Derek Sorensen

September 1, 2008

Ben Goldacre defends Dr. Andrew Wakefield

Filed under: medicine, media — Derek Sorensen @ 12:48 pm

… and lays the blame for the MMR/Autism hoax where it belongs - on the shoulders of the British Press.

http://www.badscience.net/2008/08/the-medias-mmr-hoax/

“Dr Andrew Wakefield is in front of the General Medical Council on charges of serious professional misconduct, his paper on 12 children with autism and bowel problems is described as “debunked” - although it never supported the conclusions ascribed to it - and journalists have convinced themselves that his £435,643 fee from legal aid proves that his research was flawed.”

Well worth a read.

April 9, 2008

Malaria and Homoeopathy

Filed under: skepticism, medicine, homoeopathy — Derek Sorensen @ 11:58 am

This blog might save your life

No, I’m not joking. The information in this blog really might save your life, or the life of someone you know.

What you are about to read is fairly old news, but surprisingly - to me, at least - not many people seem to know about it. It’s important people know this, so please take a few minutes to read it. I know it’s long, unfortunately there’s a lot of information to convey and there’s no easy way to make it shorter.
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March 11, 2008

OMG! It’s true! Water has a memory

Filed under: skepticism, medicine, homoeopathy — Derek Sorensen @ 8:32 pm

Time for the skeptics to eat - nay, *choke on* - their words. It seems the qua homoeopaths have been right all along.

This paper: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v434/n7030/full/nature03383.html describes some recent scientific research which indicate that water does indeed have a memory. They’ve even managed to measure it pretty accurately.

It’s a bit of a long read, so I’ll summarise:

“Our results highlight the efficiency of energy redistribution within the hydrogen-bonded network, and that liquid water essentially loses the memory of persistent correlations in its structure within 50 fs.”

I guess that about wraps things up for the critics of homoeopathy, huh?

Oh, by the way, “50 fs” is 50 femto seconds. A femto second is 0.000,000,000,000,001 seconds. It seems that homoeopathic remedies might have a very short shelf life.

August 21, 2007

Petition Against NHS Funding of Homeopathy

Filed under: skepticism, medicine, homoeopathy — Derek Sorensen @ 9:42 pm

I don’t normally set a lot of store by petitions, but this I believe to be worth supporting.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Immediately ban NHS funding of homoeopathy [sic] and redirect the resources to proven medicine.

So what’s this all about? In recent years homeopathy has begun making an entry into the NHS, so much so that recently £10 million of NHS funds was used to refurbish the Royal London Homeopathic hospital. This is only a good use of NHS funds if you approve of state-sponsorship of quackery.

April 12, 2007

Cancer: Fighting Back Against Quacks

Filed under: skepticism, medicine, law — Derek Sorensen @ 12:40 pm

From time to time we come across someone promoting a product or “therapy” which either implies or states it is a cure or preventative against cancer. The people who promote these products are attempting to prey on people’s fears or offer false hope to cancer sufferers, just to make a buck.
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