media


In which The Independent jumps the shark

A couple of weeks ago Oliver Wright of The Independent ran a hatchet job, both horrible and nonsensical, about the head of the RCGP, Clare Gerada — the tireless and currently ubiquitous critic of the NHS privatisation Health and Social Care Bill. You may remember Ben Goldacre wrote about Oliver […]


AWWTM: That’s not what I said, say scientists

According to SCIENTISTS, “pollution is not improved by c-charge.”  (“Improved”? These scientists are so sloppy with their language.) Journalists all over the city are this week reporting that the congestion charge has not reduced air pollution problems in central London, and that’s a fact, proven by science.  (As far as […]


AWWTM: “Britain pays more for fuel than anywhere else”

It’s another frequently raised fact in comment threads and pub agreements.  Everybody knows it’s true.  If it wasn’t true, why would everybody know it and repeat it all the time?  They can’t all be wrong. You would think though that such a fact, with all of the resources of the […]


AWWTM: “Driving has never cost more”

“End to the war on the motorists?  No, driving’s never cost more,” declares Mark King, Money Editor, in The Observer today.  To be fair to King, he doesn’t actually say anything as absurd as that driving has “never cost more” in his article — but newspaper headline writers have never […]


AWWTM: Punch and Judy town planning policy

“Pickles and Hammond to end the war on motorists.” The Department for Communities and Local Government put these words in a press release and today 221 national and local newspaper journalists* copypasted them into their newspapers, noticing nothing nonsensical in their conjunction.  Great job, The Media. Continue reading at At […]


Broadcast

This is an archival re-post of something written last summer on the old blog. Any Questions, one half of BBC Radio 4’s weekly foray into the realm of mindless US-style talk radio bigotry, this week invited a panel of historians, novelists, and journalists to share their poorly considered thoughts on […]


Antibiotics in an anti-science age

This is another repost originally written for the old blog in 2007. Over the next few years or decades, traditional antibiotics will largely be replaced by bacteriophages. Like everything in biology and medicine, this is ultimately down to evolution. Pathogenic bacteria are alive: they reproduce, with slight imperfections, and are […]