{"id":429,"date":"2008-12-14T09:03:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-14T09:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2008\/12\/14\/tits\/"},"modified":"2008-12-14T09:03:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-14T09:03:00","slug":"tits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2008\/12\/14\/tits\/","title":{"rendered":"Tits"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\nNow, come on, what did you really<\/em> think I meant by that title, hmm<\/em>?<\/p>\n

\nWe all love Ben Goldacre<\/a> (I have to say that: I think they take away your Gilsons if you say anything bad about him). And his expos\u00e9s of homeopathic nonsense, medical charlatanry, lousy reporting and triumphs of marketing over substance in drug trials and the like are legendary, a service for which he deserves an OBE, if not a couple of pints.<\/p>\n

\nHowever, I do sometimes wonder if he should not pick his battles with a little more discernment. Be a little less gung-ho about matters. Because when he writes<\/a>, again, about these ludicrous formulae<\/em> that we see in the papers<\/a>, I do wonder if he’s doing more harm than good.<\/p>\n

\nI mean, surely, we know<\/em> it’s all crap, don’t we? Not science\u2014the ‘maths’ that gets published in the name of selling newspapers. Does anyone take that junk seriously? And, more to the point, is anyone’s perception of real<\/em> maths and science affected so negatively by a formula describing the inappropriateness of Britney Spear’s wardrobe, or how to be happy, or whatever the hell some publicity-hungry editor (_a tautology, surely?\u2014Ed._), comes up with next? (If it is<\/em> so affected, then I don’t think Ben’s ranting is actually going to make any difference: such a person is too far gone already).<\/p>\n

\nAlthough we know that the media, like the turny-thing it is, lies to us (from my own experience I estimate that approximately half the statements in any news story are incorrect to some degree), I suspect that the vast majority of people are sophisticated enough to realize that stories such as this are mindless fluff, and are not unduly influenced by them.<\/p>\n

\nI could be wrong. Like the good scientist I am, I’d like this hypothesis to be tested.<\/p>\n

\nBut as Bryan Appleyard<\/a> says, I’m not sure the Sun<\/em> (or even the Torygraph<\/em>) does that much harm to the perception or the cause of science. I think Ben would be better aiming his statistical dissecting kit at juicier targets<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\nAll right, that’s that’s not strictly ‘bad science’, but then neither is reporting on a surreal columnist<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now, come on, what did you really think I meant by that title, hmm? We all love Ben Goldacre (I have to say that: I think they take away your Gilsons if you say anything bad about him). And his … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}