ben goldacre witters on and on and on about things that are too long to post on twitter and not clever enough to post on his main blog at www.badscience.net
Here's an odd mess. I'm in two minds about blogging it, but there are three people who might read the whole thing through, and there's one core feature that caught my eye. I'm fascinated, in cases like these, to see the people who benefit from older forms of publishing: (1) engage in dogged insistence that journals are the only right place to discuss science, while (2) simultaneously demonstrating that this may in fact not be the case. Here's the story. A researcher thinks he's found a problem in a bunch of scientific...
I first saw this three years ago and it still freaks me out. The action starts one minute in. Put it on full screen and watch closely, I'd be interested to know if you don't experience physical sensations of freaked-out-ness. Heavens above. If you're bored: I'm @bengoldacre on Twitter. My first book is Bad Science My second book is Bad Pharma My main blog is here. My throwaway blog is here. I did this TED talk, and this TED talk.
I've left this too late for xmas by about a month, because I'm an idiot, but here's an idea. I used to put t-shirts and things on the Bad Science Spreadshirt shop (I make about a quid on each one I...
N Joseph Woodland, inventor of the barcode, has died. He made $15,000 from his invention. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/business/n-joseph-woodland-inventor-of-the-bar-code-dies-at-91.html?_r=0 As you will know, all bar codes contain the number "666", proving that the end times are coming. Here is a weak so-called "explanation" of why that isn't true. http://www.av1611.org/666/barcode.html But without it we'd never have had this excellent scene from Naked by Mike Leigh. If you're...
I did this rambling unplanned talk on how to exploit existing data in science: for individual studies, for research about research, and to find good stuff. It's got some good bits once it gets going... If you're bored: I'm @bengoldacre on Twitter. My first book is Bad Science My second book is Bad Pharma My main blog is here. My throwaway blog is here. I did this TED talk, and this TED talk.
Good piece on RCTs in the Obama campaign:http://www.economist.com/news/business/21567403-techniques-presidents-election-campaigns-have-spawned-one-lot-young-firms-obama Optimizely’s “A/B testing” software helps clients review different web pages and e-mail appeals to work out which have most impact. Its technology came out of the 2008 election, when it crunched data to discover that when the campaign’s website was emblazoned with an image of Mr Obama and his family and a link labelled “learn more”, people were...
I'm a big fan of "rational disinvestment", and I buy Muir Gray's ideas: he says times of crisis are a good opportunity to get interesting and useful things done in the NHS (though they're still not ideal...), and specifically they are a good time to address waste. It's easy to imagine that evidence based medicine is all about deciding what to do, but it's also about finding things that don't work, and stopping them. This is often difficult, because patients can be committed to treatments which they believe are effective...