Prince Charles ’ letters confirm that he ’ s not fit to be king
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This post was written for the Spectator Health section, at short notice after the release of the spider letters. The following version is almost the same as appeared there, with a few updates. Some of the later sections are self-plagiarised from earlier posts.
Picture: Getty
The age of enlightenment was a beautiful thing. People cast aside dogma and authority. They started to think for themselves. Natural science flourished. Understanding of the natural world increased. The hegemony of religion slowly declined. Eventually real universities were created and real democracy developed. The modern world w...
Source: DC's goodscience - May 15, 2015 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Duchy Originals Foundation for Integrated Health Freedom of Information Act Prince Charles Prince of Wales Prince's Foundation Anti-science antiscience badscience CAM herbal medicine herbalism homeopathy politics quackery Que Source Type: blogs
Prince Charles’ letters confirm that he’s not fit to be king
Jump to follow-up
This post was written for the Spectator Health section, at short notice after the release of the spider letters. The following version is almost the same as appeared there, with a few updates. Some of the later sections are self-plagiarised from earlier posts.
Picture: Getty
The age of enlightenment was a beautiful thing. People cast aside dogma and authority. They started to think for themselves. Natural science flourished. Understanding of the natural world increased. The hegemony of religion slowly declined. Eventually real universities were created and real democracy developed. The modern world w...
Source: DC's goodscience - May 15, 2015 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Duchy Originals Foundation for Integrated Health Freedom of Information Act Prince Charles Prince of Wales Prince's Foundation Anti-science antiscience badscience CAM herbal medicine herbalism homeopathy politics quackery Que Source Type: blogs
The reproducibility of Science. A meeting report.
Conclusions
After criticism of the conclusions of official reports, I guess that I have to make an attempt at recommendations myself. Here’s a first attempt.
The heart of the problem is money. Since the total amount of money is not likely to increase in the short term, the only solution is to decrease the number of applicants. This is a real political hot-potato, but unless it’s tackled the problem will persist. The most gentle way that I can think of doing this is to restrict research to a subset of universities. My proposal for a two stage university system might go some way to achie...
Source: DC's goodscience - April 14, 2015 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Human resources Imperial reproducibility University College London University of Sheffield Alice Gast bibliometrics Dermot Kelleher impact factor Imperial College irreproducibility James Stirling King's College London Queen Mary Source Type: blogs
The death of Stefan Grimm was “ needless ” . And Imperial has done nothing to prevent it happening again
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The last email of Stefan Grimm, and its follow-up post, has been read over 195,000 times now.
After Grimm’s death, Imperial announced that it would investigate itself The report is now available.
Performance Management: Review of policies, procedures and support available to staff
Following the tragic death of a member of the College’s staff community, Professor Stefan Grimm, the Provost invited the Senior Consul, Professor Richard Thompson, and the Director of Human Resources, Mrs Louise Lindsay, to consider the relevant College policies, procedures and the support available to all staff du...
Source: DC's goodscience - April 9, 2015 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Academia Imperial antiscience bullying HR HR bollocks Imperial College Louise Lindsay Richard Thompson Stefan Grimm Source Type: blogs
The death of Stefan Grimm was “needless”. And Imperial has done nothing to prevent it happening again
Jump to follow-up
The last email of Stefan Grimm, and its follow-up post, has been read over 195,000 times now.
After Grimm’s death, Imperial announced that it would investigate itself The report is now available.
Performance Management: Review of policies, procedures and support available to staff
Following the tragic death of a member of the College’s staff community, Professor Stefan Grimm, the Provost invited the Senior Consul, Professor Richard Thompson, and the Director of Human Resources, Mrs Louise Lindsay, to consider the relevant College policies, procedures and the support available to all staff du...
Source: DC's goodscience - April 9, 2015 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Academia Imperial antiscience bullying HR HR bollocks Imperial College Louise Lindsay Richard Thompson Stefan Grimm Source Type: blogs
The University of Warwick brings itself into disrepute -four times. Watch your tone of voice.
The University of Warwick seems determined to wrest the title of worst employer from Imperial College London and Queen Mary College London. In little over a year, Warwick has had four lots of disastrous publicity, all self-inflicted.
First came the affair of Thomas Docherty.
Thomas Docherty
Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Thomas Docherty was suspended in January 2014 by Warwick because of "inappropriate sighing", "making ironic comments" and "projecting negative body language". Not only was Docherty punished, but also his students.
"As well as being banned from campus...
Source: DC's goodscience - April 8, 2015 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Herbs get the push: no statutory regulation for western herbalists or Traditional Chinese Medicine
It makes a nice change to be able to compliment an official government report.
Ever since the House of Lords report in 2000, the governments have been vacillating about what should be done about herbalists. At the moment both western herbalists and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) are essentially unregulated. Many (but not all) herbalists have been pushing for statutory regulation, which they see it as government endorsement. It would give them a status like the General Medical Council.
Chinese medicine as taught at Middlesex University
A new report has ruled out this possibility, for very good reasons...
Source: DC's goodscience - March 30, 2015 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Academia Chinese medicine Harry Cayton Health Professions Council herbal medicine herbalism Michael Driscoll Middlesex university Pittilo Prince Charles Professional Standards Authority University of Westminster alternative medicin Source Type: blogs
What to do about research assessment (the REF)? A proposal for two-stage university education
The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the latest in a series of 6-yearly attempts to assess the quality of research in UK universities. It’s used to decide how to allocate about £1.6 billion per year of taxpayers’ money, the so-called "quality-related" (QR) allocation.
It could have been done a lot worse. One of the best ideas was that only four papers could be submitted, whatever the size of a research group. After much argument, the judgment panels were told not to use journal impact factors as a proxy for quality (or, for lack of quality), though it’s clear that many people did n...
