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And this is part of why all the drug development work ends up happening in private industry.

You're joking, right?

Pharmaceutical Companies Spent 19 Times More On Self-Promotion Than Basic Research: Report

Has nothing to do with the relative spending of academia vs industry on development.

Pharmaceutical research and development: what do we get for all that money?

Also has nothing to do with the relative spending of academia vs industry on development.

Why Pharma Needs the NIH: Basic Biology Drives the Industry, Says Genentech VP

This is about basic research, not development. As I said in my post, "That said, when it comes to the basic research side of things pharma companies do tend to let the academics do the work for them."

I love research about research

Also has nothing to do with the relative spending of academia vs industry on development.

My point was that most drug DEVELOPMENT costs are incurred by private industry, because it isn't a low-risk publication environment.

I wasn't saying that the drug industry didn't have problems.

And this is part of why all the drug development work ends up happening in private industry.

You're joking, right?

Pharmaceutical Companies Spent 19 Times More On Self-Promotion Than Basic Research: Report

Pharmaceutical research and development: what do we get for all that money?

Why Pharma Needs the NIH: Basic Biology Drives the Industry, Says Genentech VP

I love research about research

Yeah Awaits sales pitch from Dr Gillian McKeith http://www.badscience.net/cate...

Responding to oneself is generally bad form, but:
http://www.badscience.net/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot-2013-12-13-17.12.05.png

In summary (and partially concordant with the person I initially criticised): On a community-wide level, requiring people wear helmets may not reduce head injuries, but on an individual level if you are cycling and can add a helmet to your cycling without changing your behaviour, you are probably safer with the helmet.

(This requires a bit of reading into the paper, and a couple of assumptions: Assumptions are: drivers don't suddenly start being dickheads around you because you're wearing a helmet, and you don't start being a dickhead because you put on a helmet. If those two hold, then the case-control rather than community-wide studies are more applicable to the individual choosing whether or not to wear a helmet).

On the other hand, an institution that is regularly criticized by folks like Dr. Ben Goldacre of http://www.badscience.net/ and Prof. Mark Liberman of Language Log for the incredibly poor quality of their science reporting may not be the source you really want to trust on this or any other topic.

- Bad Science's BBC category
- Enhance Breast Size by 80%
- Parrot Telepathy at the BBC
- More Junk Science from the BBC
- It's Always Silly Season in the BBC Science Section

Granted, few general-purpose new sources are particularly good when it comes to their coverage of science, but the BBC does have a bit of a reputation for being above average--a reputation which seems to be rather undeserved, as far as I can tell.

Science journalism from the news desk isn't so hot I would I agree however I beg to differ with your summation - when you look at their output when taken as a whole (non just science stories) I would rate them well above the average. The picture is similar here in Australia with the ABC. Though I would say that in both instances standards have fallen somewhat in the last 20 years they are still head and shoulders above the for-profit newagencies.

Whilst I appreciate the concern many have with a government funded mouthpiece I think that the proof is is the pudding and (in the english speaking world at least) publicly funded broadcasters consistently do a better job than thier for-profit peers because unfortunately when it comes to informing the public the profit motive seems only able to provide a race to the bottom.

On the other hand, an institution that is regularly criticized by folks like Dr. Ben Goldacre of http://www.badscience.net/ and Prof. Mark Liberman of Language Log for the incredibly poor quality of their science reporting may not be the source you really want to trust on this or any other topic.

- Bad Science's BBC category
- Enhance Breast Size by 80%
- Parrot Telepathy at the BBC
- More Junk Science from the BBC
- It's Always Silly Season in the BBC Science Section

Granted, few general-purpose new sources are particularly good when it comes to their coverage of science, but the BBC does have a bit of a reputation for being above average--a reputation which seems to be rather undeserved, as far as I can tell.

Science journalism from the news desk isn't so hot I would I agree however I beg to differ with your summation - when you look at their output when taken as a whole (non just science stories) I would rate them well above the average. The picture is similar here in Australia with the ABC. Though I would say that in both instances standards have fallen somewhat in the last 20 years they are still head and shoulders above the for-profit newagencies.

