Oliver the Missing Mog

Psychics, eh? Is there anything they can’t do? They can cure/heal/treat/help cancer, use their magic to confirm police reports and wear flat caps with their arses hanging out, and they can contact dead people who never actually existed. They’re a marvellous lot!

But that’s not the full extent of the psychic realm, it seems, as the BBC reported last week:

‘An Indian psychic is helping to search for cat which went missing from a Lincolnshire village. Oliver, a four-year-old tabby and white cat, went missing from Boothby Graffoe in October.

Owner Sue Machen, 56, has paid £1,000 for Hertfordshire-based company Animal Search UK to hunt for the animal.

It has employed psychic Sarita Gupta, who is based in Bangalore, to help in the search, a move which has been criticised by a sceptics’ society’. - Source: BBC

That’s right – we’re dealing psychic pet detectives! Which, to be clear, isn’t a detective who specialises in finding psychic pets (I can’t really see how one could make a full career out of that, really), but instead people who claim to use their psychic powers to detect and locate missing pets. Obviously.

So, what’s the story here? Well, it’s pretty simple - Oliver is a white and grey tabby cat. He has a white stomach and legs, and is tabby down his back and tail. He also has a distinctive black spot on the left side of his pink nose. And he’s missing. His owner Sue Machen, ‘distraught’ (according to the Fail) turned to Animal Search UK to locate him, and – as the newspapers report – they hired Indian mystic, magic woman and general all-round superhero Sarita Gupta to locate said missing moggy.

Miss Gupta, it’s reported, had similar success a fortnight ago in finding a tabby called Chiquitita in Birmingham, so she has form in this area, as Tom Watkins of Animal Search UK attests:

‘We did a search in Birmingham recently where the owner contacted her and was told the cat would be found where children play.

‘We then got a call from somebody – and when we searched a local garden, the cat was found trapped in a Wendy house. It was quite remarkable.’ – Source: Daily Fail

Remarkable indeed. So, what’s the Gupta feeling for the location of dear Ollie?

‘Ms Gupta believes the cat has been adopted as a stray by a new family, who do not know he has an owner.’ – Source: BBC

Amazing. Or not, as the spokesperson for the sceptics society explained to the BBC:

‘Looking at the advice given by the psychic in both cases, we have the suggestion that the cat is staying with another family, and the idea that lost cats like to be near children. Both of these are incredibly obvious scenarios to suggest for a missing cat, and would likely be the suggestions you’d get from someone without psychic powers – and without the need for a fee, too’. - Source: BBC

Now there’s some REAL wisdom, if you ask me. Which they did – because the very cool thing is, when the BBC saw a story of a missing cat and a psychic, they turned to we Merseyside Skeptics for balance. I can’t begin to tell you how happy it makes me that they actually bothered putting balance into the tale. In fact, in full, what I told the BBC was:

‘Looking at the advice given by the psychic in both cases, we have the suggestion that the cat is staying with another family, and the idea that lost cats like to be near children. Both of these are incredibly obvious scenarios to suggest for a missing cat, and would likely be the suggestions you’d get from someone without psychic powers – and without the need for a fee, too.

I’m sure if the cat is living with another family, people will feel it proves Ms Gupta’s psychic skills. However, if the same advice had been given by a non-psychic party, purely as an educated guess, nobody would suggest psychic powers were at play.

Of course, if Ms Gupta were interested in demonstrating that her skills work in less predictable and obvious scenarios, the Merseyside Skeptics Society would be only to happy to help put her powers to a fair and reasonable test’. – Source: Erm, Me.

And I stand by that – if Ms Gupta, or any other psychic, is in any way interested in demonstrating their talents, please contact me and we’ll discuss it: press@merseysideskeptics.org.uk. I check my email obsessively, and promise I’ll get back to you immediately.

Still, that’s not quite everything, where our little Ollie is concerned. Never one to shy away from a bit of research, I thought I’d check out what Animal Search UK have to say about the case of Oliver and the psychic. Fortunately, their website prominently displays their contact details, so I thought ‘why not?’

Interestingly enough, I was able to get straight through to Tom Watkins, who’s the lead investigator in the case of missing Oliver. He was happy to discuss the case, although entirely reticent to give me any details not already in the public domain (which is understandable, I suppose). First of all, I asked if employing psychics is the norm for their pet searching – as it turns out, they don’t hire psychics, they only consider psychic information when provided to them via the owners independently consulting a witch of their own accord. So strike one for the Daily Fail, who titled their whole piece ‘Distraught owner of missing cat pays team of PSYCHICS £1,000 to find her moggy’.

Further, when I asked how much stock his company places in the information of psychics, Tom told me: ‘We listen to them if the owners want us to, we don’t place too much stock in what they say, but we don’t discount anything’.

Interestingly, Tom was also able to confirm to me that the moggy in Birmingham was indeed located pretty much exactly where the psychic said it would be – in the sense that it was somewhere that children play. OK, sure a wendy house seems like a great hit there (although, of course, missing cats are more likely to be found by/with children than you’d imagine, I expect). However, Tom would not share any other details of that case, when I asked. Data protection? Possibly. I’ll come back to that.

Even more interestingly, Tom seemed to be a little confused as to the timelines involved with missing Ollie. As the papers have all reported, the psychic has been drafted in to help. When I asked Tom when this involvement occurred, he told me it was last week (roughly the time of the article). Which I found a little interesting, given that the website ‘ThisIsLincolnshire’ reported on Sue’s contact with a psychic back in December 2009. As I say, not one to shy away from the research. So, of course, I mentioned this to Tom… who confirmed that Sue contacted psychics to locate her missing cat 6 months ago. And, amazingly, the cat still isn’t found. Which says an awful lot about the quality of the psychic’s information, if you ask me.

So, bearing all of this in mind, one particular question springs to mind: Why is it that a story which essentially boils down to ‘psychic fails to help find missing cat after 6 months of involvement’ makes the national press, while supposedly a week before the story the same psychic successfully helped locate a missing cat in Birmingham, in a tale that’s not even been reported in local media in Birmingham?

Why is it that the success story gets no column inches, whereas the ongoing and unsuccessful search makes headlines across the world?

And why is there not a single report of a cat called Chiquitita in Birmingham, a missing cat being found in a wendy house, or Animal Search UK locating a missing cat in Birmingham? Isn’t it strange that even the company themselves don’t feature this amazing success story on their website, despite having a ‘Latest News‘ page and a ‘Happy Tails‘ page?

Is it me, or does anyone sense a shaggy cat story here?

Finally, just to cap off the story, it’s worth noting that the tale gets a whopping 850-word write-up in the Mail, in the most glowing and positive of terms, with the psychic angle largely peripheral throughout. As would be consistent, say, with a piece of PR.

