I suspect I’m going to make myself rather unpopular in some quarters with this, but I’m afraid that may commitment to good science trumps any political opinions I might have every time, so in for a penny, in for a pound. Political Scrapbook is running yet another ‘man/woman […]

Over at the Journal of Medical Ethics blog, Iain Brassington has picked up on what he describes as ‘slightly peculiar’ post by Peter Saunders in which he poses ten questions that the media doesn’t – allegedly – ask about abortion. Iain’s posted his own answers here, and just […]

I’ll keep the preamble to a minimum – what follows is a foll-on fisk of Nadine Dorries’ speech in the Westminster Hall debate on induced abortion, so let’s get on with the show. David Crausby is in the Chair, I’ve skipped the ritual sucking up to the Chair […]

If you’re a skeptic then I guess the following story isn’t really news, nevertheless the way its been written up by the BBC is well worth noting: A scientific experiment has found that two mediums were unable to demonstrate that they had special psychic powers. The test by […]

So far this week, we’ve had several examples of how not to write about abortion, so now we might as well top the week off with an object lesson in how not to write about breast cancer courtesy of Melanie McFadyean. For anyone diagnosed with cancer, anything but […]

Is is bravery or masochism that’s prompted Medhi Hasan to jump straight back into the fire by regaling the world with his list of “10 Things I Learned From Debating Abortion On Twitter“? Who knows for sure, but as the article is up at HuffPo I suppose the […]

Okay, so while I was tackling Deborah Orr’s misconceived view of the abortion debate, Mehdi Hassan was stirring up a shit storm of his own at the New Statesman with an article entitled ‘Being pro-life doesn’t make me any less of a lefty‘. Maybe it does, maybe it […]

I could, I suspect, be forgiven for being more than just a little bit irritated with Deborah Orr’s comments on the seemingly never-ending abortion debate, which she kicks off with the following observations… Oh, Lord, the right to choose. There’s no more powerful and predictable way to invite […]

There are days when one has to wonder whether there might just be a secret competition under way for the title of the most viscerally unpleasant clergyman in Britain. If there is such a competition – and if there isn’t there should be – then it’s one for […]

The smell of burning straw men is, again, wafting over Andrew Brown’s latest contribution to Comment is Free: This isn’t bad science. It’s evil science How helpful is it to say that science is neutral in itself, and what makes it good or evil are political decisions? Scientists, […]