Holford Watch on the FSA and Organic Foods *

Aug 4th, 2009 | Filed by

It is inappropriate to put figures about purported nutritional advantages of organic food into the public debate in the absence of any context.… Read the rest



Prince Declares Mind Unchanged *

Aug 4th, 2009 | Filed by

‘This study hasn’t changed His Royal Highness’s views one bit.’… Read the rest



The Home Office Have Assembled Some Evidence *

Aug 4th, 2009 | Filed by

Ben Goldacre takes a look at it. He asks if it is a joke.… Read the rest



Royal Family’s Support for Homeopathy is a Joke *

Aug 4th, 2009 | Filed by

BMA and MHRA have condemned Ainsworths and ‘Swine Flu Formula.’ Time the Royals did the same.… Read the rest



Letters for August, 2009

Aug 4th, 2009 | By

Letters for August, 2009.… Read the rest



Have some Treatment

Aug 3rd, 2009 6:01 pm | By

Got a broken leg? Hepatitis? Chapped lips? Have you tried some nice medicine?

A pharmacy supplying homeopathic remedies to the Royal Family…, Ainsworths, has been accused of “quackery” for supplying bottles of pills labelled as “Swine Flu Formula” for people suffering from the disease…Ainsworths has been granted a Royal Warrant by the Queen and Prince Charles, who are both said to be supporters of homeopathy…Its treatment is in the form of small “sugar pills”, which dissolve under the tongue. It is sold in £7 bottles, containing 50 pills, which can be bought on the company’s website or over the counter of its central London store. The label on the bottles reads: “SFF (Swine Flu Formula). Treatment: One to be

Read the rest


The Chiropractors’ World Unravels *

Aug 3rd, 2009 | Filed by

They are getting more attention than they wanted. Sad.… Read the rest



Homeopathic ‘Pharmacy’ Sells Sugar Pills *

Aug 3rd, 2009 | Filed by

Ainsworth’s, homeopaths to the royal family, sells sugar pills as swine flu treatment.… Read the rest



The Epistemology of Photoshopping *

Aug 3rd, 2009 | Filed by

Bachelard, Lacan, Heisenberg, Peggy J Bowers – it all adds up.… Read the rest



Daughter Turns Atheist – Call the FBI *

Aug 3rd, 2009 | Filed by

Or an exorcist.… Read the rest



Andrew Brown Pitches a Fit at ‘Militant’ Atheists *

Aug 3rd, 2009 | Filed by

Clock strikes twelve.… Read the rest



Footnotes on footnotes

Aug 2nd, 2009 12:45 pm | By

I mentioned that a commenter at The Intersection said I was lying. Tim Broderick, he is; here’s the central part of what he said:

When Ophelia Benson claims through her “questions” that Chris and Sheril have no evidence she is not telling the truth. It’s one thing for people who haven’t read the book to assert this – she has the book. So let me say that again and more emphatically: She is lying.

Here is the question from her own site: “How do you know overt atheism causes people to be hostile to science? How does that work? What is your evidence?”

From page 173 to page 185 there are detailed endnotes with citations to back up the assertions

Read the rest


Americans Have No Sense of Humour *

Aug 2nd, 2009 | Filed by

Says BBC reporter on his way out the door.… Read the rest



Oregon Faith-healing Father Gets 60 Days *

Aug 2nd, 2009 | Filed by

Convicted in the death of baby from illness that could easily have been cured with antibiotics. … Read the rest



Marjane Sur Tous les Fronts! *

Aug 2nd, 2009 | Filed by

Marjane Satrapi, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Bernard-Henri Levy protest the Iranian election.… Read the rest



Kara Neumann’s Father Convicted in her Death *

Aug 2nd, 2009 | Filed by

But they are devout Christians who were faithful to their convictions, so…… Read the rest



Rosenhouse on Unscientific America Part 2 *

Aug 2nd, 2009 | Filed by

Isn’t it obvious that the problem is the attitude that places religious faith in a privileged position relative to science? … Read the rest



The secular conscience

Aug 2nd, 2009 11:41 am | By

Austin Dacey, in The Secular Conscience.

“In the United States, secular and liberal have become dirty words…Best sellers allege that liberalism is a dogmatic faith, a critique popularized by evangelical leaders in the 1980s…When a rare few secularists push back against religious belief in print, they are branded – often by fellow seculars and liberal religionists – ‘dogmatic,’ ‘evangelical,’ ‘militant’ and ‘fundamentalist’ atheists. [examples in an endnote] Their scandalous premise is that religion is an urgent topic of conversation and therefore subject to the intellectual and moral standards of all serious conversation.” [p 11]

One thing that’s interesting about this is that Austin Dacey was one participant in something called ScienceDebate2008. Lawrence Krauss was another. Chris Mooney and Sheril … Read the rest



The limits of ironism

Aug 1st, 2009 6:16 pm | By

Thought for the day, from Owen Flanagan’s The Problem of the Soul (no, he doesn’t think there is such a thing as the soul).

“As for my ironist friends who think that science is no more objective than any other way of thinking, I have observed in most of them a fairly deep ignorance about science. Being around intellectuals who know almost nothing about science does not particularly bother me, except when they pronounce on the nature of science. My view is that if you are going to claim that all forms of discourse are equally subjective, you better have real familiarity with all the forms of discourse you aim to level.” p. 54… Read the rest



It will just have to go here then

Aug 1st, 2009 12:12 pm | By

Now sometimes a cunning plan turns out to be not so cunning after all. Mooney’s cunning plan of banning me from commenting on his blog so that my unkind questions and objections would no longer appear there is going to turn out to be a mistake, because it means I will post them here instead. This is penny wise and pound foolish. A comment on his blog would just get lost in the clutter of kwokkery and other nonsense there, and would not be on the main page in any case. A post here is on the main page for a month. So you see…he should have just settled for letting me ask questions there. The morally bankrupt path Does … Read the rest