ADE651 Fraudsters Astroturfing Here…

There is only one thing I enjoy more than exposing junk-science scams and that exposing junk-science scams where the perpetrator is dumb enough to try it on. This morning, three comments were posted on my recent exposé of the ‘dowsing for explosives’ scam in the space of 20 […]

EmoTrance: The New Name for Bullshit

I learned a new word this week – EmoTrance. EmoTrance is the new name for bullshit. In the last week, its received no less than two articles worth of coverage in The Times’ educational supplements; one, a vomit inducing piece of brainless advertorial by Adi Bloom, an arts […]

Johnson’s Flavour of the Month leaves Bad Taste

The row over the sacking of Professor David Nutt is, it seems, rumbling on nicely with this exchange between Evan Harris and Alan Johnson in regards to the accuracy, or otherwise, of comments made by Johnson in his statement to the House of Commons: The exchange contains this […]

British Company sells $60,000 Dowsing Rods to Iraq as ‘Explosives Detectors’

Arthur C Clarke once famously noted that ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’. Were he still alive today he might also have observed that magic, when dressed up in sufficiently advanced technobabble, can be readily mistaken for science. Tuesday’s New York Times carried this quite staggering […]

Widdecombe’s Woeful Litany of Nonsense

If you complied a list of all the people you wouldn’t offer a column on drugs policy to then Ann Widdecombe would surely be in the top ten and not too far away from Melanie Phillips, but no, in its infinite wisdom the Guardian has handed Widdie the […]

In Praise of David Nutt

If you’ll excuse the bad pun, Alan Johnson has made a complete hash of his handling of the sacking of Professor David Nutt. No, that’s unfair – the government has collectively made a complete hash of things. Johnson is just the poor sap who’s having to field a […]