1. Comment #403920 by fsm1965 on August 9, 2009 at 3:15 pm

highly recommended, also the book is required reading

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2. Comment #403922 by Peacebeuponme on August 9, 2009 at 3:20 pm

The book is fabulous. Its worth the money if only for explaining all those "scientists have calculated the formula for..." stories.

It has also meant that oftentimes now I only read the headline of a science story in the national press and realise is is pretty much bunk there and then.

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3. Comment #403923 by Animavore on August 9, 2009 at 3:22 pm

Excellent book Quite funny too. Only problem is, I don't trust anything any more.

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4. Comment #403925 by phil rimmer on August 9, 2009 at 3:47 pm

Useful website too

http://www.badscience.net/

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5. Comment #403926 by evolute on August 9, 2009 at 3:48 pm

Excellent as usual. Lends itself surprisingly well to a radio format, though I suspect only a fraction of their listeners will have been Mail readers.

Ideally Ben would have his own slot on the One Show or something prime time in which he rips the crap out of the week's sciencey/medical headlines.

Along with Flat Earth News (by Nick Davies), this is prime intellectual self-defense that should be taught to schoolkids before they face the tide of distortion that is the British popular press.

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6. Comment #403944 by movingshadow on August 9, 2009 at 6:14 pm

Ben Goldacre should be the next Doctor Who.

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7. Comment #403945 by HenryFord on August 9, 2009 at 6:24 pm

"though I suspect only a fraction of their listeners will have been Mail readers"

I don't know. Daily Mail readers have the perculiar habit of considering themselves very great thinkers.
Their group think over such important issues as immigration and muslims can be intelectualy stimulating.
/sarcasm and vomit into bucket

I wouldn't be surprised if there were a fair few Daily Fascist readers who do listen to radio4, because the Jones' next door listen to it you know. Can't have them thinking they are more sophisticated, after all.

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8. Comment #403957 by ayliffe on August 9, 2009 at 7:05 pm

Ben Goldacre is a brilliant human and his book is fantastic (especially the chapter on Gillian McKeith)

The blog be mentioned didn't last very long, but kill-or-cure.heroku.com does basically the same thing. Not leaving the As, The Daily Mail says:

Causes cancer:
acrylamide, affluence, age, air pollution, air travel, alcohol, alfatoxins, allergies, aluminium, artificial flavours, artificial light, asbestos and aspirin
Prevents cancer:
abortion, ACE inhibitors, affluence, alcohol, allergies, almonds, anastrozole, antacids, anti-baldness drugs, antibodies, antioxidants, apples, arimidex, aromatherapy, aspirin and avastin.

Good to know.

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9. Comment #403975 by Follow Peter Egan on August 9, 2009 at 8:22 pm

Ben Goldacre should be the next Doctor Who.

Bravo. He'd at least bring back some real scientific ideas into the now paralysingly inane anti-scientific travesty of a once-great show.

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10. Comment #403979 by Steve Zara on August 9, 2009 at 8:41 pm

Comment #403975 by Follow Peter Egan

You HAVE to be kidding me? Doctor Who was never about scientific accuracy. It was about stories. And David Tennant has been one of the best, especially with the amazing scripts of Stephen Moffat.

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11. Comment #403986 by Baron Scarpia on August 9, 2009 at 8:59 pm

Steve -

I agree that Doctor Who was never about scientific accuracy. (I'm rather more inclined to view it as a series of horror stories, myself)

But David Tennant one of the best Doctors? Really? I admit he has his strengths, he is but PG Tips compared to the Twinings of Tom Baker, or Christopher Eccleston.

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12. Comment #403991 by j.mills on August 9, 2009 at 9:47 pm

I suspect a derail is in progress...

Heard Goldacre on the Now Show, great fun. Get him on Thought For The Day!

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13. Comment #404000 by Peacebeuponme on August 9, 2009 at 10:09 pm

Baron Scarpia

But David Tennant one of the best Doctors? Really? I admit he has his strengths, he is but PG Tips compared to the Twinings of Tom Baker, or Christopher Eccleston.

We are not allowed to put another doctor above Tom, but Tennant would be a close second for me, and way above Eccleston.

A good many of the Eccleston ones had great stories, but Tennant was a much more enjoyable doctor (and was in the best ever episode of this latest revival, Blink). I will be sad to see him go.

