Scientific study PROVES MMR sceptics are dicks
February 10th, 2009 at 17:06

The excellent Ben Goldacre (who bought me a drink a few weeks ago – but this is far from the main reason why he is excellent), who writes the Guardian’s Bad Science column is in a spot of bother because of his tireless efforts to raise awareness that people who perpetuate the “MMR causes autism!” myth are crackers. LBC, the radio station that calls itself “London’s Big Conversation” have kicked up a fuss because he posted an audio clip of one of their presenters talking rubbish about MMR, to illustrate how hideous the programme was. Apparently London’s Big Conversation stops as soon as they start looking stupid.

LBC aren’t moaning about him disputing what the DJ, Jeni Barnett, was saying on the radio – chances are they know that she’s an idiot, but they’ve clearly been trying to cover their tracks and hide the fact such rubbish was actually broadcast. So they’ve threatened to sue Ben for “copyright infringement”.

Arguments about fair use, whistleblowing or public interest aside, I think LBC totally have a point there – if Ben Goldacre hadn’t put the recording on in the internet, I would have definitely bought a CD compilation of LBC’s Greatest MMR hits.

You’d think they’d be happy about having listeners redistribute material there’s never going to be any residual revenue on to boost awareness of the station – all of the TV news channels don’t complain about clips appearing on YouTube for much the same reason. So Ben’s had to remove the clip – but now it’s available all over the internet, including on Wikileaks.

As you probably know, this whole MMR causing autism myth started when a hilariously flawed and consistently debunked study by Andrew Wakefield was published in the Lancet – and more importantly, was picked up by the Daily Mail and Melanie Phillips began the uninformed scaremongering. And then the cases of mumps rocketed.

I’ve actually been looking into Wakefield’s methodology, and have conducted a study myself using it. And the results are quite amazing: it turns out that being a fan of Andrew Wakefield makes you a dick. I’ve even got a graph that proves it:

The results are pretty conclusive  – the trend is very clear. The bigger fan of Wakefield you are, the more of a dick you are. Now, I know there may be “MMR sceptics” reading who might dispute this – you might argue that correlation does not prove causation, or perhaps allege that my research was completely fabricated or not conducted properly. If that’s the case, I ask you: why are you holding me to a higher standard than Andrew Wakefield?

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Weakest Link Repeat
January 20th, 2009 at 02:07

When I got off the tube earlier today I was surprised to receive a flurry of texts and tweets telling me some exciting news: My appearance on the Weakest Link was being shown again on BBC One! It was recorded in November 2007 and first shown on March 3rd 2008. If you missed it first time around or want to watch it again, it’s going to be on the iPlayer for the next week.

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Is Adam Hart-Davis a Tory?
August 23rd, 2008 at 00:06

I’m not one to moan, but I think I’d be fairly justified in saying that I’ve had a pretty bad week. Right now, for instance, I should be rocking out to Rage Against the Machine at Reading, but my tickets never materialised, and for the past few days I’ve had a bloody awful stomach bug, which meant I’ve spent a couple of days in agony as my stomach decided to make the metaphorical “pain in the arse” debacle that was my Reading tickets fuck-up almost literal (it was more of a horrible pain in the stomach).

But now to top things off, for reasons I forget, I’ve discovered that one of my favourite celebrities, Adam Hart-Davis, is related to one of my least favourite people: David Cameron. Yeah, I needed to take a moment to let that sink in too. It turns out that, according to the ever-reliable Wikipedia anyway, that they’re second cousins once-removed.

This has somewhat tainted my preconceptions about how cool AHD is. I’d previously assumed that when he went into the polling booth, Adam (we’re on first name terms despite having never met) would obviously vote for the greater good, and do his democratic duty of voting for whoever keeps the Tories out. But now I know this new information, what’s to say his tribal loyalties don’t kick in? It’s pretty natural to vote for friends and family in things where voting is involved – it’s pretty much the done thing. Does this mean that AHD is voting for the Tories?

It would all make a depressing amount of sense: they both went to Eton and both have “riding bikes” as a sort-of quirky, eccentric trait. And Cameron used to be a director at Carlton Communications, one of the constituent companies that made up ITV… who later commissioned AHD’s (inexplicably excellent for ITV) How London Was Built.