Whilst I appreciate the concern many have with a government funded mouthpiece I think that the proof is is the pudding and (in the english speaking world at least) publicly funded broadcasters consistently do a better job than thier for-profit peers because unfortunately when it comes to informing the public the profit motive seems only able to provide a race to the bottom.

On the other hand, an institution that is regularly criticized by folks like Dr. Ben Goldacre of http://www.badscience.net/ and Prof. Mark Liberman of Language Log for the incredibly poor quality of their science reporting may not be the source you really want to trust on this or any other topic.

- Bad Science's BBC category
- Enhance Breast Size by 80%
- Parrot Telepathy at the BBC
- More Junk Science from the BBC
- It's Always Silly Season in the BBC Science Section

Granted, few general-purpose new sources are particularly good when it comes to their coverage of science, but the BBC does have a bit of a reputation for being above average--a reputation which seems to be rather undeserved, as far as I can tell.

On the other hand, an institution that is regularly criticized by folks like Dr. Ben Goldacre of http://www.badscience.net/ and Prof. Mark Liberman of Language Log for the incredibly poor quality of their science reporting may not be the source you really want to trust on this or any other topic.

- Bad Science's BBC category
- Enhance Breast Size by 80%
- Parrot Telepathy at the BBC
- More Junk Science from the BBC
- It's Always Silly Season in the BBC Science Section

Granted, few general-purpose new sources are particularly good when it comes to their coverage of science, but the BBC does have a bit of a reputation for being above average--a reputation which seems to be rather undeserved, as far as I can tell.

Are we sure the decision is based on science and not emotion? After all, a lot of what people believe about organic foods, vitamins, vaccines, and herbal medicine is founded on bunk but people still believe in it. Are we sure Neonicotinoid Insecticides are not being banned because they're man made and evil sounding?

Ben Goldacre of Bad Science fame uses Posterous. In his words it's for "things that are too long to post on twitter and not clever enough to post on his main blog".

So Twitter aquiring and then closing it (presumable with the thought that "Oh, you don't need Posterous any more -- just use Twitter!") becomes a little bit ironic to me, as the person I know who uses Posterous uses it explicitly because Twitter doesn't work for his purposes.

The discoveries, algorithms and parameters generated by publicly-funded research is locked behind the paywalls of for-profit publishers. Those publishers won't publish an article unless the academic SURRENDERS THEM THE COPYRIGHT OF THEIR RESEARCH PAPER FOR FREE. The only reason these publishers have survived is because academics want their research published in the most prestigious (read 'expensive') journal they can find. Academics could benefit from 'open-sourcing' their research too.

"Academic publishers charge vast fees to access research paid for by us."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist

"Academic papers are hidden from the public."
http://www.badscience.net/2011/09/academic-papers-are-hidden-from-the-public-heres-some-direct-action/

For anything related to Wakefield or the MMR hoax, try Dr. Ben Goldacre's Bad Science site. Specifically, how about this article he wrote for the Gruniad. Note the quotes from the General Medical Council. I believe Dr. Goldacre provides references to a lot of the original sources elsewhere on his site.

Talk to Ben Goldacre http://www.badscience.net/category/electrosensitivity/

There's little research on this subject and I think its mainly due to the exams being "different" rather than easier (well, that and kids tutored to specifically pass the exam regardless of what they learn)

http://www.badscience.net/2010/08/exams-are-getting-easier/

Also because several people high in the SA government, including the president, Thabo Mbeki, promoted "vitamin cures" over the genuine medicine offered by doctors, and even denied that HIV caused AIDS. There was no shortage of NGOs willing to subsidise provision of ARVs to AIDS sufferers, but they found that obstruction and misinformation made it difficult for their programmes to function effectively. At least a third of a million people died unnecessarily because of the nonsense peddled by quacks in South Africa in the early part of the last decade.

