Yes, I know it is almost impossible to fathom such depravity, but some pharmaceutical advertisers make unsubstantiated claims in medical journals! (/SARCASM OFF) Such is the conclusion of Ben Goldacre of the Guardian, writing on the Bad Science Blog. Goldacre is writing about a recent research article in the Netherlands Journal of Medicine “Are claims of [...]

Having failed to convince the Republicans of the merits of Obamacare, the Democrats have now decided to use brute force and bully the legislation through with a simple majority. This is a spectacularly bad idea. Forcing the bill through under “budget reconciliation” essentially undermines the entire set of safeguards the Americans have in place to [...]

Suppose a German Shepherd had just killed his police handler by mauling him in an unprovoked attack? This dog has a history of previously mauling the dead body of a drunk who fell into the dog’s pen and broke his neck. The same dog had also been involved in the death of another police handler, [...]

Not much time for blogging tonight but I could resist a quick comment on the low-hanging fruit offered by ScrubOne in this comment. The Yahoo “news” item reads: I feed my son marijuana While most parents are focussed on warning their children about the dangers of drugs, mum-of-three Mieko Hester-Perez is happily dishing up marijuana [...]

I have finally managed to sit down and finish Gareth Morgan’s book, Health Cheque,  on the New Zealand health care system (long international flights are at least good for something). I find most of Morgan’s books a little superficial for my tastes and Health Cheque is certainly no exception, lacking, as it does, any deep [...]

Back from South Africa, anyway. Jet lagged out of my gourd as well. After a decade away (15 years since emigrating), South Africa now feels like a foreign land to me. The South African government claims that crime has dropped since the Apartheid years but I doubt very much that that is true. Absolutely everyone [...]

My Mother has passed away after a short illness and I will be traveling to South Africa for her funeral and to help my father with her effects. She was 78 and had been unwell most of the past year after suffering a stroke in October 1998, so this is not a surprise (but still [...]

The amphibious one over at Frogblog has pointed out the extraordinary consensus in the blogosphere of the matter of Simon Power’s knee-jerk dismissal of the findings of the Law Commission’s report on Controlling And Regulating Drugs (PDF). While everyone is unanimous (including me) in their opinion that Power has been far too dismissive of the [...]

The Herald reports a 17 year old boy (who has name suppression for no apparent reason – go get ‘em, Whale) has been sentenced to 8 months home detention (on top of 4 months in custody – an effective 12 month sentence) for assisting the suicide of 16-year-old Ben Dowdell. I won’t be revisiting the [...]

The recent stunt by the New Zealand Skeptics Society might be very amusing, but it fails to add much to the debate on homeopathy. The skeptics swallow large amounts of homeopathic remedy to attempt to show its overall uselessness. Unfortunately, this demonstration is no more significant than an atheist demanding that God strikes him dead [...]