Briefly: I thought this was a pricing error, but it turns out it’s deliberate, so… My book is £2.49 on Kindle for the next week or so. Read the rest of this entry »
You might also enjoy my second blog…
As well as being here I’m also there: here’s a quick round-up of recent posts from my other blog where I post scatty, brief scribbles in between bouts of real work, they’re in the sidebar on the right too. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m talking at Glastonbury, Saturday 1:30pm Free University in The Park! (Also SGP, Latitude…)
Hi all, just to say, I’m doing a talk in the Free University of Glastonbury, 1:30pm (or thereabouts) on Saturday. Free University is the literarature tent in The Park field, based inside HMS Sweet Charity, which sounds like it’s probably a big silly boat.
www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/news/the-free-university-of-glastonbury-returns
I’m also talking at Secret Garden Party (speakers tent, no idea what day, but my friend Mark Pilkington is there too) and Latitude (on Sunday). If you’re choosing, SGP is madness with fun bands you’ve not heard of, Latitude is families with indie schmindie you have, and both are lovely.
Lots of other good people in the same tent at Glasto: Read the rest of this entry »
There’s something magical about watching patterns emerge from data
Ben Goldacre
The Guardian
Saturday 11 June 2011
We all know one atom of experience isn’t enough to spot a pattern: but when you put lots of experiences together and process that data, you get new knowledge. This might sound obvious, but following it through – watching patterns emerge from the noise – still gives me a sense of beauty and awe. Read the rest of this entry »
I foresee that nobody will do anything about this problem
Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 23 April 2011
Last year a mainstream psychology researcher called Daryl Bem published a competent academic paper, in a well respected journal, showing evidence of precognition. Instead of designing new studies to see whether people could consciously tell you about the future, he ran some classic psychology experiments backwards.
Read the rest of this entry »
I’d expect this from UKIP, or the Daily Mail. Not from a government leaflet.
Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, 15 April 2011
HM Government have issued a new leaflet to justify their NHS reforms: Working Together For A Stronger NHS. It was produced by Number 10, appears on the Department of Health website, and many of the figures it contains are misleading, out of date, or flatly incorrect.
It begins, like much pseudoscience, with uncontroversial truths: the number of people over 85 will double, and the cost of drugs is rising.
Then the trouble starts. In large letters, alone on one entire page, you see: “If the NHS was performing at truly world-class levels we would save an extra 5,000 lives from cancer every year.” The reference for this is a paper in the British Journal of Cancer called “What if cancer survival in Britain were the same as in Europe: how many deaths are avoidable?” Read the rest of this entry »
When journalists do primary research
Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 9 April 2011
This week some journalists found a pattern in some data, and ascribed a cause to it. “Recession linked to huge rise in antidepressants” said the Telegraph. “Economic woes fuel dramatic rise in use of antidepressants” said the Daily Mail. “Record numbers of people are being handed antidepressants” said The Express. Even the Guardian joined in, and it seems to have come from a BBC report. Read the rest of this entry »
Why don’t journalists link to primary sources?
Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 19 March 2011
Why don’t journalists link to primary sources? Whether it’s a press release, an academic journal article, a formal report, or perhaps (if everyone’s feeling brave) the full transcript of an interview, the primary source contains more information for interested readers, it shows your working, and it allows people to check whether what you wrote was true. Perhaps linking to primary sources would just be too embarrassing. Here are three short stories. Read the rest of this entry »
Why cigarette packs matter
Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 12 March 2011
This week our government committed itself to the removal, albeit slowly, of cigarette displays in shops. But plain packaging on cigarettes has been delayed for further consultation.
The Unite union is unimpressed. They represent 6,000 people in tobacco production and distribution, and put out a statement: “Switching to plain packaging will make it easier to sell their illicit and unregulated products, especially to young people”. This “may increase long-term health problems”. Tory MP Philip Davies says: “plain packaging for cigarettes would be gesture politics… it would have no basis in evidence.”
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not, sadly, their own facts. Cigarette packaging has been used for brand building and sales expansion, and that is bad enough: but it has also been used for many decades to sell the crucial lie that cigarettes which are “light”, “mild”, “silver”, and the rest, are somehow “safer”. Read the rest of this entry »
EudraCT, the clinical trials transparency tool held in secret
Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 5 March 2011
The European Medicines Agency now regulate the pharmaceutical industry throughout the whole of Europe. In December 2010 Thomas Lonngren stepped down as their executive director. On the 28th of that month he sent a letter telling the EMA management board that he was going to start working as a private consultant to the pharmaceutical industry, in three days time, on 1 January 2011.
Read the rest of this entry »
