January 20th, 2007 by Ben Goldacre
in africa, bad science, dangers, heroes, matthias rath, nutritionists | 55 Comments »
Ben Goldacre
Saturday January 20, 2007
The Guardian
If you think the nutritionists and vitamin peddlers in the UK are weird, you really want to go to South Africa, where President Thabo Mbeki has a long history of siding with the HIV denialists, who believe that HIV does not cause Aids (but that treatments for it do), and where his health minister talks up fruit and vegetables as a treatment, as we have previously covered here.
In this world, Zackie Achmat is a hero: Read the rest of this entry »
August 21st, 2006 by Ben Goldacre
in bad science, heroes, statistics | 39 Comments »
Okay not mine, because I’ve got a bit over-ambitious with the content, but this is a bit of a find: free books by one of the early pioneers of popularising critical appraisal, epidemiologist Petr Skrabanek. Few today will remember his fantastic “Follies and Fallacies in Medicine” (co-authored with GP James McCormick) in which they take on everything from the bad maths of breast cancer screening, through the validity of psychiatric diagnoses, and on to homeopathy and “electroquackupuncture devices”. Their “Fistful of Fallacies” is particularly good.
At the time, this was regarded as a visionary classic, a book that changed the Read the rest of this entry »
August 19th, 2006 by Ben Goldacre
in bad science, heroes, postmodernist bollocks | 83 Comments »
Ben Goldacre
Saturday August 19, 2006
The Guardian
“Deconstructing the evidence-based discourse in health sciences: truth, power and fascism.†Even from looking at the title, you just know this academic paper, from the September edition of the International Journal of Evidence-based Healthcare, is going to be a corker. And it uses the word “fascist†(or elaborate derivatives) 28 times in 6 pages, which even Rik Mayall in the Young Ones might have described as “overdoing itâ€.
Now obviously post modernist intellectuals are about a thousand times more intelligent than me – because I only know about science and computers – but I found this paper so confusing I thought it might be a spoof. After all, who could forget the great Sokal hoax, where Read the rest of this entry »