This is a worthwhile but very depressing read: http://www.badscience.net/2009/04/matthias-rath-steal-this-chapter/

Well yes actually, the British Medial Journal apparently banned the phrase "more research is needed" (source: http://www.badscience.net/2011/11/why-wont-professor-greenfield-publish-this-theory-in-a-scientific-journal/ )

Seconded. Started by Ben Goldacre, with plenty of destinations in the UK and the US, and if you know of any more just add them:

Nerdy Day Trips

The ASA are actually one of the most capable regulatory bodies within the UK. I've been continually impressed by them demanding peer reviewed evidence from manufacturers to support their claims, and by the decent balance their provide when people complain about adverts that go against their morals/religion.

A few years ago I read that the average number of complaints to the ASA that lead to the advert people pulled was 1.3 . In other words they take every complaint on their merit rather than from public pressure. So if you think an advert violates one of the standards, there is a good chance you can get it pulled.

The badscience forum provides an excellent Activisim section that can help when constructing these complaints.

The problem is the research is all methodically skewed to show the drugs work.

A common and accepted trick was to use a sugar pill as a placebo. I can tell the difference between a sugar pill and prozac and I'm not attuned to SSRIs.
A ubiquitous and accepted trick is to never test the blind. In these multi-million dollar studies, nobody spends a few thousand asking the patients what they think they took. Why? Because the patients can nearly always guess [my own site] (Fisher and Greenberg 1993). One presumes the doctors know what they're prescribing.
Another common trick is to bury studies that don't show what the drug companies want them to do.
Yet another common trick is the placebo washout. The researchers run a placebo only stage - anyone who improves is removed. Needless to say, this exaggerates any difference between the drug and the placebo.
The last trick which springs to mind is ghostwriting - the drug companies write the paper and then look for anyone to put their name on it.

Ben Goldacre is writing a book about all this.

Lastly, SSRIs encourage suicidality in some young patients, hence the much publicised FDA warning.

I was going to read TFA - believe it or not, I usually do. But after seeing Susan Greenfield's name in the summary, I decided to skip it. Anybody here who's familiar with Ben Goldachre's site, badscience.net, is certainly familiar enough with her antics that they'd know anything that comes out of her mouth is, at best, fiction.

• The condition to be screened for has to be important - either because of it's deadliness and/or because it affects a lot of people
• There has to be a detectable early stage of the condition which to screen against
• There exists an effective and acceptable treatment for the condition
• There is a reliable screening test to detect the condition with

The problem with lots of screening is that on the level of the population it can lead to more harm than good overall for a lot of different diseases, because of false positives, because of our psychological makeup that we'd prefer surgery for even harmless varieties of lumps in our bodies, etc. (see detailed examples in the book). In a lot of cases it happened that screening was introduced before the effectiveness of screening was established in a trial, then later trials showed that the screening was ineffective in reducing deaths or harm.

The bottom line is that well designed trials should be conducted and based on the systemic review of those trials it should be decided whether to conduct screening or not, based on whether it's improving health outcomes or not. A lot of trials don't improve outcomes.

What I am asking for is a little fact-checking from the press and perhaps a smidgeon of accountability. There seems to be an insane amount of bullshit being spouted now, making people in Europe unduly worried about our safety here in Japan. In one of the worst examples of what press can do, bad press has caused unjustified refusal of vaccinations causing needless resurgence of nasty diseases (MUMPS/MMR, see f.ex. http://badscience.net/). No accountability at the press, they just find the most sensational snippet and extrapolate from that.

Meltdown? Yes and no. Some parts of the fuel rods will have melted, but the material should be contained within the containment vessel. Annoying to clean, but by no means a scare with a human toll looming that is ANYWHERE NEAR the tsunami toll. Just because it is nuclear does not mean it is scary.

Now that that is off my chest, the most objective news I have seen on the reactor issue comes from the IAEA:

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

I have a couple of points to make:

1. People shouldn't assume that this means that shutting the websites would have only saved £3.99 from the BBC budget. Given large orgs and the cost mulitpliers for internally supported servers, it could well be tens of thousands of pounds per year.