Source: DC's goodscience - February 1, 2015 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Academia Education Universities graduate school postgraduate two-stage system University of California University of California system Source Type: blogs
Duchess in the soup. Sarah Ferguson in quack diet scam
Sarah Ferguson, ex-wife of Prince Andrew, Duke of York, seems to need a lot of money. Some of her wheezes are listed in today’s Times. That’s behind a paywall, as is the version reproduced in The Australian (Murdoch connection presumably). You can read it (free) here, with more details below the article.
Thomas Ough and David Brown
Published at 12:01AM, January 15 2015
In her seemingly endless quest to make money, Sarah, Duchess of York, has had little hesitation using her title to generate sales.
This week, though, she landed herself in trouble after appearing to use the name of ...
Source: DC's goodscience - January 15, 2015 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: advertisements Duchess Discoveries Duchy Originals Duke of York fraud nutribollocks nutrition Prince Andrew Sarah Ferguson Uncategorized Advertising ASA diet Imperial College Source Type: blogs
Some experiences of life at Imperial College London. An external inquiry is needed after the death of Stefan Grimm
Conclusions
The policies adopted by Imperial College have harmed Imperial’s reputation throughout the world. Worse still, they have tainted the reputation of all UK universities. They have contributed to the corruption of science. and they have, in all probability, killed a successful man,
I hope that Alice Gast (president), James Stirling (provost). Dermot Kelleher (Dean, now vice president), and Martin Wilkins (who was left to weild the knife) have a good Christmas. If I were in their shoes, I’d feel so guilty that I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.
They should spend Christmas reading Peter Lawrence&...
Source: DC's goodscience - December 23, 2014 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Academia Imperial Alice Gast assessment badscience Dermot Kelleher James Stirling Martin Wilkins Quality assessment Universities vice-chancellors Source Type: blogs
Publish and perish at Imperial College London: the death of Stefan Grimm
This week’s Times Higher Education carried a report of the death, at age 51, of Professor Stefan Grimm: Imperial College London to ‘review procedures’ after death of academic. He was professor of toxicology in the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial.
Now Stefan Grimm is dead. Despite having a good publication record, he failed to do sufficiently expensive research, so he was fired (or at least threatened with being fired).
“Speaking to Times Higher Education on condition of anonymity, two academics who knew Professor Grimm, who was 51, said that he had complained of being placed under undue pres...
Source: DC's goodscience - December 1, 2014 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Academia bullying Human resources Imperial Gavin Screaton HR Imperial College Martin Wilkins Universities vice-chancellors Source Type: blogs
Publish and perish at Imperial College London: the death of Stefan Grimm
This week’s Times Higher Education carried a report of the death, at age 51, of Professor Stefan Grimm: Imperial College London to ‘review procedures’ after death of academic. He was professor of toxicology in the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial.
Now Stefan Grimm is dead. Despite having a good publication record, he failed to do sufficiently expensive research, so he was fired.
“Speaking to Times Higher Education on condition of anonymity, two academics who knew Professor Grimm, who was 51, said that he had complained of being placed under undue pressure by the university in the months leading ...
Source: DC's goodscience - December 1, 2014 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Academia bullying Human resources Imperial Gavin Screaton HR Imperial College Martin Wilkins Universities vice-chancellors Source Type: blogs
What a paean from Ben Goldacre can do
After an interchange on Twitter about how blogs get noticed, I commented that the best thing for me was being thrown off the UCL web site by Malcolm Grant, and the subsequent support that I got from Ben Goldacre. I am a big fan of just about everything that Goldacre has done. So are a lot of other people and his support was crucial.
When I looked up his 2007 post, I found a lot of links were now broken, and some characters didn’t render properly. So, as a matter of historical record, I’m reproducing the whole post with updated links where possible.
Goldacre’s comments, of course, greatly exaggerated my v...
Source: DC's goodscience - November 16, 2014 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Ann Walker Ben Goldacre herbal medicine herbalism UCL University College London University of Westminster Westminster university Academia Malcolm Grant Red clover Source Type: blogs
What a paean from Ben Goldacre can do
After an interchange on Twitter about how blogs get noticed, I commented that the best thing for me was being thrown off the UCL web site by Malcolm Grant, and the subsequent support that I got from Ben Goldacre. I am a big fan of just about everything that Goldacre has done. So are a lot of other people and his support was crucial.
When I looked up his 2007 post, I found a lot of links were now broken, and some characters didn’t render properly. So, as a matter of historical record, I’m reproducing the whole post with updated links where possible.
Goldacre’s comments, of course, greatly exaggerated my v...
Source: DC's goodscience - November 16, 2014 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Ann Walker Ben Goldacre herbal medicine herbalism UCL University College London University of Westminster Westminster university Academia Malcolm Grant Red clover Source Type: blogs
Two more cases of hype in glamour journals: magnets, cocoa and memory
This study was promoted by the Northwestern University "Electric current to brain boosts memory". And Science tweeted along the same lines.
Science‘s link did not lead to the paper, but rather to a puff piece, "Rebooting memory with magnets". Again all the emphasis was on memory, with the usual entirely speculative stuff about helping Alzheimer’s disease. But the paper itself was behind Science‘s paywall. You couldn’t read it unless your employer subscribed to Science.
All the publicity led to much retweeting and a big altmetrics score. Given that the paper was...
Source: DC's goodscience - November 2, 2014 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Academia altmetrics Alzheimer's Bad journalism badscience false discovery rate public engagement Public relations Public understanding publishing randomisation randomization RCT science communication cocoa false positives h Source Type: blogs
