bad science

My birthday was a little odd this year - it fell really close to the whole Monaco trip, so for one thing I couldn't really afford to do anything spectacular, but for another it meant the presents from my family members were much delayed.

What I got from my Dad has been really interesting - he bought me a bread maker and a steamer. With the weather having been so hot recently I can't say I've really had a chance to use the steamer yet, but it looks like a really good model. Hopefully I'll give it a whirl with cooking some rice this weekend, which is a pretty basic thing admittedly, but it'll at least give me the chance to try it out.

The bread maker is really great and I've been having lots of fun making loafs of bread. I've not ventured too far from the traditional white bread, but even with that there are different variations - sandwich or more traditional, different sizes and whether you want light or dark crust.

The least successful side of it for me is the sizes - small loafs work really well and are manageable, but the larger loaves are not so easily used. I mean, they're great, it's just they're difficult to cut up, especially for sandwiches, which is what I mainly use bread for, because of the shape they come out in.

But most recipes appear to have smaller versions, so it's not so much of a problem. My next big venture will be into bread rolls I think - they're slightly more complex in that the bread maker only does half the job and you have to do the last bit.

Anyway, the thing I wanted to mainly mention was what my sister got me. She got me a couple of DVDs, but also a book called "bad science" by Ben Goldacre.

It's an interesting read. It covers quite a few subjects, including CAM ("Conventional and Alternative Medicine") and the MMR hoax. I'd always known CAM was pure bullshit and that the MMR hoax was, at best misplaced good intention and at worst, outright lies, so it wasn't these that's got me thinking the most.

What got me thinking was the section on Nutritionists.

It turns out that nutritionism is little more than extension of the hocus-pocus of CAM. The practitioners (or bullshit peddlers is probably a better phrase) of this pseudo-science are little better than the crystal-healers and homeopathic experts of CAM.

This really surprised me, because where homeopathy seems fairly ignored by the news, nutritionist stuff does seem to be in the main stream. Think of all those "diet doctor" type programs any you'll see what I mean. Plus, even the BBC has news articles when the latest stuff about miracle foods emerges.

But the reality is that most of these are nearly total bullshit. The problem seems to come from the fact that proper science is done, but it's miss-reported and miss-represented. Also, there's lots of really bad science done.

The books well worth reading, although I have to admit to a little bit of a dislike for Goldacre's style. It's kind of an odd one, because the people he talks about are clearly contemptible and the bad science conducted is clearly worthy of some scorn. The problem I'm having is he doesn't pull back on the contempt and scorn in the way he writes.

So while I've no problem with him fundamentally doing that, it can read like a personal attack, rather than an evidence-based dissection, which is what it actually is.