badscienceblogs

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. Our present minister of Education, Michael Gove, memorably referred to Newton’s Laws of Thermodynamics, blissfully unaware that thermodynamics was a 19th century [...]

The homeopath Alan Freestone is proposing a trial to develop a homeopathic treatment for PANDAS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Diagnosis Associated with Streptococcal Infections). Regular readers of this blog will be aware of my opinion of homeopathy but we might all learn something from a properly conducted trial. Properly conducted. Aye, there’s the rub. He gives […]

Misnamed anti-vaccine website Child Health Safety posted a blog recently in which a number of surprising claims were made with great certainty. I thought these claims sounded very dubious and it turned out that they were. It’s taken me a few days to get round to posting this debunking partly because, unlike Child Health Safety, […]

This is a rather belated review of the book Tarnished Gold: The Sickness of Evidence-based Medicine, by Steve Hickey and Hilary Roberts. It was published in 2011, and my attention was drawn to it when I was asked to comment on its claims, from the viewpoint of an experienced clinical research specialist. Otherwise, I don’t […]

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 electorate, 1300 Fellows) Yes                                  147     (11%) No                                   24        (2%) Blank ballot                       1       (0.0008%) Failed to [...]

Anti-vaccinationists have made a wide range of claims about the dangers of vaccines. In spite of the fact that they have generally had neither data nor a plausible mechanism for the claimed effect, several of their claims have been investigated by researchers. As it turns out, the anti-vaccinationists are remarkably consistent. Time and time again, [...]