David Tuller and I have written a response to an alarming research paper that appeared in a recent issue of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. We have posted a preprint with the Open Science Foundation, and David has also posted the text in full over on Virology […]
Tag: medicine
Is the stampede of COVID-19 science encouraging substandard research?
It seems that just about everyone is doing COVID-19 research these days. To date, more than 3,500 COVID-19 trials have been registered with ClinicalTrials.gov this year (compared to, for example, just 263 trials on “testicular cancer” in the entire history of the site). Meanwhile, the social sciences are also experiencing […]
Post-Covid syndrome, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, and the recurring pseudoscience of mass hysteria
The people who want you to think that everything is “all in your mind” are back, their schtick now revised and updated for a COVID-19 world. Here’s the Daily Telegraph: Some local coronavirus outbreaks could be ‘mass hysteria’, Joint Biosecurity Centre warns Some local coronavirus outbreaks may just be mass hysteria, […]
The BMJ’s ambiguous editorial commitment to scientific rigour
Here is my letter to the BMJ. I think it is pretty self-explanatory (nonetheless, I have added some additional context below the fold): Date: Sep 11, 2019To: <Fiona Godlee>, Editor in Chief, BMJRE: BMJ’s scientifically and ethically indefensible decision about Bristol’s Lightning Process study Dear Dr Godlee, First of all, […]
Begging-the-question, conjecture, anecdote, false equivalence, and a non sequitur: those five reasons for raising the Digital Age of Consent
Cormac Ryan has been tweeting about the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland and their letter to the government on the Digital Age of Consent. Its worrying that a group of medical professionals, charged with the care of children, would publicly state that they base their position on conjecture, supposition, […]
The homeopathic drugs DO work. Because they’re drugs
So, how can it be that homeopathy sometimes seems to work? Well there are a few possible explanations: The universe is broken Placebo etc. They’re cutting the stuff with real penicillin Full marks to those of you who selected #3. Because, that’s right, it’s yet another example of alternative drug […]