Podcast on government response to SciTech NHS homeopathy report

July 28th, 2010 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, homeopathy, podcast, regulating nonsense | 23 Comments »

I zipped off this quick podcast from my phone on Monday and put it on my secondary blog, which I run for scrappy stuff. People seemed to like it a bit so I’m reposting here. There’s more audio stuff coming, a bit of video too, and I’ll work out good feeds and iTunes stuff over the next couple of weeks. Cheery pip.

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The BBC have found someone whose cancer was cured by homeopathy

February 23rd, 2010 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, bbc, homeopathy | 128 Comments »

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have hit the bottom of the barrel. Homeopathy cured my cancer, on BBC News.

Parliamentary Sci Tech Committee on Homeopathy

February 22nd, 2010 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, homeopathy | 81 Comments »

Here’s the report, press release below. It looks like pretty sensible stuff to me, homeopaths can’t expect special treatment among all forms of medicine, if the evidence actively shows it doesn’t work, then that’s that. I have to say what really frightens me about all this is the MHRA: if regulation is so political that they can fall into holes over sugar pills, it tells a frightening story about their wider activities. Read the rest of this entry »

Parliamentary Science and Technology Select Committee on homeopathy today

November 25th, 2009 by Ben Goldacre in homeopathy | 66 Comments »

I gave evidence at the Parliamentary SciTech committtee today for their enquiry into whether the government had used scientific evidence properly in making their decisions about MHRA licenses for homeopathic pills, and homeopathy treatment on the NHS. This was a mini-enquiry as a result of interest expressed by the public, which is excellently democratic, you can see the whole thing online here, and some of it is quite good fun.

www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=5221

Personal highlights, from memory, include:

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The end of homeopathy?

November 16th, 2007 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, homeopathy | 476 Comments »

Time after time, properly conducted scientific studies have proved that homeopathic remedies work no better than simple placebos. So why do so many sensible people swear by them? And why do homeopaths believe they are victims of a smear campaign? Ben Goldacre follows a trail of fudged statistics, bogus surveys and widespread self-deception.

Ben Goldacre
The Guardian
Friday November 16 2007

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Homeopathy gives you Aids

September 15th, 2007 by Ben Goldacre in homeopathy, MMR, placebo | 49 Comments »

Ben Goldacre
The Guardian
September 15th, 2007

Okay now look: there’s nothing wrong with the idea of homeopaths giving out sugar pills. The placebo effect can be very powerful, because it’s not just about the pill, it’s about the cultural meaning of the treatment: so we know from research that four placebo sugar pills a day are more effective than two for eradicating gastric ulcers (and that’s not subjective, you measure ulcers by putting a camera into your stomach); we know that salt water injections are a more effective treatment for pain than sugar pills, not because salt water injections are medically active, but because injections are a more dramatic intervention; we know that green sugar pills are a more effective anxiety treatment than red ones, not because of any biomechanical effect of the dyes, but because of the cultural meanings of the colours green and red. We even know that packaging can be beneficial. Read the rest of this entry »

Homeopathy Journal Club

August 14th, 2007 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, homeopathy, journal club | 30 Comments »

Peter Fisher and Elsevier have rather kindly given me permission to reproduce the experimental papers from the special issue of Homeopathy on the memory of water, so I’m posting them in full below. As you know I’m a strong believer in free access to academic journals, especially when they’ve been press-released and discussed in popular fora.

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Homeopathy Science Degrees In British Universities

March 22nd, 2007 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, homeopathy, very basic science | 42 Comments »

Just a brief note to say, if you want to read the original Nature news story and commentary that is driving today’s news story then Prof Colquhoun (the commentary author) is hosting a PDF copy of it here on his own entirely excellent blog:

www.ucl.ac.uk/Pharmacology/dc-bits/quack.html#nature1

He’s also got a cracking round up of the newspaper and radio stories, updated as they come out.

Homeopathy Debate Video Stream

December 14th, 2006 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, homeopathy | 75 Comments »

The video for the homeopathy “debate” at the Natural History Museum two weeks ago is up, it’s me and Dr Peter Fisher, Clinical Director of the NHS Royal Intergalactic Homeopathic Hospital in Queen’s Square. It feels to me as if some of the discussion might be missing, looking at the timebar, but I haven’t had a chance to watch it all yet.

As I remember it, Peter’s talk involves rather a lot on how Dawkins said something a bit stupid about homeopathy once in an introduction to someone else’s book 7 years ago, and there was Read the rest of this entry »

Natural History Museum Homeopathy Debate – Booking Now

November 17th, 2006 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, homeopathy | 52 Comments »

I'm talking at this Natural History Museum thing on Thursday 30th Nov at 7pm with Dr Peter Fisher, Clinical Director of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital, bookings on 020 7942 5555, seats going fast…

Should be good fun, at first it was to speak "against" somebody called Dr Marysia Kratimenos, but now they've got Dr Peter Fisher. He is obviously the biggest cheese in Uk homeopathy, a very nice man, a very clever man, a very well informed man, an extremely reasonable man, a man who takes Read the rest of this entry »

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