Comments on: Brainiac “Fraud” “Slammed” In The Evening Standard And The Independent

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By: BorisTheChemist

BorisTheChemist — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 15:19:30 +0000

For shame! I looked on the link and he did his MSc and MPhil in the same area as me! Looks like I am destined for a career as a circus charlatan.

By: BorisTheChemist

BorisTheChemist — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 15:17:14 +0000

Dr Bunhead isn’t a real doctor, I see (I am suprised, he wears glasses and everything). I do believe that the only way to really get an MPhil in Chemistry (after doing an MSc and not at Cambridge) is to screw up your PhD or leave before you have finished it – that bodes well for his scientific credentials.

By: Ben Goldacre

Ben Goldacre — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 11:35:56 +0000

i’m not sure i want to piss them off, i just think its funny…

By: jimyojimbo

jimyojimbo — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 11:33:03 +0000

Ben G: Well, it’s probably a bit late now re: the ES etc, but what you should do is next time BadScience.net gets quoted as a source and readers of other publications get directed here, explicitly mention “the other stories listed on the right, including MSRA etc etc”. Point everyone arriving straight at that. That might get the newspapers’ goats!

By: jackpt

jackpt — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 10:39:50 +0000

Coracle, dumb hasn’t meant just mute for about one hundred years. I know this because I’ve looked it up.

By: Janet W

Janet W — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 10:26:32 +0000

(OK, sorry, bit tactless to make jokes about blowing things up at present. Sounded much funnier when I originally heard it)

By: Janet W

Janet W — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 10:13:48 +0000

Tom Pringle (a.k.a. “Dr Bunhead”) has a MSc and M Phil in Chemistry, but does not appear to have a PhD in same
http://www.bunhead.com/html/about_bunhead.htm

so.. not a “proper Doctor” as such, but definitely a proper science communicator, as enthusiastically reviewed by LabLit:

http://www.lablit.com/article/45

I do hope Dr G hasn’t lost him his job.

I want to say, in Brainiac’s defence, that it did coin the phrase “You can never blow up too many caravans”.

By: Robert Carnegie

Robert Carnegie — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 11:48:04 +0000

Me and Ben:

â€œI want to say again, in Brainiacâ€™s defence, that their scientific adviser apparently promised them that the bath would be blown up by the experiment.â€

“how do you know that?”

Isn’t it implied in http://www.badscience.net/?p=261 ? And the other bits which I can’t track down now?

Hmm. I seem to have interpolated more than I realised. However… if your source wasn’t saying “This experiment will be good” or “This won’t work” or “I don’t know”, probably -before- they decided to spend the day filming it, then what were they all playing at?

Have I also interpolated that your source is a science guy, just because on TV he’s called Doctor something? But he’s as much a doctor as David Tennant is?

Oh, I’m bewildered.

By: coracle

coracle — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 11:26:54 +0000

What really gets me is the use of ‘dumbed-down’. Dumb means mute not stupid.

By: FlammableFlower

FlammableFlower — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 22:05:14 +0000

Ben, with papers quoting you on Brainiac vs not mentioning Dr MRSA, at least if their readers do follow the link to the site, it may get them reading other posts and then they’ve accidently shown their readers their stories are a big pile of the proverbial.

By: Ben Goldacre

Ben Goldacre — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 19:44:41 +0000

“I want to say again, in Brainiac’s defence, that their scientific adviser apparently promised them that the bath would be blown up by the experiment.”

how do you know that?

By: Robert Carnegie

Robert Carnegie — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 19:42:30 +0000

I want to say again, in Brainiac’s defence, that their scientific adviser apparently promised them that the bath would be blown up by the experiment and then it wasn’t. In filming a bath blowing up anyway… well, in their place I’d feel I was only getting my due…

By: jackpt

jackpt — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 14:15:58 +0000

There is very little chance that any newspaper will mention a rival if they can get away with it.

Art, there is something very similar in the differences between the Discovery US version of Mythbusters, and the UK version. I was quite disheartened to tune in to the Discovery UK version only to find the ‘build team’ (US version) called the ‘Junior Mythbusters’, and the overall tone of the narration far closer to Braniac.

So it’s a little worse than the BBC dumbing down, they’ve dumbed down something that was already dumbed down. The sequence went something like this Entertainment (US) -> Dumber Entertainment -> BBC management that think all the unwashed hordes are interested in is football and the tabloids. Or something remarkably similar to that.

Although I have something of a soft spot for Mythbusters, for all it’s faults its a show that hits a balance between entertainment and education that compliments both. I would far rather see young people watching Mythbusters than Braniac. Not once have I seen big-breated girls as part of a Mythbusters experiment. Also, the Mythbuster viewer shows are quite good, because they have re-tested myths on the basis of viewer input. Some of there previous results turned out to be wrong and they admitted it.

So it’s not a bad thing that it’s on BBC 2. People with digital telly will want to watch it on the Discovery Channel.

By: pickle

pickle — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 12:37:10 +0000

The story is also reported in Saturday 19th Independant (page 7) by Cahal Milmo. Again this website is quoted as the source with no mention of The Guardian and largely a re-print of Ben’s article. Full article at http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article1202846.ece

By: Teek

Teek — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 10:28:39 +0000

good to see the Standard picking up on this indeed Ben, but to be honest i’m not that amazed that papers picked up on this rather than Dr MRSA. in this story the Standard gets to debunk a TV show, with the backing of, as they put it, a neuroscientist, and the debunking doesnt affect their own stable of publications. however, if they ran stories about Dr. Malawotsit turning out to be a fraud, they’re in trouble – as you said above, your expose on Malawotsit ‘de-rugged about 20 majour headline stories’ – some of which may have appeared in the Mail/Sunday Mail/Standard, meaning the Standar themselves are hardly gonna slate their own stable-mates…!

By: Ben Goldacre

Ben Goldacre — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 09:35:18 +0000

the thing that really amazed me, I have to say, was that no single paper picked up on the malyszewicz MRSA thing, given that it de-rugged about 20 major headline stories. although to be fair i did get one call from a tabloid who wanted to do a story on how malyszewicz was evil and had ripped off and defrauded the papers. considering most of the papers, if not all, had been told point blank that his lab was a joke, and their story was too, at the time, this struck me as being a slightly pisspoor spin on the story.

By: crgn

crgn — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 09:09:29 +0000

It’s pretty standard policy for papers not to give credit for a story to another paper, and can you imagine the Standard admitting the Guardian got there first? Not a chance.