DC's Improbable Science

Jump to follow-up Suggested twitter tag: #buckgate Number 19 Buckingham Street, London WC2N 6EF.is to be the home of the proposed "College of Medicine" that has arisen from the ashes of the late unlamented Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health (their last accounts can be seen at Quackometer). Naturally one must ask if the "College of [...]

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Jump to follow-up I’m baffled. Why is it that beautiful, high quality blogs like Orac’s Respectful Insolence, wanted to be on a commercially-run site in the first place? Scienceblogs is such a site and it recently caused a crisis when it accepted a paid PR piece by Pepsico (without warning its bloggers first). This was [...]

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This week’s edition of Nature Neuroscience carried a paper with the title “Adenosine A1 receptors mediate local anti-nociceptive effects of acupuncture“.  The paper was not without interest, but it tells one nothing about acupuncture in humans.  The mice had their paws injected with rather unpleasant stuff called Complete Freund’s Adjuvant. This makes them inflamed and [...]

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This morning I noticed a Daily Mail poll for the winner of last night’s leaders’ debate, so I cast my vote The results looked like this Click to enlarge (This picture was recorded after lunch at 14.29, so it says I’d already voted.) At the time of writing it is still there, at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/polls/poll.html?pollId=1017189, though [...]

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Jump to follow-up In the wake of the report by the Science and Technology Committee (STC) on the lack of evidence for homeopathy, and the Chinese medicine poisoning, the BBC carried at least three very bad reports. Being a strong supporter of the BBC that saddens me.  Nevertheless it has to be said that the [...]

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Jump to follow-up Yes, it’s that most boring of non-medicine topics, homeopathy, again.  At lunchtime on Thursday I got a call from a Times journallst, Fay Schopen, to ask if I could do 500 words on the Science and Technology Committee’s Evidence Check report on homeopathy. Bang goes another evening.  The (im)balance was provided by [...]

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Jump to follow-up What follows is mostly from the press release for the report of the Science and Technology Select Committee’s report on homeopathy. Comments on their hearings can be found in Comedy gold in parliament and tragedy from Prince of Wales: editorial in British Medical Journal (Although published before Christmas, the comments on this [...]

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Jump to follow-up .The University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN) is the first place I asked to see teaching materials that were used on its homeopathy “BSc” course. The request was refused, and subsequent internal appeals were refused too, Clearly UCLAN had something to hide. An appeal to the information commissioner took almost two years to [...]

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Jump to follow-up That isn’t my title. It is the title of a post by Richard Lanigan, with whom I’ve been corresponding. He has a major grudge against the General Chiropractic Council. And in particular he is disaffected about the GCC’s chair, Peter Dixon, about whom he has written a lot, I can’t judge the [...]

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Jump to follow-up Today brings a small setback for those  of us interested in spreading sensible ideas about science.  According to a press release “The BMJ Group is to begin publishing a medical journal on acupuncture from next year, it was announced today (Tuesday 11 November 2008). This will be the first complementary medicine title [...]

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Jump to follow-up Latest: Michael Reiss resigns 16 September 2008: see below There has been something of a rumpus in the media today when the education secretary of the Royal Society, Michael Reiss, appeared to endorse the teaching of creationism in science classes,  The BBC’s report was only too typical. “Call for creationism in science” [...]

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Jump to follow-up After the announcement that the University of Central Lancashire (Uclan) was suspending its homeopathy “BSc” course, it seems that their vice chancellor has listened to the pressure, both internal and external, to stop bringing his university into disrepute. An internal review of all their courses in alternative medicine was announced shortly after [...]

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Jump to follow-up The Times today has given s good showing for my comment piece. It gives the case against following the advice of the Pittilo report. It simply makes no sense to have government regulation of acupuncture, herbal medicine, traditional Chinese medicine until such time as there is evidence that they work. It makes [...]

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Jump to follow-up My original piece on Integrative Baloney@Yale was posted on May 16th, after I got back from a visit there. The talk I gave there included a short video. My movie, Integrative baloney@Yale, was made entirely from clips taken from Yale’s own YouTube movies which showed something approaching three hours of its “1st [...]

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This post is written in part as a distraction from a plague of lawyers, in New Zealand, here in the UK, and now in the USA (my movie, Integratative baloney@Yale, has recently been removed from YouTube. More on that coming soon). The duty of an advocate is to take fees, and in return for those [...]

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