Jabs “as bad as the cancer”

October 10th, 2009 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, express, Express, Lucy Johnston Express, vaccines | 53 Comments »

Ben Goldacre, Saturday 10 October 2009, The Guardian

imageLast month I had a debate at the Royal Institution with Lord Drayson, the Science Minister, in which he argued that I was too harsh on British science coverage, which is the best in the world. During this event our chairman (bizarrely and excellently Simon Mayo) pulled out a health front page from the Express, and asked what we thought about it. I said the article might well be accurate, but it’s also quite likely to be a work of fantasy, and as a serious matter of public health I would urge people to be extremely sceptical about health information on the front page of the Express. Lord Drayson thought this was cynical and unfair. He warmly encouraged us to trust this newspaper. Read the rest of this entry »

And now, nerd news

October 3rd, 2009 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, big pharma, hiding data, regulating research, systematic reviews, trial registers, vaccines | 34 Comments »

Ben Goldacre, Saturday 3 October 2009, The Guardian.

There are some very obvious problems that never seem to go away. Right now I can see 1,592 articles on Google News about one poor girl who died unexpectedly after receiving the cervical vaccine, and only 363 explaining that the post mortem found a massive and previously undiagnosed tumour in her chest. Meanwhile the Daily Mail this week continue their oncological ontology project with the magnificent headline: “Daily dose of housework could cut risk of breast cancer”.

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