I Think You'll Find It's a Bit More Complicated Than That

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I Think You'll Find It's a Bit More Complicated Than That Page 34

by Ben Goldacre


  Celia Mulrow: http://www.bmj.com/content/309/6954/597.full

  ‘systematic reviews’: http://www.bmj.com/content/315/7109/672.full

  the last time: http://www.badscience.net/2011/09/2009/02/the-evidence-aric-sigman-ignored/

  deliberately incomplete article: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg8LlUME-IM&feature=player_embedded

  Being Wrong

  Being Wrong: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian

  research about research: http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/archinternmed.2011.295

  John Ioannidis: http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long&pmid=16014596

  Kids Who Spot Bullshit, and the Adults Who Get Upset About It

  Kids Who Spot: http://www.badscience.net/2011/06/kids-who-spot-bullshit-and-the-adults-who-get-upset-about-it/

  Ryan Giggs’s penis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Giggs

  Brain Gym: http://www.badscience.net/2011/06/category/brain-gym/

  writing about since 2003: http://www.badscience.net/2011/06/2003/06/work-out-your-mind/

  pay hundreds of thousands: http://www.davidcolarusso.com/blog/?p=48

  hundreds of state schools: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22brain+gym%22+inurl%3Asch.uk

  Emily Rosa: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Rosa

  published a scientific paper: http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/279/13/1005.full

  Journal of the American Medical Association: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_the_American_Medical_Association

  practitioners were deeply unhappy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Rosa

  Rhys Morgan: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/15/miracle-mineral-solutions-mms-bleach

  www.crohnsforum.com: http://www.crohnsforum.com/

  finding official documents: http://www.fda.gov/Safety/MedWatch/SafetyInformation/SafetyAlertsforHumanMedicalProducts/ucm220756.htm

  The adults banned him: http://thewelshboyo.co.uk/?p=87

  The One Show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0yUYOz62wk

  Chief Medical Officer for Wales: http://thewelshboyo.co.uk/?p=54

  have waded in: http://thewelshboyo.wordpress.com/2010/10/01/bleachgate-more-on-mms-in-the-uk/

  evidence-based medicine: http://www.jameslindlibrary.org/testing-treatments.html

  tell the world: http://wordpress.com/

  Existential Angst About the Bigger Picture

  Existential Angst: http://www.badscience.net/2011/05/existential-angst-about-the-bigger-picture/

  major review in 2003: http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/jost.glaser.political-conservatism-as-motivated-social-cog.pdf

  study from 2004: http://psp.sagepub.com/content/30/9/1136.abstract

  new study: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2 Fjournal.pone.0017349

  most recent estimate: http://www.stratongina.net/files/50million ArifJinhaFinal.pdf

  systems are imperfect: http://www.badscience.net/2011/05/category/regulating-research/

  The Glorious Mess of Real Scientific Results

  Glorious Mess: http://www.badscience.net/2010/11/the-glorious-mess-of-real-scientific-results/

  Solomon Asch’s legendary studies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments

  hints of patterns: http://psycnet.apa.org/?&fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/0033-2909.119.1.111

  a new variant: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a922516755&fulltext=713240928

  sometimes happens with uncomfortable data: http://www.badscience.net/2009/08/how-myths-are-made/

  over 20,000 academic journals: http://zetoc.mimas.ac.uk/index.html

  well over a million articles: http://informationr.net/ir/14-1/paper391.html

  Nullius in Verba

  recent study hunting down: http://www.badscience.net/2010/06/2008/01/washing-the-numbers-selling-the-model/

  strengths and weaknesses of the HES dataset: http://www.healthknowledge.org.uk/parta/paper1knowledge/3_healthinformation/3a_Populations/3a2.asp

  standard public health exam: http://www.publichealthy.com/partatips.htm

  couldn’t find the pattern either: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/14/size-isnt-everything-in-hospital-treatment

  Is It OK to Ignore Results from People You Don’t Trust?

