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).

To answer the original question: YABU, he is exceptionally smug. He is also rather too prone to wade into subjects he knows little about (typically in the realm of public policy-making) and made unfounded, unevidenced pronouncements of the type he so deplores when he finds them in his own domain. (If not for that I might be a little in love with him myself.)

Exactly right hackmum - I would see a conflict of interest as if he was in the pay of a pharmaceutical company and writing about one of their drugs. Being member of IofP? Don't see the conflict.

People have criticised him saying he has 'undisclosed conflicts of interests', now suddenly it's just that he's 'not an independent journalist'. Hmmmmm.

In my eyes being a member of the IofP would only be a CofI if he was financially beneftting from writing about articles about the IofP.

But it is perfectly possible that Goldacre has received funding from pharmaceutical companies in his capacity at the IoP. Or at the very least worked in a department which has received funding - I don't know if he is important enough a researcher to have been granted funding for a project of his instigation. It would seem not as he hasn't really published anything.

Certainly the IoP itself receives industry funding for research - this is a common state of affairs in the current set-up. It is not one I am entirely happy about myself, but I accept that that is the way things are done these days. I do think it is important to transparently declare these things though - and it would seem that the establishment agrees with me.

Funding aside though, I do think it is about time Goldacre shed some light on the subject of citing controversial studies, authored by people from the IoP, in an authoritative manner, whilst influencing public opinion on a major medical controversy - various people have been requesting that he do so for quite some time.

I mean what with him presenting himself as this crusader who demands that others are transparent and thorough.

There is no CoI, no corruption.

It's mud-slinging, pure and simple.

As for BG's smugness - yep, I guess it's true. He is a little smug.

Wading through this, I'm beginning to think that no-one should ever write about anything because anyone with any real experience of a subject is almost bound to have some 'interest'. Membership of a professional body - ooh, CofI!!! Not a member of a professional body ... ooh, is he qualified to pronounce on this?

We may have different interpretations of what constitutes a conflict of interest (financial COI are not the only kind BTW) but surely we can agree that Goldacre was not writing as an independent journalist when he wrote about MMR? (In a high circulation broadsheet newspaper which prides itself on its integrity.)

Would I be out of order to ask whether any of the people challenging BG's impartiality have declared any conflict of interest?

For example, are any of them practising homeopaths? Connected with JABS?

Potential conflicts of interest don't matter if the evidence and the argument is sound.

Otherwise no scientists would ever get any work done. No one is ever completely impartial.

It is not just 'membership of a professional body' though is it?

It is 'a research fellowship within an influential research organisation which has played a role in influencing public opinion in a major medical controversy'.

He wasn't a 'member' of the IoP - he was an employee. Other employees of the IoP are folks like Rutter and Fombonne - two people who wrote famous studies about the major medical controversy. Studies that Goldacre cites as being the last word on the matter.

I think given the importance of the whole story, the above is a bit unsettling.

I have had quite a few discussions about MMR, and I think, without exception, Goldacre has always been linked to as an authority on the subject - I think he has had quite a big influence on public opinion.

Oh well, I suppose it must just be me - most people on this thread seem to be quite happy with things. I do sort of wonder if that might be because people aren't aware of the importance of the IoP and in particular Rutter and Fombonne when it comes to the 'official line' (i.e. the government's position) on the MMR safety record.

Nobody is objective. Anyone with a background in critical thinking (which, btw, I teach!) knows that no-one is objective.

Seeker: setting yourself up as a debunker means you need to be financially, intellectually and academically independent and objective.

This, quite simply, is utter nonsense and completely impossible. I'm surprised you'd suggest otherwise, you seem quite intelligent on the subject otherwise.

Is anyone prepared to answer my question? To repeat

"Would I be out of order to ask whether any of the people challenging BG's impartiality have declared any conflict of interest?

For example, are any of them practising homeopaths? Connected with JABS?"

Because I do think that if you are questioning the professional integrity of a person not present, you should declare where you are coming from.

JF, your problem with the Denmark paper doesn't matter because we are looking at the accumulation of evidence on the topic. A missing follow-up doesn't invalidate all the rest of the data collected. There is an abundance of evidence, people have been looking for a link and what is missing in all that data is credible evidence of a link.

Going through each and every paper trying to spot flaws that nonetheless don't invalidate the research is akin to saying 'well, the MMR autism could have hidden here on this study and there on that study and in that gap of that study' When you look at all the studies together, individually they might not be perfect but together you can say 'if there was a link, we'd have most likely spotted it, it is very unlikely that all these studies, some specifically designed to spot it, missed it.'

Your scientists said there was no good evidence for a link. Cochrane said there was no credible evidence. A decade and lots more research later there still isn't any. What does that suggest?

Science is the impartial debunker. Ben Goldacre uses science.

If you disagree with him, you need to argue with the science.

I'm none of the things Seeker thinks I might be. I'm an MNer and a mum.

I'm not sure whether to be appalled or heartened by people's low expectations of our newspapers' objectivity, especially The Guardian.

Give us a chance seeker!

I'm a parent who works in sales (not of anything connected to health).

I have a personal interest in vaccines because my eldest child reacts badly enough to them that I and her doctor agreed to be very cautious about giving any more to her. This decision is reviewed on a yearly basis.

This is funny actually - as many of you may know there has been an insistence that anybody discussing MMR/ASD in places like Rapid Responses, declare any potential bias.

Which is why you see lots of responses there with 'parent of a child with autism' in the signature.

My disclaimer would need to be 'parent who is very grateful to the autism community for the awesome information they have made available to me which has helped me enormously in managing my child's health issues'.

Mmm, might have to work on that it isn't very snappy.

Oh I did use homoeopathy for my kids when they had chicken pox - to help with the itchiness.