Top all-time · #762
Ben Goldacre
Personal blog · badscience.netsciencehealthwriting
Ben Goldacre's personal blog at badscience.net covers science, health and writing. Since 2007, 86 different Hacker News readers have linked it 167 times, most often “Ben Goldacre: Here’s the foreword to my new book, Bad Pharma”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Sometimes recommended · 14 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Ben Goldacre's Bad Science blog and his writing on clinical trials, evidence and drug policy, often alongside the book Bad Pharma.
- Recommended for · 14 comments
- Called the blog 'very good' and 'great', one post 'helpful', and the writing 'some interesting stuff'.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /18 people · 19 mentions · first linked 2009-06-07
- Ben Goldacre: Here’s the foreword to my new book, Bad Pharma4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2012-09-25
- The Doctor Will Sue You Now3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2009-07-04
- /2008/08/the-medias-mmr-hoax/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-01-07
- When ethics committees kill2 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2011-03-26
- /about-dr-ben-goldacre/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-03-30
- /2008/04/cliff-richard-gloria-hunniford-carole-caplin-the-60bn-food-supplement-industry-and-the-quantum-xrroid-dude-refute-a-cochrane-meta-analysis/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-05-19
- /category/big-pharma/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-05-30
- "Facebook causes cancer"2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-02-25
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-03-19
What Hacker News says?
I disagree. 95 good. 98 bad. 2000 good, XP bad (for me), Vista bad, 7 good, 8 bad, 8.1 better but not great, 10 OK, 11 bad. As always: https://www.badscience.net/wp-content/uploads/complicatedcov... ("I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that." -- Ben Goldacre)
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/complicatedcover154.jpg
on “Windows needs a change in priorities”Submitted Kids who spot bullshit, and the adults who get upset about it as a story · 330 points
HN discussionThen his helmeted head hit the ground so hard it knocked him unconscious — hard enough for his Apple Watch to feel it. “A hit that hard could have killed me if I weren’t wearing it,” Burdett said. He had to replace the helmet. Sigh. Bicycle helmets prevent neither concussions nor death: by design, according to all epidemiological studies and according to the manufacturers of bicycle helmets. https://www.badscience.n…
Comment linking /2013/12/bicycle-helmets-and-the-law-a-perfect-teaching-case-for-epidemiology/
on “Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911”Submitted 50% of neuroscience papers suffer from a major statistical error. as a story · 182 points
HN discussionScience doesn't work like that. To get meaningful results you need a large sample size, with a control group, with patients not knowing whether they're getting the new medicine or the old medicine[1] and with doctors not knowing either. Then you need to write that up and analyse it. Many patients are happy to take part in such trials, but it's hard to get ethics panel approval. [1] you tend to test against current b…
Comment linking /2011/03/when-ethics-committees-kill/
on “How Doctors Die”Submitted Why don’t journalists link to primary sources? as a story · 173 points
HN discussionPrescribing heroin to addicts seemed to work quite well for society http://www.badscience.net/2006/11/methadone-and-heroin/ Unlike our former business of selling the stuff to China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_opium_in_China
Comment linking /2006/11/methadone-and-heroin/
on “Kofi Annan on Why It's Time to Legalize Drugs”Submitted Academic papers are hidden from the public. Here's some direct action. as a story · 156 points
HN discussionWe're lucky to have hard-headed people willing to put up with legal threats and bullying tactics. I'm not sure I'd have the spine for it. It reminds me of when Ben Goldacre was sued [0] which luckily his publisher covered the costs for. [0] https://www.badscience.net/files/The-Doctor-Will-Sue-You-Now...
Comment linking /files/The-Doctor-Will-Sue-You-Now.pdf
on “Data sleuths who spotted research misconduct cleared of defamation”Submitted Ben Goldacre: Here’s the foreword to my new book, Bad Pharma as a story · 146 points
HN discussionMore info here: http://www.badscience.net/2013/01/alltrials-campaign-launche... "Overall, about half of all clinical trials have never been published, and we know that trials with negative results about a treatment are much more likely to be brushed under the carpet." Bonus: By having all trials public, researchers won't waste time researching something that has already been researched (replication aside).