I can only hope that AHD and David Cameron aren’t the best of friends. Perhaps AHD could be like the embarassing cousin? At family functions whenever Adam arrives, Dave winces and thinks “Oh god, not him again… what’s he wearing this time? Who thought the bright yellow shirt and shorts were a good idea? I hope he doesn’t show me up by enthusising about his love of science and history…”

C’mon Adam, betray your genetic make-up and don’t be a Tory, please! Ask your partner (leading psychologist and pioneer of memetics, Susan Blackmore) if she can introduce you to altruistic memes like social conscience and helping the poor!

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Dawkster Who
April 6th, 2008 at 18:38

Assuming I’m not the victim of an obscure (and late) April Fools joke, apparently Richard Dawkins is going to guest star in Doctor Who. All Russell T Davies needs to get now is Adam Hart Davis and the Misery of Others to cameo and all four of my favourite things will be united at last.

Apparently Davies, who is pictured in the article dressed as a middle-aged Neo at the weekend, is a big fan. Which makes me wonder just how Dawkins will be incorporated into the show.

Hopefully it’ll be in his guise as a gangster rapper.

I think it’d be pretty good if Dawkins would become the new companion – its not as if the Doctor has too many after all. He could provide a level-headed rationalist counter to the Doctor and the villains they encounter.

He’d be great fun – he could sneer at any credulous villains who speak of what they believe, and demolish their arguments academically.

I guess the only downside it would prevent the Doctor from so wrecklessly ignoring the laws of physics and using his sonic-screwdriver to get out of every situation, because Dawkins would tell him that there’s no way it could work, and there’s no evidence to suggest it could.

I can’t wait.

Rejected Post Titles:

• The Ood Delusion
• The Blind Clockwork-Monster-People Maker
• Unweaving the Face-of-Boe
• The Extended Carrionite

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Milking the celebrity cow
March 4th, 2008 at 23:21

If you missed the rather oblique hints I’ve been posting over the past week, you may be surprised to learn that I was on the Weakest Link on Monday. And even more remarkably, I actually won.

It’s fairly probable that a couple of million people saw my glorious victory on the telly – on (almost) primetime BBC One. I’m not going to delude myself though. The grandeur, the celebrity, the immense wealth… are all factors I’m going to have to cope with in my new role as a prominent figure in the public consciousness.

Obviously, despite being a quiz show champion and presumably able to take my seat next to Judith Keppel and Kevin Ashman on the Eggheads team at my own discretion, I should probably resign myself to the fact that at best I’m going to be a rather low-rent celebrity now, rather than face the crushing disappointment later. I don’t want my pursuit of fame to lead me to milling around the town centre in the same brown shirt I wore on the programme, pen in hand ready to sign autographs, approaching people and saying “You are the Weakest Link, Goodbye”, in a desperate attempt to be recognised. I don’t want to slowly die a little inside every time someone looks at me and raises my hopes, only for them then to cross the road to avoid me.

This said, I fully intend to take my duties as a low-rent celebrity seriously. Without people like me, the trashier end of the gossip magazine market would crumble, and the general public would have nothing to read in waiting rooms the world over.

In fact, I’ve already started phoning up the gossip magazines and newspapers to report “wicked whispers” of myself, just so that I remain in the public eye. It can’t belong until “Psst… which Weak Link was spotted filling his car up with petrol last Tuesday?” or something equally inane appears inset in a box on the 3am Girls page.

My concern at this time though is prolonging my fame – I imagine its going to be pretty fleeting. I’m already bored of talking about the programme, so my legions of fans probably are too, so I’m going to have to try and reinvent myself. It’s going to be difficult, but as this is the entertainment industry we’re talking about, luckily a lack of talent isn’t actually a barrier to remaining famous. The fact I can namedrop Kerry Katona or Richard Blackwood and you know who I’m talking about illustrates this nicely.

So I’m thinking there are two routes I could go down. I could take up drugs and have myself referred to as “the troubled star, James O’Malley” whenever I’m mentioned, or slightly less self-destructively, acquire myself an equally low-rent celebrity girlfriend – say, a former Eggheads contestant, or someone who once appeared in the background of an outside broadcast on the regional news – that’s the sort of level of celebrity we’re talking about. Interest in me would be revived as the press would, for some reason, care about the ups and downs of our relationship, as if it somehow makes a difference to… well, anything.

Obviously after the difficult and highly public split I’ll have another short lived career revival as everyone wants to see what I do next.

