It’s not at all clear who actually coined the aphorism that there are ‘lies, damned lies and statistics’ but whoever it was was wrong. Statistics are nothing more than meaningless figures until someone sits down to analyse and interpret them and it’s there that the problems arise. In, […]

Having done my fair share of politics in the last day or two I want to come back to a story which appeared on the BBC news website last week only for it to slip quietly under the radar without gaining much in the way of attention: Fears […]

It’s been about six weeks since I last slapped Dr Peter Saunders around – metaphorically speaking, of course – but as he’s decided to give me an early Christmas present with a typically misconceived article on teenage pregnancy, STIs and emergency contraception who am I to decline an […]

I am unashamedly a fan of the work of fact checking organisations and websites, not least amongst which is the excellent Full Fact. However, as a stats hound myself, I am also very much aware of the limitations and occasional pitfalls of the standard fact check model used […]

After last week’s Leveson splurge it’s time to get back to normal business and remind everyone what public interest journalism looks like via an old ‘friend’ of the Ministry that’s popped its head up above the parapet. Benefit cheats to face lie detector tests Council leaders have introduced […]

There are many things in this world that I really, seriously dislike. I don’t like racists. I don’t like bullies – and naturally it follows that I really don’t like racist bullies. But more so even that racists and bullies I really, really dislike people who try to […]

Yesterday’s short post on the tragic and wholly preventable death of Savita Halappanavar provoked a comment that neatly sums up the direction that the anti-abortion lobby’s is going in it’s efforts to find a suitable bullshit excuse to defend the indefensible. The Irish law makes provision for cases […]

If you download this Powerpoint presentation, which was produced by Dr Peter Saunders of the Christian Medical Fellowship in conjunction with what was then (2007) the ‘Alive and Kicking’ anti-abortion campaign, you find a slide – number 47 – with the following title: What about abortion to save […]

The Guardian’s youthful science correspondent, Alok Jha, has a new article up on CiF that manages to be both uplifting and frustrating in equal measure. The uplift part is, of course, the bigging up of everyone from Robin Ince and his excellent Radio 4 show the Infinite Monkey […]

I’ve had a couple of comments  on yesterday’s article about the slogan ‘ATOS kills‘ which rather serve to illustrate the problems you invariable run into when you try to inject  a bit of evidence and reason into a narrative based largely, if not entirely, on anecdotes and emotive […]