‘Greatest’..?
I am wont, over a drink with either fellow aficionados or indulgent people possessed of too much politeness to tell me to shut up, to bore on about (the music of) Led Zeppelin. Its continued signposting of the soundtrack of my life is (unlike many other bands from my (mal-)formative youth) not merely nostalgia. Whilst … Read more
Worth the effort…?
There is (fair) argument sometimes made that the huge amount of public money expended on often unnecessary and/or ineffective and/or downright dangerous ‘Big Pharma’ products renders objection to that frittered on, say, (always unnecessary, ineffective and potentially indirectly dangerous) homeopathy to be hardly worth rational effort. Indeed, the NHS’s 65-year support for homeopathy is on … Read more
‘Is ‘cloning’ mad, bad and dangerous?’ – an argument revisited
Six years ago, to mark the then tenth anniversary of the announcement of the birth of the folkloric Dolly the sheep, and in the still reverberating wake of the South Korean cloning scandal, I practiced my fledgling/intermittent/debatable/wanton science communication skills with the penning of an article on the issue of ‘cloning.’ It being an anniversary … Read more
Grammar and gender
This is the letter that landed 100 academics the inaugural Idler Academy Bad Grammar award. Well, we might pedantically recoil at a missing comma and a misplaced apostrophe in the very first sentence of the clunky first paragraph; and frown quizzically at the unlikelihood of 100 failed cursory proof-readings of an early draft (which suggests … Read more
No such thing as ‘Allopathy’
Over at FreethoughtBlogs, an uncharacteristic petit faux pas in the prolifically excellent ‘A Million Gods‘ motivates me into publicly scratching an irritation. The first time I think I heard/read the term ‘allopathy’ was in the context of something discussing homeopathy. And it seemed quite reasonable to me at the time: homeopathy = ‘like cures like’; … Read more
Yet further comment…
(I know at least one reader will be interested in this, thus making it a topic theme worth continuing…) I have of late been banging my head at the ongoing frustration borne of repeat attempts to post comment on a pretty questionable, seemingly homeopathy-lauding paper published in a scientific medical journal. Yesterday, my eye was … Read more
Another comment on BMC Cancer, WDDTY and homeopathy
Well, I don’t know what bugs are at play in the BMC Cancer system. Almost three weeks since submitting the latest re-worked version of my comment (which I append below so it may be read by somebody), not only has it not appeared under the paper in question, but the continued lack of response (excepting … Read more
Libel reform – Lords Amendment 2 reinstated…?
Ping Pong today sees the Defamation Bill back with the Lords, who will hopefully extract the fascistic spanner hurled into its works last week. Scroll down here to Motion B Lords Amendment No. 2 to see the moves to (re-)insert reparative clauses/wording. But that wording… still includes ‘… or is/are likely to cause…’. Which I … Read more
Libel reform – Lords Amendment 2 rejected
MPs have just voted to reject Lords Amendment 2, which would have required corporate bodies to obtain court permission to bring libel cases against individuals (ie, that requiring that they first demonstrate proof of (likelihood of) financial loss; the only measure that would have prevented Simon Singh being sued by the British Chiropractic Association). The … Read more
A tale of moderation
Having slept on this, I am still driven to vent. Yesterday, after noting that Nick Cohen’s cogent argument in The Observer was not – under its ‘Comment is free’ online label – open for comments, I was – unusually – drawn to Barbara Ellen’s page. I say unusually… because I usually try and avoid the … Read more
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