The psychology of climate change denial

Last night I watched a fascinating documentary on BBC 4 about climate change denialism in general, and about Lord Christopher Monckton in particular. Watch it on BBC iPlayer if you missed it.

Water fluoridation

There are many controversies in science, but most of them have a "right answer". Why should something which has a "right answer" be controversial? Well, it may be because people are simply ignorant of the facts or motivated by competing interests, or it may be that even though there is a right answer out there somewhere, we don't actually know what it is.

Duration of exclusive breastfeeding and risk of anaemia

There's been a lot of stuff in the news today about a paper that's just been published in the BMJ by Mary Fewtrell and colleagues, which questions the current recommendation that infants should be exclusively breastfed for 6 months. There are many issues here, and I don't have time to look at all of them, but one thing that I found interesting is that the paper raises the possibility that exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months may increase the risk of iron-deficiency anaemia in the infant, compared with exclusive breastfeeding for only 4 months.

Medical writer vacancy

We have a vacancy for a medical writer to join our team for maternity cover. Please note that the job will be for a fixed-term contract for approximately 6 months, although it is possible that the position could subsequently become permanent if circumstances permit.

The role will involve writing manuscripts for publication in peer-reviewed journals, clinical study reports for drug regulatory purposes, and a healthy variety of other documents. Relevant experience would be useful, but not essential, as full training will be provided. You must have excellent English language skills, a degree (or PhD) in a science discipline, an enthusiasm for writing, and good attention to detail.

Implanon and contraceptive failures

Today a story has been in the news about the "scandalous" contraceptive failures reported with Implanon, a long-term hormonal contraceptive which is implanted under the skin. See here and here for examples from some of our most respected broadcasters. And see here for an example from possibly our least respected "news" source, the Daily Mail.

The imperial war on drugs

I often write about drugs, and am doing so again today, but today's post is not about licensed pharmaceutical products designed to treat disease; it's about drugs of abuse: heroin, cocaine, and the like.

Bob Ainsworth, a Labour MP and a former cabinet minister, has publicly declared his support for legalising all drugs. It's certainly a radical solution. He imagines a future in which drug users can obtain heroin, cocaine, or whatever perfectly legally, either on prescription from their GP or perhaps bought from the local pharmacy (for such a radical policy, clearly there are a lot of details that would need to be worked out).

Should we all take a daily dose of aspirin?

The lead item on the news on Radio 4 when I woke up this morning was a paper that has just been published in the Lancet on the effects of daily aspirin use on cancer deaths. This was presented as a major new piece of research that might mean we should all be taking aspirin every day.

It's life Jim, but not as we know it...

NASA's astrobiology unit held a press conference yesterday, in which they made the eagerly-awaited announcement about their latest piece of research.

Now, given that an announcement from NASA's astrobiology unit was eagerly awaited, it's not surprising that there had been a lot of speculation that they'd discovered aliens. No serious commentators were expecting little green men, of course, but there was some quite serious speculation that they might have discovered some microbes, perhaps from an asteroid, of non-terrestrial origin.

Why you should not believe a word in adverts

Last month, I blogged about the highly misleading advert for Dettol, which claims "Dettol protects: fact", and my response from the Advertising Standards Authority to my complaint about the advert. It appeared that the ASA had misunderstood my complaint, and thought I was doubting Dettol's ability to kill bacteria on kitchen surfaces (which I don't). Rather, I was complaining that the advert was claiming that using Dettol can protect against infection, which is not at all the same thing as killing bacteria. I emailed the ASA to explain why their original response missed the point and asked them to take another look at it.

Evil Big Pharma

Last week, I featured on a podcast called The Pod Delusion, where I discussed the evidence on whether Evil Big Pharma really are as evil as they are made out to be. Many of the accusations of evildoing on the part of Big Pharma are based on anecdote, but what does research evidence show? Listen here to find out. My piece starts about 33 minutes into the podcast.