badscienceblogs

Dr John Briffa has a blog. His latest post is about fluoridation. I think I agree with Dr Briffa on some points: for one thing, it seems to me that the benefits of fluoridation are often overstated; there is also the issue of informed consent. I’m uncomfortable with the idea of “mass medication” where those [...]

A woman is left with terminal breast cancer after 2½ years of Bioptron therapy. No one said it could cure cancer; but Bioptron AG and a CAM Institute don’t respect evidence.

Today’s post looks at how serious measles is and what difference vaccination against measles has made.
How serious is measles?
Very. The Lay Science blog has covered this topic here. The post includes details of recent outbreaks of measles:
Italy, 2002: 4 deaths, 594 hospitalizations.
California, 1989/90: 75 deaths, 3,390 hospital admissions.
Japan, 2000: 88 deaths.
Germany, 2006: 160 children [...]

“Were lasers cool?” is a mandatory question in most peer reviews

Welcome to this weeks slightly late Carnival of the Liberals! Obama has been in the White House for a month or so, but prisoners are still being abused in Gitmo, U.S. forces are still fighting the War-Formerly-Known-As-The-War-On-Terror, humanity is still farting CO2 from every orifice, and the economy is lower than Dolly Parton’s unsupported nipples. On the plus side, Europeans now like America again, although not your plague of hamburger franchises.

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It is a sadly recurrent theme that figures from the world of AltMed tend to pad their CVs - Dr Roy Rutherford seems to be one of these although the GMC explicitly advises against such practices.

A mischievous octopus is being held responsible over the flooding of a Californian aquarium after sabotaging the filtration system. Employees at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium arrived at work yesterday to find their offices soaked with hundreds of gallons of seawater. The source of the flood was traced to the aquarium’s small two-spotted octopus. Staff member Brianne Emhiser stated in a press release:

“Our best guess is that the octopus, who is incredibly gregarious and curious, tugged on a valve in her tank last night causing a steady stream of water to overflow out of the tank.”

The calculated act of vandalism comes just months after a major refurbishment replaced all the flooring in the offices.

Octopuses - is there anything they can’t do?

Read the comments on this post…

A mischievous octopus is being held responsible over the flooding of a Californian aquarium after sabotaging the filtration system. Employees at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium arrived at work yesterday to find their offices soaked with hundreds of gallons of seawater. The source of the flood was traced to the aquarium’s small two-spotted octopus. Staff member Brianne Emhiser stated in a press release:

“Our best guess is that the octopus, who is incredibly gregarious and curious, tugged on a valve in her tank last night causing a steady stream of water to overflow out of the tank.”

The calculated act of vandalism comes just months after a major refurbishment replaced all the flooring in the offices.

Octopuses - is there anything they can’t do?

Read the comments on this post…

A mischievous octopus is being held responsible over the flooding of a Californian aquarium after sabotaging the filtration system. Employees at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium arrived at work yesterday to find their offices soaked with hundreds of gallons of seawater. The source of the flood was traced to the aquarium’s small two-spotted octopus. Staff member Brianne Emhiser stated in a press release:

“Our best guess is that the octopus, who is incredibly gregarious and curious, tugged on a valve in her tank last night causing a steady stream of water to overflow out of the tank.”

The calculated act of vandalism comes just months after a major refurbishment replaced all the flooring in the offices.

Octopuses - is there anything they can’t do?

Read the comments on this post…

A mischievous octopus is being held responsible over the flooding of a Californian aquarium after sabotaging the filtration system. Employees at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium arrived at work yesterday to find their offices soaked with hundreds of gallons of seawater. The source of the flood was traced to the aquarium’s small two-spotted octopus. Staff member Brianne Emhiser stated in a press release:

“Our best guess is that the octopus, who is incredibly gregarious and curious, tugged on a valve in her tank last night causing a steady stream of water to overflow out of the tank.”

The calculated act of vandalism comes just months after a major refurbishment replaced all the flooring in the offices.

Octopuses - is there anything they can’t do?

Read the comments on this post…

Watch this video. It features the most amazing argument you will ever see:

You may know already that I’m a fan of Ben Goldacre, but it’s not him. I found his style of agument quite conservative and traditional: people have been trying to win arguments by pointing out the gaping holes in their opponents’ ideas for [...]

Jeremy Sherr, the homeopath who is carrying out homeopathic trials on AIDS patients in the developing world with the support of the homeopathic establishment, believed he was justified in his actions on account of a recently passed bill in Tanzanian law*.
Sigs explained about the Tanzanian law that support homoeopathy and other traditional medicines; Traditional and [...]

Today the Big Daddy of bad science journalism, Ben Goldacre, received the advance new-look copies of his fantastically brilliant book, Bad Science. He didn’t take well to having his picture in it, either because he is so modest he gets flustered by these things, or because he is in reality several different people engaged in an elaborate ruse the meaning of which we cannot fathom.

Anyway, all his harping inspired me demonstrate just how bad the Bad Science cover redesign could have been. His publishers may, for example, have tried to boost female readership by breaking into the misery-lit market:

But then, how good could it have gone? I mean, what if Ben’s book had come out in the 1960s?

What do you think? Could you design a better / worse cover? Special points for using Ben’s face on the front or making him appear to be berserk with rage. Only real quotes from or about the book allowed. Winner gets a free copy of the Bad Science book. Email your efforts, no matter how crude, to webmaster@sciencepunk.com.

Read the comments on this post…

“It's risky to say that the priorities of what research is done should be set by articles in the Daily Mail”

Trust in bloggers to investigate properly

Bought the game? You failed the first test.

Recently I wrote a piece for the National Health Executive (”the Independent Journal for Senior Health Service Managers”), with the title Medicines that contain no medicine and other follies. 
In the interests of what journalists call balance (but might better be called equal time for the Flat Earth Society), an article appeared straight after [...]

Former Visiting Professor Patrick Holford is still ignoring the sore thumb issue of Dr Andrew Wakefield and the findings of fraud and deliberate manipulation in association with his research. Holford is advising people to take his advice, buy his books and supplements and undergo unevidenced interventions such as chelation for unproven heavy metal toxicity.

Aphids repair their homes with the bodies of sacrificed soldiers

We were surprised to seeing the Independent running a story by Rob Sharp which can be summed up as ‘autistic child develops as she gets older (while parents invest lots of time and money in dubious treatments)’. This may be shocking to Independent journalists, but autism is a developmental difference, not developmental stasis. [...]