Daily Archives:March 7th, 2009

Hearin’ about heroin

I’m about half-way through Ben Goldacre’s splendid book ‘Bad Science’, which talks about clinical trials, homeopathy, the subtleties of the placebo effect, the supposed benefits of antioxidants, and a range of other topics, and does so in a most enjoyable way. He exposes some of the real science, and some of the nonsense, behind what is reported in the media.

Ben is a doctor who works for the NHS, has a column in The Guardian, and a web site at badscience.net. To get a feel for his work, have a look at his analysis of some recent feel-good reports in the papers and, worryingly, in Parliament. He begins:

“”Seven hundred British troops seized four Taliban narcotics factories containing £50m of drugs”” said the Guardian on Wednesday. “”Troops recovered more than 400kg of raw opium in one drug factory and nearly 800kg of heroin in another.”” Lordy that is good. In the Telegraph, British forces had seized “”£50 million of heroin and killed at least 20 Taliban fighters in a daring raid that dealt a significant blow to the insurgents in Afghanistan.”” Everyone carried the good news. “”John Hutton, defence secretary, said the seizure of £50m of narcotics would ‘starve the Taliban of funding preventing the proliferation of drugs and terror in the UK’.””

Well.

And then he looks at the real numbers. Read the post here.

© Copyright Quentin Stafford-Fraser