[EDIT: and by the way, Steve, Stephen Moffat hasn't written that many so far, but he did write Blink]

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14. Comment #404002 by ukvillafan on August 9, 2009 at 10:16 pm

Twinings might be better than PG Tips, but you're still in the lower leagues as far as tea is concerned. You really need single estate black tea, so try here http://www.ringtons.co.uk/shop/tea/loose-tea/single-origin-black

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15. Comment #404037 by movingshadow on August 10, 2009 at 12:18 am

tom baker > david tennant > the rest

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16. Comment #404047 by Fil on August 10, 2009 at 12:53 am

er, which coffee causes cancer and which one prevents it? Anybody know? Bloody Ben Goldacre didn't say. :-;

On the topic of British tabloids, I have an e-friend who works for one. Apparently his paper has an entire room full of lawyers who's job it is to read every single word published. Not in case they get sued, but for when they get sued. The utter crap they write is balanced for profit/risk ratio. If the article is deemed to be nasty enough to sell more papers than the cost of any payout, they print it.

Charming; no wonder their science reporting is rubbish.

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17. Comment #404052 by Enlightenme.. on August 10, 2009 at 1:30 am

Earlier today somebody has tried to re-inite a long dead thread on Ben's gig at the Bristol ideas festival by posting this link to a rather loony-fringe blogsite:

smart says:
August 9th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Goldacre appears to be a charlatan himself, an utter hypocrite:

http://ben-goldacre.blogspot.com/

Example paragraphs:

In the next post I will indicate some evidence that on the contrary, it is Ben Goldacre himself who is peddling outrageous pseudo-science, and in the face of honest truthful research to the contrary. My guess is that he is doing this as a shill of big biz corporate "health" industry interests, though this is of course not something I am in a position to prove or disprove.

Whether he is consciously "lying" or merely "just happens" to specialise in "unconsciously" self-serving falsehoods, like The Rt. Hon. Mr 40-Minutes Weapons of Mass Destruction, is besides the point.

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18. Comment #404061 by zengardener on August 10, 2009 at 5:59 am

Ben Goldacre

Thank you, for letting me shout at you.

Any time sir. We shout at each other all of the time, because our loved ones would put us out, if they had to do all of the listening.

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19. Comment #404064 by beanson on August 10, 2009 at 6:04 am

Hey guys- ever get the feeling you've been had,

we're not gonna get our avatars back are we, nor are they gonna put the just posted stream back on the front page.

I think the idea is to clean up the site a bit- make it more respectable...

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20. Comment #404072 by DamnDirtyApe on August 10, 2009 at 7:28 am

on topic: YEAH!

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21. Comment #404078 by Quetzalcoatl on August 10, 2009 at 8:15 am

Beanson-

Interestingly when you post a comment, the avatar still appears in the comment box at the bottom of the page, then disappears when refreshed.

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22. Comment #404083 by Peacebeuponme on August 10, 2009 at 8:59 am

Enlighten me...

I'm surprised you managed to find that rather pointless blog. It just a guy who had problems with fillings and seems to think that Ben Goldacre should have been obliged to take up his cause.

However, he does have a point re site registration. I can't seem to register for Bad Science so far. Though I'm sure its just a glitch and not part of Ben's behind-the-scenes pact with Big Pharma to suppress the truth.

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23. Comment #404084 by PERSON on August 10, 2009 at 9:06 am

Hope they have Ben back on.

Avatars: I've never like 'em.

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24. Comment #404085 by Goldy on August 10, 2009 at 9:09 am

Funny - had avatars when I posted at work. Ah, well, all that time I spent learning how to make my picture smaller...an education, I suppose. Should be happy...

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25. Comment #404089 by Enlightenme.. on August 10, 2009 at 9:30 am

"22. Comment #404083 by Peacebeuponme on August 10
Enlighten me...

I'm surprised you managed to find that rather pointless blog. "

----------
Never underestimate the power of Big Pharma and the military-industrial-complex!

No, I subscribed the rss feed for Bristol Festival of Ideas site after going to see Dan Dennett (plenty of archived audio & video there)
I'm reckoning the guy who posted and linked to it could possibly have been the blogger himself.
His two blogs have Zero responses.
I suppose I could post one going "Yay! first post!, and then correcting him that it was the Mr Rt. Hon. 45 minutes WMD.

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26. Comment #404091 by Peacebeuponme on August 10, 2009 at 9:46 am

Enlightenme..

His two blogs have Zero responses.

I think Big Pharma and Ben Goldacre have got together to ensure nobody can post in support of the blogger. There are rumours of an impending DDOS attack on the site, with a network of thousands of zombie computers across Eastern Europe and Asia waiting and ready.

