Category: Bullshit

  • The entire MMR scare was based on fraud

    Old news perhaps, but it can’t be restated enough: the MMR scare was bunk, based on fraud. The BMJ: not one of the 12 cases reported in the 1998 Lancet paper was free of misrepresentation or undisclosed alteration, and that in no single case could the medical records be fully reconciled with the descriptions, diagnoses, or histories…

  • Illegal downloading did not cost the UK record industry £1 billion

    Fun with bullshit statistics: the BPI says dodgy downloads cost record companies nearly £1 billion this year. But as the Guardian points out, even the BPI knows that figure is massively exaggerated: While the notional worth of the 1.2bn illegal downloads was almost £1bn, the BPI estimated the actual loss from “forgone spend” was £219m in…

  • Panorama and videogames

    Last night’s Panorama programme – the BBC’s flagship current affairs show – was dedicated to the evils of videogames. I haven’t seen it, but I do know that John Walker of Rock, Paper, Shotgun is an eminently reasonable and trustworthy writer, so I’m linking to this piece he wrote about it. I believe that there…

  • Breastfeeding and making new mums feel like crap

    I’ve written before about the way new mums are talked down to by health “professionals” – last week on Radio Scotland the NHS Breastfeeding Co-Ordinator spent an entire programme patronising women who dared suggest that breastfeeding isn’t always possible – and other parents, but Zoe Williams expresses it wonderfully in today’s Guardian: the case for breastfeeding…

  • I don’t mean to sound callous, but I am, so that’s how it comes out*

    I’ve just received an email forward asking me to look out for a missing kid called Reachelle Marie Smith. As with 99% of these things, the email’s a load of nonsense: while it is indeed based on a real case, the girl didn’t go missing from Woking (as claimed; another version says it happened in…

  • CES 2010: technology and a horrible bum disease

    I’ve been following the more interesting developments at this week’s CES gadget frenzy, and naturally I’ve been writing about them too. First up, comparing Steve Ballmer to anal unpleasantness. Every day, Apple shareholders wake up and thank their lucky stars that their chosen firm’s CEO isn’t Steve Ballmer. The Gordon Brown of tech could make…

  • Buying books online for Xmas? I’d avoid Waterstone’s if I were you

    I’m beginning to suspect that Waterstone’s online isn’t really cut out for the book selling business. The site’s nice. The prices are okay. The selection’s pretty good. That’s all fine. It’s just the getting-books-to-your-house bit that seems to have been designed by complete fucking numpties. I ordered four books in mid-November, three of which were…

  • That’s not a paywall. That’s a taking-the-piss-wall

    After reading Mupwangle’s comment regarding The 4 of Us (in the Anorak’n’Roll thread further down the page), I decided to try and find out from the horse’s mouth why the band went completely off the radar in the mid-90s. There isn’t much online, but I did find a link to a recent interview in Hot…

  • Who needs facts when you have faith?

    There’s a truly extraordinary article by AN Wilson in today’s Daily Mail which, after something of an online storm, has been tweaked – so it’s no longer illustrated with a picture of Hitler, as it was this morning.  I’m not going to link to it because I’m increasingly convinced that the Mail runs really crazy…

  • Vaccines bad, m’kay?

    Here we go again. Malcolm Coles argues that media reports are doing an MMR, this time with the cervical cancer vaccine: Let’s be clear. The only reason parents are worried, boycotting the vaccine, and demanding suspensions of the vaccination program is because the media whipped up a storm with no evidence whatsoever.