  Is it OK: http://www.badscience.net/2010/03/when-is-it-okay-to-ignore-people-you-dont-trust/

  three month period in 2002: http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/research/publications/health_in_the.html

  systematic review on the subject: http://iospress.metapress.com/content/x880352113361jk4/

  Legacy Tobacco Documents Library: http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/

  The importance of younger adults: http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu:8080/e/y/n/eyn18c00/Seyn18c00.pdf

  Youth cigarette – new concepts: http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu:8080/o/y/q/oyq83f00/Soyq83f00.pdf

  Two researchers, Schairer and Schöniger: http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/30/1/31

  Foreign Substances in Your Precious Bodily Fluids

  Foreign Substances: http://www.badscience.net/2008/02/foreign-substances-in-your-precious-bodily-fluids/

  calls it a ‘poison’: http://www.sunderlandecho.com/news/Fluoride39poison39-says-Wear-MP.3745368.jp

  lead and arsenic: http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1 556071,00.html

  speaking way beyond the evidence: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/335/7622/699

  the benefits of fluoridation: http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/crd/fluorid.htm

  ‘overwhelming evidence’: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23435556-details/Fluoride+to+be+added+to+all+Britain%27s+tap+water+to+tackle+tooth+decay/article.do

  Alan Johnston says: http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5iJ2QJhA7EJ_HT5WiESAO3L1bla6Q

  people are misrepresenting: http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/crd/fluoridnew.htm

  Further references:

  The most readable overview on the poor quality of the data is this article by Cheng, Chalmers and Sheldon. Prof Sir Iain Chalmers founded the Cochrane library, for anyone who seeks to doubt his badassness: www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/335/7622/699

  The Taiwan study is here (the authors attribute the increase in risk to a problem of multiple comparisons): http://www.science direct.com/science/article/pii/S0013935199940185

  The York review is here: www.york.ac.uk/inst/crd/fluorid.htm. You’ll see that for several years now they’ve been trying to point out that people are misrepresenting their work: http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/crd/fluoridnew.htm

  And if you want a particularly good example of someone pompously overstating the evidence, try this doozy from the Sunday Mirror: www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/columnists/opinion/2008/02/03/fluoride-the-whole-tooth-98487-20307072/

  How Myths Are Made

  How Myths are Made: http://www.badscience.net/2009/08/how-myths-are-made/

  successfully used a court order: http://speakingofmedicine.plos.org/2009/08/05/guest-blog-from-adriane-fugh-berman-plos-medicine-and-the-new-york-times-victorious-in-court-public-will-have-access-to-ghostwriting-documents/

  Such an analysis: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/339/jul20_3/b2680

  Publish or Be Damned

  Publish or be Damned: http://www.badscience.net/2005/08/publish-or-be-damned/

  Academic Papers Are Hidden from the Public. Here’s Some Direct Action

  Academic Papers are Hidden: http://www.badscience.net/2011/09/academic-papers-are-hidden-from-the-public-heres-some-direct-action/

  piece on academic publishers: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist

  pay up front: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=417266&c=1

  Aaron Swartz: http://blog.demandprogress.org/2011/07/federal-government-indicts-former-demand-progress-executive-director-for-downloading-too-many-journal-articles/

  federal indictment document online: http://web.mit.edu/bitbucket/Swartz,Aaron Indictment.pdf

  harvest
academic papers from JSTOR: http://about.jstor.org/news-events/news/jstor-statement-misuse-incident-and-criminal-case

  Pirate Bay: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6554331/Papers_from_Philosophical_Transactions_of_the_Royal_Society__fro

  Royal Society Papers: http://royalsociety.org/about-us/reporting/

  BIOLOGISING

  Neuro-Realism

  Neuro-Realism: http://www.badscience.net/2010/10/neuro-realism/

  When the BBC tells you: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11620971

  ‘normal’ sex drive http://amzn.to/doM9h8

  ‘hypoactive sexual desire disorder’: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypoactive_sexual_desire_disorder

  tells the Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1323730/Is-women-dont-like-make-love-Scientists-discover-low-libidos-behave-differently.html

  In the Metro: http://www.metro.co.uk/lifestyle/845156-women-with-low-sex-drive-have-different-brains

