The Irish men’s rugby team is currently number one in the world. We might therefore expect its governing body, the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU), to be a proficient and effective organisation, capable of meeting its own aims while setting examples for others to follow. Unfortunately, however, when it comes […]
Scientific literacy
Will innumeracy cause this study to be retracted? Don’t count on it…
I used to be concerned about bad science. These days, what gets me going is wrong science: blatant error somehow surviving peer-review and ending up published as if it were fact. It seems that is where we have got to with modern academic publishing. Standards have slipped so badly, even […]
How illnesses become psychologised: Long COVID, ME, and the ‘All-In-Your-Head’ cartel
I was delighted to be part of this panel discussion on Gez Medinger‘s YouTube channel, RUN-DMC. As many readers will know, Gez is a London-based film producer and director who has been debilitated with severe Long COVID ever since contracting Covid early in the pandemic. His YouTube channel is now […]
Time to flatten the curve of shoddy COVID scholarship
Last October, I wrote that COVID-19 had created a stampede of shoddy research. Little has changed in the interim. Putting all hands to the pump might feel appropriate in a crisis, but during a global public health emergency, rushing headlong into the scholarly frontline is anything but okay. Frankly, it is […]
Beware the COVID-sceptic doctors
It turns out that not all medical doctors are infallible. Who knew? Some of them, it seems, dally at the margins of pseudoscience. Take for example the latest BMJ Op-Ed from the doctor who cured himself of long COVID. He says he did so through positive thinking. Go him! ‘Pseudoscience’ is […]
Letter to the BMJ
David Tuller, Vincent Racaniello, and I have written to the BMJ about that guest editorial on the draft NICE guidelines for ME and related conditions. The letter is also online over at Virology Blog and has now been posted as a Rapid Response on BMJ.com. * * * Subject line: […]