Apparently, Croatian doctors are baffled after a teenage girl who fell into a mysterious coma woke up speaking fluent German. The teenager has been unable to speak Croatian – although can understand it when it is spoken to her – and now communicates only in German.

Pretty off-the-wall I think you’ll agree. This is the kind of thing that would have steadfast believers in past lives screaming “Proof!” in very loud voices, particularly if this unfortunate teenager didn’t speak German beforehand. Going by the tone of the article, you would think that this is what had actually happened. That would be a bona-fide miracle. However, despite it’s ‘mysterious event’ tone, the article is quick to point out that the girl in fact did know ‘a bit’ of German, although apparently her usage of the language following the coma was far superior to the mastery of the language she had when she was intially taken ill.

Apparently. (I’m getting used to that word, now.)

The parents of the girl, a thirteen-year-old from the Southern town of Knin, said that their daughter had only just started studying German at school and had been trying to read German books and watch German television – but had never been that good at german.

Yes. She was ‘studying’ it, ‘reading’ it and ‘watching’ TV programs in it, but despite all that she was, you know, a bit rubbish…

Excuse me while I prop up my dying sense of hope in a rational world and try to shake it violently awake.

The article is filled with references to the “mysterious coma” and “the unusual case”, and speaks of “getting to the bottom of the mystery”. It really tries its best to make it all seem as mystical and impossible-seeming as it can. Despite this, they are forced in their final paragraph to point out that the coma only lasted twenty-four hours and was probably caused by extremely high body temperature. So it seems as if the doctors aren’t quite as baffled as the Daily Fail/BellyLaugh axis of evil suggests.

In fact, the hospital director, Dujomir Marasovic, said:

“You never know when recovering from such a trauma how the brain will react. Obviously we have some theories although at the moment we are limited in what we can say because we have to respect the privacy of the patient.”

I like to think that the girl was a secret foreign languages junkie, staying up late in her room at night with a torch under the covers, speaking fluent German to herself.

Of course, the case is still unusual. A psychiatrist involved with the case, Dr Mijo Milas, wisely pointed out that:

“In earlier times this would have been referred to as a miracle; we prefer to think that there must be a logical explanation – it’s just that we haven’t found it yet.”

Fair enough, and about as skeptical as you get in the Daily Fail/BellyLaugh. Unfortunately, the wise Dr Milas then goes on to say:

“There are references to cases where people who have been seriously ill and perhaps in a coma have woken up being able to speak other languages – sometimes even the Biblical languages such as that in old Babylon or Egypt – at the moment though any speculation would remain just that – speculation – so it’s better to continue tests until we actually know something.”

Damn right it is! Personally I’d love to see ANY evidence of people suddenly speaking ancient languages following a coma, because I’m willing to bet money that if anyone ever did, they were probably students of ancient languages!

Gaahh…

That was the last gasp of my hope in a rational world.

Now, to the girl’s condition itself. The brain does funny things. People with brain injuries can lose short term memory, forget their own families, forget how to speak, all kinds of bizarre and unusual things. Severe stutterers can sometimes sing and speak their second languages fluently. Aphasia sufferers speak the wrong words because they simply can’t access the right ones, even though they’re attempting to make perfect sense, and grammatically they do. If this coma affected the parts of the girl’s brain which dealt with speech and language, I see no technical reason why something like this couldn’t happen. You don’t even need to be personally ‘fluent’ in the language as such. There is a gap between the amount of information you absorb and how efficiently and capably you can use that information. This girl may very well have read and heard more German words than she could personally recall consciously in a conversation. Somewhere she will have taken in that information, but just not immediately processed it for her conscious mind.

In addition, I would probably dispute the supposed high level of German she purportedly now speaks. That to me sounds like simple exaggeration, provided by those around the girl and then amplified by the reporters themselves. However, I can’t know that for sure, so I’ll leave that.

This story is fascinating and amazing on its own. Even if she woke only speaking the five words of German she knew and none of her first language, that would be fascinating enough on its own. It infuriates me when newspapers feel they have to portray stories like this in almost mystical terms, as if they’re reporting on a miracle. No: give us the facts, we’ll decide whether it’s a miracle or not. This tends to happen a lot with stories from abroad. I suspect it is because it makes it more difficult for readers and other journalists to verify the truthfulness of those stories. Indeed, I tried my best to find a source for this story outside of the identical articles in the Daily Fail/BellyLaugh but found absolutely nothing.

In fact, I’m not sure it even exists. Maybe it’s all just made up.

What a miracle!

Fake orgasm story? Trot out a Meg Ryan pic

To help me vent my frustration and ongoing obsession with the dodgy PR stories that make the papers on a daily basis, I thought I’d start a bit of a ‘BadPR’ series, taking a look at stories as they appear in the papers, the press release that inspired them (often word-for-word inspiration, no less), and the companies who benefit. Regular readers of the blog will know the score, and irregular readers of the blog will soon pick it up, so without further intro I give you today’s offering:

Ex girls top at fake fun

The fake orgasm capital of Britain is Exeter, claims a new survey. A whopping 57 per cent of women in the Devon town admit to feigning it. Meanwhile, girls in Oxford were happiest in bed with only a third faking their big O. Nationally, one in 10 women admits acting most times. And a fifth said they thought about another man if they wanted satisfaction. – Source: The People

And, alternatively:

Poor show, chaps: Survey reveals nearly one in ten women fake it between the sheets

It is enough to make even the most confident lover a little worried. One in ten women fake an orgasm almost every single time they make love, according to a poll. Researchers found that 48 per cent of British women had faked the height of passion. But an Oscar-worthy 9 per cent admitted it happened every time they have sex. Seven per cent have ended a relationship because they were unsatisfied in bed but just one in ten of those told their partner the real reason for the break-up.  

Not surprisingly, one in five women claims to be extremely unhappy with their sex life, with 16 per cent complaining about a lack of foreplay, and 11 saying their partner orgasms too quickly. Even more worrying for men, the poll of 3,000 women revealed that almost 38 per cent of women reckon their partner would struggle to tell the difference between a real and fake orgasm. One in five women even admitted to thinking about another man in bed to help them reach orgasm, with a famous actor or a male friend the most popular people to fantasise about. - Source: Daily Mail

So, answers on a postcard – who do you think’s behind this? Let’s take a look at the themes of the story – half of women in Exeter are sexually dissatisfied, 10% of UK women aren’t fulfilled by their men, a fifth want other men; men are bad at sex, men don’t know what they’re doing, even men who are confident in bed should worry, men’s poor performance is often the reason for the end of a relationship.

