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
Homeopaths are boring, but homeopathy is a great teaching tool for evidence based medicine, because it's such an extreme example of a treatment that doesn't work, but is hotly defended by some patients and healthcare people.
So, in that vein, here's an interesting science communication challenge.You have to write the official MHRA label for homeopathy pills when they're sold in the UK. You need to convey a lot of information in a small space (though to be honest, they could make it bigger), to a lay audience who don't know any technical terms. The most important thing from an ethical perspective is that you respect patients autonomy, and informed consent, by clearly informing them of what they're putting in their body. The competition closes tomorrow:http://www.mhra.gov.uk/Publications/Consultations/Medicinesconsultations/Othermedicinesconsultations/CON105929 Here's my first draft for the label (but I don't think it's perfect, the "dummy" is problematic, but so is "placebo"):Lactose tablet sold as a “homeopathy” treatment, contains no detectable ingredients. Repeated trials have shown no difference in patient outcome when “homeopathy” treatments are compared with dummy treatments, beyond a placebo effect.Here's DC's entry:http://www.dcscience.net/?p=4011Here's the homeopaths' entry:http://bengoldacre.posterous.com/homeopaths-are-at-their-most-amusing-when-the And here's some background on homeopathy:http://www.badscience.net/2007/11/a-kind-of-magic/.
A MESSAGE FROM NO SPONSOR:
You might die soon, before that happens you should totally buy some books, they're awesome, like a Kindle only they don’t break all the time. You can have my book in the UK, US or Canada, my favourite storybook is this which I just bought for Robin Ince, I wrote an introduction for this amazing book because I love it, your life is basically broken if you don’t watch Wholphin which is how I found this which made me cry (ish). You could improve your life with nerd kit, this thing is made by people but my top nerd tip this month is stick some velcro on the back of your laptop and use that to attach a small portable hard drive with a short usb cable, hey presto, instant space upgrade. If you only read one book a month that's ten a year and 100 a decade. All that stuff to know about, and how many decades have you got left? I don't mind telling you this scares the hell out of me.
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
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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