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    The fishy reckoning

    September 22nd, 2007 by Ben Goldacre in media, medicalisation, fish oil, cash-for-"stories", adverts, mirror, alternative medicine, nutritionists, mail, bad science | 34 Comments »

    Ben Goldacre
    The Guardian
    Saturday September 22 2007

    So you will remember the fish oil pill stories of last year. For the new kids: pill company Equazen and Durham Council said they were doing a trial on them with their GCSE year, but it wasn’t really a proper trial, for example there was no control group, and they had lots of similarly dodgy “trials” dotted about, which were being pimped successfully to the media as “positive”. When asked, Durham refused to release the detailed information you would expect from a proper piece of research. Even now, for all this pretending, there still has never been a single controlled trial, even a cheap one, of omega-3 fish oil supplements in normal children. Ridiculously.

    Read the rest of this entry »

    Dore - The Miracle Cure For Dyslexia

    November 4th, 2006 by Ben Goldacre in brain gym, dore, mirror, space, references, mail, bad science | 73 Comments »

    Ben Goldacre
    Saturday November 4, 2006
    The Guardian

    Wouldn’t it be great if there really was an expensive proprietary cure for dyslexia? Oh hang on, there is: paint tycoon Wynford Dore has developed one, with NASA space technology. It’s only £1700, it has celebrity endorsements, it involves some special exercises, but it has been proven with experts. “A revolutionary drug-free dyslexia remedy has been hailed a wonder cure by experts,” said the Mirror on Monday, in fact. And in the Mail: “Millions of people with dyslexia have been given hope by a set of simple exercises that experts say can cure the disorder.”

    This most recent wave of publicity was prompted by a paper on Dore’s miracle cure published in the academic journal Dyslexia. The story of why they should publish such a flawed study is, perhaps, for another day. But what Read the rest of this entry »

    The Red Baron

    July 8th, 2006 by Ben Goldacre in nutritionists, mirror, references, alternative medicine, PhDs, doctors, and qualifications, bad science | 27 Comments »

    The Nutrition Society was founded in 1941 by Lord Boyd Orr. He was described in his obituary - rather fabulously - as “Baron and Nutritional Physiologist” and in 1949 he casually picked up a Nobel Peace Prize. Since his time, the Nutrition Society seems to have gone rather badly downhill.

    Here is a website, for example, run by two of the Nutrition Society’s “Registered Nutritionists” (www.nutrition-advice.com). They are Read the rest of this entry »

    “Cocaine Floods The Playground”

    March 31st, 2006 by Ben Goldacre in mirror, drurrrgs, scare stories, telegraph, statistics, times, bad science | 123 Comments »

    Ben Goldacre
    Saturday April 1, 2006
    The Guardian

    Nothing comes for free: if you can cope with 400 words on statistics, we can trash a front page news story together. “Cocaine floods the playground,” roared the front page of the Times last Friday. “Use of the addictive drug by children doubles in a year.”

    Doubles? Now that was odd, because the press release for this government survey said Read the rest of this entry »

    The Great Tamiflu Vaccine Scare

    February 18th, 2006 by Ben Goldacre in MMR, scare stories, mirror, evening standard, telegraph, independent, times, mail, express, bad science | 48 Comments »

    Ben Goldacre
    Saturday February 18, 2006
    The Guardian

    The interesting thing about the Tamiflu vaccine for bird flu that everybody keeps going on about, is this: it’s not a vaccine. The manufacturers even spell that out in their factsheet. It’s a drug, an antibiotic for viruses.

    But you wouldn’t know that if you read Paul Routledge in the Mirror, Alan Hall in the Daily Mail, Sally Guyoncourt in Read the rest of this entry »

    Microbiologists raising doubts? It must be a cover-up

    November 5th, 2005 by Ben Goldacre in MRSA, mirror, scare stories, bad science | 71 Comments »

    Ben Goldacre
    Saturday November 5, 2005
    The Guardian

    There are times when it’s just great to be alive: you’re running through the archives, the wind’s in your hair, suddenly you stumble on a gem from last year’s Sunday Mirror and it just makes you bless the day you decided to become a sarcastic and hateful campaigning science Read the rest of this entry »

    The man behind the Mop of Death

    October 22nd, 2005 by Ben Goldacre in media, sun, MRSA, mirror, scare stories, PhDs, doctors, and qualifications, very basic science, mail, bad science | 25 Comments »

    Ben Goldacre
    Saturday October 22, 2005
    The Guardian

    Right. Where were we? Oh yes: there is a small unaccredited laboratory in Northants called Chemsol, run by a man with a non-accredited correspondence-course PhD and no formal microbiology training, and he seems to find MRSA in hospitals where other accredited labs, in universities and the like, cannot. And, weirdly, almost every undercover tabloid Read the rest of this entry »

    Lab that finds bugs where others do not

    October 15th, 2005 by Ben Goldacre in sun, news of the world, MRSA, media, mirror, PhDs, doctors, and qualifications, scare stories, bad science | 76 Comments »

    Ben Goldacre
    Saturday October 15, 2005
    The Guardian

    A while ago an investigative television journalist friend rang me up. “I just went undercover to take some MRSA swabs for my filthy hospital superbug scandal,” he said, “but they all came back negative. What am I doing wrong?” Always happy to help, I suggested he swab “my arse” instead. Ten minutes later Read the rest of this entry »

    Don’t dumb me down

    September 8th, 2005 by Ben Goldacre in adverts, weight loss, chocolate, mirror, letters, dangers, media, cash-for-"stories", channel five, channel 4, bbc, scare stories, MMR, references, gillian mckeith, statistics, alternative medicine, PhDs, doctors, and qualifications, very basic science, times, telegraph, independent, express, mail, bad science | 70 Comments »

    We laughed, we cried, we learned about statistics … Ben Goldacre on why writing Bad Science has increased his suspicion of the media by, ooh, a lot of per cents

    Ben Goldacre
    Thursday September 8, 2005
    The Guardian

    OK, here’s something weird. Every week in Bad Science we either victimise some barking pseudoscientific quack, or a big science story in a national newspaper. Now, tell me, why are these two groups even being mentioned in the same breath? Why is science in the media so often pointless, simplistic, boring, or just plain wrong? Like a proper little Darwin, I’ve been Read the rest of this entry »

    Risky Business

    June 20th, 2005 by Ben Goldacre in mirror, scare stories, telegraph, times, statistics | 18 Comments »

    Comment
    Risky business

    Health-scare stories often arise because their authors simply don’t understand numbers

    Ben Goldacre
    Monday June 20, 2005
    The Guardian

    Competence always looks better from a distance, but I have a confession to make: I’m a doctor, and I just don’t understand most of the stories on health risks in the news. I don’t mean I can’t understand the fuss. I mean I literally can’t understand what Read the rest of this entry »

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