The Quackometer has had some rather unpleasant emails following his criticism of the Burzynski clinic. The issue is that some people wanted to kindly raise money for a child with cancer to be treated there, when the evidence for the proffered interventions is questionable. Other people have examined the science very well. There is something […]
Continue Reading →Freedom of information requests vs science research
Free link, and follow up in the BMJ to the newspaper headlines such as “Hundreds of preteen children treated for eating disorders”.
Continue Reading →Peter Wilmshurst, free speech and libel
An article in TheHeart.org – Dr Wilmshurst is now being threatened with libel over a radio interview he did a year ago. I interviewed Dr Wilmshurst for the FT at around the same time. It was a shortish interview, discussing the reasons why he’d spoken out about the research he’d been involved with and the […]
Continue Reading →The origin of PMT
I’ve had some truly fascinating emails in response to this column on PMT. I had forgotten completely about this BMJ paper, from 1953, which you can view for free if you register. The first author is Katharina Dalton, who is famous for advocating progesterone to ‘treat’ PMT, and which is now recognised as being non […]
Continue Reading →Best science joke of ’10 (so far)
Schrodingers’ cat walks into a bar. And doesn’t. (Thank you Julie Miller)
Continue Reading →Health and holiday housekeeping
I’m taking a couple of weeks off the blog to hide from the heat, the lack of which I usually complain about. In the meantime, two thought-provoking treats: an excellent article on cancer screening – It is not wrong to say no – from Dr Iona Heath, who is the new president of the Royal College of […]
Continue Reading →Protect and perfect and not at all convinced
Boots the chemist are making much of research just published in the British Journal of Dermatology. It involves their Protect and Perfect product, which is on sale in my local store, where there are signs saying that customers are allowed to buy only 6 bottles. Clearly they are anticipating great demand. In 2007, the BBC […]
Continue Reading →The Professor Peter Higgs Fan Club
I don’t think that Peter Higgs has a fan club – yet. An interview with him in New Scientist this week reveals why he should have one. He is the theoretical physicist who has predicted the existence of a particle now known as the ‘Higgs boson’ which explains the origin of mass and which the […]
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