Pretty much an anti-men message there, then. The aim of both articles seems to be to undermine men and make them doubt their performance. Any clues yet? Let’s take a look at the press release the articles were taken from:

FAKE IT

One in ten women fake an orgasm almost every single time they have sex, a new study has found. Researchers found that a whopping 48 per cent of British women have faked it in bed, with nine per cent admitting they do it most of the time, or even every time they have sex. Seven per cent have even dumped their other half because they didn’t satisfy them in bed, but just one in ten of those told them the real reason for the break-up. Not surprisingly, one in five women claims to be extremely unhappy with their sex life, with 16 per cent complaining about a lack of foreplay, and 11 saying their partner orgasms too quickly. - Source: One Poll (bless em)

Wow, that’s uncannily almost word-for-word what appeared in the papers! Funny that. Read on…

A spokesman for Stimul8, a fruit flavoured energy soft drink reputed for its aphrodisiac and performance enhancing ingredients, which commissioned the survey said: ”It appears guys in the UK have their work cut out if one in five women are saying they are extremely unhappy with their sex life. ’But it’s not all down to the blokes as women need to communicate a bit more with their partner to let them know what it is they really want. ’Although it may be down to tiredness or stress, if a guy isn’t doing it right, he’s not going to know unless he is told.”

I think we can stop there. “Stimul8, a fruit flavoured energy soft drink reputed for its aphrodisiac and performance enhancing ingredients”. So this is all to peddle a soft drink with dubious ‘reputed’ claims to aphrodisiac properties. Interesting wording – note how the claims are not only softened by ‘reputed’, they’re also attached to the ingredients, not the drink. Because claiming it about the drink, would require substantiation, and would be liable to ASA complaints. However, it seems you can makes claims about the ‘reputed’ benefits of ingredients, without needing to back it up with proof.

Do you like sex? Are you a susceptible moron? Then you should buy... Stimul8!

For completion, let’s take a look at the Stimul8 website – ooohh, bikini-clad girls, loud Nuts-style fonts and lots of shots of the magic liquid (erm, I mean Stimul8 there!), all hidden behind an age-verification warning. Attached to a press release aimed at undermining a guy’s sexual confidence. In order to sell a drink which claims to ‘enhance performance’:

Stimul8® is designed to enhance your performance. It comes in a discreet 60ml bottle so you can give yourself the edge anytime, anyplace, anywhere. We think this is the fruitiest tasting shot product on the market.

This fruity little number is packed with a special blend of leaves, roots and berries derived from Damiana, Korean Ginseng, Echinacea, Schizandra and Ginkgo Biloba – all renowned for their aphrodisiac properties. Add to that energy boosting L-Arginine, Caffeine, Anthocyanin, plus sugars and you’ve got a heady liquid performance enhancer.

I checked – all of those ingredients are indeed ‘renowned’ for their aphrodisiac properties (if by ‘renowned’ you accept ‘sometimes claimed to have’)… however, try and find a herb that hasn’t been claimed to have aphrodisiac properties. Really, try – I did: Marapuama, Catuba, Cajueiro, Suma, Maca, Avena Sativa, Yohumbune, Ajwain (aka Bishop’s Weed), Ashwaghandha, Shitawari and even Hemp (hemp for fuck’s sake!) were all claimed to have such properties on a single page I picked out of Google. It turns out, if you’re going to make up a property for a herb, a good one to pick is one that men are prone to be susceptible to – sexual performance. And with newspapers, PR departments and fucking soft drinks trying to perpetuate these fears for gain, it’s easy to see why this sexual hang-up persists.

Thanks for playing.

Sources

• The People –  http://www.people.co.uk/news/tm_headline=ex-girls-top-at-fake-fun%26method=full%26objectid=22109518%26siteid=93463-name_page.html
• Daily Mail – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1256134/Poor-chaps-Survey-reveals-nearly-women-fake-sheets.html
• OnePoll – http://www.onepoll.com/press-archive/survey-reveals–women-fake-it

Speaking of the Daily Mail and my own relative silence of late, here’s something uber-old-hat by now (news these days moves so fast) but I felt I had to write it up partly because a) it’s batshit insane, b) it’s a good example of how fallacious arguments are entirely interchangeably applicable to a whole range of topics and c) it gives me a chance to make some cheap gags:

Vaccines ‘are making our dogs sick as vets cash in’ - Source: Daily Mail (obviously).

See what I mean? Replace ‘dogs’ for ‘babies’ and ‘vets’ for ‘doctors’, and you’ve got a textbook anti-vaccination statement, a la Miss McCarthy. And it doesn’t stop there:

“Vaccines given to dogs are making them ill, a pet charity claimed yesterday. Profit-hungry drug companies and vets are ‘frightening’ dog owners into inoculating their pets more often than necessary, according to Canine Health Concern.”

If this isn’t PR for the Canine Health Concern charity, I don’t know what is. And it doesn’t stop there, either:

“Some puppies have developed conditions including autism and epilepsy after a raft of injections, it warns”

Yep – doggie autism. Doggie vaccines cause doggie autism, or so says the Canine Health Concern charity. Now, a few things to bear in mind:

• Vaccines don’t cause autism. That’s established fact.
• Dogs don’t have autism, or at least if they do it’s not caused by vaccines.
• Canine Health Concern is not a very large charity, and does not often get national news coverage the size their ‘Vaccines cause autism’ story has.

Those facts established, let’s continue in the Mail:

“Catherine O’Driscoll, from the charity, said: ‘We are not anti-vaccination. What we are saying is that currently our pets are receiving far too many. The latest scientific research shows that after the first course of injections as a puppy most dogs are immune against these diseases for at least seven years, if not for life. Every year pet vaccination companies hold National Vaccination Month, a national campaign when pet owners whose boosters have lapsed by 18 months or more are terrified into having their pet jabbed.”

Well, I’m sorry, Catherine, but that sounds pretty anti-vaccine to me. And it’s surely easy to see just how pot/kettle/black it is to speak of animal owners who are being terrified by Big Pharma into having their pet jabbed… with stuff that will give them AUTISM!!!!1!!11!!

This, of course, is the same non-anti-vaccination Catherine O’Driscoll who has written two anti-vaccination and anti-medicine books (‘What Vets Don’t Tell You about Vaccines‘ and ‘Shock to the System: The Facts about Animal Vaccination, Pet Food and How to Keep Your Pets Healthy‘) - the first page of one mentions going to a homeopathic vet who opened her eyes to how things really are; page two of the other book has Catherine admit she was a ‘science virgin’ and that ‘most of us – even the scientists – are science virgins’. Not to mention this beauty on page three:

“What nobody understands, and nobody seems to know, is how great the vaccination risk is. Will my dog die if I give him a vaccine? Will my child have brain damage if I give her a vaccine?” – Source: Shock to the System

Answer: No, Catherine, he won’t, and she won’t, and thanks for equating your dog’s life to that of your child’s.