Comment linking /2013/01/alltrials-campaign-launches-please-sign-and-spread/
on “It’s time all clinical trial results are reported”Submitted Why cigarette packs matter as a story · 79 points
HN discussionBen Goldacre has a good blog post about "When Ethics Committees Kill" ( http://www.badscience.net/2011/03/when-ethics-committees-kil... )
Comment linking /2011/03/when-ethics-committees-kill/
on “Why I quit medicine”Submitted Lucia de Berk – a martyr to stupidity as a story · 62 points
HN discussion> Don't get me wrong: funding bias is a problem, but it gets overstated. Hardly. It is in fact far worse than you are attempting to imply, and is covered in detail in Bad Pharma[1] which is well worth reading. A snippet: "Drugs are tested by the people who manufacture them, in poorly designed trials, on hopelessly small numbers of weird, unrepresentative patients, and analysed using techniques which are flawed by de…
Comment linking /2012/09/heres-the-intro-to-my-new-book/
on “Leading Anti-Marijuana Academics Are Paid by Painkiller Drug Companies”Submitted "We are more possible than you can powerfully imagine" as a story · 60 points
HN discussionWhat, like the pharmaceutical industry? I would argue that much good knowledge is created that way but it, too, has its issues. See much of Ben Goldacre's work. http://www.badscience.net/
Comment linking /
on ““This week, I resigned from my position at Duke University””Submitted When ethics committees kill as a story · 52 points
HN discussionThis article re-hashes much of the content of Ben Goldacre's book 'Bad Pharma', however it does not propose any solutions (Ben Goldacre does). There is plenty that can be done with legislation, as a customer of healthcare and in clinical trials. If all trials - good results or bad - were published then we would be half way there. http://www.badscience.net/2013/10/why-and-how-i-wrote-bad-ph... The article mentions th…
Comment linking /2013/10/why-and-how-i-wrote-bad-pharma/
on “To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting”Submitted Bicycle Helmets and the law: a perfect teaching case for epidemiology as a story · 45 points
HN discussionInteresting take-away from having watched football-related concussion documentaries. For a long period of time football players were told that if they wore helmets they were protecting their head. So they were lured into dangerous behaviors. If cycling is a dangerous as playing football (it's not) then bicycle helmets would fulfill the same misleading role as football helmets. As it is cycling is relatively safe and…
Comment linking /2013/12/bicycle-helmets-and-the-law-a-perfect-teaching-case-for-epidemiology/
on “Bontrager’s WaveCel material more effective at preventing concussions than MIPS”Submitted How do you regulate Wu? as a story · 43 points
HN discussionEthics committees introduce weird results. Ben Goldacre talks about it here ( http://www.badscience.net/2011/03/when-ethics-committees-kil... ) We have a variety of treatments that work for some people, but not for others. Combining these sometimes-effective evidence based treatments with the ethics panel weirdness above makes it hard. People with depression are at increased risk of suicide. They are also at increas…
Comment linking /2011/03/when-ethics-committees-kill/
on “Yale scientists explain how ketamine vanquishes depression within hours”Submitted Home taping didn’t kill music as a story · 40 points
HN discussionHis blog ( http://www.badscience.net ) is also very good and he writes for the Guardian.
Comment linking /
on “Infectious disease doesn't care why you're unvaccinated”Submitted Guns don’t kill people, puppies do as a story · 33 points
HN discussionBen Goldacre writes some interesting stuff: http://www.badscience.net/about-dr-ben-goldacre/
Comment linking /about-dr-ben-goldacre/
on “Dunning-Kruger and Other Memes”Submitted Yeah well you can prove anything with science as a story · 24 points
HN discussionBen Goldacre (of Bad Science) wrote a paper with the UK Government on A/B tests of policies. http://www.badscience.net/2012/06/heres-a-cabinet-office-pap...
Comment linking /2012/06/heres-a-cabinet-office-paper-i-co-authored-about-randomised-trials-of-government-policies/
on “Show HN: Guess which government programs work”Submitted The Nutt Sack Affair as a story · 23 points
HN discussion
