Bad Science

Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 13 March 2010 “2,000 bugs taking a ride in every train compartment” said the Daily Mail. “Cockroaches cluster on trains“, scuttled the Telegraph. “Commuters share trains with 1,000 cockroaches, 200 bedbugs and 200 fleas” said the Evening Standard. The figures were all very specific and very...

Read more

Ben goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 6 March 2010 If the media were actuarial about drawing our attention to the causes of avoidable death, your newspapers would be filled with diarrhoea, Aids, and cigarettes every day. In reality we know this is an absurd idea. For those interested in the scale of...

Read more

Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 27 February, 2010 After the Science and Technology committee report this week, and the jaw dropping stupidity of “we bring you both sides” in the media coverage afterwards, you are bored of homeopathy. So am I, but it gives a very simple window into the wider...

Read more

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have hit the bottom of the barrel. Homeopathy cured my cancer, on BBC News....

Read more

Here’s the report, press release below. It looks like pretty sensible stuff to me, homeopaths can’t expect special treatment among all forms of medicine, if the evidence actively shows it doesn’t work, then that’s that. I have to say what really frightens me about all this is the MHRA: if...

Read more

Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 20 February 2010 You might have read the case of Ying Wu this week: a fully qualified traditional chinese medicine doctor operating out of a shop in Chelmsford who for several years prescribed high doses of a dangerous banned substance to treat the acne of senior...

Read more

Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 13 February 2010 Often one data point isn’t enough to spot a pattern, or even to say that an event is interesting and exceptional, because numbers are all about context and constraints. At one end there are the simple examples. “Mum beats odds of 50...

Read more

Sorry no column this week, I’ve got some fun stuff in the pipe, as they say, and a lot on. In case you miss me, here’s my shouty contribution to Radio 4’s “Moments Of Genius”, a eulogy to the startlingly new idea of systematic reviews. Other bits and bobs… …I’m...

Read more

I thought you might be interested in this job advert from the Independent. It’s from the nice people at Maperton Trust. You can go and see them for a diagnosis with their magical machines, although the best product is their Head Lice Repelling Unit or HELRU (right) which various people have emailed...

Read more

Here’s a very brief piece I bashed out for the Guardian newsdesk today on the Wakefield finding, the further reading below will be more helpful if you’re interested in the story. Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Thursday 28 January 2009 In medicine, “untoward incident inquiries” tend to look for systems failures, rather...

Read more

Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 23 January 2010 Like many people, you’re possibly afraid to share your views on animal experiments, because you don’t want anyone digging up your grandmother’s grave, or setting fire to your house, or stuff like that. Animal experiments are necessary, they need to be properly regulated,...

Read more

Brief note to say I’m a guest on LlewTube this week with Robert Llewellyn (or Kryten off of Red Dwarf if you prefer). The show’s great generally, and a galaxy of nerds, recent guests include Patrick Stewart, Graham Linehan, Martha Lane Fox, Adrian Edmondson, Brian Cox, and the rest. It’s...

Read more

Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 16 January 2010 Every now and then you have to salute a genius. Both the Daily Mail and the Metro report new research analysing the positions of Britain’s ancient sites, and the results are startling: primitive man had his own form of “sat nav”. Researcher Tom...

Read more

Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 8 January 2009 “Public sector pay races ahead in a recession” shouted the front page of this week’s Sunday Times. “Public sector workers earn 7% more on average than their peers in the private sector — a pay gulf that has more than doubled since the...

Read more

On the birthday of Jesus Christ – who was clearly a very nice guy, giant sky wizard issues aside – I can think of no better bible reading than this, Daniel 1:8, a description of the first ever clinical trial. Daniel and his people have been dragged off to...

Read more

Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 19 December 2009 It’s been a vintage year for dodgy science in government. We saw reports on cocaine that were disappeared, dodgy evidence to justify DNA retention, and some government advisors who estimated the cost of piracy at 10% of GDP, to media applause, and then...

Read more

Last year I ran into Ariane Sherine. She had found that no charity would publicly take money from a book written by atheists at Christmas, since Christians give so much money for good work, and they didn’t want to annoy them. Luckily the Terence Higgins Trust stepped up to this...

Read more

Ooh, starting tomorrow is this year’s run of our amazing super-nerd-comedy-musical spectacular Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People. It’s a galaxy of stars, Richard Dawkins, Johnny Ball, Barry Cryer, Chris Addison off the Thick of It, Brian Cox, Richard Herring, Simon Singh, me, and many many more random people....

Read more

Sorry, this felt a bit rushed and PollyFillaesque, I hope it’s vaguely interesting… Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 12 December 2009 So as we career towards a mediocre outcome in Copenhagen, why do roughly half the people in this country not believe in man-made climate change, when the vast, overwhelming majority of...

Read more

I just finished recording Any Questions on Radio 4 (you can hear the programme here). Since it was recorded in a pesticides research base, I was hoping for a question on GM, because there’s an interesting dark corner here that needs a bit more attention. Regular readers will know...

Read more