BPSDB - The Skeptics' Aggregator

[BPSDB] Dr Ben Goldacre pwnd detox and Detox in a Box on the BBC Today programme. Oddly enough, Detox in a Box has nutritional expertise that is supplied by Diane Green, a diplomate nutritionist from the Institute of Optimum Nutrition.
Read more [Holford Watch] 

[BPSDB] It’s back to work after the festive binge and the health woos are after your money, judging by “Body Matters” in today’s “METRO”. The first item is a largely uncritical piece by Lisa Scott on the Grinberg Method.  We are told:- “It was developed by Israeli reflexologist Avi Grinberg, who believed feet to be accurate predictors of our overall health and, in particular, how our mind affects our body. His argument? We spend most of the day on our feet so our physical and emotional history will show up on them through marks and scars. Shyness, ...
Read more [Letting Off Steam] 

Who says I couldn't be a tabloid headline writer?Anyway, the airwaves and dead-tree media have been choc-a-bloc-a-detox (see? ok, fair point) with Sense About Science once again announcing to the world the ridiculousness of 'detox' diets and products.In his post "Detox: Nonsense for the Gullible", David Colquhoun has nicely laid out the bones of the story, as well as the list of media outlets that ran the story.One such place that picked it up was BBC Radio 4's flagship news program, Today. The interview was with science-behemoth Dr Ben Goldacre of Bad Science and Nas Amir Ahmadi, managing ...
Read more [Thinking is Dangerous] 

[BPSDB] I was navel gazing and having a look at which of my rants was the most read, it seems that it was the one on electrosensitivity. So lets have a talk about medically unexplained symptoms shall we? What are medically unexplained symptoms? Briefly, if someone presents with physical symptoms and signs that do not appear to have [...]
Read more [Musings of a Phenomenologist] 

See also Lessons from the Placebo Gene. Also, if you like this kind of thing, see my other fMRI-curmudgeonry(1, 2)The life of a neurocurmudgeon is a hard one, but once in a while, fate smiles upon us. This article in the Daily Telegraph neatly embodies several of the mistakes that people make about the brain, all in one bite-size portion.The article is about a recent fMRI study published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research. 22 healthy Stanford student volunteers (half of them male) played a "video game" while being scanned. The game wasn't an actual game like Left 4 Dead(*), but rather ...
Read more [Neuroskeptic] 

Fairly recently I read this article on the Daily Kos, about a Powerpoint presentation being shown to the US Air Force. It’s pushing religion, obviously — it’s written by the chaplain. I still really have no idea what chaplains are for. I think our university has one and I have no idea what, if anything, he does. But the fact that a chaplain wrote a presentation pushing religion is not remarkable or necessarily bad. What is wrong with this one is that it’s pushing religion — in fact, it’s pushing creationism — as a way of fighting suicide. (Because, ...
Read more [Apathy Sketchpad] 

It seems that the ASA has changed its position on Gingko Biloba.  This is a good thing and speaks well of the organisation.   In 2001 the ASA commissioned a, “report by an academic in the field of Pharmacognosy” which concluded that, “most research appeared to suggest that there was sufficient proof Ginkgo Biloba was likely to improve short-term memory and blood-flow in healthy individuals.”  On the basis of this work the ASA told me that they had, “… accepted that this particular product can, in the short term, help with the maintenance of memory in ...
Read more [A canna’ change the laws of physics] 

A correction: Matthias Rath vs. Ben Goldacre and the Guardian In September 2008 the Badscience Blogosphere, in common with media outlets, reported that controversial vitamin entrepreneur Dr Matthias Rath had dropped a legal action for defamation against writer Ben Goldacre and the Guardian. We now realise that this impression, conveyed in headlines like: ”Fall of the doctor who said his vitamins would cure AIDS” (The Guardian, Sept 12th 2008) ”The Matthias Rath case exposes the difference between science and its imitators” (The Times, Sept 20th 2008) ”One small additional reason ...
Read more [Dr Aust's Spleen] 

[BPSDB] Former Visiting Professor Patrick Holford of Teesside University has a subscription 100%health service. Subscribers pay for information that will transform their life and health. Daily Record carries an item from a recent newsletter: it is riddled with the obvious and also some remarkable errors - e.g., the nutritional composition of chicken breast. When UK universities pay for accreditation of their catering facilities by such experts, precisely what are they spending their money on?
Read more [Holford Watch] 

There's a recent story in The Guardian about how Michael Flately is back on his toes and ready for more Celtic prancing following a baffling illness. He credits this to a visit to some bozos at the Plexus Bio-Energy Clinic, who(accoding to their website) use a system that "represents the integration of a network of powerful and effective healing techniques that work by rebalancing the life energy within". For good measure we're told that they have "achieved exceptional results in the treatment of a wide range of conditions often in cases that have proved difficult to treat by conventional ...
Read more [Effortless Incitemennt] 

Here's some supremely nebulous tosh, among other things illustrating that peer-review on its own can easily be an empty charade. It's by no means clear what is being asserted here, and it's even less clear what reasons are being given. Here, to start with, is the abstract:In psychology, we can look at human beings either in their thing-like aspects or in their person-like aspects. One of the best places in which human beings can be studied as persons is in the arena of psychotherapy. Unfortunately, the prevalence of schoolism has meant that the findings of different schools of ...
Read more [Effortless Incitemennt] 

Galileo would be turning in his grave. His achievement was to set science on the course which has made it into an astonishingly successful means of generating knowledge. Yet some people not only reject the truths of the science that Galileo did so much to advance; they do it in his name.Intro: In Denial?Scientific truth is increasingly disbelieved, and this is a new phenomenon, so much so that new words have been invented to describe it. Leah Ceccarelli defines manufacturoversy as a public controversy over some question (usually scientific) which is not considered by experts on the topic ...
Read more [Neuroskeptic] 

[BPSDB]Ben Goldacre has done a review of 2008 so I thought I’d take a leaf out of his book (or should that be a byte out of his blog? Whatever. You know what I mean.) and produce my own review of my first full year of serious blogging. Homeopathy featured prominently and I began the year by examining a couple of papers that are trumpeted as proof that homeopathy works. They aren’t and it doesn’t. This post was discovered several months later by homeopathic Drs P.K. Sethi and Nancy Malik. It will surprise nobody to learn that they provided no evidence that homeopathy ...
Read more [Letting Off Steam] 

