Intergalactic Bullshit

There are some religious and quasi-religious claims that one can always dismiss as bullshit without even bothering to go to the trouble of investigating the evidence that believers wish to put forward to support them. For example, any claim based on the use of a piece of astronomy […]

Bailey Review: A Triumph Of Prejudice Over Evidence

Dr. Brooke Magnanti has posted a rather interesting commentary on the problems of defining ‘sexualisation’ over at her Sexonomics blog in response to the the publication, last week, of the Bailey Review of the Commercialisation and Sexualisation of Childhood. Unfortunately, so far as the Government are concerned, I […]

Margaret Forrester: Not a Christian Martyr

Another week, another bullshit story of the alleged persecution of Christians hits the headlines at the Daily Torygraph: Christian sacked after abortion leaflet row A Christian mental health worker has been sacked after passing colleagues a booklet warning of the physical and psychological damage some women suffer after […]

Homeopathy: The Endgame Cometh?

There has been a rather interesting announcment from the Advertising Standards Authority: Since 1 March we’ve received a large number of complaints about claims on homeopathy websites, mostly about claims for the efficacy of homeopathy in diagnosing, treating or helping certain health or medical conditions (e.g. arthritis). The […]

Why pro-choice must mean pro-science

Over the years, I written quite a few articles on abortion, more perhaps that most British-based male bloggers and as as result – and without ever intending to – I guess I’ve become something of a lay expert on the subject, particularly in regards to scientific evidence base […]

Won’t you fuck off, Reg Bailey

As most people should be aware, the Bailey Review into the ‘commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood’ was published today under the title ‘Letting Children Be Children‘ and it’s already spawned a few notable commentaries. If the review interests you at all then I’d suggest you start with Dr […]

Homeopathic research – a complete waste of time?

As regular visitors will know, Early Day Motions are the nearest thing that Parliament has to a parish noticeboard, and like the contents of most such noticeboards EDMs are, for the most part, dull and rather mundane but occasionally useful for identifying the House of Commons’ resident idiots, […]

Heaven and the Burden of Evidence

Stephen Hawking, great man that he is, seems to have upset a few people with his observations on the non-existence of heaven: “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that […]

Bad Science at the Council of Europe

I’m tied up with other stuff this morning, so this is going to be a bit of drive-by by my usual standards… The Sunday Telegraph has a front page report which claims that a Council of Europe committee are planning to recommend a ban on mobile phones and […]

Homeopathy in the BMJ: A response to Clare Stanford

My attention has been drawn, this morning, to a thoroughly absurd attempt to defend the provision of homeopathy on the NHS by a Dr Clare Stanford, a reader in experimental psychopharmacology at the Department of Neuroscience, Physiology, and Pharmacology, University College London. The text that follows comes from […]