I think this is starting to sound like a plan. Sure, there’s at least a case for bowing out of the public eye gracefully instead and not perpetuating our societal addiction to the cult of celebrity… but where’s the fun in that? If anyone needs me, I’ll be in Britain’s crowded shopping centres and precincts, waiting for someone to recognise me from off the telly.

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Final Reminder! Weakest Link Tonight!
March 3rd, 2008 at 12:57

Just in case you haven’t spotted all of the not-so-subtle hints, or the post below, or are genuinely stupid, here’s one last reminder that I’m on the Weakest Link Tonight (that’s Monday 3rd).

That’s on BBC One, at 5.15pm. Just after Newsround. I’ll probably post more about it after the event. Unless I come across badly.

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Moustaches make people look evil
January 13th, 2008 at 23:52

Have you ever noticed how moustaches tend to make people look evil? The inverse is true too: if you don’t have a moustache, you look less evil. Look at General Suharto for instance – he looks like a kindly old man, who could perhaps be the grandad you don’t see very often. He doesn’t look like a horrible dictator who caused the death of thousands of East Timorese at all.

The reason I think it is the lack of moustache is because if you look at, say, Hitler and Stalin, there’s just something about them that makes them look evil. The same goes for Saddam Hussein and John Bolton too. Its almost like a moustache is a key component of being a top-flight international bastard.

Want some proof? Have a look at Hitler without a moustache – he looks like Middle Management more than a bastard:

Adding a moustache seems to add a sinister streak to anyone. Look what happens when you add one on to Suharto:

“Hmm, I wonder what he’s planning now?”, you think when you look at him. Immediately any tentative trust based on first impressions is lost.

Even someone like Nelson Mandela, who is generally regarded as a pretty decent bloke looks like he could be a Bond villain with a moustache.

And what about children’s TV presenter Mark Speight? A couple of weeks ago it was reported that he’s suspected of murdering his girlfriend – of course, since then, its been announced that the death doesn’t look suspicious, he’s actually quite upset about it and probably didn’t do it. The news tends to forget about following things like that up quite so vigorously, so all you need to do is add an evil moustache for him to twirl, and he immediately looks more guilty of being evil:

So what’s the moral of this story? Don’t trust people with moustaches, obviously.

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WHO will be the next DOCTOR?
September 3rd, 2007 at 00:27

The big news in the Doctor Who nerd community is that David Tennant is almost certainly going to be leaving the programme after series 4. Rather than just being baseless speculation, he’s apparently doing some Royal Shakespeare Company stuff next year, so unless he actual has a real working TARDIS, he won’t be able to film Doctor Who at the same time.

Obviously, this leaves a huge, gaping void in the programme, so speculation has begun about who will be the next Doctor Who. On the nerdy Doctor Who forums there’s people throwing names around: Rik Mayall, Jon Simm, the bloke who played the creepy public school boy in the last series, but I think they’ve missed out a very obvious candidate for the next Doctor: Adam Hart-Davis.

I don’t just think this because it’d be uniting two things that I’m a big fan of either – if that were the case I’d suggest they should repair the TARDIS’s chameleon circuit and turn it into a cherrypicker too.

He’d be perfect for the part, as he has all of the things that I good Doctor would need. For a start, he knows all about space and the Cosmos, as we saw on his series about the Cosmos recently. He also knows his history, and would blend perfectly into and feel comfortable in any time period, be it in Tudor England as a jester or Roman times as a Centurion. Kate Humble could be his companion.

The Doctor needs to be able to get out of sticky situations. I’m sure Adam wouldn’t find this a problem, after spending time in the Science Shack, he’ll be able to build a makeshift anything.

Also, AHD has a tendency to dress rather loudly – which is perfect when you consider what all of the old Doctors used to wear. Look at Peter Davison or Sylvester McCoy, for instance.

And most of all, he’s slightly eccentric, like all the best people – which is perhaps the key element to being a good Doctor Who.

So who’s with me? Adam Hart Davis for Doctor Who!

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Adam Hart Davis is brilliant
August 24th, 2007 at 20:03

As you might know, I’m doing a BA at the moment, so as you might imagine, science isn’t my strong point – and isn’t the strong point of the other people on my course either. There’s one guy on my course, who I think it is fair to say I have a pretty “combative” “relationship” with, who once claimed that the Moon is approximately half way between the Earth and the Sun.

