DC's Improbable Science
Truth, falsehood and evidence: investigations of dubious and dishonest science
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Latest posts
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Resonators and kindred frauds
Googling ‘bioresonance therapy’ produces a large number of hits. One of the first comes from the Oxford Chiropractic Clinic, which says “Bioresonance is one of the most exciting innovative complementary health therapies of our time. It is a bespoke therapeutic approach that is…
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Artificial intelligence is surprisingly good at detecting quackery
Back to my old interest in medicine that doesn’t work. And the fact that there is such a huge market for medicine that doesn’t work is, in large part, a result of regulators who fail to regulate. One example of a regulator that fails to protect the public from health fraud is…
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How do we stop a resurgence of fascism?
Is it bad to write for hard-right outlets? There is no doubt that the Overton window has shifted to the right during the last decade or two. It is now common to hear people saying things that, even in 2010 would have been thought to be frankly fascistic. I recall a conversation…
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Bloody Religion
Go to follow-up “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”Steven Weinberg In 2003, I started a web page that documented the horrors of the Iraq war. The…
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A letter to our member of parliament
Today, in desperation, we sent a letter to our MP. Usually such letters get a boiler plate response, dictated by Conservative Central Office. We aren’t hopeful about changing the mind of our MP. Before he was elected he ran a shockingly misogynist web site, now deleted. But it’s…
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Why p values can’t tell you what you need to know and what to do about it
This is a transcript of the talk that I gave to the RIOT science club on 1st October 2020. The video of the talk is on YouTube . The transcript was very kindly made by Chris F Carroll, but I have modified it a bit here to increase clarity. Links to the [...]
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The transgender question
I am going to set out my current views about the transgender problem. It’s something that has caused a lot of discussion on twitter, much of it unpleasantly vituperative. When I refer to ‘problem’ I’m referring to the vituperation, not, of course, the existence of transgender…
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Dr Rosi Sexton for leader of the Green Party
There will soon be an election for the leader of the Green Party of England and Wales. I support Dr Sexton for the job. Here’s my endorsement. I’ll say why below. I support Dr Sexton as a candidate to lead the Green Party (England and Wales). She said “The Green Party is a…
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The toppling of Edward Colston
During the Black Lives Matter demonstrations on Sunday 7th June, the statue of Edward Colston was pulled down and dumped in the harbour in Bristol. I think that it was the most beautiful thing that happened yesterday. Colston made his money from the slave trade. 84,000 humans…
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Exponential growth is terrifying
This example illustrates just how fast exponential growth is. It was proposed on twitter by Charles Arthur (@charlesarthur) who attributes the idea to Simon Moores. The stadium version is a variant of the better known ‘grains of wheat (or rice) on a chessboard‘ problem. The…
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The history of eugenics at UCL: the inquiry report
Jump to follow-up The inquiry into UCL’s historical role in eugenics was set up a year ago. Its report was delivered on Friday 28 February 2020. Nine (the MORE group) of the 16 members of the inquiry commission refused to sign the final report and issued their own…
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An interview with Rosi Sexton: polymath
Jump to follow-up On Sunday 23 September, we recorded an interview with Rosi Sexton. Ever since I got to know her, I’ve been impressed by her polymathy. She’s a musician, a mathematician and a champion athlete, and now an osteopath: certainly an unusual combination. You can read…
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Bernard L. Ginsborg (1925 – 2018). A tribute.
Jump to follow-up If you are not a pharmacologist or physiologist, you may never have heard of Bernard Ginsborg. I first met him in 1960. He was a huge influence on me and a great friend. I’m publishing this here because the Physiological Society has published only a brief…
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Eugenics, UCL and freedom of speech
Jump to follow-up See also The history of eugenics at UCL: the inquiry report. On Monday evening (8th January 2018), I got an email from Ben van der Merwe, a UCL student who works as a reporter for the student newspaper, London Student. He said “Our investigation has found a…
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Christopher Robin: a sad story
Jump to follow-up Today we went to see the film Goodbye Christopher Robin. It was very good. I, like most children, read Pooh books as a child. Image from Wikipedia I got interested in their author, A.A. Milne, when I discovered that he’d done a mathematics degree at Cambridge.…