The Cosmic Web

In case you suspected that the Daily Mail might be more interested in journalistic integrity, truth, the health of its readers or even simple consistency than writing what it thinks will sell the most papers, here’s something to make you reconsider. Martin of The Lay Scientist has accidentally discovered that the paper is either viciously against or stridently for the controversial* HPV vaccine - depending on which side of the Irish Sea you’re on.

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Shortly after I reviewed Bed Goldacre’s book Bad Science he released an extra chapter, which is in the new printing of the book and available for free on his website. This chapter concerns a man called Matthias Rath, whose hobbies include selling vitamin supplements to AIDS sufferers; claiming that people who give out actual medicine are part of a shadowy conspiracy to murder South Africans; and threatening legal action against anyone who disagrees with him (as though scientific truth and health policy were best established in courts rather than with, say, science). The fact that he was suing Ben Goldacre and the Guardian for writing nasty things about him is what prevented the chapter from being published earlier (he lost).

The chapter makes for interesting reading; particularly the part where Rath and his friend call for the International Criminal Court to have their detractors tortured. And lest you be tempted to dismiss him as a harmless crank, Goldacre also details the South African Government’s collusion in his successful campaign to manslaughter tens of thousands of its citizens.

Last week I was ill, which is partly responsible for my lack of posting. It did result in a lot of lying in bed reading though, so here are some fruits of my efforts in the form of a book review.

Bad Science is by Ben Goldacre, a junior NHS doctor who writes a column for the Guardian and a blog of the same name.

When I first heard of the book I was expecting it to be a collection of articles from his column, perhaps expanded to somewhat greater detail. I was quite wrong: it’s much more of a full book than a collection of essays.

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