I was discussing this the other day with my friend Michael, and we were wildly speculating about the possible implications if the universe really were like that. I speculated that if it were the case, then the Moon would have to be massive in order to appear the same size in the night’s sky – and that it probably wouldn’t be orbiting us, it’d probably be orbiting the Sun. Maybe we’d have a binary star system… but I don’t really know what I’m talking about. We both didn’t really know enough about cosmology (surprise, surprise) to commentate.

So we thought, who would know about something like this? Then it struck us: who has been recently on TV with an excellently informative yet accessible TV series about the Cosmos? Adam Hart Davis, of course. I’d already pestered him with stupid questions via e-mail before, so we tried it again. Confirming his place as the best celebrity, he sent this excellent response:

“Hi there,

What a simple question, and what a complicated answer. If the Moon were 46 million miles away, instead of a quarter of a million, there would be many consequences.

First, we would scarcely be able to see it, since it would look about 200 times smaller than it does now. Second, it would probably take much longer to orbit the Earth – so out months would become many times longer.

Third, at that distance it would be closer to the Sun, in part of its orbit, than Venus; so it might well get captured by Venus, by Mercury, or by the Sun; in which case we would lose it altogether.

Fourth, the Earth’s tilt and magnetic field are probably stabilized by the Moon; if we lost the Moon we might wobble and waver, and our seasons might become chaotic or disappear completely.

There is more information in my book The cosmos – a beginner’s guide.

Good luck,

Adam”

I don’t know what I like more: the fact that a celebrity took the time to send a fairly detailed response to an obscure question, or the fact that his answer more than disproves the “hypothesis” that the Moon is half way between the Earth and the Sun. Maybe he just wanted to plug his book.

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Lowri Turner
July 14th, 2007 at 13:22

Oh dear. It appears that Lowri Turner is a horrible racist. She’s written an article for the Daily Mail titled “I love my mixed race baby – but why does she feel so alien?”, and in the process inadvertently coined a new phrase similar to “I’m not racist, but…”.

Have a click of the link in the first paragraph, it’s really quite incredible. Turner’s column contains some truly shocking lines:

“I know that concentrating on how my daughter looks is shallow. She is a person in her own right, not an accessory to me. But still, I can’t shake off the feeling of unease.”

I’d hate to be her kid growing up and Googling her mother in a few years time. “I wonder why mum’s career ended shortly after I was born? I’ll ask Google!”

The funniest line in the whole article is probably this: “I worry that, as my daughter doesn’t look like me, people will assume she is adopted. After all, it’s all the rage in showbiz circles.” She seems to be implying that presenting DIY SOS makes you a massive celebrity. Nobody cares about you, Lowri. Unless you’re being slightly racist towards your own kids, in which case its not the sort of celebrity interest you’re after.

“White women who have non-white children are stigmatised as ‘Tracy Towerblocks’ living on benefits, most of which they spend on lager and fags.”

You can see why it was published in the Mail, its ticking all of the boxes: darkies, the working class, sponging benefits, etc. I’ve never heard this expression before though, and can’t figure out the factual basis on which it originated.

“Even admitting to having mixed feelings about her not being blonde and blue eyed, I feel disloyal and incredibly guilty.”

Writing about it in a national newspaper will make you feel much better about it though. Who knows, you might even get invited on to TalkSport or The Wright Stuff, if you’re lucky.

“Part of me thinks I should be playing sitar music to her in her cot, mastering pakoras and serving them dressed in a sari, but that would be fantastically fake coming from me.”

I can’t quite understand why she wrote this. There’s no angle from which you can interpret it in which she comes away looking anything less than a horrible racist.

This may sound like a pretty big statement to make, but consider this: for once, the comments posted by readers on the Mail website are actually sane:

“How do you imagine your daughter will feel, reading this article when she is older? It is all about YOU not your child.” – Caroline, Surrey

“I am so shocked by this stupid woman I am unable to find the words….” – Martha L, London, England

“How can you say this about your own child? I hope your husband knows how you feel. I’d be very disturbed if i were him.” – M, surrey

After doing some investigation (or “looking on Wikipedia” as it is sometimes known), it turns out that Lowri Turner is a right nasty piece of work. It turns out she wrote a column entitled “However much I love my gay friends, I don’t want them running the country“. Basically, she’s pretty awful. Ian Betteridge did a good job of fisking this second link back when it was actually written.

I’m never going to watch DIY SOS again in protest.

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