One of the advantages of insomnia

Is that on occasions you get to see, and comment upon, things that get released in the early hours first. On this occasion, it isn't such a great advantage as it is a subject the author has covered on a number previous occasion. Ben Goldacre is almost certainly known to all of you as the author of the Bad Science column in the Grauniad. When he isn't gaining nutritional accreditation for his dead cat he writes about  people making scientific, especially medical, claims without the evidence to back them up. Proper evidence mind, correctly run trials producing reviewed papers in respectable journals for example.

One example of the utter rubbish he has been railing against over the years is Brain Gym an expensive proprietary set of exercises used in thousands of schools in the UK. There isn't anything intrinsically bad in any of those statements about the system, what is a problem is the pseudo-scientific justifications used to sell these exercises to teachers. The exact nature of the what and whys of how this mumbo jumbo is used to peddle this stuff has even become the subject of a level 3 psychology module.

So while today's Bad Science column is telling us anything new, we still aren't listening enough to ensure that there isn't any more than the necessary amounts of cods wallop being taught to the children of this country.