So it’s hard to take Catherine seriously as a genuine source of unbiased, educated information. Well, it’s hard, unless you’re the Mail I mean. But then again, the Mail also ran with the back-up, super-proof tale of Charlie the Autistic Spaniel, whose owner told of his personality post-vaccination:

“Shutting a door or moving the washing basket terrified him. Then sometimes, despite calling his name, he wouldn’t even come to you… I simply cannot think of another explanation for the sudden change in his personality”

I can: He’s a fucking dog.

Elsewhere in the article, the Mail merrily quotes the letter produced by the crazy CHC and signed by ’17 vets and other pet experts’. Note that’s 17 total, not 17 vets AND other pet experts. And Catherine counts as a pet expert, remember. I wonder how many vets would sign a letter backing the use of vaccines… Fortunately, I know a vet, who I got straight onto the phone to – MSS member and sometime-blogger ‘Redwinelover‘, who quickly put paid to the notion that, as O’Driscoll suggests, a simple blood test would determine whether an animal needed a booster shot:

“It would actually be much more expensive to pay for the blood test to see if the dog is covered for the various diseases than it is to give one booster, as the booster shot can cover all the necessary vaccinations. There’s a certain percentage of dogs that will need the vaccination each time, so the best practice is to vaccinate yearly – after an extra 6 months past the booster date, 5-10%” of dogs are no longer immune; after an extra 12 months past the booster date that rises to 10-20%.

Also, vets are culpable if they were to forego vaccinating an animal and it develop the illness.”

What’s more, she confirmed to me that dogs don’t develop autism - or at least that there’s nowhere near enough personality work done on dogs to determine what robust diagnostic criteria would be for doggie autism.

So, I’ve been pretty disparaging of the CHC and O’Driscoll so far, and perhaps that seems harsh or ad-hom-y. Well, let’s take a brief look at the CHC website, and see if the criticism is justified.

“CHC advocates real food for dogs.  That is, food that Mother Nature has designed, over millions of years, and which has made the species thrive for millions of years.”

Ooh, an appeal-to-nature fallacy, combined with the sheer idiocy to overlook that ‘Mother Nature’ isn’t the one responsible for how food and vegetables are today – instead millenia of selective breeding by humans have moulded crops into the food we know today.

“Emotional Freedom Techniques - Based on impressive new discoveries involving the body’s subtle energies, Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) has been clinically effective in thousands of cases for Trauma & Abuse, Stress & Anxiety, Fears & Phobias, Depression, Addictive Cravings, Children’s Issues and hundreds of physical symptoms including headaches, body pains and breathing difficulties.”

Ooh, some mystical reference to ‘subtle energies’ and a healing system so completely bonkers in adults that we’ve featured it several times.

And what’s this in their ‘Complementary Healthcare’ list?

Animal Life and Death:

So, when your animals don’t heal, despite what you see as your best efforts, it is not that you are failing in your duty, or seeming not to be capable of healing anyone or keeping anyone safe, it is just that they see their going as the next best step, their own path to healing of the spirit rather than of the physical body.

Back Flower Remedies:

There are 38 Flower Remedies, developed by Dr Bach with the aim of raising our vibrations so that we can hear our Spiritual Selves and fulfil our life purposes… If the dog becomes fixated on something that happened – for example, he heard a loud bang outside and now refuses to go into the garden, then White Chestnut can help him get the distressing event out of his mind and carry on with life.

Contacts – including details for:

I think it’s fair to say O’Driscoll and the Canine Health Concern charity aren’t the most reliable, sensible, sane sources of animal health information. Quick, someone call the Mail and tell them they’ve made a mistake, I’m positive they’ll issue a correction…

Yes, Tommy Cooper, in a Steak Pie. What of it?

Over the years we’re seen God in a toilet door, the virgin Mary on wet windows and jesus burnt into a cheese sandwich. Not to mention Mother Teresa the croissant, and all manner of other religious figures mystically coming through in a variety of unusual places, which is definitely down to the fact that God exists.

However, it’s not just the religious that get to come back from the grave to haunt our furniture, foodstuffs and everyday lives – a few months ago we covered on the show an image of the late Michael Jackson which had appeared in an ultrasound, so it seems of late it’s becoming easier to pass through the mystical doorway and re-enter this world, albeit confined to poor-quality images on mundane objects.

Which is why it should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone to see this amazing, wondrous, blessed meat pie, complete with image of 70s comedy legend Tommy Cooper.

Yeah, Tommy Cooper. And yes, a meat pie.

What’s more, miraculously and in no way suspiciously, the pastry effigy was found in the village of Trethomas – just a couple of miles from Cooper’s hometown of Caerphilly. Which proves it’s definitely genuine. Honest. I mean, it even featured in the Daily Mail…

Chip shop owner Crad Jones discovered the image when eating his pie and chips in his shop in Caerphilly, South Wales, which was Cooper’s home town.

Mr Jones, 45, said he called the manufacturers, Peter’s Pies, when he noticed the silhouette so they could document his find.

Of course, it’s in no way suspicious that the manufacturer of the pie gets a nice big mention right there at the start of the story. This pie coincidentally had a photo of Tommy Cooper in it – of course the first thing you’re gonna want to know is which company the late funnyman chose to bless with his image.

Mr Jones said: ‘I was about to eat my lunch in the shop, as I normally do. I got my Peter’s pie, which I always have with chips and peas, and noticed the resemblance of Tommy Cooper on the bottom of it. The comparison was amazing. It was definitely Tommy Cooper.

Again, it’s in no way suspicious that Mr Jones referred to it as a ‘Peter’s pie’, I mean we all always cite the name of the pie company when we talk about what pie we’re eating. And we all look at the bottom of the pie before we tuck in, just in case there’s a mystical image of a deceased 70s funnyman there.

The story, quite rightly, got picked up by all manner of news sources, with the Metro, the Daily Mail, and other news sources using almost identical wording throughout their whole articles, which might sound suspiciously like the hand of PR but in fact makes perfect sense, because once one newspaper has gotten the details of this completely true story totally correct why bother writing it in your own words for other papers?

Chad Jones, Tommy Cooper, Meaningless PR-Piece.

The story also got picked up in The Telegraph, which also dutifully and in no way suspiciously happened to mention the name of the chip shop Crad Jones runs:

Mr Jones owns The Codfather’s Plaice in Trethomas, Caerphilly, where Tommy was born in 1921.