2. Instead of people like Ben Goldacre boo-hooing and expecting the government (which the BBC is effectively an arm of) to save the sites, he could have shelled out the £4 and done it himself. Could it be that - GASP - sometimes governments aren't the best way to get things done? :-O

If you actually believe this and are not just trolling, you are not familiar with anything Goldacre says. Much of his writing relates to homeopathy or "alternative medicine". He has an enormous amount of contempt for those people precisely because they try to convince people that their "medicines" - their placebo pills - are as effective as actual, properly tested drugs. So yes, this video suggests that the placebo effect is able to overpower the effects of certain drugs. But it very obviously does not show that believers always heal themselves by thought alone in modern medicine (or any flaky alternative medicine you care to list). Vitamin pills don't cure AIDS better than anti-retroviral-drugs, no matter how much you believe in them. That very example is the subject of this, a chapter of his book not published originally due to a lawsuit with its subject, Matthias Rath.

Ben Goldacre, an MD from UK, has been at the detecting pseudoscience game for a while now. I have just started reading his book, Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks. I find it refreshingly topical and well-focused on the problem: evidence-based decision making.

Similar to Goldacre's findings, my experience has been that evidence, which has been produced by some test, requires the nature of that test to be disclosed. Following the model of the scientific process, evidence requires the following before it is complete: a testable idea, a test (or series of). To facilitate TFA's issue of replication, it is often nice to include the test setup, the procedure for executing the test, results of running the test given some inputs, etc.

--I apologize for any weirdness. I have been trying to edit this but apparently copy/paste is broken for my mode of /. viewing and Mac OS X 10.6.5 Safari 5.0.3.

The Onion, as usual, has the scoop:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/fda-approves-sale-of-prescription-placebo,1606/

I came across that link on Ben Goldacre's site, where he mentions a study from the 60s that (carefully) told the patients they were just getting sugar pills:

"Mr Doe ... we have a week between now and your next appointment, and we would like to do something to give you some relief from your symptoms. Many different kinds of tranquillisers and similar pills have been used for conditions such as yours, and many of them have helped. Many people with your kind of condition have also been helped by what are sometimes called 'sugar pills', and we feel that a so-called sugar pill may help you, too. Do you know what a sugar pill is? A sugar pill is a pill with no medicine in it at all. I think this pill will help you as it has helped so many others. Are you willing to try this pill?"

http://www.badscience.net/2008/03/all-bow-before-the-might-of-the-placebo-effect-it-is-the-coolest-strangest-thing-in-medicine/

http://www.leecrandallparkmd.net/researchpages/placebo1.html

Fat is just efficiently stored energy. Eating 400 cals of fat (a small amount), or 400 cals of lower carb-dense food (a larger amount) is the same.

You can either lose weight with exercise, diet, or both.
You need to burn 3500 calories to lose a pound of fat (7700 for a kg). An hours running is about 600.
Or you can diet, which is what I've chosen.

I've lost 10 kg (22lbs) in 40 days, and that's with no exercising at all.

Ketosis is your friend. When you're in it, your body breaks down fat, and turns it to ketones which are used to give you energy. It's natures way of getting you through a famine. I'm sure the Chilean miners were in it until they were rescued.

By the way, there's a guy over here in the UK who seems to have made it his life's work to identify poor science. Bad Science. He has a book by the same name, which is very interesting.

No, it's not a humorous article, given that it's exactly how mainstream science reporting looks like.

It is still humorous. As the saying goes, it's funny because it's true. (And if you think the situation is too dismal to be funny, that just makes it black humor.)

No, it's not a humorous article, given that it's exactly how mainstream science reporting looks like.

What do you expect? They publish horoscopes, celebrity gossip and sports results in mainstream media. How do you expect to take the science seriously when it's presented along superstition and mindless drivel. If you want to keep up with science buy a science mag - New Scientist, Scientific American, even National Geographic would serve better. If you REALLY want to know the science get your hands on the original papers and take a look at references. (Of course few people are dedicated enough to go learn the jargon and math of the field)

No, it's not a humorous article, given that it's exactly how mainstream science reporting looks like.

you seem to be implying willow bark is the only herb with a better than minor effect

I could be wrong, but I think you're reading something into his statement that's not there. I didn't see anything that suggested it was the only effective herb - it was just a single example.

