1 This column uses the example of some work by the Guardian’s health correspondent to illustrate the importance of transparency about research methods, as well as results. This is a growing issue, as raw data and the tools for analysis have become more accessible (excitingly) – and more widely used – outside of traditional academia. It is the only column by me that the Guardian has ever declined to publish.
1 Where there are updates, occasionally, throughout the book, they are after the piece in italics.
1 Unless you have an Athens login, you are not allowed to read what the researchers actually said, instead of what the media said they said. Because although they are publicly funded academics at the University of Newcastle, and although this work has been publicised in every major mainstream media outlet in Britain and the US, and although the journal is edited by academics you fund, and paid for by subscriptions from university libraries … the actual academic article is behind a paywall, with a payment model geared towards institutions, rather than interested individuals. Bad luck you. I guess you have to rely on journalists.
1 In case it’s been puzzling you, epidemiologists use ‘odds’ (e.g. 366 ÷ 2300 for the top row of Table 1) rather than ‘proportions’ (which would be 366 ÷ 2666 for the top row of Table 1) because odds work more neatly when you use ‘logistic regression’, which is the more advanced technique mentioned above. If you’re interested to know more, I recommend coming to London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to do our MSc in Epidemiology.
1 This is an editorial I wrote for the British Medical Journal with David Spiegelhalter about the complex, contradictory mess of evidence on the impact of bicycle helmets. Like most places where there’s controversy and disagreement, this is a great opportunity to walk through the benefits and shortcomings of different epidemiological techniques, from case-control studies to modelling. Epidemiology is my day job – Bad Science and Bad Pharma are both, effectively, epidemiology textbooks with bad guys – and since the techniques of epidemiology are at the core of most media stories and squabbles on health, it’s very weird that you don’t hear the word more often.
1 Writing is just a hobby, alongside seeing patients, doing research, and – increasingly – putting these ideas into practice through campaigning and lobbying. In 2011 I co-authored a Cabinet Office White Paper explaining how randomised controlled trials can be used to improve government policy (this is the subject of my next book). And in 2012 I did an Independent External Review for the Department for Education, looking at what could be done to improve the use of evidence and data in schools. This was a dry internal report, but I was also asked to write something to explain what these changes might look like, aimed specifically at teachers, which is reproduced here. If you like it, and want to share it, there’s a PDF on the DfE website. I feel fairly hopeful, but these are long, slow cultural shifts. In June 2014 DfE advertised a public tender to assess progress towards the goals I set out in the internal report; so we shall see.
1 I chose titles on my blog spontaneously when I posted the pieces. ‘A Rock of Crack as Big as the Ritz’ is the title of a short story by Will Self.
1 There might be other explanations; I was only a medical student – BG, 2014.
1From the preface to the second edition: ‘The first edition of this book prompted many curious letters from irate readers. The most violent letters came from Reichians, furious because the book considered orgonomy alongside such (to them) outlandish cults as dianetics. Dianeticians, of course, felt the same about orgonomy. I heard from homoeopaths who were insulted to find themselves in company with such frauds as osteopathy and chiropractic, and one chiropractor in Kentucky “pitied” me because I had turned my spine on God’s greatest gift to suffering humanity. Several admirers of Dr. Bates favoured me with letters so badly typed that I suspect the writers were in urgent need of strong spectacles. Oddly enough, most of these correspondents objected to one chapter only, thinking all the others excellent.’
1 The thirty-seventh study was released in the fortnight between the previous article and this one.
1 In 2014 Rolf Harris was found guilty of several sexual offences against children and jailed for over five years. I’ve left this piece in, partly as a reminder that abusers don’t always have the word ‘monster’ tattooed on their forehead. That phrasing comes from PinkZapCat, when I asked on Twitter about deleting the column with Rolf in it. I think it’s extremely wise.
1 Although it wasn’t adequately recognised at the time, I feel I should take some credit for getting ‘shit head’, ‘fuck yourself’, ‘twathead’ and ‘twat’ into a top-ten academic journal. The gauntlet is down.
1 After this column, Theodore Gray bought some five-gram chunks of caesium and rubidium – much more than Brainiac didn’t use – and threw them into water in his garden. In the video, you can see some light, some pinging, and some phutting, but no explosion. Why not? Although caesium and rubidium are technically more reactive than sodium, he explains, in reality you get a bigger bang for your money from sodium: the atoms are smaller, so you get more atoms per gram, so the same-sized lump makes more hydrogen. ‘Under typical night-time escapade conditions, the larger hydrogen explosion created by sodium more than makes up for the more vigorous initial decomposition reaction of caesium. It’s a pity that Brainiac felt they needed to perpetuate a myth by faking it, when the truth is even better: common everyday sodium beats out those high-priced exotic elements.’
1 I still get a handful of emails every year from creepy men asking me how to do this.