You see some interesting things in the ‘letters’ pages of our local newspapers. A little while ago it was the suggestion that ‘stabilised liquid oxygen’ was the cure for all ills. This week: a statement that the recently-introduced Gardasil vaccine contains rat poison & aluminium, and that it’s caused 29 deaths and 10,000+ adverse reactions. […]
Continue readingOver at his BadScience blog, Ben Goldacre has had a close look at yet another dubious use of basic statistics. It’s to do with the provision of carbon monoxide monitors in council housing in the UK. Carbon monoxide (CO) is a nasty thing – you can’t smell it, & it can kill you very dead quite […]
Continue readingRecently the journalist Amanda Gefter wrote an article for New Scientist on how to recognise ‘science’ books with a hidden (anti-evolutionary) agenda. While that’s still available in the print version, the journal has now removed the on-line version – apparently, due to a complaint or complaints from readers. This strikes me as more than a […]
Continue readingAfter reading & commenting on that letter, which attributed health benefits to sodium chlorite, I found my interest had been piqued. Just what has been claimed for this chemical? So I went looking…
Continue readingA letter in our local free newspaper caught my eye tonight. Along with the rather outrageous statement that medical pharmaceuticals are ‘just toxic pills and potions’ pushed as medicines by marketing types (sorry, what? Does this person really think that drug companies & doctors are out to poison people?), there were some other interesting claims […]
Continue readingWhen I visited Ben Goldacre’s site the other day, it was apparently down. Then I read at Orac’s place that Ben was in trouble with a radio station in the UK, for posting much of a program that made some rather startling comments & claims about the MMR vaccine. I did a spot of net-surfing […]
Continue readingI’ve just come across a post by Phil Plait on Skepticblog, on understanding the nature of science. (Phil also writes the Bad Astronomy blog.) It’s clear & concise, & the comments thread is also excellent as it expands on some of Phil’s points. Included in his post is an introduction to the new website Understanding […]
Continue readingHIV = Human Immunodeficiency Virus. And there’s an extremely large volume of evidence supporting the hypothesis that infection with HIV generally leads to the development of AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). I say ‘generally’ because there is a very small subset of people (called ‘elite suppressors’) in whom this progression doesn’t seem to happen. But in […]
Continue readingOver on Respectful Insolence, one of Orac’s specialties is the dissection of various forms of jiggery-pokery/hocus-pocus/pseudoscientific nonsense. This post of his is well worth reading: it takes a recent paper on a purported ‘energy-healing’ technique & explains why what was done is very far indeed from good science. (It’s worth repeating the old aphorism that the […]
Continue readingThankfully, the antivaccination lobby is (so far!) relatively small & quiet in New Zealand. It’s another story in the US, where various celebrities lend their names to the anti- voices. A couple of days ago Orac posted another in his series on what’s wrong with the US anti-vax groupings, & I thought I’d talk about some of the […]
Continue reading