As I travel the underground to work each morning I must survive a barrage of advertising. Everywhere you look in a modern city there is some kind of attempt to get you to buy the latest doodad or visit this or that place. One of the largest categories of advertising is that of the supplement… Read More The Great Vitamin And Supplement Hoax
I love a good curry. Obviously little old Indian grandmothers and Indian restaurants make the best ones but I am also capable of making a halfway decent curry from scratch. One of the several spices I tend to use is turmeric, not so much for its flavour which is a kind of bitter gingery flavour,… Read More Turmeric Injections
We turn now to one of my favourite whipping boys of complimentary and alternative medicine (CAM): acupuncture. More than 3000 research studies into acupuncture are yet to show any kind of effect other than that of an elaborate placebo. Why would they, of course? What possible rationale could there be for sticking needles into your… Read More Breaking News: Sticking Needles in Babies Does Not Stop Them Crying
Post hoc ergo propter hoc; this is one of my favourite logical fallacies, not just because it sounds cool but because it’s so commonly used and easy to spot. It translates as ‘after this therefore because of this’ and the essence of it is that a conclusion has been reached based solely on the order… Read More 12 Days of Scepticism: Day 5- Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc
A couple of years back I was at a party and I met a young lady. She was nice enough and we chatted about this and that but I became particularly interested when she revealed that she worked for a publisher of scientific journals. This was very interesting. Apparently she was one of the people… Read More Detecting Bullshit
It’s time to tackle a tricky subject. Everyone has heard of the placebo effect but there are a lot of misconceptions out there about what it really is and whether or not it’s ‘real’. Let’s start with a basic description of what it is: when a person is given a fake treatment for an illness,… Read More The Placebo Effect: The Myth and The Reality
