Tag: Skepticism

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Beware the health scan scams: don’t be fooled by the long words

The original Magic 8 BallMagic 8 Ball toys are great fun when you’re a kid. The fortune-telling plastic spheres have been entertaining children since the 1950s and are delightfully simple – you ask the black ball a question, give it a shake, and an answer ‘magically’ emerges out of the inky darkness. “Will I be popular at school?” The ball says: “It is decidedly so.” “Should I ask Debbie to out to the disco?“ The ball replies: “Signs point to yes”. “Will I be a millionaire someday”? “Don’t count on it,” replies the ball. All is not lost, however, for those who aspire after the high life: you can keep shaking until you get the answer you want. Read more

Does eating Celery burn calories? The Science about ‘Negative Calorie’ diets (finally).

1.31.10 CeleryScience can be great for answering life’s little questions – you know, the sort of thing you ponder whilst sitting on the toilet or waiting for the number 49 bus. Does chewing gum take seven years to digest? No. Will eating bread crusts make your hair curl? You should be so lucky. Will eating an apple a day keep the doctor away? Probably not, but it might do you some good. Once in a while, there’s a question that is a bit harder to prove one way or the other.

Take celery. I was recently asked whether eating it caused you to lose weight. Sounds crazy, but the logic behind it is half plausible. It goes something like this: Celery has hardly any calories in it (6 calories per stalk) and the process of digesting food burns energy. Because celery is quite a bulky, fibrous plant it’s going to take a lot of chewing and digesting. Surely that’s more than those meager six calories? If true – eating celery will help you loose weight.

After a bit of digging into the scientific literature, I think I may be able to resolve the negative calorie food debate once and for all… Read more

“Your Science Reporting Truly Sucks…” – The Editor’s ‘Apology’

It’s not just tabloids that are having their pants pulled down at the moment. Medical journals are too.

Sorry, We're Open by marsupialrobotA few weeks the BJGP – Europe’s leading general practice journal – heralded apparently ground-breaking research on the benefits of acupuncture. On closer inspection, the research was poorly constructed, drew dubious conclusions and biased in extremis.

I wrote an outraged letter, complaining of how such a ‘peer-reviewed’ periodical could promote such utter tosh as ‘ground breaking research’. Two months have passed and the editors have had the humility to publish not just my correspondence, but that of nine others(!) Clearly I wasn’t the only one hacked off.

To readers, the deconstruction and utter lambasting from doctors, professors and lay-readers was conclusive. It’s was a shame then that the editor’s ‘response’ was so utterly lacklustre… Read more

The Top 10 Medical TV Myths

Everyone loves a good hospital drama. They tick all the boxes for good TV: Gritty plots, life and death situations, steamy relationships, ethical dilemmas and blood and gore. Now more popular than ever, medical TV dramas have come a long way in the last 50 years. But just how accurate are they?

You might be surprised to discover just how many inaccuracies modern hospital TV dramas have in them. Here’s the Top 10 list of things you will only ever see in a TV hospital… Read more

The rise of the ‘Skeptics’: A new breed of Armchair Scientists

When I was a child, Johnny Ball used to be my hero. He hosted a UK TV programme, called ‘Johnny Ball Reveals All‘. With the enthusiasm of a five-year-old, he bounced across the TV screen while explaining science questions: ‘Why does a volcano erupt?’, ‘How do my eyes work?’ and ‘What is electricity?’ He was an inspiring and eccentric character, who helped give me a love of science.

We love Johnny Ball!

I’m still excited about science today, and try to share that passion with others. But some people don’t seem to get quite as passionate as me: My wife’s eyes normally glaze over when I start to get animated about quantum physics!

But I’ve stumbled across a new breed of science lovers:  a movement of armchair scientists, on a mission to separate fact from fiction.  They call themselves ‘skeptics’ and are determined not to fall victim to any hoax or scam. They meet together in pubs and cast a questioning eye over anything controversial. In recent months, numbers have been mushrooming and I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. I picked the brains of Hayley Stevens, co-founder of the Bath Skeptic Society to find out more….  Read more