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A review of Do You Believe in Magic, by Paul Offit. And a fine piece of timidity from Nature Medicine 27 Aug 2013 | 06:17 pm
Despite the First Amendment in the US and a new Defamation Act in the UK, fear of legal threats continue to suppress the expression of honest scientific opinion. I was asked by Nature Medicine (which...
The Quacktitioner Royal is a threat to constitutional government and to the health of the nation 30 Jul 2013 | 11:38 am
This article has appeared, in nearly identical form, on the UK Conversation . You can leave comments there or here. The modern major-general A constitutional monarch is purely ceremonial and plays n...
Connect Physical Health sells quackery to NHS 10 Jun 2013 | 11:05 pm
A constant theme of this blog is that the NHS should not pay for useless treatments. By and large, NICE does a good job of preventing that. But NICE has not been allowed by the Department of Health to...
Blogs lead in critical thinking, but newspapers still matter 10 Jun 2013 | 09:37 pm
Jump to follow-up Here is a record of a couple of recent newspaper pieces. Who says the mainstream media don’t matter any longer? Blogs may be in the lead now when it comes to critical analysis, but t...
Acupuncture is a theatrical placebo: the end of a myth 30 May 2013 | 01:52 pm
Jump to follow-up Anesthesia & Analgesia is the official journal of the International Anesthesia Research Society. In 2012 its editor, Steven Shafer, proposed a head-to-head contest between those who ...
The election of Prince Andrew to the Royal Society. What Fellows think. 26 May 2013 | 04:02 am
Jump to follow-up A recent post, A right royal cock-up, got a lot more press attention than I’d expected. Perhaps I should have realised that the mainstream media are fascinated with anything that inv...
A curious letter from David Tredinnick MP, the government’s resident medical loon 16 May 2013 | 01:52 am
It’s hard to know what to make of David Tredinnick MP (Cons, Bosworth). He is certainly an extreme example of the scientific ignorance of our parliamentary representatives, but he isn’t alone in that...
A right Royal cock-up. Prince Andrew elected to the Royal Society 3 May 2013 | 04:29 pm
Today the Royal Society elected Andrew, Duke of York, as a “Royal Fellow”. Well, to be exact. 11% of them did. The numbers, which the Society has not made public, were as follows (as fraction of the e...
Another update. Red meat doesn’t kill you, but the spin is fascinating 14 Apr 2013 | 12:07 am
Jump to follow-up The latest news: eating red meat doesn’t do any harm. But why isn’t that said clearly? Alarmism makes better news, not only for journalists but for authors and university PR people t...
The exploitation of cancer patients is wicked. Carrot juice for lunch, then die destitute 25 Mar 2013 | 06:16 pm
The time when I lose patience with quacks is when they make unjustified claims about serious diseases. Giving false hope to the desperate (often at a high price) is plain wicked. If the patient stops ...
