ben goldacre witters on and on and on about things that are too long to post on twitter and not clever enough to post on his main blog at www.badscience.net
in 1781 the Royal Academy of Brussels ran a competition asking for clever scientific suggestions. We should have more of these competitions. Here is Benjamin Franklin's entry: Permit me then humbly to propose one of that sort for your consideration, and through you, if you approve it, for the serious Enquiry of learned Physicians, Chemists, &c. of this enlightened Age. It is universally well known, That in digesting our common Food, there is created or produced in the Bowels of human Creatures, a great Quantity of...
Here's an interesting nerdy corner you might have missed: Andrew Lansley is changing the regional funding model for NHS resources. Currently it's done on a complex formula taking lots of factors into account, like deprivation, age, etc. Now it is proposed that this formula should be driven by the age structure of the local population. This will have one simple consequence: less for the poor, more for the old. Some might say this is a vote winner for the tories. They'd be right. It's also a rather bizarre thing...
You will remember Aric Sigman, the slightly farcical omg-computers-harm-children man who operates from his home in Brighton, and distorts scientific research by cherry picking only the scary results which suit his story. He even - amazingly - admits to doing exactly this. http://www.badscience.net/category/aric-sigman/ Here's a clip of some previous fun with Sigman in this video clip (starts at 2 minutes, he gets a bit angry when he's caught out, and denies that his article about social networking was about social...
I am often struck by how many people in medicine are afraid to speak out about problems that they see around them, so this editorial by Harlan Krumholz is great: I have seen evidence of many such efforts to coerce conformity of opinion and behavior. I have heard of junior faculty who were told that questioning key assumptions of the field, even with evidence, would result in threats to funding and support. I am aware of individuals in nationally prominent organizations whose ability to attain leadership roles was...
Via waxy.org/links Sent from my zx81 Sorry about the typo's
This is great: a free, online app for producing attractive infographics. The site is easel.ly, and it's very usable. I can't wait to see professional infographics tech deployed outside of journalism in blogs, academic presentations, and snarky online parodies. If you enjoy this kind of thing I also highly recommend Visualise This, by Nathan Yau from flowingdata.com, which mixes design guruism with some stats and data visualisation examples, as well as concrete guides of how to get things done using software...
This is an interesting piece that suggests universities could innovate by becoming more open, for example by running exams, but not actually teaching themselves, and leaving that to others. http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2012/may/10/innovators-academia-universities I think it's interesting to pair it up with this piece, on the movement (in the US only, really) among academics to open up their course to anyone and everyone, for free. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/03/education/harvard...
This was sent to all doctors at UCLH. It's not weird: tbh it's pretty run of the mill these days. My concern is simple: I am vastly in favour of informed patients, I think the human communication aspects...
I was just left a message by "Barclays" asking me to call them on some odd, unusual 0800 number. I did so, and they started asking me for security information. "How do I know your Barclays?" I asked. The guy on the phone was baffled. "But we're Barclays". This is a serious problem, in my view, because if this really is my bank, then they are basically training their customers to behave insecurely. I said I needed to call them on a number that I knew was definitely Barclays, and he told me to call the number...
I like stats. I'm a doctor. I write about dodgy scientific claims in my spare time.
This isn't my main blog. Find me here:
Blog:
www.badscience.net/
Book:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Science-Ben-Goldacre/dp/000728487X/?tag=bs0b-21
Tweet:
www.twitter.com/bengoldacre
TED talk:
http://www.ted.com/talks/ben_goldacre_battling_bad_science.html
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