The highlight of this week has been the news that Matthias Rath has folded in his attempt to sue Ben Goldacre and the Guardian. Rath will end up paying about half a million pounds for his attempt to silence and harass his critics. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving man. Matthias Rath is a modern day Lysenko. Trofim Lysenko was the Russian peasant who worked his way up through [read more…]
You may remember in January that I reported how dawn raids had been conducted on the house of a man selling a quack remedy called Triamazon. Well, today the BBC report that Andrew Harris of Sale, near Manchester, was ‘convicted under the Cancer Act of 1939 of taking part in the publication of adverts offering to treat people for cancer.’ Triamazon appeared to be a fairly mundane herbal remedy, ordinarily costing [read more…]
One of the themes of Ben Goldacre’s new book, Bad Science, is the ‘medicalisation of everyday life’. (read and except here). Everyday experiences are turned into illnesses that need medical solutions. The pharmaceutical companies do it and so do the quacks. The quacks have a great ability though of also turning food and drink into medical products. We learn that Waitrose is to launch a new drink soon. Mile High [read more…]
(as seen here.) Congratulations Ben on finally getting the book out. I will review it as soon as your publisher sees fit to send me the promised free copy and stuffed brown envelope. Update this could get boring…
The comedy genius of What Doctor’s Don’t Tell You always has me in stitches. A recent blog entry warns us of the dangers of DIRTY ELECTRICITY. Their comedy writer, Jo Blogs, warns us that, Dirty electricity’ is a phenomenon few of us have heard about but it could be affecting the lives of millions of people around the world, according to new research. Basically, dirty electricity is a power quality [read more…]
I have just returned from Europe’s first conference on science blogging. Held at the Royal Institution in London and organised by Nature Network, the conference was attended by science bloggers from all over the world. The conference kicked off with a keynote speech from ‘Britain’s leading science blogger’, Ben Goldacre, who talked about the superiority of bloggers to be first to important science stories, to report them more accurately and [read more…]
The decision by the British Chiropractic Association to sue Simon Singh will undoubtedly bring increased scrutiny of chiropractic. I would like to start with a first look at the education of chiropractors in the UK. This is also timely as Universities have recently been criticised for teaching quackery, resulting in a homeopathy degree being dropped by the University of Central Lancashire. Chiropractic is going to be quite different from homeopathy [read more…]
Hot on the heals of New Zealand Chiropractors trying to silence David Colquhoun and the The New Zealand Medical Journal, we learn today in the Telegraph that the British Chiropractic Association has issued a writ against Simon Singh for an article he wrote in the Guardian entitled Beware the Spinal Trap. ‘Dr’ Antoni Jakubowski of the BCA said that this was not a decision they were taking lightly. If justice [read more…]
Chiropractors have an air of respectability about them. They style themselves, ‘Doctor’. They wear white coats and have brass plaques outside their offices with lots of letters after their name. My friends look at be puzzled when I say they are quacks. But that is what the evidence says. Their practice is founded on strange ideas about mysterious things called ‘subluxions’ and pseudoscientific beliefs in ‘inate intelligence’ running through our [read more…]
Andy Burman, Chief Executive of the British Dietetic Association, appears to have resigned his post from the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (Ofquack). This news follows my recent criticism on this site of the BDA for not doing enough to educate the public about the difference between pseudoscientific Nutritional Therapists (as to be ‘regulated’ by Ofquack) and professionally trained and regulated dietitians (as currently represented by the BDA). This came [read more…]
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