to be a little in love with Ben Goldacre?

[entropyglitter]

Just read 'bad science' (finally) and I think I am in love.....

my favourite bit was Gillian McKeith thinking that oxygen (generated by chlorophyll) in your gut is not only plausible, but at all a good idea....

presumably this is at the same time as main lining anti-oxidants (which had been shown to increase your risk of disease rather than decrease it).

Shit, sorry, that was in reference to DrChristian, I just realized it looked like an extremely nasty reply to you, SGM

To make amends I will agree we are always right.

btw I am not speaking for BG! I am simply telling you what is in the book, and the general impression of where he lays the lion share of the blame.

It is not intellectually dishonest to hold the same opinion as other researchers???

It is not dishonest to be a member of the same institute as someone who does research in a given area....

I am not a particle physicist but I am in the same department as particle physicists...does that mean I am not allowed to put forward my own (only just beyond lay persons) perspective without warning people that someone I may never have met might agree with me??

Sorry for the explosion of ? but there is something that I just cannot wrap my head around going on here.

I know the paper presented it as a minor cause for further investigation....its the mass media that presented it as a done deal and caused the problem.

So everytime I post on this forum I should list every person I have ever worked with and every institute I have been a member of and every source of funding? Or I am intellectually dishonest?

So Wakefield didn't recommend not taking the triple vaccine or suggest any link between the MMR and autism at all based on his research? That press conference didn't happen?

If you wanted to know Id be willing to tell you but I would never assume that you would possibly want to know all that totally irrelevant information!

I am only commenting on what the research paper said. And what BG said about the research paper.

What happened between Wakefield and the press is not something I have looked into at all.

Oh, come on, let's call a spade a spade.

The book is pop science designed to make us feel good and clever for spotting quacks and bad journalism. A lot of it does this very well at an appropriate level.

You would have to be very careless or very slow not to realize that it is not to be taken as gospel in every particular.

The first 'experiment' Goldman himself sets up to 'test' the theories of quacks has an obvious flaw in (it's the one where he asks you to imagine putting a Barbie doll in a home-made detox bath, and concludes (rightly) that the detox bath must be quackery because the same result occurs when a human is put in the bath and when a Barbie is).

I really doubt he is setting it up as serious science - he's an entertainer and a crusader, but I do think it's fair to judge the book without researching every single thing in it first. You can tell from first principles he's not always quite as transparent as he claims.

Juicy - some? Why did you struggle? It's not that complicated.

Basically my point is that it is unreasonable to assume that just because someone doesnt tell you up front about their entire research connectivity network that they are hiding something....

LRD I think it's also good for explaining peer review, double blind trials etc. in an accessible way - the "pop science" style means it's more readable. It's on my recommended reading list for A level students as they need to know about these things and are unlikely to plough through worthier tomes.

Wakefield wasn't struck off for being over-cautious

Okay bed time for me....

As long as I we dont go anywhere near aids denial Im happy to resume anon.

I'm just waiting for the dedicated Gillian McKeith followers to turn up and defend the chlorophyll comment.

So Wakefield didn't suggest that parents should opt for the single vaccines to be on the safe-side, on the back of his research, because of a potential link with autism?