Dr Aust and the family Aust live in a decent sized city in the North of England. As cities tend to, this one has a good share of urban poverty. A few years back we were discussing how to incorporate a ”learning outcome” (yuck) into Dr Aust’s bit of the University’s medical degree that would point the med students to think a bit about diseases associated with poverty in the UK. As part of this, Dr Aust asked all his clinician mates what medical conditions they would think of as being most strongly associated with poverty. The two answers, pretty much universally, were “Anything caused ...
Read more [Dr Aust's Spleen] 

[BPSDB] Can you get 23 portions of fruit and veg in a single glass of juice: Patrick Holford Ponders, Briefly, Before Suggesting a Product where you can consume an astonishing number of ORAC units at a high cost, without any variety and without any evidence of efficacy or clinical relevance.
Read more [Holford Watch] 

Here’s a bit of year-end nonsense:  one of the mysteries of my blog this year has been the post, “Good News For Hypercholesterolemic Hamsters“.  This has been, far and away, the most viewed post; accruing twice the number of views of its nearest rival. So, is it interest in the applicability of animal models to people that has driven this phenomenon?  This post uses the Google Trends tool to explore the relative popularity of hamsters against: gerbils, guinea pigs, homeopathy, acupuncture, aromatherapy and reflexology, Ginseng, Black Cohosh, Ginkgo Biloba and Red ...
Read more [A canna’ change the laws of physics] 

[bpsdb] Mike Adams came to my attention recently, when I decided to subscribe to a couple of the nuttier alternative medicine websites out there to help provide raw material to feed by blogging habit. He is... let's say passionate, about the wonders of alternal medicine, and the giant conspiracy that is the medical establishment, and his rants are an endless source of amusement to me. read more
Read more [The Lay Scientist] 

I’ve not commented much on the MMR ‘controversy’ manufactured by Andrew Wakefield, his fellow travellers and the media: I’ve left it to better qualified commentators.  To date, my only brief foray was on the topic of making decisions in the absence of certainty; a riposte to Dr John Briffa’s apparent instance on being able to be absolutely certain that the vaccine caused no harm before it could be endorsed.  One of the sources I cited in the piece was the Science Museum’s generally excellent web pages, “The MMR Files“.  Recently bloggers ...
Read more [A canna’ change the laws of physics] 

[bpsdb] Australian comedian Tim Minchin delivers an inspired piece of poetry about the alternative-medicine-loving girl he once met at a dinner party. Recorded at the London Apollo, apologies for the poor sound quality. read more
Read more [The Lay Scientist] 

[BPSDB] Tim Minchin's Storm from 9 Lessons and Carols for Godless People.
Read more [Holford Watch] 

Holiday best wishes to all Dr Aust’s readers (all four of them). As a bit of light seasonal fare, I decided on a Christmas song. Others may like to invent their own versions. On the twelfth day of Christmas, My true love sent to me Twelve healers “healing” Eleven chiros suing Ten psychic surgeons Nine worthless journals Eight random needles Seven magic crystals Six placebo pills Five sessions of homoeopathy (Or:  “Five alternative realities” ) Four nutritionistas Three imagined allergies Two crank diets And a fictitious Ph.D. ! [BPSDB] ...
Read more [Dr Aust's Spleen] 

Some people believe that living near high-voltage power lines raises the risk of childhood cancer. Most people are skeptical. A Chinese group have just published a paper in the journal Leukemia and Lymphoma, claiming that a genetic polymorphism in the XRCC1 gene, which has been previously linked to various cancers, raises the risk of electromagnetic field (EMF)-related leukemia. People who believe in EMF-related leukemia are happy. The Daily Mail report on this study quoting no less than three such people.What's the real story? The authors took 123 childhood leukemia patients living near ...
Read more [Neuroskeptic] 

[BPSDB] Months ago I’ve created a rebuttal essay debunking the claims being made about alleged live pterosaur sightings in Papua New Guinea and guess who’s upset over what I wrote–... They're No Biblical Behemoths! This blog is created to expose the lies, deceit, and hypocrisy of young earth creationism and their false beliefs on dinosaurs and debunks them in an unbiased way and also pays homage to the late 80s animated TV series C.O.P.S. too.
Read more [Stupid Dinosaur Lies] 

As the year draws towards its end, what has become of one of the big Alt.Reality stories of the year in the UK – the back-crackers Chiropractors vs. Simon Singh libel action? Well, legal blogger Jack of Kent has been keeping a weather eye on the procedural bubblings-under of this case, in which the British Chiropractic Association (or BCA) are suing noted science writer Simon Singh for being mean about them. As those who have been following the case will know, it all stems from a short Opinion piece Singh wrote in the Guardian back in April. In the article he repeated what he and ...
Read more [Dr Aust's Spleen] 

[BPSDB] To be honest with you I just cannot look at creationist emotional rants without getting upset over them. Creationists have master the art of emotionally manipulating people into clouding... They're No Biblical Behemoths! This blog is created to expose the lies, deceit, and hypocrisy of young earth creationism and their false beliefs on dinosaurs and debunks them in an unbiased way and also pays homage to the late 80s animated TV series C.O.P.S. too.
Read more [Stupid Dinosaur Lies] 

[BPSDB] As we come towards the end of 2008, North Korea's inimitable national news outlet / propaganda machine brings us news of two amazing new medical breakthroughs that will surely keep the not-at-all brutally oppressed people - the ones that aren't being slaughtered in concentration camps while the world turns a blind eye - in good health and spirits. read more
Read more [The Lay Scientist] 

You can't be a little bit pregnant, you either are or you aren't. - Bob Flowerdew, Radio 4's 'Gardener's Question Time', talking about organic gardening.I've never bought into the idea of 'organic' produce - there are some solid organic principals and guidelines which I think are Good Things, like reducing pesticides and biodiversity, but Organic True Believers™ would have no truck with my post-modern woolly organicity.I'll also say, I've never trusted the Organic High Priests like the Soil Association, whose take on organic food has been put through the PR mill, so that the perceived ...
Read more [Thinking is Dangerous] 

[BPSDB] Review of 9 Lessons and 8 Carols for Godless People with: Phil Harris, Stewart Lee, Phil Jupitus, Simon Singh, Darren Hayman, Ricky Gervais, Richard Dawkins, Phil Jeays, Robyn Hitchcock, Josie Long, Jo Neary, Isy Suttie and Gavin Osborn, Mark Thomas, Christina Martin, Colin Watson, Natalie Haynes, Andrew Collins, Peter Buckley Hill, Ben Goldacre, Chris Addison, Tim Minchin, Carl Sagan and Robin Ince.
Read more [Holford Watch] 

