BBC muzzles David Attenborough, suspends top sports presenter, for fear of Tory backlash

An interesting take on a couple of recent events involving the BBC.

Primate's Progress

by Paul Braterman

UPDATE (March 15, 2023): The Home Secretary has said in the House of Commons that “Police chiefs around the country, what they tell me is that criminality, in particular drug supply and usage, is now connected to people who came here on small boats illegally in the first place.” WhatDoTheyKnow has made a Freedom of Information request to the Home Office, asking for evidence to back up this inflammatory claim.

The Guardian has revealed details of internal BBC emails in which a senior editor was asking reporters to modify their presentations because of complaints from Downing Street.

There will no doubt be more in the coming days, but I’ll leave it at that.

UPDATE (March 13, 2023, 8 AM): Gary Lineker has been reinstated, and has reaffirmed his position:

A final thought: however difficult the last few days have been, it simply doesn’t compare to having…

View original post 2,532 more words

The concept of a “chemical-free lifestyle” is absurd

The Logic of Science does a great job of debunking the nonsense which is ‘A Chemical Free Lifestyle ‘.

The Logic of Science

From Tim Minchin’s introduction to his brilliant song, “The Fence.”

Chemophobia is alive and well. It is difficult to get on the internet without celebrities, friends, and family members bombarding you with concerns about chemicals in your food, hygiene products, vaccines, etc. Indeed, being anti-chemical seems to be extremely fashionable at the moment, and you will often hear people talk about living a “chemical-free lifestyle” or trying to “avoid chemicals.” The problem is, of course, that everything is made of chemicals. Literally all matter is made of chemicals, and if you truly lived a chemical-free lifestyle, you would only live for a matter of minutes, after which you would die from a lack of oxygen.

I’ve written about this topic before, and I don’t want to spend this entire post belaboring the point, because it is a fundamental and basic fact of science that I shouldn’t have to explain…

View original post 1,098 more words

Britain’s National Health Service about to ban homeopathy

Not before time!

Why Evolution Is True

Reader Barrie called my attention to an article in The Independent  that offers some good news: Britan’s NHS, based on a 48-page document about items that shouldn’t be prescribed in primary care medicine, seems set to stop prescribing Magic Water, otherwise known as homeopathic medicine.

The motivation for the whole document was to eliminate, as a cost-cutting measure, those prescribed items that were of low clinical effectiveness. So there are many drugs listed, but on page 14 you’ll find this:

Actually, given Prince Charles’s fondness for this quackery (he even uses it own his own farm animals), I’m surprised the expenditure by the NHS is less than £100,000 per year, but it sends an important signal to people that the government health agency sees homeopathy as ineffective. Now I’m sure that patients who want Magic Water can still buy it themselves, but at least doctors can’t prescribe it.

Here’s a…

View original post 115 more words

10 Things I Want Parents Who Don’t Vaccinate Their Kids To Know

A comprehensive refutation of common anti-vaccination claims.

vaccinesworkblog

I read a blog post today, entitled “10-things-want-parents-vaccinate-kids-know” and I felt the need to respond.

1.Most of the time the diseases we vaccinate for are very mild and unlike vaccine injury, they last only a short time. This is not true. Back when vaccine-preventable diseases were common, disease injury was common. 30% of measles patients suffer complications requiring hospitalization and some of those will be permanently injured. Back when nearly all children got measles, this mean thousands suffered injury every year.  Polio was also very bad in the 1950s.  “In 1952 alone, nearly 60,000 children were infected with the virus; thousands were paralyzed, and more than 3,000 died. Hospitals set up special units with iron lung machines to keep polio victims alive. Rich kids as well as poor were left paralyzed.”  source  Before the hepatitis V vaccine was recommended for all children in 1994,  30%…

View original post 752 more words

More Trumpish anti-science: The Donald reportedly asked anti-vaxxer to head panel on vaccine safety

Those of us who feared the worst when Donald Trump was elected President of the USA are discovering just how bad the “worst” can be.

Why Evolution Is True

I’m not quite sure what these articles from theWashington Post and Scientific American mean, but they augur yet more anti-scientific attitudes from the incoming Trump administration, which will take over in (horrors!) only nine days. (The words “President Trump” still stick in my craw.) From Sci Am we hear about a position reportedly offered to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., son of Bobby Kennedy and thus the nephew of JFK. RFK Jr. is an environmental activist but has some wonky ideas about vaccines:

WASHINGTON—Outspoken vaccine critic Robert Kennedy Jr. has accepted a position within Donald Trump’s administration as chair of a panel on vaccine safety and scientific integrity—the clearest sign yet of the president-elect’s suspicions about vaccines.

The offer, which came in a Wednesday meeting between Trump and the scion of America’s most prominent Democratic family, is likely to concern scientists and public health experts who fear the incoming administration could give legitimacy to skeptics…

View original post 533 more words