Another example is fish oil, like marijuana there are many physicians recommending fish oil over FDA approved supplements.

You might want to look at what Ben Goldacre has to say about fish oils, and the poor science behind much of their promotion, on http://www.badscience.net/.

I've just been reading this morning's BadScience so my statistics brain is running a bit hot this morning.

There's a lot this data doesn't tell you. For one thing, the start dates are all different, and the guy that downloaded the most had the earliest start (along with a few others). Are they counting to a specific date, or over a period of time. If it's the former, the guy who is second has a whole 10 days more of data to download, or roughly 1/3rd of a month.

Also, what about the people that didn't agree to this, are there people who are higher, but didn't agree to have their data usage shown? Or a lot of people thought their usage was excessive, but actually was at the 1TB mark. It could be that the top guy there is a line that has a lot of students on it, all downloading P2P data, all with no anti-virus so all with trojans turning their computers in to zombies that are sending out incredible amounts of spam.

Another point, what about the rest of the data? This is obviously the top %age of users, but what percent is that? 1%, 0.01%? This could be a guy doing a lot of HD video editing, or has a company editing for him and he wanted review different edits at home. It could be that most people are on holiday in July in Belgium and therefore not downloading, so it's much easier to download more data because the contention is lower. It could also just be that it is 'download all the crap you possibly can' month in Belgium, totally throwing this data out of whack.

Basically what I'm saying is, while this data is very interesting, it's not useful. I would love to see a more about the context of this information. I bet there are plenty of people (like me) who go to work and don't P2P, and aren't using anywhere near their data cap.

I agree. Also relevant is this from the Bad Science blog: http://www.badscience.net/2009/04/parmageddon/ . In particular, people seem to misunderstand risk:

They were risks, risks that didn't materialise, but they were still risks. That's what a risk is.

It's the same thing with Y2K - even here, you see people claiming it as a myth or waste of time. The risks were there, and indeed, the fact that little happened is a credit to those people who worked fixing the problems. The only ones making ludicrous claims were the media - the same media who now cite the example as "experts make claims that turn out to be completely wrong".

Now the fact is that Cliff Arnall’s equations are stupid, and some fail even to make mathematical sense on their own terms. His equation for the perfect long weekend is a case in point. It is “(C x R x ZZ) / ((Tt + D) x St) + (P x Pr) >400 (Tt = travel time; D = delays; C = time spent on cultural activities; R = time spent relaxing; ZZ = time spent sleeping; St = time spent in a state of stress; P = time spent packing; Pr = time spent in preparation).

I give you Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology and health at the University of Lancaster, in the Evening Standard. "Psychologists claim to have developed a mathematical formula, [(V x P x R) + A] x (VFM), which allows them to grade the nation's sporting triumphs. And they have produced a highly contentious 'top 10' covering everything from England's World Cup win in 1966 to the Ashes triumph over Australia last year." Can they be serious? "The people behind the equation boast that it's 'the first ever scientific equation that reveals just how good a game of sport has been to watch'.

Hollywood beauty, Jessica Alba, is ‘strutterly’ desirable – she has the sexiest ever walk, according to new research revealed today by Veet. Veet, the hair removal expert, has teamed up with mathematicians at Cambridge University to reveal a ratio to work out who has the hottest walk, and the Fantastic Four star clocked up the top score, thanks to her luscious legs and curvy frame.

Etc. etc. ad nauseum. Slashdot should not be providing advertising for companies which further distort the public's understanding of science.

Ben Goldacre talks about these "equation for the perfect X" stories which turn up regularly: formula for fame, equation for a neckline, perfect "wiggle", a particularly bad propagator.

It's bullshit non-science to generate publicity.

Ben Goldacre talks about these "equation for the perfect X" stories which turn up regularly: formula for fame, equation for a neckline, perfect "wiggle", a particularly bad propagator.