In November the Thinking Is Dangerous blog pointed out that the Natural History Museum (NHM) was running and publicising on its website, a project to catalogue plants and fungi ‘used’ in homeopathy; I was amazed.   I was even more shocked whn I found out that the the Department of Botany at the Natural History Museum had published, “Plant Names in Homeopathy An annotated checklist of currently accepted names in common use“.  Don’t they know that homeopathy is nonsense? It should be unthinkable that a premier scientific institution would lend its credibility ...
Read more [A canna’ change the laws of physics] 

Link: I write further on this topic in a subsequent post.Some interesting comments over at Respectful Insolence got me thinking about the "Galileo Gambit". This is when people with unpopular ideas compare themselves to Galileo with the implication that, like him, they're being persecuted for their unorthodox views but that they will eventually be proved right. Everyone wants to be the underdog, and the Gambit has become such a cliché that several writers are famous for denouncing it. Michael Shermer gave us the snappy aphorism -Heresy does not equal correctness.While Carl Sagan went for ...
Read more [Neuroskeptic] 

[BPSDB] Even by the impressive standards of the Daily Mail, Richard Littlejohn's column contains a spectacular amount of idiocy, but in today's paper he surpasses himself with some of the most ridiculous nonsense I've ever seen written on the subject of climate change in a "credible" mass media publication. I've reproduced some of his Conservapedia-style ramblings below, annotated with my own facts, rebuttals and thoughts. read more
Read more [The Lay Scientist] 

[BPSDB] Just when you thought that after 10 tedious years the MMR Hoax was finally dying a death, no less an authority than the Science Museum have managed to screw things up again. As reported over on Thinking is Dangerous, the Museum's staff have taken it upon themselves to recommend anti-vaccine campaigners JABS as an appropriate source of advice for concerned parents. If you haven't heard of JABS before and don't know why this is such a big deal, check out this Guardian piece on them. So in the best British tradition I've written them a stern letter, which you can see below. First, ...
Read more [The Lay Scientist] 

[BPSDB] So Answers in Genesis’ member Buddy Davis asks, “How Can We Use Dinosaurs to Spread the Creation Gospel Message?” Here’s Buddy’s answer: “Lie. Lie about... They're No Biblical Behemoths! This blog is created to expose the lies, deceit, and hypocrisy of young earth creationism and their false beliefs on dinosaurs and debunks them in an unbiased way and also pays homage to the late 80s animated TV series C.O.P.S. too.
Read more [Stupid Dinosaur Lies] 

I'm currently in the middle of rewriting the BPSDB code from the ground up. By the time I'm finished we'll have a powerful search engine and an RSS feed that works properly. In the meantime, over the course of this week you're likely to see a lot of glitches, particularly in the RSS feed where you'll see a lot of duplicates appearing. If all goes well, the new BPSDB site should be live Saturday night.
Read more [The Lay Scientist] 

This is the tenth year of the MMR Hoax. Of course, the media - who according to Dr Ben Goldacre in the above link are largely responsible - have switched allegiances and act as if their constant publishing of nonsense and scare stories relating to MMR never happened.At least, after ten years, the media will now admit (in accordance with what respectable health practitioners have been saying for a decade) that it was a hoax - the NHS website on MMR states the site is no longer being updated and the Department of Health has announced an MMR vaccine catch-up campaign.The media, that is, apart ...
Read more [Thinking is Dangerous] 

[BPSDB] When I see what this Answers in Genesis idiot article is written by, I’m reminded about Marcus Ross who lied his way into getting a PH.D from Rhode Island University so he can use it to... They're No Biblical Behemoths! This blog is created to expose the lies, deceit, and hypocrisy of young earth creationism and their false beliefs on dinosaurs and debunks them in an unbiased way and also pays homage to the late 80s animated TV series C.O.P.S. too.
Read more [Stupid Dinosaur Lies] 

[BPSDB] This is an absolutely fascinating interview between Richard Dawkins and Derren Brown on the subject of psychics, where Brown lays into his "peers", and explains how he believes they rationalize their work. The interview was conducted for "Enemies of Reason", a new documentary, and although only a few minutes will be shown in the final cut, the whole interview was deemed interesting enough to put online for the public to see. It's nearly an hour long, but well worth watching.
Read more [The Lay Scientist] 

In part three of my two-part series (here and here) on The Royal College of Nursing’s “Complementary approaches to menopausal symptoms - RCN guidance for nurses, midwives and health visitors” I pursue a niggling doubt about the evidence base for red clover isoflavones: the RCN seemed keen on them around the same time the NIH was saying, “studies suggest that it is not effective in reducing hot flashes.”  The RCN’s evidence centres on a 1996 paper published by Nachtigall and co-workers.  I was so intrigued I bought a copy from the British Library.  I ...
Read more [A canna’ change the laws of physics] 

[BPSDB] A burglar breaking into a house in Malaysia was found dehydrated and fatigued by police three days later, claiming that he was held there against his will by a ghost. Really, or is there another explanation? read more
Read more [The Lay Scientist] 

[BPSDB] A burglar breaking into a house in Malaysia was found dehydrated and fatigued by police three days later, claiming that he was held there against his will by a ghost. Really, or is there another explanation? read more
Read more [The Lay Scientist] 

What with all the fuss over the Large Hadron Collider being about to suck us all into a black hole or blow up the world or something, it's easy to forget that it's not just cutting-edge, incredibly cool physics research that can be dangerous. Even seemingly benign New Age woo can go awry and end up killing hundreds - at least judging by the results of the fascinatingly flaky Peace Intention Experiment, an update of the famous Transcendental Mediation crime reduction studies.The Peace Intention Experiment, or as I call it the PIE (in the sky?), is the latest project from Lynn McTaggart, New ...
Read more [Neuroskeptic] 

If you hear voices that aren't really there, are you "mad"? Maybe - auditory hallucinations, most commonly voices, are one of the characteristic symptoms of schizophrenia and are sometimes also a feature of severe depression and mania. (For more on hallucinations, try this paper. It's long, but it's worth a read because it's one of the few academic papers containing phrases like "Do YOU want a slap in the head?" and "Die, bitch".) But anyone can find themselves hearing things that others don't - it just takes a little prompting.Via the excellent Mind Hacks, I came across this great little ...
Read more [Neuroskeptic] 

Vicky Tuck, President of the British Girls' Schools Association, has some odd ideas about the brain.Tuck has appeared on British radio and in print over the past few days arguing that there should be more single-sex schools (which are still quite common in Britain) because girls and boys learn in different ways and benefit from different teaching styles. Given her job, I suppose she ought to be doing that, and there are, I'm sure, some good arguments for single-sex schools.So why has she resorted to talking nonsense about neuroscience? Listen if you will to an interview she gave on the ...
Read more [Neuroskeptic] 

