ask for evidence

[specialsubject]

delighted to see on my feed from Sense about Science that Mumsnet are featuring 'ask for evidence' as their campaign of the week. Essential reading for all.

If you've ever been tempted by 'chemical-free', 'detox', 'anti-ageing' and so on, you need to read this.

Was just about to start this thread myself, special!

Nice one, MNHQ.

Linky.

In fact, I've been lecturing on this topic since the world was in black and white.

Actually, the real me made a complaint to the ASA about a chiropracter's ludicrous advert a few years ago.

The ad got pulled and the ASA ruling was mentioned on a couple of sites, including Ben Goldacre's Bad Science, which encouraged more people to report dodgy "medical" ads.

Which is lovely, because it was Goldacre's work that triggered my contacting the ASA in the first place. I'd just been getting wrathful reading his reports of the dodgy Durham fishoil "trials", picked up my local paper with the chiropractor's crap and thought, "Really, you're not allowed to make shit up like this."

And did something about it.

and

come on mumsnet, push this harder please!

forget it. Repeatedly shown to be a waste of effort here, and proven again in another thread tonight.

You can lead them to sense, but you can't make them think.