I don’t know about the rest of you but I love going and visiting other countries and finding a bit about their history, culture and traditions. Especially traditions that have been around for hundreds of years, like the Italian tradition of taking Scientists to court. This noble tradition began with Galileo Galilei when he dared to suggest that actually the sun might be at the centre of the solar system and the earth orbits it. Thankfully this knave and blaggard was ultimately convicted and put under house arrest till he died……
You know that feeling you get when you ask pointed questions about somebody’s goofy beliefs? The strange looks people will give? The cold shoulders and ended friendships? The life of a skeptic can be quite hard. But can also be extremely rewarding. And to celebrate life’s little ‘challenges’ that we skeptics face, a little song to remind us that we shouldn’t always…
The Sunday Express decried it as the “Jab ‘as deadly as the cancer’” right across its front page. Perhaps we should leave proceedings there, given that the same front page was also advertising a free Galaxy Caramel for every reader – this is hardly the British Medical Journal. Besides, I thought Sunday papers were meant to be lighter reading. A topic like this is hardly something to complement a freebie chocolate bar.
But let’s suspend all that for a moment and suppose that this piece of medical whistleblowing is urgent enough to save our confectionary for the Lifestyle pull-out. The claim that a vaccination is as deadly as any cancer is certainly a worrying proposition. The jab in question is to protect against the human Papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually transmitted infection that is the primary cause of cervical cancer. According to the Sunday Express, an “exclusiv[e]” (it wasn’t) interview with “Dr Diane Harper” (she’s actually a professor), who “developed” (she did not, she helped conduct its clinical trials) the “controversial” (she explicitly told them it was not controversial) HPV vaccine Cervarix. A fuller list of errata can be found in Ben Goldacre’s article for The Gardian, as posted on his blog, but the most important is this statement by the SundayExpress:
Continue reading A Shot in the Arm for the Anti-vaccination Lobby, An Adverse Reaction for the Rest
So there I was on another forum randomly discussing stuff related to science and why we need people to have more than a basic factual grounding to spot pseudoscience. Granted it would probably take a degree to have a hope in hells chance of debunking but I’m just talking enough science to spot that there’s something fishy going on.
All of this reminded me of when AnswersinBooks had some dealings with one snakeoil salesman Peter Goodgold. And if anyone was reading our blog and the updates we gave at the time you should know that all seems quiet following the judicial application of the LAW!! (Yes, read that as being Judge Dredd stylee.)
On a Dutch football forum, or as the Yanks would say a soccer forum (weirdos), I started having a discussion with a Muslim creationist over a year ago. During this year he displayed the usual ignorance and arrogance. He studies law but has read many books and seen many documentaries on Evolutionary Theory, or so he says. Even after every correction he claimed to be right, like a true Dunning-Kruger. The discussion is in Dutch but I will translate the most hilarious comments and mistakes that he made:
1) I’m not denying Evolution exists, it’s just not the Evolutions the scientists talk about. 2) Evolution says it is possible for a black man and a white woman to give birth to a purple child. 3) Seedless grapes grow out of seeds.
Continue reading Hilarious Mistakes and Quotes by a Muslim Creationist!
A couple of days ago AngryWomble already retweeted a survey that is being passed around in the British homeopath circles, to give it a bit more exposure outside of that circle. And I have to say the survey itself starts in a very nice way:
Homeopathy as a profession is under attack from groups such as Sense about Science and groups such as the Nightingale Collaboration.
This Research will gauge public opinion as to the amount of information that the public and prospective patients wish to be able to access from professionally Qualified Practitioners only.
The ‘attack’ they mention is a campaign to hold complementary and alternative medicine to the same standards as advertisers of other products and services. Which means they won’t be able to make unsubstantiated and/or misleading claims that might endager the lives of patients.
Most of us Europeans know Robert Llewellyn from either Scrapheap Challenge or from the science fiction series Red Dwarf. But he’s also very active on YouTube with several channels where he talks for example about politics and even has a full fledged show called Fully Charged.
In it he reviews electric cars, news and developments about them and his experience in using the cars in his day to day life. All with a very high production quality and with his trademark humour and voice. Always a joy to watch.
Continue reading Carpooling With Robert Llewellyn And Ben Goldacre
I’ve noticed, especially more recently, how often someone I felt was intelligent, reasoned and logical will jump to erroneous conclusions, or profess an opinion that seems too divorced from the world we live in. Whether it is simply believing that person X said Y, with no evidence anywhere supporting this other than the believer just wants it to be true, all the way to someone arguing that person X should accept his or her position in a situation as though it were the believer’s position.
A recent example has been the Rebecca Watson situation. I’ve heard from far too many men, even those who I thought would have known better, that she was taking the action too seriously, and that she should shut up about it, even that she should take it as a compliment.
Continue reading Sometimes Skeptics are Completely Wrong
Firstly a quick appology to our none British readers, this blog post probably won’t have much bearing on you BUT you could also have a look a the charity thats doing it and see if there’s similar local to you.
There is a charity in the UK called Sense About Science, it’s focus is to equip people to understand science in the media and the like and one of it’s big things is raising awareness of bad science. I’ve now been to two skeptic type events where they’ve had someone present as a speaker, other aims of the organisation include promoting an evidence based approach and making sure that scientific enquiry is undertaken without stigma or censorship. Now oddly enough these aims are all things we here at SkepticTV think are jolly good and things that we all need to try and push for to try and deal with the various quacks, loons and peddlers of hokum.
Continue reading Reporting Dodgy Science – A New Sense About Science Campaign
The Sunday Express decried it as the “Jab ‘as deadly as the cancer’” right across its front page. Perhaps we should leave proceedings there, given that the same front page was also advertising a free Galaxy Caramel for every reader – this is hardly the British Medical Journal. Besides, I thought Sunday papers were meant to be lighter reading. A topic like this is hardly something to complement a freebie chocolate bar.
Most of us Europeans know Robert Llewellyn from either Scrapheap Challenge or from the science fiction series Red Dwarf. But he’s also very active on YouTube with several channels where he talks for example about politics and even has a full fledged show called