Over the past few weeks, Christian neurosurgeon Michael Egnor, who writes on Evolution News & Views, and atheist neurologist Steve Novella (Neurologica) have been having an, er, vigorous debate about what neuroscience can tell us about materialism and the soul. As reported in New Scientist, this is part of an apparant attempt to undermine the materialist position (that all mental processes are the product of neural processes), on the part of the same people who brought you Intelligent Design. Many are calling it the latest front in the Culture War.A couple of days ago Denyse O'Leary, a ...
Read more [Neuroskeptic] 

Last month I blogged about the relationship between alternative health eurosceptics, the MEP Kathy Sinnott and the murderous quack Matthias Rath.  During the leadup to that blog post I had corresponded with the MEP Kathy Sinnott and informed her about the reputation and practices of Matthias Rath, while I found it difficult to get Ms Sinnott to criticise Matthias Rath I thought at the very least she might rethink her association with the European Referendum Initiative (ERI) - a Dr Rath Foundation funded organisation.  Sadly I was wrong. The latest press release from the ERI was published ...
Read more [Gimpy's Blog] 

By Guest Blogger, Redlan.Media reporting of science is a beautiful thing to behold, and usually dreadfully and woefully wrong. Read the original study and you are pretty much guaranteed to find that the study found almost the complete reverse of what was reported.The Daily Mail recently reported that "Meditation 'as effective as medication' in treating depression" and the BBC followed with "Group Therapy 'beats depression'"As effective? Beats depression?On this one they might have redeemed themselves though, as they’re both only half wrong. What they are talking about is something called ...
Read more [Thinking is Dangerous] 

[BPSDB] First, creationists say that dinosaurs and humans lived together at the same time and then turn around and say that they never really interacted, but kept themselves apart from each other... They're No Biblical Behemoths! This blog is created to expose the lies, deceit, and hypocrisy of young earth creationism and their false beliefs on dinosaurs and debunks them in an unbiased way and also pays homage to the late 80s animated TV series C.O.P.S. too.
Read more [Stupid Dinosaur Lies] 

[BPSDB] Michael Oard, a member of Answers in Genesis, thinks he’s an expert in the fictional Flood Geology as paraded by creationists, who claims the fossils of plants and animals were all... They're No Biblical Behemoths! This blog is created to expose the lies, deceit, and hypocrisy of young earth creationism and their false beliefs on dinosaurs and debunks them in an unbiased way and also pays homage to the late 80s animated TV series C.O.P.S. too.
Read more [Stupid Dinosaur Lies] 

[BPSDB] Demonbaby is a site that’s has a great article about the author’s visit to Ken Ham’s creation “museum” I strongly prefer to call a crackhouse because that’s exactly what it is. Always it raises my ire every time I see what the “museum” teaches and how it’s targeting children with sappy dinosaur stereotypes and crappy Barney-type songs that Buddy Davis made up for children to sing along to. This “museum” is a truly a crackhouse that sells nothing but crack in form of creation dogma to kids, church groups and ...
Read more [Stupid Dinosaur Lies] 

How to be an IDiot 101.You? An IDiot? It's more likely than you think!All you need to do is follow these simple steps:Have no clue about what your theory actually is.Claim that what you've been trumpeting for years is now ALL FUCKING WRONG!Claim that it is still AWWRIGHT after all.???PROFIT!If you aren't yet convinced that the ID lunatics have no clue as to what the fuck is going on and what their own failure of a 'theory' is about, this recent post by William "BillDumb" Dembski over on Uncommonly Dense may provide a clue:In an off-hand comment in a thread on this blog I remarked that I ...
Read more [Evolved and Rational] 

In which Dr Aust ruminates somewhat unoriginally on the desperate consequences of delusional thinking about medicine… when the deluded are the people running the country. Somewhat submerged under the media storm over the Bombay terrorist attacks, last month saw the publication of a sobering estimate of the true human cost of the Mbeki government’s decade of incomprehensible HIV denialism in South Africa. The Guardian covered the story here. The basic history is no doubt well known to most readers in the Badscience blogosphere; as the millenium dawned, South Africa faced an ...
Read more [Dr Aust's Spleen] 

First, there was the crappy old design. Then, there was the swish new design on the crappy old server. Now, after about a week of incredibly painful tinkering in Linux, PHP and MySQL, I've finally moved The Lay Scientist to a new server, which means I can finally set about upgrading and fixing the site properly. You probably won't notice the difference on the outside, but under the bonnet I'm completely reengineering the site to create the most powerful blogging platform I can. read more
Read more [The Lay Scientist] 

If you visit the website of any pseudo-scientific practitioner one thing almost always displayed is a list of testimonials - effusive endorsements from previous clients. For example, here’s an extract from the website of Cynde Van Vleet, a Tellington T Touch practitioner from California: My experience with Cynde and her TTouch work has been nothing but wonderful, rewarding, and informative.  Cynde is a most gentle  and intuitive animal lover who conducts herself professionally at all times, yet exudes warmth and kindness as well.  I have great respect and admiration for Cynde and the ...
Read more [Bridging Schisms] 

[BPSDB] In which I recount my early efforts as a childhood Barnum and find some startling correspondences with current media coverage of science and health stories. Pious hopes that the extension of registration to those qualified in nutritionism does not encourage PCTs to offer them as an alternative to Registered Dietitians.
Read more [Holford Watch] 

[BPSDB] I was reading a car magazine last week and found an advert selling SnorBan With the strap-line “Snoring Driving fatigue can be fatal”. Now the strap line itself I don’t argue with, falling asleep due to fatigue when driving is not a good idea but what does it have to do with snoring? Apparently this: “People who suffer from [...]
Read more [Musings of a Phenomenologist] 

[BPSDB] We think it’s a bit more complicated than that. In the ‘meet the author’ video about his How to Quit book, Holford takes a horribly reductionist view of addiction and recovery: he focuses pretty much exclusively on physiological issues and, in particular, on the alleviation of ‘abstinence systems’ through diet and supplements. However, there are [...]
Read more [Holford Watch] 

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has let me know that they have concluded two of the three complaints I raised about a recent flurry of e-mailed advertising from Holland and Barrett.  I was concerned that the adverts in question directly associated particular herbs and supplements with implicit unfounded health claims: improving mental healh and beating the menopause to be specific. Holland and Barrett have reportedly assured the ASA, “that these emails will not be used again and that in future campaigns they will not use headings or product categories that imply health ...
Read more [A canna’ change the laws of physics] 

