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 [...]

The Guardian has an article from their resident marxist environmentalist, Fred Pearce, that has the cheek to slag off New Zealand as not being very green because of the UN report on our emissions record. Depressingly the NZPA repeats his drivel, instead of ignoring it as they should have done. Pearce quotes statistics from the [...]

I see that question time was filled with references to the UNDP Human Development Report on Human Mobility and Development and a book called The Spirit Level. No Right Turn and FrogBlog are also terribly excited about the report, as if inequality is the only thing that matters. They probably get this idea from the [...]

My previous post was designed to add some clarity to the issue of how John Key should respond to the massive “No” vote in the referendum. However, I note that there seems to be much confusion amongst politicians, the media and even in the blogosphere about the result. The Editorial in the Herald on Sunday ”Referenda [...]

Just in case you thought that we might have learned something from the 1975 Swine Flu debacle, where the vaccine killed more people than the flu itself, comes the news that Europe is “fast-tracking” the Swine Flu vaccine. “Fast-tracking” means that, when we give the vaccine, we won’t know the proper dose, any of the [...]

Spam Journalism: The spurious use of sensational headlines to add spice to an otherwise pointless article. (MacDoctor definition)
Thanks go to Pique Oil for this piece of statistical spam. This demonstrates why all journalists need to take a statistics primer and learn MacDoctor’s rules of Data Interpretation viz:

Statistics are misleading
Statistics shown on data projectors are deliberately misleading.
Statistics shown on [...]

Online polls are very unscientific, but, due to the reasonably large sample of people who answer Stuff polls, I have noticed that people do give some sort of credence to them. Which is why the particular poll below is of interest:

Notice the subtle bias? If Stuff had just asked the first two questions, all of [...]

A study in the New Zealand Journal of Medicine questions the validity of the MoH statistics which suggest that smoking has decreased from 22.8% to 18.1%. The actual article can be found here (PDF). They reason (correctly) that  since current cigarette sales increased 7.5% from 3957 to 4253 million cigarettes, all remaining smokers would have to [...]

A recent study by Otago university has indicated that there has been an increase in the number of people over the age of 65 being readmitted to hospital or dying within one month of surgery. The study was done comparing the years 2001-2 and 2003-4. The usual expected comments come from the usual people. Grey [...]

Front page of the Herald today (not yet available online) is an article on scientific research that has finally debunked the myth that eating eggs increases your cholesterol levels. The Egg/Cholesterol myth is one of the more enduring of medical legends. Fueled  by the discovery of cholesterol in arterial plaque, and the association between elevated cholesterol and [...]