It's bullshit non-science to generate publicity.

Ben Goldacre talks about these "equation for the perfect X" stories which turn up regularly: formula for fame, equation for a neckline, perfect "wiggle", a particularly bad propagator.

It's bullshit non-science to generate publicity.

Ben Goldacre talks about these "equation for the perfect X" stories which turn up regularly: formula for fame, equation for a neckline, perfect "wiggle", a particularly bad propagator.

It's bullshit non-science to generate publicity.

I haven't read TFA, and won't. These "Boffins discover equation for ____" stories are almost always marketing. Here's an example: http://www.badscience.net/2007/09/clarion-communications-respond-on-the-rigged-jessica-alba-wiggle/

"antioxidants "

actually that ones a myth too.
Right now all the health food shops love them and in that at least they're only a few decades behind actual medical science.
http://www.badscience.net/2007/12/epistemological-indulgences/

citation:
http://annonc.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/1/166.abstract
found
"antioxidant supplements were found to have no preventive effect on cancer"
in fact....
"the use of antioxidant supplements significantly increased the risk of bladder cancer "

"Nobody ever actually SAID it was the alcohol that was healthy numbnuts. "
lots of people do.
it's a common myth.
that you should drink a glass of wine ever day, that it's good for your heart. etc etc.
with the exception of the social stuff it's pretty much bunk.
an apple a day is the far more likely option.

Alcohol is both a muscle relaxant and a mental relaxant. Moderate use relieves stress and frankly the side effects are far less severe than any of the prescription meds you can get for the same job. Relieving average daily stress levels by itself probably does more good than alcohol can do bad.

muscle relaxant? sure.
mental relaxant? simply interacting with other people socially is what's good for that.
Drinking alone does little or nothing to relieve mental stress.

You still haven't proven that they were. When scientists from reputable institutions publish research in reputable journals it gets peer reviewed. If that research is skewed then they get blasted and their reputations (which in science IS your entire career) gets blown to hell. They have to be as unbiased as technology allows them to be - no matter who paid for the research grant. That isn't to say that some scientists aren't bought off and that some don't get away with it - scientists are only human so if this was one study - I'd take it with a grain of salt. But all the numerous confirmatory studies that have been done have ALL come to the SAME conclusion, all these independent researchers including the ones who set out to prove it false because they were raised in alcoholic home (of COURSE some of them exist and nobody is completely bias free) have repeatedly found the same results.

Did you even read the citation from the other post?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17478320
should be able to get a full copy of the paper with a little googling.

No they have not ALL come to the SAME conclusion.
It's a myth.
An attractive myth.
There's countless studies which show homeopathy to work yet there's even more higher quality ones which show it's useless.
Guess which ones get more attention in the tabloids.
Guess which ones the homoeopaths talk about.

are you familiar with the concept of a systematic review or a meta-analysis?

I probably drink slightly more than you- I do more cold deserts with alcohol in them.
I take the view that any health risks are trivial enough.

Unfortunately I don't think this will make a difference.

Is anyone here willing to stand up and say they were a denialist but became convinced of the validity of AGW when the CRU was vindicated? What about anyone who's still a denialist, but decided that the emails weren't the smoking gun after all?

I fear that no evidence can ever be enough. Imagine we had a time machine and could look 100 years in the future and saw the climate was 10 degrees warmer. I suspect a substantial portion of denialists would simply claim it was part of a natural cycle, or a scientific conspiracy was using a doomsday device to warm the planet, anything but the greenhouse effect.

Well the blame lies on the expert and on the peer review that wasn't properly conducted, not on the people who believed him!!!

Close, but no, the blame lies with the media who persistently presented what was in fact a dissenting view in the face of increasing amounts of evidence that suggested otherwise. I refer you to someone brighter than myself who is known for writing on the subject.

