Ben Goldacre
Thursday July 22, 2004
The Guardian

· Bad Science business as usual in the British “news” media. Several of you were delighted to spot the Times worrying us about BSE all over again, with a picture of what caused it: not a prion, mysteriously, but a picture of a nice big bacterium. And It was labelled as the “BSE virus”, which will come as news to the people who spend their time worrying about what to do with the teeny prion molecules on surgical implements. For future reference, the bacteria are the big roundish things with lots of other stuff going on inside them, and the prions are the bendy wee molecules.

· Perry Groves has been reading the Independent on Sunday. “It appears to have taken the viewpoint that all nanoscience is dangerous,” she writes. “It then blows any credibility it may have had for this position with the sentence ‘Nanotechnology, which is set to revolutionise industry and everyday life, deals with particles so small the laws of physics no longer apply.'” So that’s very small, then.

· The naive quest to find some intellectual consistency in the world of alternative therapies continues unabated. Reader Guy Herbert always thought the point of traditional Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine (mysteriously conflated by western magpies) was that old was good, and ideas changing in the light of new evidence was a sinister modern invention. Until he read the London Evening Standard: “Cupping is a healing technique in Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine that involves the placing of glass jars over acupuncture points. This creates a vacuum that increases blood circulation and detoxification.” “So,” he writes, with glorious pedantry, “at least now they accept Harvey’s blood circulation theory. But surely something as modern as the 17th century can’t be any good?”

· And the ever vigilant Andy Mabbett sends us news that the Birmingham Evening Mail has exclusive rights on a major breakthrough in microbiology, with a story about a former lorry driver who has “invented a wonder cream which could spell the end of hospital superbugs”. Over to our truck driving genius: “We found it killed everything. It was the first potion that killed every known bacteria.” That’s every known bacteria. “Managing infection outbreaks costs the NHS over £1bn annually,” said Mr Watts, his main investor and the chairman of a recruitment agency. No wonder the Evening Mail think he’s “set to make a fortune”.