Homeopathic PANDAS Trial

The homeopath Alan Freestone is proposing a trial to develop a homeopathic treatment for PANDAS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Diagnosis Associated with Streptococcal Infections). Regular readers of this blog will be aware of my opinion of homeopathy but we might all learn something from a properly conducted trial. Properly conducted. Aye, there’s the rub.

Is It a Bomb Detector? No, It’s a Diagnostic Tool!

The Guardian has once again demonstrated that science and technology should be reported by specialist journalists, not whoever just happens to be around. Patrick Kingsley, thier Egypt correspondant has reported on an Egyptian device that supposedly remotely detects hepatitis C.

Another Letter That Should Be Sent

Somebody over on the Bad Science forum posted this. I really hope he does send it.

Oxford University PPE Course Convenors

Dear Sirs,

There are many famous and successful alumni of the Politics, Philosophy and Economics degree – indeed, a truly disproportionate number of the higher echelons of government and parliament hold PPE degrees. This is a credit to the success of the first P – you have obviously taught them politics very well.

However, given the country’s performance, maybe the Economics syllabus could be improved. I realize that it is not a precise discipline, but it is possible that you could revise parts of the syllabus to correct the obvious errors in belief held by your former students.

But, and this is the biggest “but” of all – I think your teaching of Philosophy requires a major overhaul. The current crop of PPE graduates in parliament on all sides of the House clearly do not know how to think things through properly, how to make decisions and how to consider what probable outcomes of those decisions will be. They have not been taught to think critically and analytically at all. C-, must try harder.

Yours faithfully, etc.

Magic Drinking Water Bottle

It seems that the alkali diet fad has generated a Far-Eastern spin-off – a plastic bottle that allegedly ‘alkalises’ whatever is put in it and retails for £19.75. Twenty quid might seem a bit steep for a plastic bottle but according to its sellers, this bottle works miracles.

When Is Additive-Free Not Additive-Free?

It’s January so the diet industry will be gearing up to sell its products to over-indulgers. One such company is MXI, purveyors of xocai chocolate. And this is their offering, a natural cold pressed product with no preservatines or additives. Hmmm.

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 42,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 10 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

A Fifth Year of Steam

My fifth year of blogging has proved interesting in that it has supplied evidence that I’m getting under the skin of one of the dodgy characters I write about. I’m not talking about the personal abuse and snarky comments posted by homeopaths, scenar salesmen and UCKG mouthpieces but someone stealing my name to use in the url of his sales blogs.

Deflecting Criticism – Accusing the Critic

The internet rants of live blood analyst Errol Denton have prompted me to resume my survey of the methods used by quacks to deflect criticism. As the title of this posts suggests, one method is to accuse the critic of something more reprehensible than the behaviour of the quack.

What Doctors Don’t Tell You – the Magazine

Yesterday I picked up a copy of a new magazine called “What Doctors Don’t Tell You” which is clearly linked to the website of the same name. If you think from the title that the contents would be full of alleged health secrets that the medical establishment are with-holding from you, you’d be right. This blogpost just covers a sample of the contents. To do them justice would require a whole series of posts which I don’t have time to research and write at the moment.

Relative Forgetfulness

Now that the Olympics are out of the way, I thought I’d catch up on politics a bit. Our misrulers are doubtless hoping we have all forgotten about the Leveson Inquiry but I for one have not.