But that makes complete sense because if he’s been blessed enough to make this miracle discovery, then his business deserves the extra public recognition a mention in a national newspaper attached to a weird and suspiciously-PR-like story would give him. What’s more, the following suspiciously-PR-heavy sentence from the Telegraph is, again, in no way unusual for a national newspaper puporting to be telling genuine news:

Fun-loving Mr Jones saw the funny side of Cooper in the £1.60 premier steak pie made by local baker’s Peters Pies.He said: “Tommy has always been in the upper crust as far as I’m concerned. “But I ate the pie straight after the pictures were taken. It went down a treat – just like that!”

Newspapers often run prices of pastries from prominent bakers amongst their re-telling of the day’s events – again, this isn’t blatantly PR at all.

The story was also picked up by local news too, with Walesonline.co.uk noting:

Staff at the PR company who distributed the picture were quick to deny yesterday that the image of Cooper on the pie was an elaborate publicity stunt.

Ah, it was distributed by a PR company. And featured in a range of credulous newspapers with near-identical wording. And featured very prominently the names of two businesses, one of which is a national chain. And even included a price guide for the national chain’s goods. And the photo is completely and utterly unconvincing, as if someone has just burned the vague shape of Tommy Cooper onto the bottom of the pie and thought ‘fuck it, I won’t bother trying to fuzz out these too-straight edges that look a lot like a stencilled or branded image, because people are stupid enough to buy this as a real news item’.

This MIGHT be PR. Hmm.

Seriously, nothing. Age, hair colour, eye colour, general shape – all alien to us men. Really. It’s remarkable we’re even able to pick them out of a police line-up. Although try asking them what the hell they’re doing in a police line-up, and you’re in trouble. Bloody Women. Harumph. Oops, that might have been wildly sterotypically ignorantly sexist towards the end there, and I can’t go around like that…

…because clearly wild, ignorant, sexist stereotyping is the Daily Mail’s job, as evidenced by their stunningly-accurate-and-definitely-not-made-up research on the amount we fellas know about our missuses:

“Think he knows you? Think again! How millions of men don’t know their partner’s dress size, date of birth, or even eye colour“

Millions of men! Millions of men don’t know their partner’s date of birth! If the UK population is 60 million, let’s simplify things and say that 50% are male (ratios tend to favour a higher female population, bloody women harumph and all that), that’s 30 million men at most, of which millions don’t know their partners’ eye colour! That’s assuming all have partners. And are straight. Realistically, we’re probably talking about 15 or 20 million men who are straight and attached. So the Mail’s ‘millions’ of ignorant men speaks to a real epidemic! What bastards we are!

ORRRR the Mail made it up. Hmm. Let’s read on beyond the headline, and see if we come out the other side.

“For despite their claims to the contrary, millions of British men are completely clueless about their partner’s clothes size, her natural hair colour and even the colour of her eyes.”

Well, that seems solid enough. Not sure where the Mail got their figures – did I miss a survey? Was there a census I wasn’t told about? I’m always missing those, I mean Family Fortunes asks 100 people stuff every week and they’ve never asked me anything (quick aside – I love the idea of finding out the location of the Family Fortunes survey, gathering 99 mates and then REALLY fucking with their figures… I need to see the day when the question is ‘We asked 100 people to name a flavour of ice cream’ and the answers include Dead Bird, Back to the Future Part II and Shame. Take that, surveys).

Back to the Mail, and their sexist gibberish:

“The failure to pay attention can, at best, lead to awkward conversations. And for some hapless men, not knowing these everyday details can cause major problems with almost one in 10 women ending their relationship or getting perilously close to ending it and a further eight per cent having serious rows”

Wait, 1 in 10 women ‘ending their relationship or getting perilously close to ending it’ and ‘eight per cent having serious rows’? Well that hardly sounds like the outrageous levels of neglect and ignorance put upon these poor creatures by we heartless, unthoughtful, brutish males. Only 2 in 25 couples have serious rows, and 1 in 10 come close to breaking up? That sounds actually pretty positive… 90% of people stay together, even despite the male’s inability to remember his partner’s name or where he left his shoes or how to breathe or whatever else the Mail think men forget. Those numbers seem way too low for real life, let alone life in the nightmarish scenario depicted by the Mail.

“The full extent of men’s failure to pay attention emerged from a survey of 2,000 men conducted for The Perfume Shop”

And the penny drops. The ‘millions’ of men is an extrapolation from a pretty small (comparatively) sample size. The study is a meaningless survey, funded by a high-street chain with a marked interest in the Day Of Pinkandloveandhugsandwearegreattogetherseeeveryoneseeseesee (TM). I wonder what else is on the list of things The Perfume Shop scientifically-discovered (ie made up) that men don’t know about their girlfriends:

“However when questioned 12 per cent did not know their partner’s eye colour, 10 per cent did not know their partner’s date of birth and a further eight per cent did not know their natural hair colour.

One in three had no idea what her favourite perfume is. A further 30 per cent was oblivious to their partner’s bra size, 11 per cent did not know their job title and 12 per cent did not know the name of their wife or girlfriend’s best friend”

Wow, apparently a shop that sells perfume thinks men need help in buying perfume for their girlfriends who like perfume. And as if to ram home the point:

“This lack of basic knowledge can turn shopping for gifts into a minefield”

Now, clearly there’s the obvious easy angle on this – a non-event story timed to coincide with the time men will be looking for gifts for their girlfriends, framed in a way to encourage women to ask men certain facts about themselves, including the name of the perfume they like. Chided-and-chastised-Man then slopes off to those helpful people at the shop of perfume, who turn their minefield into a cakewalk yaddah yaddah yaddah. That bits very clear, very old-hat, very Flat Earth News.

But there’s more to this. For one, the complete bastardisation of the maths involved – while the story tells us that millions of men don’t know a range of facts about their loved one, in actuality we have a small number of men who didn’t know individual facts. The article/PR-puff-piece doesn’t treat the scores for those facts individually, but takes the separate percentages and represents them as a majority – a bit like saying 60% of people have dark hair, 50% have brown eyes, therefore %110 of people have dark hair or brown eyes. Erm, no.

We also have the opposite implication in part too – that men know nothing, a combination of forgotten features. Yet one of the 240/2000 men who didn’t know their partner’s eye colour is not necessarily also in the 220/2000 who didn’t know their girlfriend’s job title. On top of that, did they not know, or could they not remember? Two very different scenarios. If I was asked the name of my girlfriend’s best friend, I’d have to answer I don’t know – which does she like best? I doubt she’d make a choice, why should I? Did that scenario get captured in the stats, or did it go down as a male-fail? 30% didn’t know their partner’s bra size – is that because they’re terrible men, or because they’re not obsessed with cup size? Personally I think it’s actually pretty cool that way more men knew their girlfriend’s job title and best friend’s name than the size of her boobs – that’s actual intimacy there.

