I Think You'll Find It's a Bit More Complicated Than That (47 page)

MMR: The Scare Stories Are Back

1
Although it wasn’t adequately recognised at the time, I feel I should take some credit for getting ‘shit head’, ‘fuck yourself’, ‘twathead’ and ‘twat’ into a top-ten academic journal. The gauntlet is down.

Who’s the Daddy?

1
After this column, Theodore Gray bought some five-gram chunks of caesium and rubidium – much more than
Brainiac
didn’t use – and threw them into water in his garden. In the video, you can see some light, some pinging, and some phutting, but no explosion. Why not? Although caesium and rubidium are technically more reactive than sodium, he explains, in reality you get a bigger bang for your money from sodium: the atoms are smaller, so you get more atoms per gram, so the same-sized lump makes more hydrogen. ‘Under typical night-time escapade conditions, the larger hydrogen explosion created by sodium more than makes up for the more vigorous initial decomposition reaction of caesium. It’s a pity that
Brainiac
felt they needed to perpetuate a myth by faking it, when the truth is even better: common everyday sodium beats out those high-priced exotic elements.’

How I Stalked My Girlfriend

1
I still get a handful of emails every year from creepy men asking me how to do this.

Notes

HOW SCIENCE WORKS

Why Won’t Professor Susan Greenfield Publish This Theory in a Scientific Journal?

Why Won’t Professor
:
http://www.badscience.net/2011/11/why-wont-professor-greenfield-publish-this-theory-in-a-scientific-journal/

announced that computer games
:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/health/health/3871474/Computer-games-are-giving-kids-dementia.html

dementia in children
:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2049040/Computer-games-leave-children-dementia-warns-neurologist.html

not really what she meant
:
http://beefjack.com/news/the-sun-misrepresented-scientist-in-games-dementia-article/

rise in autism diagnoses
:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128236.400-susan-greenfield-living-online-is-changing-our-brains.html

then pulled back
:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2023535/Battle-dons-internet-link-autism-scientists-claim-PCs-shorten-attention-span.html

autism charities
:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/aug/06/research-autism-internet-susan-greenfield?CMP=twt_fd

Oxford professor of psychology
:
http://deevybee.blogspot.com/2011/08/open-letter-to-baroness-susan.html

They seem changeable
:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2011/aug/08/1

derided in the media as sexist
:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23793960-the-male-rage-that-is-a-bad-rap-for-science.do

Professor Greenfield responded
:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/aug/06/research-autism-internet-susan-greenfield?CMP=twt_fd

Cherry-Picking Is Bad. At Least Warn Us When You Do It

Cherry-Picking
:
http://www.badscience.net/2011/09/cherry-picking-is-bad-at-least-warn-us-when-you-do-it/

Aric Sigman
:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/14/daycare-cortisol-levels-children?INTCMP=SRCH

Professor Dorothy Bishop
:
http://deevybee.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-to-become-celebrity-scientific.html

Sigman himself admits it
:
http://www.badscience.net/2011/09/2009/02/the-evidence-aric-sigman-ignored/

pdf on his website
:
http://www.aricsigman.com/IMAGES/Statement.pdf

Celia Mulrow
:
http://www.bmj.com/content/309/6954/597.full

‘systematic reviews’
:
http://www.bmj.com/content/315/7109/672.full

the last time
:
http://www.badscience.net/2011/09/2009/02/the-evidence-aric-sigman-ignored/

deliberately incomplete article
:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg8LlUME-IM&feature=player_embedded

Being Wrong

Being Wrong
:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian

research about research
:
http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/archinternmed.2011.295

John Ioannidis
:
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long&pmid=16014596

Kids Who Spot Bullshit, and the Adults Who Get Upset About It

Kids Who Spot
:
http://www.badscience.net/2011/06/kids-who-spot-bullshit-and-the-adults-who-get-upset-about-it/

Ryan Giggs’s penis
:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Giggs

Brain Gym
:
http://www.badscience.net/2011/06/category/brain-gym/

writing about since 2003
:
http://www.badscience.net/2011/06/2003/06/work-out-your-mind/

pay hundreds of thousands
:
http://www.davidcolarusso.com/blog/?p=48

hundreds of state schools
:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22brain+gym%22+inurl%3Asch.uk

Emily Rosa
:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Rosa

published a scientific paper
:
http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/279/13/1005.full

Journal of the American Medical Association
:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_the_American_Medical_Association

practitioners were deeply unhappy
:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Rosa

Rhys Morgan
:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/15/miracle-mineral-solutions-mms-bleach

www.crohnsforum.com
:
http://www.crohnsforum.com/

finding official documents
:
http://www.fda.gov/Safety/MedWatch/SafetyInformation/SafetyAlertsforHumanMedicalProducts/ucm220756.htm