  ‘fMRI in the Public Eye’: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1524852/

  The Stigma Game

  The Stigma Game: http://www.badscience.net/2010/10/pride-and-prejudice/

  looked for chromosomal deletions: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736%2810%2961109-9

  including that in the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/sep/30/hyperactive-children-genetic-disorder-study

  said Professor Anita Thapar: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/sep/30/hyperactive-children-genetic-disorder-study

  Read and Harre: http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09638230123129

  Read and Law: http://isp.sagepub.com/content/45/3/216.full.pdf+html

  Walker and Read: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12530335

  Dietrich and colleagues: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1440-1614.2004.01363.x/abstract

  review of the literature to date: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0447.2006.00824.x/full

  ‘Genetic Bases of Mental Illness’: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0166-2236%2802%2902209-9

  Pink, Pink, Pink, Pink. Pink Moan

  Pink Moan: http://www.badscience.net/2007/08/pink-pink-pink-pink-pink-moan/

  every single newspaper in the world: http://news.google.co.uk/news?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&rls=org.

  said The Times: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2294539.ece

  The study took 208: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2007.06.022

  Bem Sex Role Inventory: http://www.neiu.edu/~tschuepf/bsri.html

  Anyone can take this test online: http://garote.bdmonkeys.net/bsri.html

  Further references:

  The academic paper is here: Anya C. Hurlbert and Yazhu Ling, ‘Biological components of sex differences in color preference’, Current Biology, Volume 17, Issue 16, 21 August 2007, Pages R623–R625, dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2007.06.022

  STATISTICS

  Guns Don’t Kill People, Puppies Do

  Guns Don’t Kill People: http://www.badscience.net/2010/02/guns-dont-kill-people-puppies-do/

  3 babies on same date: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/157444/Mum-beats-odds-of-50m-to-one-to-have-3-babies-on-same-date-

  725,440 births: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=369

  ‘Who is Having Babies’: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/births 1209.pdf

  ‘Dog Shoots Man’: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/01/ap/strange/main6162474.shtml

  ‘Dog Shoots Man in Back’: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,291687,00.html

  another in Iowa: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7068549.stm

  Puppy Shoots Man: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5950304

  Datamining for Terrorists Would Be Lovely If It Worked

  Datamining for Terrorists: http://www.badscience.net/2009/02/data mining-would-be-lovely-if-it-worked/

  This week Sir David Omand: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/25/database-state-ippr-paper

  described how the state: http://www.ippr.org/publicationsandreports/publication.asp?id=646

  what statisticians call the ‘specificity’: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity_(tests)

  Benford’s Law: Using Stats to Bust an Entire Nation for Naughtiness

  Benford’s Law: http://www.badscience.net/2011/09/benfords-law-using-stats-to-bust-an-entire-nation-for-naughtiness/

  something called Benford’s Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law

  61,838,154 in 2009: http://www.google.co.uk/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_pop_totl&idim=country:GBR&dl=en&hl=en&q=uk+population

  think about why this happens: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benfords_law

  testingbenfordslaw.com: http://testingbenfordslaw.com/

  Twitter users’ follower counts: http://testingbenfordslaw.com/twitter-users-by-followers-count

  books in different libraries: http://testingbenfordslaw.com/total-number-of-print-materials-in-us-libraries

  countries’ economic data: http://econpapers.repec.org/article/blagermec/v_3a10_3ay_3a2009_3ai_3a_3ap_3a339-351.htm

  the results were published: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0475.2011.00542.x/abstract

  hat-tip to Tim Harford: http://timharford.com/2011/09/look-out-for-no-1/

  macroeconomic data: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/esa95_supply_use_input_tables/data/workbooks

  online repository Eurostat: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/esa95_supply_use_input_tables/introduction

  run several investigations: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/product_details/publication?p_product_code=COM_2010_report_greek

  repeat the analysis for yourself: http://rstudio.org/

  The Certainty of Chance

  The Certainty of Chance: http://www.badscience.net/2008/09/the-certainty-of-chance/