“Researchers revealed a healthy six out of ten males believed they knew their partner inside out”

Even better! So 40% would say they don’t know their partner’s every detail, yet only 10% couldn’t recall their girlfriend’s date of birth (22.07.1981, by the way!) – 30% of guys give themselves way too little credit, then.

What’s most annoying about this made up PR nonsense is the associated opportunity for relationship ‘experts’ to tell women why their men are useless, in sweeping ignorant statements:

Relationship expert Francine Kaye said the crux of the problem was that whereas knowledge of small details is important to woman, it is unimportant to men.

‘These things are vitally important to women. But men are wired differently. We’re not talking about one in a hundred men who fail to notice basic details. We’re talking about the majority.

‘However, you can’t expect men to change without prompting and reminding. You need to be a pragmatist”

Francine – if, in you’re experience, men fail to notice basic details, maybe it’s because you’re an ignorant sexist moron? It’s OK, we can’t expect you to change that without prompting and reminding. We’re pragmatic too. For anyone who’s not aware, Francine is ‘The Divorce Doctor’ and appears on Channel 5′s procession of idiocy ‘The Wright Stuff’ from time to time, to dispense her self-help guff like a particularly misandric mould periodically spluttering out it’s sexist spores. And she’s not alone:

Michelle D’vaz, spokeswoman for The Perfume Shop, agreed men would benefit from learning basic details about their partners.

‘The results of the survey are actually quite shocking,’ she said.

‘The basic details like date of birth and hair colour are what you expect your partner to know about you, but it seems many men don’t. This is especially the case with everyday things like eye colour, or the perfume they spray on each morning’.

Here’s a few subtle details I’ve noticed, Michelle:

1. You work for The Perfume Shop, and you’re advice is to pay attention to what perfume girls spray on each morning.
2. You say many men don’t know the date of birth or hair colour of their partner, but the stats don’t support that.
3. You work for The Perfume Shop, and are therefore in no way an expert or authority on relationships, the male psychology or statistics.
4. Your company paid for a cheap 2000 person survey, mangled the stats into something sexist, extrapolated the results into something nationwide, and then threw it out there to try and sell perfume.

And they say we men don’t notice the little things…

*For anyone who wondered, I correctly answered 9/10 for definite, and was pretty confident about the 10th.

Today’s headline: newspaper accuses pharmaceutical companies of manufacturing the panic about the swine flu pandemic to sell more drugs.

This, of course, is the same newspaper that did its best at the time to report the facts and not create panic with articles such as this, this, this and this. I can’t bring myself to look at the articles that the Daily Express was putting out at the time: if the Mail is the malicious kid at school who spread nasty rumours about people, the Express is the gullible, panicky person he talks to first.

The article, in its rush to expose how Big Pharma leaned on the World Health Organisation to get swine flu bumped up to pandemic status, ignores the fact that swine flu met the WHO’s very basic criteria for a pandemic. Like any good conspiracy theory, it starts to unravel when you actually look at the facts. If there was any pressure from some Tamiflu-selling corporate mastermind it was fairly pointless, since swine flu far and away fit the bill for a pandemic anyway. Avian flu didn’t, and neither did SARS – two glitzy media diseases that you’d think would be ripe for making money.

The real spleen-buster is the Mail complaining that in the UK there have been “just 251 deaths overall”. They sound terribly disappointed by this. Poor show, swine flu. There is, of course, no mention of the UK’s excellent free healthcare services and the fact that worldwide about 13,000 people have died, but that’s not even the important bit.

The real danger of swine flu – as told to us by actual scientists at the time – was not that it was particularly more lethal than flu, but that it was particularly virulent and seemed to be predominantly striking young healthy individuals rather than the young, elderly and infirm. The Mail seems to miss this point completely despite the fact that even a cursory search on the WHO’s website throws up this press release which notes:

“Globally, we have good reason to believe that this pandemic, at least in its early days, will be of moderate severity… Worldwide, the number of deaths is small. Each and every one of these deaths is tragic, and we have to brace ourselves to see more. However, we do not expect to see a sudden and dramatic jump in the number of severe or fatal infections.”

This is fairly typical of science articles in the tabloids: scientists are amazing boffins who create wonderful treatments that evaporate fat and boost our ‘friendly bacteria’ until they make a public health warning, at which point it’s time to panic. When the imagined scare turns out to be fairly minor – just as the scientists initially suggested it would be – the papers take umbrage, puffing up their feathers and squawking loudly about how horrible it was to trick them. I prefer to think that all tabloid journalists have some kind of brain defect that renders them without short-term memory, but in truth they just know that nothing sells papers and breeds loyalty to a newspaper than the panic -blame cycle. They whip people up into a state and then when no threat materialises they cast themselves as great truth-seeking heroes, rooting out the responsible parties and making their readers feel so protected that they forget who it was who got them agitated in the first place.

It’s hard to see how anyone other than the papers could emerge victorious from this. Had the government been blasé about the whole thing and not stocked up on flu medication that would have been an even worse blunder. Raging aporkalypse just around the corner, but the government won’t give you the medicine you need! Practically every line about this story I read, I want to grab the person who wrote it and shake them, shouting “but it was you who created the ‘atmosphere of panic’ in the first place!”

Just like the MMR hoax, swine flu was turned from a moderate, legitimate health concern into a raging apocalyptic panic-fest by the newspapers, who will now proceed to lambast the people who “lied” and talked it up. As ever scientists get the blame, initially because the reality of the situation wasn’t jazzy enough for panic coverage and now because the panic coverage doesn’t match the reality. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the British press. They aren’t the worst though. While that article is a depressing example of today’s ‘quality’ journalism, nothing quite beats the heart-shrivelling horror of the comments below. The worst-rated comment?

“The pandemic was real under the definitions as set down by international scientific standards and vaccination can only be a good thing. Drugs companies are businesses so they are bound to make money but I don’t believe they engineered or influenced the decision making processes.”

Sorry, Phil from Edinburgh. This isn’t the right place for a rational run-through of the facts. This is a newspaper.

Usually when the Daily Mail says something stupid I read about via friends. It can be anything from a mangling of a political issue to bigotry, hypocrisy or racism. In this case they have attacked scientists as a group. And they can fuck right off.

The row between the Government and its scientific advisers blazes on like an out-of-control forest fire. It began with that difficult customer Professor David Nutt, who was chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. He told the Home Office that alcohol and tobacco were more dangerous than the banned substance cannabis, and horse-riding was more of a risk to your health than ecstasy.