[BPSDB] Last year, Food for the Brain modified some advice on dietary exclusions for children - when we pointed out that such changes should be implemented under medical and/or dietetic supervision. We were therefore disappointed to see iAfrica reporting Holford’s advice that “in order to maximise your children’s potential” you should: Take your child off foods [...]
Read more [Holford Watch] 

The British Association for Applied Nutrition and Nutritional Therapy (BANT) have issued a press release(PDF) expressing their desire for strict regulation of the nutritionist profession under the auspices of the Nutritional Therapy Council (NTC) and, in 2009, the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC). Unfortunately the press release contains a statement that is an astonishing exercise in mendacity. The British Association for Applied Nutrition and Nutritional Therapy is the largest Professional body representing NT practitioners. BANT was set up as a Company Limited by ...
Read more [Gimpy's Blog] 

[BPSDB] The Alt.Med crowd love their electronic “bioresonance” devices. Here is one which claims to cure all kinds of ills with electrical impulses “tailored to mimic the electrical discharges of the nervous system.” From their website: “The basic signal component is a bipolar pulse, consisting of a negative square-wave followed by a positive saw-tooth, starting and finishing at zero and lasting for a few microseconds. A number of these pulses may be packaged into a discrete burst (intensity) which itself may be repeated at a fixed default frequency. The ...
Read more [Letting Off Steam] 

OK,OK, it's a loaded question, it may not surprise you to know it's the latter. To be honest, I'm bored of homeopathy. Bored. Bored. Bored.I'm bored of its nonsensical, illogical, deceitful, uncritical, confused, law-breaking, twisted, underhand, conspiratorial, paranoid True Believers™ who are able to preach their religion in the media, often without any critical appraisal by the cut-and-paste journalistas.Nonetheless, to labour the point heavily, one of the mantras trundled out time and time and time again is that homeopathy is a holistic medicine. (It is, in reality, neither of those ...
Read more [Thinking is Dangerous] 

In case you're all wondering why it's a bit quiet, I'm in the process of moving the Lay Scientist onto a new, virtual dedicated server to provide a bit more horsepower for improvements and expansion of the BPSDB aggregator, podcasting, guest bloggers and other exciting things that will be coming in 2009. There shouldn't be any disruption to the site itself, as I'm basically cloning it and then switching the domain name to point at the new clone. Gotta love this GM tech. Normal service will be resumed soonish... read more
Read more [The Lay Scientist] 

In case you're all wondering why it's a bit quiet, I'm in the process of moving the Lay Scientist onto a new, virtual dedicated server to provide a bit more horsepower for improvements and expansion of the BPSDB aggregator, podcasting, guest bloggers and other exciting things that will be coming in 2009. There shouldn't be any disruption to the site itself, as I'm basically cloning it and then switching the domain name to point at the new clone. Gotta love this GM tech. Normal service will be resumed soonish... read more
Read more [The Lay Scientist] 

[BPSDB] Following our disappointment following the credulous nature of an item in The Economist concerning the treatment of addiction with nutrition, The Economist has followed up on the matter and printed a clarification - a gracious and graceful coda to L'Affaire Treatment on a Plate and Jerome Burne.
Read more [Holford Watch] 

[BPSDB] Ian Marber, The Food Doctor, recently outlined his plan to defeat abdominal bloating and gas. He correctly gave his opinion that there is little to support the notion that IgG tests are helpful for food intolerance diagnosis but then followed it up with what looks like an anti-candida diet that lacks clinical evidence.
Read more [Holford Watch] 

[BPSDB] Well, if you live in Edinburgh you are likely to be according to this you are more likely to be. Yes this is a story of deprivation and loneliness, or is it? The paper that is being referred to was comissioned by the BBC, not a problem in itself but I do wonder what the motivation [...]
Read more [Musings of a Phenomenologist] 

Online polls are notoriously inaccurate, unreliable and open to manipulation and no serious decision should be taken on the basis of one.  However, they are often used to capture a snapshot of a particular confluence of public opinion, societal pressures and agendas at a particular point in time which can be later used to either argue a position or decide influence editorial direction in the case of media outlets.  By asking online readers of a newspaper their opinions on a subject allows that newspaper to plan the design and focus of its online reporting and opinion pieces to best respond ...
Read more [Gimpy's Blog] 

[BPSDB] I dunno. You wait all month for some media over-interpretation of research, then you get two helpings in quick succession. I have pv of badscience to thank for posting this link which states that: “Scientists claim blueberries activate learning and memory in the brain. Eating blueberries can reverse memory loss and may have implications in the treatment of diseases like Alzheimer’s, University of Reading scientists claim.” As is usual with the mass media, there does not appear to be a link to the original research. Before I could get around to googling another ...
Read more [Letting Off Steam] 

[BPSDB] Rami Tzabar and Ben Goldacre, won the Norwich Union Healthcare Medical Journalism Broadcast Category Award 2008 for their BBC Radio 4 – ‘The rise of the lifestyle nutritionists’ Judges’ comments: "This was an incisive look at some of the unsubstantiated claims surrounding this modern obsession and helped to expose the charade of alleged scientific evidence. Very refreshing." Patrick Holford was one of the exemplar sources of distorted research findings and unsubstantiated claims that were examined in the programme.
Read more [Holford Watch] 

In part one of this short series on the Royal College of Nursing’s “Complementary approaches to menopausal symptoms - RCN guidance for nurses, midwives and health visitors” I looked at the guidance on herbal remedies.  Now I’m moving on to cover what the document has to say about the role of acupuncture, aromatherapy, reflexology and homeopathy in treating symptoms of the menopause.  Just like its approach to herbal remedies, we shall see that this document falls into the pitfalls of appeals to common practise and tradition; along with a predilection for ...
Read more [A canna’ change the laws of physics] 

[BPSDB] I was lurking on the bad science forum again today (been off work with a stinker of a cold) and found a link to this, a claim that children are not developing their physical co-ordination as rapidly as they used to. Now, I am not a developmental psychologist but a couple of things in this set off my woodar. First, it is not peer-reviewed research but a conference presentation - always a bad sign. Secondly, it was presented by Madeleine Portwood of Durham fish-oil trial initiative fame. Now just because she’s been involved with one piece of rubbish research does not mean ...
Read more [Letting Off Steam] 

