Tesco Value Science

November 18th, 2006 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, bbc, cash-for-"stories", evening standard | 50 Comments »

Ben Goldacre
Saturday November 18, 2006
The Guardian

I am going into PR: it's just too easy. Let's say you're running the account for some Tesco "sports initiative". You're doing great work for the kids, but nobody cares, because it's just another corporate wheeze. You could always pay for adverts. Or you could just find an academic cheap enough to sell you their good name, and their university's name, concoct some stupid "equation" that means nothing, and get your corporate brand in the papers.

I give you Cary Cooper, professor of Read the rest of this entry »

Brainiac “Fraud” “Slammed” In The Evening Standard And The Independent

July 28th, 2006 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, brainiac, evening standard, independent | 23 Comments »

And some of you have been quoted. Nice. If any of you are here from the Evening Standard looking for more on the Brainiac fake experiments nonsense then click here (or, er, buy the Guardian):

www.badscience.net/?cat=58

There’s lots of other quackbusting action on the site, listed by topic down the right hand side of the page, and there’s much more on the Brainiac fake experiments thing in tomorrow’s Bad Science column which I’ll Read the rest of this entry »

The Great Tamiflu Vaccine Scare

February 18th, 2006 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, evening standard, express, independent, mail, mirror, MMR, scare stories, telegraph, times | 55 Comments »

Ben Goldacre
Saturday February 18, 2006
The Guardian

The interesting thing about the Tamiflu vaccine for bird flu that everybody keeps going on about, is this: it’s not a vaccine. The manufacturers even spell that out in their factsheet. It’s a drug, an antibiotic for viruses.

But you wouldn’t know that if you read Paul Routledge in the Mirror, Alan Hall in the Daily Mail, Sally Guyoncourt in Read the rest of this entry »

How many microbiologists does it take to change a tabloid story?

November 19th, 2005 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, evening standard, media, MRSA, onanism, PhDs, doctors, and qualifications, scare stories, very basic science | 29 Comments »

Ben Goldacre
Saturday November 19, 2005
The Guardian

I realise this is starting to look like some kind of dirty protest, but here is a window on to how the media sees itself in relation to scientific expertise, and how it copes with criticism, which just happens – entirely by coincidence – to involve the MRSA scandal.

To recap: bloke with no microbiology qualifications in unaccredited garden shed “laboratory” finds MRSA on Read the rest of this entry »