…and backed what he said up with facts…

But he was not content simply to give advice, of course. What he appeared to want to do was to dictate to the Government, and when it refused to acknowledge his infallibility, Professor Nutt started to break ranks and to denounce the country’s law on drugs.

Right, here we get into the anti-intellectualism. A high-ranking scientific advisor who understands the issue better than other people (that’s why he’s advising!!!) sees his advice completely ignored. It is not his job to go to the press and seek that the government actually pay attention to evidence when formulating policy, though. He is only paid to “advise”. However, so strong was his feeling on this issue that he sought to make his views known in an attempt to change things for the better.

Now he has been sacked, the scientific establishment is in an uproar of self-pity and self-importance. How dare mere politicians question their judgments? They are scientists, aren’t they? And what scientists say must be taken as true.

Scientific advisors should be listened to and their advice should form the basis of policy. That’s why they are there! If scientific advisors are just for show or just to be heard when they agree with what the government want to do, what is the point of having them?

The trouble with a ‘scientific’ argument, of course, is that it is not made in the real world, but in a laboratory by an unimaginative academic relying solely on empirical facts.

That’s right, the Daily Mail is criticising scientists for using “facts” too much. I agree – we should all be like the Mail and use puffed-up, bile-fuelled hyperbole and wild speculation instead!

It is one thing to argue Professor Nutt’s case in a university common room or over a Hampstead dining table, but another to translate his arguments to murkier parts of our society.

And here we are again – scientists apparently just sit in ivory towers and cannot possibly conceive of anything beyond those shining walls. Bollocks. Social sciences research can be frontline stuff. Having spoken to academics who conduct research on drugs, the sex trade, gender issues, etc., they collect data from “the field”, i.e. out in the big wide world where these problems are actually affecting lives.

Try saying that ecstasy is safe in the sink estates of our big cities, where police, social workers and teachers work to improve the lives of young people at the bottom of the heap. Try saying it to those who see, every single day, the devastation wrought not only on the youngsters themselves, but on whole communities by the casual abuse of drugs.

This is a strawman argument – Prof Nutt never said ecstasy was safe, but that it was as safe as horse riding. Equally hurling yourself off a ten storey building is as safe as throwing yourself in front of a bus. Stupid appeal to the public’s emotional response.

If you add together all the winos and self-destructive alcoholics, then throw in the smokers who’ve died of respiratory or cardiac disease, the total will far outstrip the number of young people who die after taking an ecstasy pill – and you could conclude from this that smoking and drinking are more dangerous than ecstasy.

More of the same strawman argument… He said that cannabis, not ecstasy, was safer than alcohol or tobacco. I think if you do the stats on the actual comparison that he made that you will find that Prof Nutt is ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!

That does not mean it is safe to take ecstasy nor that it is desirable to tolerate a druggy culture among the impressionable young.

He’s not advocating that. The journalist has put words in his mouth to misrepresent his position.

This whole debate between David Nutt and the Government is about much more than the simple academic question over the relative dangers of cigarettes, drink and other drugs. What is on trial is the reputation of science.

I agree that the wider issue of government advice from leading scientific advisors is something that needs to be discussed. The Bush administration was renowned for censoring scientific research (particularly on climate change) because it did not fit with their policies. Why is this any different?

Of course, it would be folly to deny that we all owe a vast debt to scientific discoveries, made by patient, intellectually rigorous men and women over the past few centuries. Just think what we owe to developments in medicine, let alone all those technologies we now depend upon, from cars to computers. Nor would I ever wish to suppress scientific inquiry or to undervalue the good which scientists have done for our world.

What’s the point in doing scientific research if you don’t implement it in policy? I am sure that the Mail has at some stage criticised “blue skies” research for having no apparent application to the real world (a charge which is utterly false) so why criticise it also when it does?

But there is an increasing presumption among many intelligent and good-hearted people that science is an absolute truth, that its methods of arriving at the truth are infallible and that scientists must be listened to at all times.

What other methods should we use to derive our legislative framework? Perhaps “the voice of middle England” should allow their collective emotional impulses to guide policy development? Maybe all scientists should kowtow to the irrational, ignorant and ill-informed masses, lest they should actually do some good!?

A Home Secretary who sacks a plucky little scientist for daring to speak his mind – correction, daring to speak ‘the truth’ – is surely worthy of our contempt? That is how the scientific establishment has portrayed the story as they line up to denounce Alan Johnson.

Hang on, now – I’ve heard about Prof Nutt and two of his colleagues making a point about the role of scientific advisors, not “the scientific establishment”. And good for them if they want to make a point. I’m sure that they would not do so without due cause.

Before we get carried away by their bluster, we should recognise the arrogance for what it is. What the scientists are saying basically is that they will brook no contradiction.

No, what scientists are saying is: “We have conducted vast amounts of research into this particular issue and we have come to certain conclusions about what course of action should be taken. We are in the best position from which to make suggestions as to where government policy should go and therefore it is logical that we should be listened to. Furthermore, this is an issue which daily risks and claims the lives of thousands of people around the country and therefore deserves the best possible facts (which the Daily Mail hates so much) so as to make the most prudent decisions”

And this is where the journalist starts to go gradually insane…

Yet if we examine the history of scientific experts – and, in particular, scientists advising governments – they do not have a very happy record. Do you remember the foot-and-mouth outbreak of 2001? All reasonable farmers and vets believed that the epidemic could be contained by vaccine, or simply by isolating animals. But the Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government, David King, insisted upon a massive cull.

You see, I thought that it could be cured by humming gently in the animal’s ear. We could have saved so many of the poor animals!! Why oh why didn’t they listen to me?? The fact is that scientific advisors weren’t called in until 35 days into the crisis, by which time it was damage control that was needed, not an aversion of the crisis. The disease had past its peak by the time vaccination was even agreed to be the correct course of action (for more details see here, particularly the summary).

Millions of sheep and cows were destroyed, and every hill and valley, which once echoed to bleating or lowing was silenced and despoiled. Did we ever hear a word of apology when events proved this government scientific adviser wrong?

More bloody emotional outrage… The scientific advisors weren’t proven wrong. Where’s foot and mouth now, eh? If you can invent a time machine and demonstrate that an alternative course of action would have worked out better then I’ll take this point seriously.

We hear a lot about the bovine brain disease BSE which was passed onto humans, and the possible cures which science might effect. But how often do we hear that BSE was almost certainly passed on to other cattle because scientists had encouraged farmers to force their animals to eat concentrated foods which contained beef products?

Lack of knowledge of an emerging disease is not grounds to accuse the scientific advisors of causing the BSE outbreak!