[BPSDB] You can't review what is never submitted to you. If you are an editor for a journal you can neither accept nor reject, on its merits, work that is never presented to you for evaluation. It's an obvious point: what isn't so obvious is the amount of data that is suppressed and never submitted for review and publication. Two recent PLoS papers elaborate on this point and emphasise that this is to the detriment of clinical decisions and patients' well-being.
Read more [Holford Watch] 

[BPSDB]On the drive home last night from Thanksgiving festivities, we caught Coast to Coast with George Noory on the radio and he was having random guests for the night.  His first guest, the only one we got to listen to, were the Psychic Twins, Terry and Linda Jamison and I’ve got to admit, I’m not at all impressed. They went into a whole spiel about what they saw for next year and to be honest, you don’t need psychic powers for the overwhelming majority of it, just an eye to recent events.  Where was anything that your normal informed man on the street couldn’t ...
Read more [BitchSpot] 

[BPSDB] Official Homeopathy Resource breaks some shocking news: New York Times: Beware of Anti-Homeopathy Journalists and Bloggers- They May Be Sponsored By Drug Companies. They name names - Dr Ben Goldacre and Gimpy. Except, it wasn't really the NYT, except in the imagination of Official Homeopathy Resource, and the story wasn't about anti-homeopathy journalists or bloggers. And the NYT didn't namecheck either Goldacre or Gimpy. Homeopathy, bringing the accurate reports to your screen.
Read more [Holford Watch] 

[BPSDB] A small but increasing number of UK universities are spending money on accreditation from Food for the Brain. Why? The FFTB educational materials contain mis-information or are embarrassingly simplistic. HolfordWatch has some reservations about the value of FFTB audits. Why aren't catering depts. that need guidance asking the specialist depts. of their own universities?
Read more [Holford Watch] 

I've written about unregulated arthritis product Artrosilium on a number of occasions. The Advertising Standards Agency has just upheld the third complaint this year against Intramed Ltd, the company that markets Artrosilium in the UK.The first in May 2008 was for selling herbal pills that purported to sort out prostate problems and raise your sexual game; the second in Sept 2008 was promoting more herbal pills (more specifically gingko biloba) which claimed:By taking just two capsules of Ginkgo Biloba each day you will cope better with stress; your blood pressure will return to normal, a ...
Read more [Thinking is Dangerous] 

[BPSDB] It started off as a simple observational study [1] that showed that babies facing forwards in their buggies have slightly higher heart rates, a phenomenon that could be attributable to stress, or perhaps simply to the increased amount of stimuli the babies received. Then the papers got a hold of it. read more
Read more [The Lay Scientist] 

[BPSDB] It started off as a simple observational study [1] that showed that babies facing forwards in their buggies have slightly higher heart rates, a phenomenon that could be attributable to stress, or perhaps simply to the increased amount of stimuli the babies received. Then the papers got a hold of it. read more
Read more [The Lay Scientist] 

A long time ago, when I was an angry young blogger, I wrote about Sarah Beany and her nonsense 'chemical-free' cosmetics.The Royal Society of Chemistry has taken this one step further and recently announced that they'll give £1,000,000 to anyone who can furnish them with 100% chemical-free material.Part of the riot has been caused by Miracle-Gro who have longed claimed (to the derision of anyone with basic chemistry understanding) that some of their products are:Made from 100% naturally occurring materials. 100% chemical free.The Advertising Standards Authority have been unusually backward ...
Read more [Thinking is Dangerous] 

[BPSDB] After my hosting service performed a server upgrade at the end of last week, the entire BPSDB system is now broken due to a PHP/MySQL issue that they've managed to introduce. I'm working to fix it at soon as I can, one way or another... Edit: Well I've gotten the feeds working again, but I've had to temporarily remove a couple of sites from the service while I iron out bugs. I'll try and get these re-added by the weekend. Thanks for your patience.
Read more [The Lay Scientist] 

[BPSDB] After my hosting service performed a server upgrade at the end of last week, the entire BPSDB system is now broken due to a PHP/MySQL issue that they've managed to introduce. I'm working to fix it at soon as I can, one way or another... Edit: Well I've gotten the feeds working again, but I've had to temporarily remove a couple of sites from the service while I iron out bugs. I'll try and get these re-added by the weekend. Thanks for your patience.
Read more [The Lay Scientist] 

[BPSDB] YouTube virals must play by US ad rules: UK advertising rules may change to close loophole. We have blogged several ASA rulings that involve Patrick Holford and Equazen where the ASA has found that their advertising in untruthful, unsubstantiated etc. and yet, these breaches of advertising guidelines continue because of various loopholes. The ASA may be about to close some of those loopholes.
Read more [Holford Watch] 

[BPSDB] Orthomolecular Medicine News Service is warning us all about dental amalgams and is forecasting that they will be the subject of the "biggest product-liability lawsuit in history". They spin some conspiracy theories by the numbers in their email, some of them rest on the fact that pages have been updated in 4 years (and revision dates provided) or that a web page has disappeared, except that it hasn't, as a quick entry into 'Down for Everyone or Just Me' would have indicated. YMMV, but with research skills like that, why would you trust these people for health advice?
Read more [Holford Watch] 

The Royal National Lifeboats Institute (RNLI) is the charity that saves lives at sea.As required by the Charity Commission, it defines its objects as:FIRSTLY ... TO SAVE LIVES, PROMOTE SAFETY AND PROVIDE RELIEF FROM DISASTER AT SEA AND, SECONDLY, TO SAVE LIVES, PROMOTE SAFETY AND PROVIDE RELIEF FROM DISASTER ON INLAND WATERSWhen I'm not laid low I like to go scuba diving and instructing around the UK coast and have one occasion been involved in an RNLI operation. They are an amazing service and save myriad lives per year through sheer bravery by volunteers. The Charity Commission webpage ...
Read more [Thinking is Dangerous] 

[BPSDB] Former Visiting Professor Patrick Holford of Teesside University has a subscription 100%health service. Subscribers pay for information that will transform their life and health. In the November 2008 issue, Holford casts aspersions on the the state of knowledge of the research literature on chromium and blood sugar management for the writers and editors of the Manual of Dietetic Practice. He upbraids them for failing to update their text in the light of a systematic review that was published *after* the book was published. Despite Holford's selective quotation from that review, it ...
Read more [Holford Watch] 

