badscience


Subluxations and Subpoenas – Prologue

Here’s a thing I wrote in July 2009, back when British alternative medicine was simultaneously trying to silence critics in court and complaining that there was a powerful conspiracy against it. It disappeared in blog reorganisations and possibly was just about amusing enough to deserve saving… So I was rummaging […]


Scientists bend observation to fit evolution

This is another archival repost, originally posted on the old blog in feb 2009, during the Darwin 200 celebrations. I wrote the majority of this post a couple of years ago, when I had the intention to do a regular “creationist claim” feature, but for some reason never got around […]


Simple rules

This is another archival repost, originally written for the old blog in november 2007. The main driving force for creationists is not science, but ethics. Their trump card is that “evolution is immoral”: they cite “might makes right” and eugenics, quote Darwin’s supposedly racist terminology in The Origin and Voyage, […]


Help! Help! I’m being repressed

(This is another archival repost of something written on the old blog a few years ago.) I’ve been catching up with about a month of blogosphere this weekend, after travelling, and other distractions. I managed to catch a discarded copy of G2 with Ben Goldacre’s homeopathy article, so I was […]


Lay Science: Further research is necessary

The paper that initiated the great MMR hoax has been thoroughly discredited and retracted by the journal that published it, but the anti-vaxxers still claim — and hoodwink some parents — that more research is required to establish whether or not vaccines cause autism. I thought therefore that it was […]


Lay Science: Lies, damned lies, and tissue culture

Skepticism is about critical thinking and knowing how to avoid being fooled by charlatans and the honest but mistaken.  Over at Lay Science I explain one way that you can get fooled: by people citing the activities of cells in a dish as scientific proof for anything and everything.  Read […]


In which Johnny Ball demonstrates why we can be confident that AGW is happening

This is an archive repost, originally posted on the old blog shortly after Johnny Ball had made his first appearance at Nine Lessons And Carols For Godless People. Skepticism — the movement and the everyday scientific method — is about vetting the new ideas that want to take up residence […]


Three cheers for Radio 4!

This is another archival repost from the old blog, originally from september 2008. It’s a right good science fest on Radio 4 at the moment. If you missed it, you must listen to Physics Rocks (available until 17/9). It’s Brian Cox talking to comedians about their enthusiasm for science. It’s […]


The lazy gene: in which I review a nature versus nurture debate six years late

This is another archive repost from the old blog, written in aug 2008. The psychologist Oliver James was on The Late Edition a couple of weeks ago.[1] His argument was unconvincing and his behaviour unimpressive. So I took a quick look at his website. He offers for download a Radio […]


One god short of an atheist

This is another archival repost originally written for the old blog in november 2007. “Yes I agree, but this is different. Don’t lump us in with those charlatans!” Criticise quack miracle cures, irrational superstition, loony pseudoscience, and religion, and you will get in return an example of the comment above. […]