What Doctors Don’t Tell You

There’s a new magazine in the shops this week. It’s called What Doctors Don’t Tell You and I’m reasonably sure that no-one who reads this blog would be at all interested in reading it. If you think that you might be then try looking at the sample pages on their subscription site. It’s all complete… Continue reading What Doctors Don’t Tell You

BBC on Curiosity

A few days ago I complained to the BBC about the lack of live coverage of the Curiosity landing. The automatic response promised a reply within ten working days. Impressively, it arrived just now. Less impressively, it didn’t really say anything useful. Thanks for contacting us regarding the BBC’s Olympic Breakfast on 6 August. I… Continue reading BBC on Curiosity

Teach Evolution, Not Creationism

The British Humanist Association is behind a new campaign called “Teach Evolution, Not Creationism“. Of course any reasonable person is going to support the campaign. No-one wants creationism taught to children as fact in science lessons. But there are a couple of subtleties that should probably be explained in detail. Firstly, I’ve seen this as… Continue reading Teach Evolution, Not Creationism

Storm

If you’ve been hanging around the skeptic community over the last couple of years, then you’ll already know Tim Minchin‘s beat poem Storm. But unless you were at last year’s TAM London you probably won’t have seen the official animation of it which was premièred there. For nearly six months I’ve desperately wanted to be… Continue reading Storm

Homeopathy Petition Response

A year ago, the House of Commons science and technology committee published the results of its evidence check on homeopathy. The committee’s findings were unequivocal and the report strongly recommended against the NHS continuing to waste money on treatments that did nothing. Soon after that I set up a petition asking the government to implement… Continue reading Homeopathy Petition Response

Snow vs Global Warming

Every winter as the snow starts to fall we get some some climate change denier claiming that the existence of snow categorically disproves the existence of climate change. This weekend the race was won by Richard Littlejohn who added the following to the end of his column in the Mail on Sunday. It’s late November… Continue reading Snow vs Global Warming

Berlin Time

You might have heard of a campaign to move the UK onto the same timezone as Central Europe. There are a number of groups campaigning for this (see, for example, Lighter Later) and the proposals are going to be discussed in parliament on December 3rd. Now, I don’t have any particularly strong feelings either way… Continue reading Berlin Time

Government Ignores Science

Section 47 of the Government Response to the Science and Technology Committee’s Evidence Check on homeopathy: We note the Committee’s view that allowing for the provision of homeopathy may risk seeming to endorse it, and we will keep the position under review. However, we do not believe that this risk amounts to a risk to… Continue reading Government Ignores Science

Petition Closed Prematurely

Earlier this year, I created a petition on the (then) government’s petition web site. The petition called for the government to fully implement the recommendations of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee’s Evidence Check on Homeopathy – basically calling on the government to stop wasting money on homeopathy. The petition was due to be… Continue reading Petition Closed Prematurely

On the Intelligence of MPs

It’s easy to make cheap cracks about how stupid MPs are. The problem is that many of them seem determined to do nothing at all to counter this impression. Indeed, they often seem keen to reinforce it. David Tredinnick (Con, Bosworth) is a particularly good example. He is a proponent of “complementary and alternative” medicine.… Continue reading On the Intelligence of MPs