Exactly. Pain free. That's what the article says - Pain free. I am willing to put this down to an over-sycophantic headline writer, but the article in this week's Carlisle News & Star is a textbook case of what's wrong with the media, in particular, local media.The article describes local homeopath Janine Whitfield MLCHom, MARH from New Path Homeopathy and her quest for the perfect childbirth.Uncritical, sycophantic, factless, un-researched and vacuous, the feature takes us through Janine's plan for (I assume) her first childbirth experience. Now, we have been reproducing pretty ...
Read more [Thinking is Dangerous] 

In which Dr Aust gets all Gilbert and Sullivan on celebrity Nutritionistas and their airs Dr Aust is into rhyming at the moment. This is in part because the Aust-mobile (a twelve-year old tin box on wheels with the absolute minimum of features) finally gave up the ghost a few weeks back. The clutch started making strange groaning noises, and was diagnosed as terminal, and the gearbox is apparently also on its last legs. As result I have been travelling to work and back each day on our wonderful (note: irony) local public transport system, after a gap of nearly a decade. I now get 40 ...
Read more [Dr Aust's Spleen] 

The Natural History Museum is one of the most amazing attractions in London. That's not opinion, its evidence-based fact. The science made available to the public in the NHM is outstanding and world-class - I haven't seen the new Darwin Exhibition but if past exhibitions are anything to go by, it will be top notch historical science.Why, then, is the NHM dedicating valuable research time and effort to create a homeopathic database of the various plants, fungi, lichens and algae used by quacks to make useless sugar pills?From the website:The homeopathy database is a standard reference ...
Read more [Thinking is Dangerous] 

[BPSDB] The Daily Mail carries news of an astonishing tea that helps to whittle down waistlines and reduce blood pressure. It is six paragraphs before you discover that the research in question is about rats rather than people and is about to be presented in a conference, it has not as yet been subjected to scrutiny in a peer-reviewed journal. More worryingly, without any context, the journalist makes a throw-away comment about anti-inflammatory and anti-obeseogenic findings for ibuprofen without indicating that people should not self-experiment and that there are many contraindications.
Read more [Holford Watch] 

[BPSDB] The Daily Mail has published two articles about fish oil supplements in two weeks. Unfortunately, they contradict each other concerning value for money. This is very unhelpful as the Daily Mail fails to provide an evidence base for some of the advice that it dispenses concerning recommended doses of fish oil supplements and I'd like to think that they can redeem themselves in some way by commenting on value for money or actual efficacy.
Read more [Holford Watch] 

I’ve recently stumbled upon the Royal College of Nursing’s “Complementary approaches to menopausal symptoms” and I’m not overly impressed.  So I’ve decided to review it in two posts.  This post looks at some of its introductory sections and then focuses on what it has to say about herbs and the menopause.  Part two will look at its inadequate treatment of the remaining complementary therapies (acupuncture, aromatherapy, reflexology and homeopathy) Don’t get me wrong, the document has its strengths: a good discussion of the placebo effect and ...
Read more [A canna’ change the laws of physics] 

From time to time, I get asked why I bother putting the screw on various complementary therapies - my usual first response is as someone who finds science interesting, overwhelming, incredible and at times barely believable (but always based on rigorous experiment), I get frustrated at people inventing non-sensical waffle that is often demonstrably wrong, and passing it off as science (usually to make money). Further on in the conversation, the phrase "well, it's fine as long as you don't take it too seriously" rears its fence-sitting little head. If that's the case, why no just ditch it ...
Read more [Thinking is Dangerous] 

[BPSDB] "Healing therapist" Russell Jenkins tragically died after a minor injury to his foot became gangrenous when he refused to seek medical attention, an inquest has heard. read more
Read more [The Lay Scientist] 

[BPSDB] "Healing therapist" Russell Jenkins tragically died after a minor injury to his foot became gangrenous when he refused to seek medical attention, an inquest has heard. read more
Read more [The Lay Scientist] 

[BPSDB] "Healing therapist" Russell Jenkins tragically died after a minor injury to his foot became gangrenous when he refused to seek medical attention, an inquest has heard. read more
Read more [The Lay Scientist] 

[BPSDB] Patrick Holford and Food for the Brain think that a profile of Holford in the National Health Executive shows him in a good light despite some extraordinary questions. The piece is so odd that it really doesn't do anything except raise questions about why this piece was published. However, NHE advertises that it is an effective outlet for marketing campaigns so perhaps the publication of this article isn't so odd.
Read more [Holford Watch] 

"The outcome I would be really happy with is a better understanding of healthy eating", said teacher Paul Whitaker, from Auckland's Wellsford School, according to TV.NZ.What I assume he meant is "The outcome I would be really happy with is a better understanding of the scientific method, placebos and possibly the Hawthorne Effect".It appears that after watching a BBC documentary on Omega 3 fish oils, Mr Whitaker decided to run a trial of his own: 42 pupils, 21 with a fish oil pill and 21 without, otherwise, everything was the same. The story was also picked up (slightly, but only slightly ...
Read more [Thinking is Dangerous] 

[BPSDB] I want to tell you a story. It's a story about oil. It's a story about (obliquely) climate change. It's a story about corruption and murder, and it's a story about poverty in Africa. But most of all, it's about a government official who was sacked after failing to get the money he stole to pay his witchdocter refunded. Welcome to the Niger Delta. read more
Read more [The Lay Scientist] 

[BPSDB] I want to tell you a story. It's a story about oil. It's a story about (obliquely) climate change. It's a story about corruption and murder, and it's a story about poverty in Africa. But most of all, it's about a government official who was sacked after failing to get the money he stole to pay his witchdocter refunded. Welcome to the Niger Delta. read more
Read more [The Lay Scientist] 

[BPSDB] I want to tell you a story. It's a story about oil. It's a story about (obliquely) climate change. It's a story about corruption and murder, and it's a story about poverty in Africa. But most of all, it's about a government official who was sacked after failing to get the money he stole to pay his witchdocter refunded. Welcome to the Niger Delta. read more
Read more [The Lay Scientist] 

[BPSDB] It is with great sorrow and yet some amusement that we report the identity of the writer responsible for the recent, lamentable, credulous write-up about the Food for the Brain conference in The Economist. The article lauded nutritional approaches to the treatment of addiction. When you learn the identity of the author, you may think that there is a conflict of interest, we couldn't possibly comment.
Read more [Holford Watch] 

Holland and Barrett have recently taken the opportunity to pitch me the idea, via an e-mail, that Ginkgo Biloba “helps the maintenance of good cognitive function.”   Their web page contains a more detailed and specific claim:  “Today nutritionists are taking a closer look at this wonderful herb because it has been used for many years throughout Europe. Supports the maintenance of good cognitive function and healthy circulation which helps to maintain memory with age decline.” Interestingly the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) tells me that they ...
Read more [A canna’ change the laws of physics] 