Simon sing is going to go after the BCA for costs: http://www.badscience.net/2010/04/british-chiropractic-association-drops-shameful-libel-case-against-science-writer-who-criticised-them/

You can't get time back. He can't get the last year of his life back. He needs to get more than costs. The case was harassment, plain and simple. They used their influence to make his life hard for a year, they should pay him a salary for that, and it should be more than ANY member of the BCA makes, whether they're just a chiropractor, or one of the executives. And also, a public apology, in the form of a press release from the BCA, to be hosted alongside their other PR, and to be distributed to all the same places they send their positive PR. With a signed copy suitable for framing. How is getting back your costs considered a form of justice? It's a half measure at best.

There is something very wrong with a legal system where someone can sue you and then drop the case or lose, and you still have to pay and are not compensated for your time.

Simon sing is going to go after the BCA for costs: http://www.badscience.net/2010/04/british-chiropractic-association-drops-shameful-libel-case-against-science-writer-who-criticised-them/

Singh might go after them for his legal fees. That would be about a £100,000 loss to the BCA (not to mention what they spent already). It doesn't make it better for Singh, but it's still a victory for everybody else. And this might spark a reform in the libel law, which is another win for everybody else.

So far, Singh has been hit the hardest, but the fight isn't over yet. I don't know if we can make things easier on him directly, but maybe the other side can still be hit hard.

On the subject: http://www.badscience.net/2010/02/the-bbc-have-found-someone-whose-cancer-was-cured-by-homeopathy/

Ben Goldacre for stopping this lunacy. His weekly Bad Science column and website have been invaluable in combating woo.

But the "it's a load of rubbish" sensationalism - which no doubt we will now get, which of course is terribly easy to "predict" after the fact - is just as bad as the original sensationalism.

Here's an interesting read from Ben Goldacre's Bad Science column: http://www.badscience.net/2009/04/parmageddon/

People were queuing up to ask him to dismiss the concerns as sensationalism, which is what he often does so well, and you know what? He doesn't. Just because some media sources might have made ludicrous claims doesn't mean the risks didn't exist. Just because it turned out not to be as bad as we feared doesn't mean the risks didn't exist.

"They were risks, risks that didn't materialise, but they were still risks. That's what a risk is."

Jumping on the bandwagon to claim that these risks never existed, and that we should never do anything to protect ourselves from such risks, is as sensalist and dangerous as making false sensationalist claims in the first place.

Considering back in 2006 they did no less than 31 studies (probably more but I'm too lazy to google for them) and found that overwhelmingly, people couldn't even tell when they were around a electromagnetic device like a cell phone:

"31 is a good number of studies, and 24 found that electromagnetic fields have no effect. But 7 did find some measurable effect, and because I have a reputation for pedantry to uphold: in 2 of those studies with positive findings, even the original authors have been unable to replicate the results; for the next 3, the results seem to be statistical artifacts (details below); and for the final 2, the positive results are mutually inconsistent (one shows improved mood with provocation, and the other shows worsened mood)."

There comes a point when both the doctors involved, and society at large need to consider that someone is more likely to simply be a hypochondriac, a head case, or misdiagnosed.

Since I think the Polar Bear thing is particularly funny (I think a lot of teen girls think they are so cute, in spite of the fact that they are apparently some of the most aggressive and violent bears), this is certainly not Fox News. nor are these folks. But with proof like simply SEEING them so far off shore and presuming global warming is the reason, it's so obvious that any criticism must be wrong! I guess since the food that Polar Bears eat - like seals - are remaining completely stationary while the snow/ice presumably recedes. I've seen reports that polar bears can swim anywhere from 60 to 100s of miles, so apparently they aren't completely sure....

Incidentally, from here [reason.com]:

All the articles you link to follow from the same exact flaw which renders them rather meaningless - they claim that polar bears are not threatened because present numbers are stable or increasing (polar bears are lucky animals, living far as far away from human settlement as they do); yet they miss the point that it is the future that matters - what will happen in 50-100 years time when the arctic is ice-free? This style of nonsense reasoning is typical of the obfuscation performed by denialist pundits.

The Daily Telegraph by the way is the FOX News of the UK. If you think the CRU team are bending the truth, they can't hold a candle to the Daily Telegraph.