  Sampling Error, the Unspoken Issue Behind Small Number Changes in the News

  Sampling Error: http://www.badscience.net/2011/08/untitled-1/

  “Worrying” Jobless Rise: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14558369

  ‘Labour Market’ figures: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/StatBase/Product.asp?vlnk=1944

  in a PDF document: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/lmsuk0811.pdf

  Scientific Proof That We Live in a Warmer and More Caring Universe

  Scientific Proof: http://www.badscience.net/2008/11/scientific-proof-that-we-live-in-a-warmer-and-more-caring-universe/

  ‘Down’s births increase in a caring Britain’: http://www.timeson line.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article5219174.ece

  when diagnosed with Down’s: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1088774/More-mothers-choosing-babies-diagnosed-Downs-Syndrome.html

  said the Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/downs-parents-think-again-1032193.html

  said the Mirror: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2008/11/24/babies-born-with-down-s-syndrome-on-increase-115875-20919849/

  Radio 4 documentary: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fkx0m

  her what plays Ruth Archer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/archers/whos_who/actors/actor_felicity_finch.shtml

  National Down Syndrome Cytogenetic Register: http://www.wolfson.qmul.ac.uk/ndscr/

  took the story to pieces: http://www.wolfson.qmul.ac.uk/ndscr/

  National Down Syndrome Cytogenetic Register: http://www.nhs.uk/news/2008/11November/Pages/DownssyndromeQA.aspx

  Radio 4 website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/

  Drink Coffee, See Dead People

  Drink Coffee: http://www.badscience.net/2009/01/drink-coffee-see-dead-people/

  7 cups of coffee a day: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/79820/utter-cock-as-usual

  in almost every national newspaper: http://news.google.co.uk/news?q=coffee+hallucinations+location%3Auk

  exactly what the researchers did: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2008.10.032

  survey is still online: http://psychology.dur.ac.uk:82/srj/caffeine2.html

&
nbsp; ‘Launay-Slade Hallucination Scale’: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Launay-Slade+Hallucination+Scale

  alternative explanations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding_variable

  the academic paper: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2008.10.032

  the press release: http://www.alphagalileo.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=readrelease&releaseid=535120&ez_search=1

  ‘multiple comparisons’: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_comparisons

  no one was there: http://www.thinkgeek.com/caffeine/accessories/5a65/

  draw a target around them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_sharpshooter_fallacy

  Voices of the Ancients

  Voices of the Ancients: http://www.badscience.net/2010/01/voices-of-the-ancients/

  Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1240746/Prehistoric-sat-nav-set-ancestors-Britain.html

  the Metro: http://www.metro.co.uk/news/807855-did-prehistoric-satnav-help-britons-find-their-way

  Matt Parker: http://www.standupmaths.com/

  applied the same techniques: http://bengoldacre.posterous.com/did-aliens-play-a-role-in-woolworths

  BIG DATA

  There’s Something Magical About Watching Patterns Emerge from Data

  There’s Something Magical: http://www.badscience.net/2011/06/theres-something-magical-about-watching-patterns-emerge-from-data/

  British Medical Journal: http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d2983.full

  first NHS reforms: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/nhs

  Give Us the Data

  A consultation is under way: http://c561635.r35.cf2.rackcdn.com/A-Consultation-on-Data-Policy-for-a-Public-Data-Corporation.pdf

  foolishly restrictive: http://pdcconsult.ernestmarples.com/

  everyday government data: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/government-data

  forbidden to repurpose it: http://hadleybeeman.net/2011/01/26/uses-for-open-data/

  TheyWorkForYou.com: http://www.theyworkforyou.com/

  all our postcode information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcodes_in_the_United_Kingdom

  the house-number boundaries: http://ernestmarples.com/blog/2010/01/postcode-petition-response-our-reply/

  make the government: http://pdcconsult.ernestmarples.com/

  Care.data Can Save Lives: But Not If We Bungle It

  greatest need in the NHS http://www.theguardian.com/society/nhs

  at risk by the bungled: http://www.nature.com/news/power-to-the-people-1.14505?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20140116

 

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