Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 29 January 2011
If science has any authority, it derives from transparency: you can check the claims against the working. Sometimes you hit a brick wall. Sometimes you might consider a shortcut. Let’s look at 3 types of checking. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 8th January 2011
“600 pregnancies despite contraceptive implant” said the BBC. “500 fall pregnant after having contraceptive implant” said the Express. “Contraceptive implant alert” said the Daily Mail: “Hundreds of women fall pregnant after birth control fails”. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 13 November 2010
If science has any credibility, it derives from transparency: when you make a claim about how something works, you provide references to experiments, which describe openly and in full what was done, in enough detail for the experiment to be replicated, detailing what was measured, and how. Then people discuss what they think this all means in the real world.
Maria Hatzistefanis is a star of lifestyle pages and the owner of Rodial, the cosmetics company who sell a product called “Boob Job” which they claim will give you a “fuller bust” “increase the bust size” and “plump up the décolleté area” with “an instant lifting and firming effect”, and an increase of half a cup size in 56 days. Or rather an increase of “8.4%”. It’s all very precise. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 16 October 2010
You will be familiar with the Daily Mail’s ongoing project to divide all the inanimate objects in the world into the ones that either cause or prevent cancer. Individual entries are now barely worth documenting, and the phenomenon is best appreciated in bulk through websites such as the Daily Mail Oncological Ontology Project and Kill Or Cure, with its alphabetised list: from almonds, apples and artificial light; through horseradish, hotdrinks and housework; to wasabi, water, watercress, and more.
But occasionally one story pops up to illustrate a wider issue, and “Strict diet two days a week ‘cuts risk of breast cancer by 40 per cent’” is a good example. It goes on: “a strict diet for two days a week consisting solely of vegetables, fruit, milk and a mug of Bovril could prevent breast cancer, scientists say.” Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 28 August 2010
For simpletons and amateurs, there are good research methods, and bad research methods. In reality, different tools are valuable in different situations, and sometimes, even very tiny numbers of people can give you a meaningful piece of information: even an anecdote can be informative. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 24 July 2010
There is a pleasing symmetry in the ropey science you get from different players. When GlaxoSmithKline are confronted with an unflattering meta-analysis summarising the results of all 56 trials on one of their treatments, as we saw last week, their defense is to point at 7 positive trials, exactly as a homeopath would do. Politicians will often find a ray of positive sunshine in a failed policy’s appraisal, and promote that to the sky. Newspapers, similarly, will spin science to fit their political agenda, with surreal consequences (the Telegraph have claimed recently that shopping causes infertility in men, and the Daily Mail reckon housework prevents breast cancer in women).
But does the same thing happen in formal academic research?
Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 24 April 2010
What can science and evidence bring to an election? First there are the micro-issues: we can assess the validity of claims made by politicians by seeking out the evidence. David Cameron, for example, claimed that UK cancer services were bad because fewer people die of cancer in Bulgaria than in the UK, which many have already debunked: he used death data from a country with inferior monitoring standards, and a far lower life expectancy, but more than that, he used death data, which is driven not just by treatment success, but also by the number of new cases to start with, which can vary widely for all kinds of reasons. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 13 March 2010
“2,000 bugs taking a ride in every train compartment” said the Daily Mail. “Cockroaches cluster on trains“, scuttled the Telegraph. “Commuters share trains with 1,000 cockroaches, 200 bedbugs and 200 fleas” said the Evening Standard. The figures were all very specific and very frightening.
“Rentokil say they also discovered that a bus was home to 500 cockroaches, along with dozens of fleas and bedbugs,” explained the Standard. Those disgusting trains are even worse. “Research by pest controllers Rentokil shows that, on average, a single train compartment houses a staggering 1,000 cockroaches, 200 bed bugs, 200 fleas, 500 dust mites and 100 carpet beetles,” said the Mail. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 16 January 2010
Every now and then you have to salute a genius. Both the Daily Mail and the Metro report new research analysing the positions of Britain’s ancient sites, and the results are startling: primitive man had his own form of “sat nav”. Researcher Tom Brooks analysed 1,500 prehistoric monuments, and found them all to be on a grid of isosceles triangles, each pointing to the next site, allowing our ancestors to travel between settlements with pinpoint accuracy. The papers even carried an example of his map work, which I have reproduced here.
Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 19 December 2009
It’s been a vintage year for dodgy science in government. We saw reports on cocaine that were disappeared, dodgy evidence to justify DNA retention, and some government advisors who estimated the cost of piracy at 10% of GDP, to media applause, and then failed to tell everyone they’d got the figure wrong by 1000%.