Going back in time, some people think that Hitler invented the revolting experiments performed by Dr Mengele on human beings and animals. But the Nazis did not invent these things. The only difference between Hitler and previous governments was that he believed, with babyish credulity, in science as the only truth. He allowed scientists freedoms which a civilised government would have checked.

Godwin’s law kicks in and we get a nice little reductio ad Hitlerum… I mean, it’s almost like the journalist is suggesting that British scientists are currently conducting experiments comparable to those which were allowed in Nazi Germany or in Soviet Russia!

I am not suggesting that any British scientists are currently conducting experiments comparable to those which were allowed in Nazi Germany or in Soviet Russia.

Oh, ok, I stand corrected…

But I see the same habit of mind at work in Professor Nutt and his colleagues as made those mad scientists of the 20th century think they were above the moral law which governs the rest of us mortals.

Are yes, we aren’t actually conducting the experiments… But we’d like to! Bwahahaha…

The worship of science is the great superstition of our age. The scientific adviser speaks and we are all supposed to believe him, whether he is promoting crops genetically modified to withstand huge doses of poisonous weedkillers and pesticides, or tampering with the origin of human life itself in so-called stem cell research.

Hmmm… Two emotive issues brought up here… Who are we to trust when it comes to deciding how safe emerging technologies are? Should we listen to the scientists who have spent years researching the topic, have published research in peer-reviewed scientific journals, have written briefing documents for government ministers and have survived in an immensely competitive profession to rise to the top of their field? No! Let’s not use THE FACTS!

Those who dare question scientists are demonised for their irrationality.

No, government ministers who are in charge of safe-guarding the lives of the people of this country are chastised for ignoring the facts of the issues at hand as presented by scientists who are experts in their respective fields.

Global warming may or may not be a certainty…

Woo! We get a feel for where the journalist is coming from by this stage…

…but anyone who queries it has his sanity questioned.

Not true! We welcome you questioning these things! That is what science is all about! If an interested member of the public wishes to find out about climate change, there are a thousand peer-reviewed scientific articles out there just waiting to inform that person. But don’t start arguing from an emotional stand point or because of something some bloke down the pub said. Use the facts!!

Cast doubt on these gods of certainty and you are accused of wanting to suppress free expression – which is the argument now being used by Nutt and pals against the Home Secretary.

This isn’t about freedom of expression you stupid tit! Anybody can say whatever they want! But when you employ an extremely well-educated, well-informed and well-qualified person for the express purpose of listening to what he or she has to say but then brazenly ignore it that is JUST FRICKING STUPID!!!

In fact, it is the arrogant scientific establishment which questions free expression. Think of the hoo-ha which occurred when one hospital doctor dared to question the wisdom of using the MMR vaccine.

I had to walk away from my keyboard when I read that… Anybody who knows anything about the so-called “MMR controversy” knows that the only controversial thing about it is that the disgraced scientists at the heart of it have not been punished sufficiently. The scientific establishment fell-upon that “one hospital doctor” because he gave a press conference making statements that were not backed-up be research. He was attempting to discredit the MMR vaccine because he had financial interests in doing so. It is probably possible to attribute the death toll of children to that greed. That is what science is about and one of its strengths. When we see bad science we try to eliminate it. It was the media (including the Daily Mail) who took that “one hospital doctor”, did not question the veracity of his claims and created a media furore over the issue. They are also partly to blame for the resulting drop in vaccine uptake. Indeed the Daily Mail (and, in particularly, the odious Melanie Phillips) have been defiant in their claim that the MMR vaccine is still a threat, completely contradicting a unanimous scientific verdict.

The point here is not whether he was right or wrong…

Oh well that’s ok. The facts don’t matter…

- it was the way in which the scientific establishment closed ranks in order to assassinate him. There was a blanket denunciation of his heresy…

For “heresy”, read “greed”, “bad science” or “publicity seeking” – you choose.

…just as there is if anyone dares to point out some of the mistakes made by that very fallible genius Charles Darwin.

For fucks sake this is ridiculous, now the journalist has questioned global warming and evolution, defended the disgraced scientist at the heart of the MMR debacle and stated clearly that scientists have no morals.

Science rules

Hell yeah!

- and it does so with just as much energy as the old Spanish Inquisition that refused to allow any creed other than Catholicism

We still haven’t heard anything about the alternatives to science that the journalist has in mind…?

…and with the Inquisition’s need to distort arguments…

Pray tell, where has science distorted arguments…?

…and control the brains of men and women who might otherwise think for themselves.

I thought we hadn’t told people about the mind control drugs in the water, yet…?

In complex areas – medicine, agriculture, astronomy – the politicians who make our laws inevitably have to consult ‘experts’.

Thank goodness Wilson finally admits this. And why are these the only “complex” areas? Does it follow from this that constitutional law, educational theory and economics can be done by anyone?

But this is not to guarantee that such experts are always right. As Margaret Thatcher once said: ‘Advisers advise…

…what is the best course of action…

and ministers decide…

…whether it would win any votes. (For an interesting interview with David Nutt and Sir David King on their experiences of advising government see here).

To be governed by politicians is a necessary evil.

I agree that it is evil. To be governed by a group of individuals whose sole purpose is to seek re-election is at best ridiculous and at worst outright frightening!

To be governed by arrogant scientists would truly be hell on earth.

Why are we so arrogant? I never really understood that… And he never really justifies why it would be so bad to be ruled by scientists… I think it would be fun!

Listen to the way these scientists are describing one another as they huff and puff at the Home Secretary’s treatment of Professor Nutt. ‘It will be hard to find a replacement of comparable expertise and stature,’ says one pompous ass in the letters column of a newspaper. Stature? Nutt? Like so many scientific experts, his arrogance is matched by his naivety. Like them, he cannot bear to be contradicted.

Hang on now… The ad hominems have gone on long enough. Stature and expertise within a field are fairly objective. This is not “pompous” of the writer. David J Nutt MRCP MRCPsych FRCPsych FMedSci, is professor of neuropsychopharmacology (that’s “the effects of drugs on the brain” to the rest of us) and heads the Psychopharmacology Unit in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Bristol and the Neuropsychopharmacology Department at Imperial College (ranked as the 5th best university in the world). This suggests that there aren’t many people of his “expertise and stature” around…

And to every one who thinks otherwise, I would ask them to carry out a simple experiment. Put a drug, bought casually on the street corner, and a glass of red wine on the table when your teenager comes home from school. Which of them, in all honesty, would you prefer him to try?

Nice, end with a stupid piece of rhetoric. It’s good to see that Wilson has really attacked the science of the points rather than attacking the individuals involved… Given that he hasn’t stated any facts in this article, I’m not sure that it really qualifies as journalism…