As you’ve probably already heard, the British Chiropractic Association has dropped its court case against Simon Singh following the overturning on appeal of the previous ruling against him, marking the end of an expensive and mostly pointless legal battle. Mostly pointless, because it has at least served to focus national attention on Britain’s hideously illiberal […]
Posts by Psychic Dave:
Nov 04 2009
Keep your pesky science out of our policy
The laughable state of drug laws in the UK has been getting some play recently, with the news that Prof. David Nutt has been sacked for daring to intimate that perhaps placing cannabis in the same broad category as amphetamine and codeine is somewhat unreasonable. Understandably, his colleagues have begun resigning in a show of […]
Aug 20 2009
Five News breaks the law on air
I just happened to stumble on a report being broadcast on Five News in which they discussed the leak of the latest pop ditty by Justin Timberlake and Leona Lewis (and the hilariously futile attempts by the IFPI to remove the file from the internet). Towards the end of the segment, the reporter remarked “Now, […]
Jul 15 2009
For God’s sake, Ireland
I may be a bit late to the party on this one, but I recently found out about Ireland’s passing of a law creating penalties for blasphemy. For a modern democratic nation, this is pretty embarrasing. It’s also a very stupid idea, as others have been quicker than I to point out. It doesn’t take […]
Jul 03 2009
Statistics misuse in BBC News magazine
It’s far from the most egregious failure of statistics reporting, but this article in the BBC News’ Magazine section is really rather pointless. It’s clearly not meant as any sort of serious commentary on the appropriateness of the prison time given for various offences, but why even include crimes where the probable offender was killed […]
Jun 02 2009
Welcome to BrainJunk
Gosh, look at you digging through the archives. Hello, and welcome to BrainJunk; a blog I intend to update with news, commentary, and other whimsical notions I may have about science, skepticism, the role of the media, and the state of modern society. Yes, it’s going to be one of those blogs. Sorry. Anyway, I […]