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27. Comment #404104 by ghost of numf-el on August 10, 2009 at 11:11 am

Tetleys all the way!

And as for Dr Who - my personal opinion is that Tennant is as good as if not better than anyone before him (Ecclescakes was not far behind), even Pertwee and Tom Baker, who were the two that I grew up with (although not literally).

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28. Comment #404120 by God fearing Atheist on August 10, 2009 at 12:19 pm

16. #404047 by Fil

On the topic of British tabloids, I have an e-friend who works for one. Apparently his paper has an entire room full of lawyers who's job it is to read every single word published. Not in case they get sued, but for when they get sued. The utter crap they write is balanced for profit/risk ratio. If the article is deemed to be nasty enough to sell more papers than the cost of any payout, they print it.

Charming; no wonder their science reporting is rubbish.

Then it is in the common interest (i.e. the Government's job) to increase the penalties for spreading mis-information to the point where it is no longer profitable to do so.

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29. Comment #404245 by Adrian Bartholomew on August 10, 2009 at 5:20 pm

What’s needed is a complete revamp. Look at the case Goldacre points out with where the paper says “women that dress provocatively are more likely to be raped” in comparison to the actual story of “promiscuous men more likely to rape”. What will be the penalty for the paper for that? None at all. Whereas the fantastic science reporter Simon Singh gets sued by the BCA for expressing health concerns regarding children.

It seems that good reporting is punished and bad reporting is ignored.

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30. Comment #404521 by Rich Wiltshir on August 11, 2009 at 2:32 pm

We need people like this on TV... NOW!

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31. Comment #404822 by Follow Peter Egan on August 12, 2009 at 9:32 am

Steve Zara,

I'm really not kidding, I think the new Doctor Who an exercise in homeopathy. The odd Moffatt script is worth watching but that's 1/10! Russell T Davies consistently resorts to deus ex machina endings and non-science like "anti-plastic"... I could go on, but as a life-long Who fanatic I've had to stop watching I hate it that much. Tennant is OTT in a Colin Baker way and his "eccentricity" painfully false. Still, each to their own. I recognize I represent a minority.

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32. Comment #404824 by Steve Zara on August 12, 2009 at 9:39 am

Comment #404822 by Follow Peter Egan

I agree with the pain of having to sit through Russell T Davies Dr Who plots. But what I would suggest, if you haven't done it, is to watch again some of the 70's Doctor Who episodes. See if they are as good as you remember! There was some good acting by the various Doctors, but some of the scripts were awful, and the direction and pacing were positively soporific.

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33. Comment #404835 by Follow Peter Egan on August 12, 2009 at 10:16 am

Steve,

Totally agree about the 70s ones! (Yup, I have all the videos (blushes)) but that's part of the joy of that era of TV. Give me something from the 60s and 70s and I'm in TV heaven, even though the sets look like sets and the scenes go on for ten minutes. Perhaps because it was more dialogue driven they had to (by and large) work out a decent or workable plot. RTD just puts out any old ill-informed and badly structured shite and hopes with loud incidental music and slick direction and an audience accustomed to switching off their brains to be entertained that no one will notice. I just hate having my intelligence insulted, which the old ones rarely did, and the quasi-religious claims of the new series' fans that the show is infallible and RTD a great writer. Sorry to sound like a ranting preacher, it's just been a profound disappointment, but taught me the useful adage: be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.

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34. Comment #404837 by Peacebeuponme on August 12, 2009 at 10:23 am

Follow Peter Egan

ut taught me the useful adage: be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.

Fans of (off the top of my head) Star Wars, Indiana Jones and This Life would have been able to teach you that as well. Its always the way.

I'm kind of glad there are no plans for a third series of Spaced for that reason.

I actually love the new Dr Who though, and don't mind at all the odd programme which is entertaining but brainless. As you say, each to their own.

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35. Comment #404845 by Follow Peter Egan on August 12, 2009 at 10:44 am

Yes, things of nostalgic value, especially where childhood memories are concerned, are seldom as good in adult life. Having said that, I have plenty of friends older than I am who have the same child-like passion for the new series. We have some terrific debates!

I think all those examples you cite, peacebeuponme, have been disappointing and agree they should leave Spaced alone. Naturally, the film version of Edge of Darkness, my all-time favourite telly, which replaces Bob Peck with Catholic bigot Mel Gibson, is something I will be giving a very, very wide berth.

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