I have been reading a lot recently about the Irish Government’s decision to get rid of its Chief Scientific Adviser. My fellow blogger Maria Delaney has covered this well both on her award-winning Science Calling! blog and on Journal.ie. The story is that, due to budgetary cutbacks, the supposedly independent Adviser […]
Other Bits
Obligatory Halloween tie-in: Ghost spotted at football match actually a man
Here’s a famous football quote (out of the mouth of Satan himself): “Football, eh? Bloody hell!” Yes. Football and hell. Inextricably linked. So, it was always but a matter of time before intrepid photojournalists would capture occult goings-on at a football game. But not just any old kickabout. No, the […]
To coin a phrase…
It’s a small world. One that requires some joined up thinking. We need to see the contours among the shadows, to extract the signal from the noise, to construct synchrony from the chaos. You know what I mean. We need to become pattern detectors. (Just nod. I am going somewhere […]
Guess what: Cancer vaccines don’t cause cancer
We’ve previously discussed the whole “oh-my-god-vaccines-are-terrible” carry-on that seems to have gripped the popular Luddite imagination since, well, since vaccines were basically invented. Well, they’ve been at it again. This time the controversy has related to the tragically young death of a teenager in New Zealand, who died some three […]
Todd Akin’s empirical question
So, as you may have heard, Mr Akin, the Republican Party Senate candidate in Missouri (hi, Missouri!) has some weird views on rape, conception, and abortion. Basically, this is what the Todd Akin t-shirts are going to be saying this November: It seems to me, from what I understand from […]
Quick media round-up is quick
I am totally on holidays right now. I even have a beard. However, I still function at an intellectual level (for all intents and purposes). Here are two minor updates regarding ongoing media coverage of this blog/blogger-with-beard. Yesterday, The Guardian’s Higher Education Network included my post on paywalls in its […]
Recent Posts
That BMJ review of Long Covid therapies does not show what it says it does
My submission on the new Canadian draft recommendations for Long Covid
The cries for help are getting louder. And that’s a good sign
“A science that does not allow opposing opinions abolishes knowledge.” Er, kind of
Getting it Right: Addressing Myths about the 2021 NICE Guideline for ME/CFS
