Category Archives: Science

A sense of deja vu: the advertising of e-cigarettes

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Glamourising smoking, targeting advertising at young people, using imagery of healthy, sporty smokers – all old, outlawed techniques for the tobacco industry. But the advent of e-cigarettes has lit the embers of this debate again. The BMA has complained to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) about a television advertisement for e-cigarettes, saying it breaches two of the new rules that were announced by the Committees of Advertising Practice in October. They came into effect on  Monday 10 November, the same day the ad was aired for the first time.

The manufacturer, VIP Electronic Cigarette, says this is the first time the act of using an electronic cigarette – or vaping – has been shown on television. It appeared in an ad break in Grantchester, ITV1’s smoke-wreathed drama about a 1950s country vicar who falls over corpses in between lighting cigarettes. Continue reading →

Opening the evidence up to policymakers

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A group of UK academics and researchers is planning to launch a UK Evidence Information Service (EIS) for politicians. It is now asking members of the public to volunteer to interview local elected politicians, providing feedback that will help shape the service. Continue reading →

Bridging the gap between evidence and policy

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Nature recently published an excellent list of 20 things policymakers should understand about interpreting scientific claims, by William J Sutherland, David Spiegelhalter and Mark A Burgman, academics from Cambridge and Melbourne. Included are reminders that “scientists are human” and that “correlation does not imply causation”, as well as practical examples explaining why “regression to the mean can mislead” or how to “beware the base rate fallacy”. Continue reading →

Medical journals and the tobacco industry

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The BMJ has announced that it will no longer consider consider research funded by the tobacco industry, in whole or part, for publication. It is time, say the editors of the BMJ, Heart,
Thorax, and BMJ Open, “to cease supporting the now discredited notion that tobacco industry funded research is just like any other research”. They cite the increasing evidence that peer review and declaration of funding is not enough: funding can Continue reading →

Surgery in early 20C: less risk – and more

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Scientific advances such as anaesthesia meant that surgery in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries started to be seen as safe – but at the same time more risky. Surgeons, buoyed by early successes, started undertaking more risky procedures, in greater volumes,
accompanied by a media-fuelled moral panic about experimentation and vivisection. These apparent paradoxes are explored in a recent article that looks at attitudes to risk and responsibility by surgeons, their patients and the public, as well as the risks faced by the early women surgeons. Continue reading →

Women of science: worthy of note

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Post banknotegate, the row about the absence of women on Bank of England notes, about which Anna Jenkin has a different take, highlighting the limits of a focus on individuals in
history, I came across some interesting blog posts about women in science. In one, Vanessa Heggie chronicles the extraordinary career of Dr Ida H Hyde, inventor of both the
micro-electrode and an octopus restraint system. Of course. Continue reading →

Naming and shaming sites that make dubious health claims

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Legal, decent, honest and truthful. It doesn’t sound too much to ask, but many traders
continue to use misleading advertising claims on their websites – and the list is dominated by health products.

If the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) decides that an online ad does not comply with the UK Advertising Code, it will make repeated requests for the dubious claim to be
amended: if traders still fail to comply, then details of the claim and the ASA decision are published. Looking down the list, it is dominated by health products, including something I misread as psychic dentistry. Continue reading →

Health internet searches: early warning of drug safety issues?

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One common use of the internet is to search for health information. Could an analysis of search terms, and a little detective work, help provide early clues about drug side effects, before more traditional methods such as official reporting systems have kicked in? Continue reading →

AllTrials not SomeTrials: no more invisible evidence

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To assess the evidence, you need to know it is there.

Properly conducted clinical trials provide the best evidence for whether drugs work and are safe. But about half have never been published, and trials with positive results – where the drug concerned is shown to be safe and effective – are more likely to be published than negative ones. Patients can be harmed – for example if a treatment found to be harmful in an invisible trial is then given to patients in a new one – or medicines used ineffectively or wastefully, as a result. Researchers can’t plan research properly because they don’t know what has gone before. The problems with this situation have been well documented for years, but things may now be going to change.

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NHS Choices: homeopathy is a ‘treatment’ without evidence

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It’s official: homeopathy is a ‘treatment’ not a treatment.

The homeopathy entry on the NHS Choices website has been rewritten, following the media storm resulting from the revelation that the Department of Health censored accurate information about homeopathy after lobbying by the Prince’s Foundation.

The new entry starts by saying, “Homeopathy is a ‘treatment’ based on the use of highly diluted substances” and is bracingly frank in the evidence section: “There is no evidence for the idea that substances that can induce certain symptoms can also help to treat them. There is no evidence for the idea that diluting and shaking substances in water can turn those substances into medicines”. The evidence appears to have triumphed.

Is the speed with which this entry was rewritten a record?