The adults banned him
:
http://thewelshboyo.co.uk/?p=87

The One Show
:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0yUYOz62wk

Chief Medical Officer for Wales
:
http://thewelshboyo.co.uk/?p=54

have waded in
:
http://thewelshboyo.wordpress.com/2010/10/01/bleachgate-more-on-mms-in-the-uk/

evidence-based medicine
:
http://www.jameslindlibrary.org/testing-treatments.html

tell the world
:
http://wordpress.com/

Existential Angst About the Bigger Picture

Existential Angst
:
http://www.badscience.net/2011/05/existential-angst-about-the-bigger-picture/

major review in 2003
:
http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/jost.glaser.political-conservatism-as-motivated-social-cog.pdf

study from 2004
:
http://psp.sagepub.com/content/30/9/1136.abstract

new study
:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2 Fjournal.pone.0017349

most recent estimate
:
http://www.stratongina.net/files/50million ArifJinhaFinal.pdf

systems are imperfect
:
http://www.badscience.net/2011/05/category/regulating-research/

The Glorious Mess of Real Scientific Results

Glorious Mess
:
http://www.badscience.net/2010/11/the-glorious-mess-of-real-scientific-results/

Solomon Asch’s legendary studies
:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments

hints of patterns
:
http://psycnet.apa.org/?&fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/0033-2909.119.1.111

a new variant
:
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a922516755&fulltext=713240928

sometimes happens with uncomfortable data
:
http://www.badscience.net/2009/08/how-myths-are-made/

over 20,000 academic journals
:
http://zetoc.mimas.ac.uk/index.html

well over a million articles
:
http://informationr.net/ir/14-1/paper391.html

Nullius in Verba

recent study hunting down
:
http://www.badscience.net/2010/06/2008/01/washing-the-numbers-selling-the-model/

strengths and weaknesses of the HES dataset
:
http://www.healthknowledge.org.uk/parta/paper1knowledge/3_healthinformation/3a_Populations/3a2.asp

standard public health exam
:
http://www.publichealthy.com/partatips.htm

couldn’t find the pattern either
:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/14/size-isnt-everything-in-hospital-treatment

Is It OK to Ignore Results from People You Don’t Trust?

Is it OK
:
http://www.badscience.net/2010/03/when-is-it-okay-to-ignore-people-you-dont-trust/

three month period in 2002
:
http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/research/publications/health_in_the.html

systematic review on the subject
:
http://iospress.metapress.com/content/x880352113361jk4/

Legacy Tobacco Documents Library
:
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/

The importance of younger adults
:
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu:8080/e/y/n/eyn18c00/Seyn18c00.pdf

Youth cigarette – new concepts
:
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu:8080/o/y/q/oyq83f00/Soyq83f00.pdf

Two researchers, Schairer and Schöniger
:
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/30/1/31

Foreign Substances in Your Precious Bodily Fluids

Foreign Substances
:
http://www.badscience.net/2008/02/foreign-substances-in-your-precious-bodily-fluids/

calls it a ‘poison’
:
http://www.sunderlandecho.com/news/Fluoride39poison39-says-Wear-MP.3745368.jp

lead and arsenic
:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1 556071,00.html

speaking way beyond the evidence
:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/335/7622/699

the benefits of fluoridation
:
http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/crd/fluorid.htm

‘overwhelming evidence’
:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23435556-details/Fluoride+to+be+added+to+all+Britain%27s+tap+water+to+tackle+tooth+decay/article.do

Alan Johnston says
:
http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5iJ2QJhA7EJ_HT5WiESAO3L1bla6Q

people are misrepresenting
:
http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/crd/fluoridnew.htm

Further references
:

The most readable overview on the poor quality of the data is this article by Cheng, Chalmers and Sheldon. Prof Sir Iain Chalmers founded the Cochrane library, for anyone who seeks to doubt his badassness:
www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/335/7622/699

The Taiwan study is here (the authors attribute the increase in risk to a problem of multiple comparisons):
http://www.science direct.com/science/article/pii/S0013935199940185

The York review is here:
www.york.ac.uk/inst/crd/fluorid.htm
. You’ll see that for several years now they’ve been trying to point out that people are misrepresenting their work:
http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/crd/fluoridnew.htm

And if you want a particularly good example of someone pompously overstating the evidence, try this doozy from the
Sunday Mirror
:
www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/columnists/opinion/2008/02/03/fluoride-the-whole-tooth-98487-20307072/

How Myths Are Made

How Myths are Made
:
http://www.badscience.net/2009/08/how-myths-are-made/

successfully used a court order
:
http://speakingofmedicine.plos.org/2009/08/05/guest-blog-from-adriane-fugh-berman-plos-medicine-and-the-new-york-times-victorious-in-court-public-will-have-access-to-ghostwriting-documents/

Such an analysis
:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/339/jul20_3/b2680

Publish or Be Damned

Publish or be Damned
:
http://www.badscience.net/2005/08/publish-or-be-damned/