Fri 2007-03-30 While I am sticking the boot in on homeopathy, here is a Nature special report on pseudoscience teaching posing as real science degree courses at British universities (link via The Island of Doubt). How can you have a science in which you cannot afford to ask awkward questions (ie: subject it to randomised double-blind tests) without it collapsing?
Fri 2007-03-30 From the end of a post by Darren Naish at Tetrapod Zoology:
... I'll finish by mentioning the fact that I dislocated my right shoulder - again - on Sunday morning. This time I managed to do it while sitting at breakfast. I was imitating a chimpanzee spearing a bushbaby at the time, my wails of pain assumed by those around me to be my attempts at replicating the calls of a speared strepsirrhine.
He must have a very understanding family.
Sat 2007-03-24 In the original version of this post I suggested that ShopOnLion acted unethically by continuing to sell the bogus antimalarial Demal 200 after being advised not to do so. As explained below in the comments this was based on a misunderstanding and I withdraw that suggestion.
Sat 2007-03-24 Via Ben Goldacre, a link to a lecture by Raymond Tallis in which he defends the value of science and puts pseudo science in its place. Transcript, slides and an MP3 are available. I particularly liked Tallis ' characterization of pseudo science as parasitic on science. I think that sums up the relationship exactly.
Thu 2007-03-22 This afternoon, at about 13:30, I was on a train coming into Ascot on the line from Frimley when I saw a deer in the scrubland on the inside of the curve. I haven't seen any deer there since the drought ended last September. It was a thin grey deer without antlers, nothing like the stubby dark-brown munjac that I recently saw in central Reading.
