‘The greatest ideological revolution in the history of science’!

Next week marks the 150th anniversary of the first public reading of Darwins theory of evolution by natural selection at the Linnean Society. Many people are unaware that at the same meeting another scientist’s theory of evolution by natural selection was also read for the first time. Indeed, if it wasn’t for Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin may never have published his theory of natural selection at all. So why does Darwin get all of the credit and not Wallace?

Charles Darwin

Robin McKie has written an excellent article on this important anniversary and the history behind it in this Observer article. I suggest you read it.

NHS Choices: Behind the Headlines

Aspirin no help for elderly sight December 2, 2009

Aspirin “could stop you going blind”, according to the Daily Express, which reports that taking daily aspirin can cut the risk of developing age-related macular degeneration by almost a fifth. Age-related macular degeneration is a common cause of visual loss in the elderly, occurring when the cells in the centre of the retina become progressively damaged. Th […]

Why do women live longer? December 2, 2009

“Men have a detrimental effect on lifespan,” The Daily Telegraph reported. The Times also covered the story, saying that research suggests that “genes that are passed on by fathers may be shortening the lifespans of their offspring”. This study involved 13 genetically engineered mice that did not have any paternal DNA but had been engineered from egg cells f […]

Bad Science

By me in the BMJ: the dodginess of drug company trials December 1, 2009

Here’s a piece by me in the British Medical Journal this week, published online already, and in the print edition this Friday. It’s a head to head with Vincent Lawton, who until recently was head of Merck in the UK. Briefly, I set out the quantitative evidence demonstrating the scale of the problem, and he [...]

All bow before the mighty power of the nocebo effect November 28, 2009

Ben Goldacre, Saturday 28 November 2009, The Guardian This week the parliamentary science and technology select committee looked into the evidence behind the MHRA’s decision to allow homeopathy sugar pill labels to make medical claims without evidence of efficacy, and the funding of homeopathy on the NHS. There were some comedy highlights, as you might expec […]

The Naked Scientists

Tripping over Psychoactive Toads October 13, 2009

For anyone fresh out of frogs and tempted to kiss a toad instead, this article has a word of warning. Although certain species of toads do make hallucinogenic chemicals linked to a lively "trip", many produce a lethal cocktail of cardiotoxic compounds that could turn such a trip into a once in a lifetime experience, en-route to the mortuary. So whi […]

Deconstructing Chomsky - Re-writing the Innate Rules of Grammar October 1, 2009

Noam Chomsky, a rookie professor at MIT, published a ground-breaking book called Syntactic Structures, which set out a theory of Generative Grammar. He suggested that a Universal Grammar (UG) of basic linguistic principles and a Transformational Grammar of rules responsible for putting sentences together was hard wired into all of us. Some don't agree i […]

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