science

Please watch this video.

Having watched it you’ll probably agree that Matthias Rath dropping a case against the Guardian and Ben Goldace is a good thing indeed.  Ben Goldacre attacked with the troll stick of truth and won. Read about it in today’s Guardian, Ben’s Bad Science blog, and other blogs that are covering it.  It’s worth covering.

Picture borrowed from here.  Transport history is underrated.

And well done Guardian for sticking up for your writers in-between fellating the Labour Party and (on the plus side) pissing off the Tories.

Sagan cited Dumb and Dumber as an example of dumbing down, Richard Dawkins is grating*, albeit unwittingly, and many books criticising pseudo-science are risible in their preaching to the choir smugness. Ben Goldacre is funny, can write for laymen without treating us like morons, and is a serious fuck-off academic ninja**. Buy Ben Goldacre’s book on Amazon here, you’ll enjoy the book.

* Although I agree up to a point.
** Or, also accurately, a junior doctor in London, and a shameless geek.

Photo of Ben nicked to make this post look bigger.  He looks like he’s sheepishly owning up to stealing his own book.

Simon Singh, author and good egg, is being sued by the British Chiropractic Association (note: it’s not a .org.uk address) because he said chiropractors knowingly promote bogus treatments.  It is lolworthy. Their legal attack will amount to them saying they promote bogus treatments – but not knowingly. Heh.  Chiropractic medicine is based on nonsense, and lacks any solid evidence.  If it had solid evidence it would simply be referred to as medicine.

Read more about it on Holford Watch.

Have a bit of a laugh at the press release they produced saying teens need to worry more about their health – here.  What a bunch of twats.  Their press releases, in my opinion, amount to sales literature.

See also.

Someone needs to set up a “shut up or I’ll sue you blog” documenting people with thin skins suing because they can’t handle debate.

Static electricity was described by Thales of Miletus on observing that if you rub amber it attracts minute particles. The word electron is Greek for amber (ήλεκτρον).  Jeremy Clarkson will never make such an observation, and is a twat. And so is Richard Hammond.  James May is probably OK.  Although, for all I know, he could be into badger baiting.  He probably isn’t.

Amber is cool.

Interesting interview with Derren Brown.  Part 1 & Part 2.

Dispatches – The Truth About Beauty Creams was good.  It’s good that Dispatches seems to be over the hump of mediocrity and doing something worthwhile.  Even the present (Tazeen Ahmad) seemed more switched on than the usual presenters (whose primary occupation seems to be obsessing about immigration, Muslims, and other things they think are crowd pleasers.  Thus adding to the hysteria du jour).   So well done Channel 4.  If only you had a Youtube-a-like, like the good bit of the BBC iPlayer.  I could post a link to it.   90% of sensible people,  a figure pulled out of my arse – but I suspect accurate – can’t be arsed with 4OD.

The recent stories in the press about high-tech dust that helped grow a severed finger back are nonsense. Furthermore they’re old nonsense. It will make you angry but today’s Bad Science column is essential reading and worth sharing. The stories of the ‘pixie dust’ were bad, in many ways, and on a very simple human level – there’s going to be people who, in desperation, will badger doctors for something that doesn’t work as well as the stories they’d seen in the press implied. When I saw the story this week I took a minute, and did a Google Archive search, it’s a little like LexisNexis (something many journalists have access to), and it turned up the following results:

Click here to lose a little more faith in humanity.

And, was somewhat perplexed that the story didn’t appear to be new, given the widespread coverage it was receiving, and that, furthermore, the finger didn’t appear to be severed in any sense of the word. I think Ben Goldacre is right to draw attention to such risible coverage from people we rely on for news. See also.

Imagine a world before science: a world of the supernatural - hunches dictating belief, of sun blotting fallacy.  For some seriously lolworthy quackery and pseudoscience watch UFO uHnters.  For fuck’s sake.