[BPSDB] Troubled by the incidence of constipation amongst young children, there is a campaign in schools in Japan to teach children how to have healthy bowel movements and eliminate constipation. Japan seems to have a remarkable obsession with bathroom gadgetry that co-exists with social reticence about using the bathroom in earshot of others. In the UK, we have our own bowel obsessions.
Read more [Holford Watch] 

Sorry, no bad science trashing this week – a bit of scientific historical rambling instead, reflecting another of my part-time interests. Probably too serious, too. I blame the clocks going back – pesky SAD. The recent plethora of (often rather good) TV and radio programmes commemorating the 90th anniversary of the end of World War One set me to thinking this week. What is the link between the WW1 trenches, a best-selling modern novel and a pretty good film, and the history of double-blind trials? The answer is a man – William Halse Rivers FRS (1864-1922), Gold Medallist and ...
Read more [Dr Aust's Spleen] 

Well, I say respond, but they don't really say anything.The original petition is here with the following wording:We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Immediately ban NHS funding of homoeopathy and redirect the resources to proven medicine. to which the DoH replied:Although the Department of Health provides strategic leadership to the NHS and social care organisations in England, it is for local NHS organisations to plan, develop and improve services for local people. These bodies are best placed to respond to patients’ concerns and needs, so it is their responsibility to ...
Read more [Thinking is Dangerous] 

[BPSDB] The Journal of the American Medical Association has recently published a good quality, placebo-controlled, randomised, double-blind trial looking at whether vitamin C and E supplementation can reduce cardiovascular events. It ran for 10 years, and included “14 641 US male physicians enrolled, who were initially aged 50 years or older, including 754 men (5.1%) [...]
Read more [Holford Watch] 

... so ends a pretty good section from BBC's Inside Out SouthWest program, which on 12th Nov ran a piece on The College of Natural Nutrition.For those of you in the UK, the BBC iPlayer has the program here, it runs from about 1min 7secs to 11 mins 38 secs. (Unless some kind bod pops it onto YouTube, I'm afraid non-Brits will have access issues).(As an aside, it was also BBCs Inside Out Southwest program that confronted Neal's Yard about selling homeopathic products for malaria and, along with a complaint from this site, managed to get the products withdrawn.)The main villain in the piece ...
Read more [Thinking is Dangerous] 

Paul Dacre, Editor of The Daily Mail, addressed the Society of Editors in Bristol this week, and his speech was printed in Monday's MediaGuardian. Throughout the week, various commentators have responded to Dacre's uncharacteristically public outburst, including Max Mosely and Polly Toynbee.His main gripe was that the "British press is having a privacy law imposed on it" by one man, Justice David Eady who has used the privacy clause of the Human Rights Act to stop various sordid details of famous private lives making it into the public domain. Dacre uses the case of Max Mosely who famously ...
Read more [Thinking is Dangerous] 

The BBC’s Editorial Complaints Unit (ECU) has just let me know that their adjudication on the “Britain’s happiest places mapped” debacle (previously covered here and here) has been published on the BBC Complaints website.  As ever, these tend to be less detailed than the private responses given to complainants; but they provide a useful public record.  Ultimately they get distilled further into a summary document, so the link won’t be live indefinitely. So, has the article actually changed as a result of this complaint?  Yes, but some of the changes actually ...
Read more [A canna’ change the laws of physics] 

(By Guest Blogger, Sceptical Rogue)Wow. What a great morning to wake up to! The Daily Mail is telling me all about the new statin drug that slashes the risk of heart attacks and strokes for EVERYONE by up to 44 per cent. I can't believe it. How happy I am. Even BBC Breakfast is having a go, promising that 'rarely have we seen such clear and dramatic results'.But before we all rush to the doctor demanding prescriptions of Crestor to crush up and put in our morning cereal, I thought I'd take a slightly closer look.So, this story is about the The JUPITER Study which was published online in ...
Read more [Thinking is Dangerous] 

Two weeks ago today I had an open hip debridement on my right hip. At 31, I was about half the age of most of the other people having similar operations, but I guess that's not too surprising. Cam impingement and subsequent treatment seems to be a reasonably new area of medicine and as such the techniques are still being developed. (Given the nature of this blog, I thought CAM Impingement was quite an ironic pathology for me to have)Nonetheless, the above will explain the lack of blog activity over the past while, and indeed may explain the (anticipated) blog over-activity in the next few ...
Read more [Thinking is Dangerous] 

Matthias Rath, the deeply odious and murderous quack nutritionist, is collaborating with representatives of the alternative health industry to campaign for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and other EU legal decisions.  This alliance incorporates minor political parties in Germany and the Netherlands - AGFG and Partij voor Mens en Spirit respectively, the Alliance for Natural Health (ANH), the National Health Federation (NHF), La Leva di Archimede and the Zeus Information Service, all organised and brought together by the Dr. Rath Health Foundation.   I do not have the Dutch or German ...
Read more [Gimpy's Blog] 

In which Dr Aust starts worrying about the pismonunciation of worms Sorry to have been off-line for so long. Pressure of work, and other not-quite-day-job writing projects with recent deadlines. Not to mention half-term holiday, teething/colicky Baby Aust, and intermittently manic Junior Aust, who is having a “You-Parents-will-PAY-for-having-another-child-apart-from-me” phase. So blogging is slightly back-burnered. The ideas are there… it’s just the time to finish them, as I think I warned in the one-year round-up. Anyway,apologies if today’s snippet is a bit ...
Read more [Dr Aust's Spleen] 

Another Week, another charitable day to target, and another set of dubious promotional claims from Holland and Barrett.  This time they have been piggy-backing (somewhat belatedly) on World Menopause Day.  That an event designed to bring some reliable advice to women facing this natural, and unavoidable, transition is used to advertise products of no clear worth seems distasteful to me. A mail shot improbably entitled, “Beat menopause naturally - save up to 50% on menopause supplements” implies that a range of products can beat the menopause.  The menopause, of course, ...
Read more [A canna’ change the laws of physics] 

[BPSDB] The Economist carried a particularly ill-judged piece about "new treatments for addiction" that were discussed at the recent Food for the Brain conference. The piece is the sort of shoddy scholarship that is more typically associated with other news outlets and it is distressing to see it in a publication as reputable as The Economist: a childhood illusion has been shattered.
Read more [Holford Watch] 

[BPSDB]Most people know that a lot of stuff on the internet, particularly in the fields of