Dr Christian Jessen's at it again

Last year I wrote about how real life TV doctor Christian Jessen didn't do as well as fictional tv doctor Gregory House.

Background: Dr Christian works for a private company offering screening tests. These aren't diagnostic tests. A diagnostic test is when you have a symptom - a lump in your breast say. A test is to try and diagnose what that might be. A screening test is when you have no symptoms but are screened anyway. Screening tests carry risks, and can do more harm than good. I do not know if Dr Christian directly makes money from a harmful practice, or merely works for a company that does.

I saw this conversation on twitter:

I asked Dr McCartney how she had been misrepresented, to which she replied:

It's distressing that someone whose "main aim is to help raise medical awareness and simplify, demystify, de-stigmatise and explain the sometimes complicated and inaccessible world of medicine to the public" is doing such a shoddy job when it comes to screening tests, and is not even entering into a conversation with Dr McCartney, especially given her stirling work that mirrors his main aim.

So, as small as my voice may be, I urge you to ignore Dr Christian's output, and go and check out http://privatehealthscreen.org/ and maybe pop down to your library or book shop and check out The Patient Paradox, and if you're contemplating a screening test, check out the risks involved - it seems that doctors who work for companies offering them won't tell you after all.

UPDATE: Dr McCarteny's article in the Independent about the smear test.

Baking with science

At school there's a Bake Off amongst the staff for Comic Relief (the results of which shall make up a cake sale). I have never baked  a cake. But how hard can it be? After all, I'm a science teacher, and baking is science for hungry people.

 So, armed with Chapter 6 of Ben Miller's excellent "It's Not Rocket Science" in which he talks about the science of making a Victoria sponge, I shall do just that.

No crazy challenges of physical endurance this. No test runs, I shall enter the kitchen with my ingredients, the book, and my wits.

 So, if you fancy, do chip in a quid.

 Thanks!

Remembrance Day

John Brown went off to war to fight on a foreign shore

His mama sure was proud of him!
He stood straight and tall in his uniform and all
His mama’s face broke out all in a grin

“Oh son, you look so fine, I’m glad you’re a son of mine
You make me proud to know you hold a gun
Do what the captain says, lots of medals you will get
And we’ll put them on the wall when you come home”

As that old train pulled out, John’s ma began to shout
Tellin’ ev’ryone in the neighborhood:
“That’s my son that’s about to go, he’s a soldier now, you know”
She made well sure her neighbors understood

She got a letter once in a while and her face broke into a smile
As she showed them to the people from next door
And she bragged about her son with his uniform and gun
And these things you called a good old-fashioned war

Oh! Good old-fashioned war!

Then the letters ceased to come, for a long time they did not come
They ceased to come for about ten months or more
Then a letter finally came saying, “Go down and meet the train
Your son’s a-coming home from the war”

She smiled and went right down, she looked everywhere around
But she could not see her soldier son in sight
But as all the people passed, she saw her son at last
When she did she could hardly believe her eyes

Oh his face was all shot up and his hand was all blown off
And he wore a metal brace around his waist
He whispered kind of slow, in a voice she did not know
While she couldn’t even recognize his face!

Oh! Lord! Not even recognize his face

“Oh tell me, my darling son, pray tell me what they done
How is it you come to be this way?”
He tried his best to talk but his mouth could hardly move
And the mother had to turn her face away

“Don’t you remember, Ma, when I went off to war
You thought it was the best thing I could do?
I was on the battleground, you were home . . . acting proud
You wasn’t there standing in my shoes”

“Oh, and I thought when I was there, God, what am I doing here?
I’m a-tryin’ to kill somebody or die tryin’
But the thing that scared me most was when my enemy came close
And I saw that his face looked just like mine”

Oh! Lord! Just like mine!

“And I couldn’t help but think, through the thunder rolling and stink
That I was just a puppet in a play
And through the roar and smoke, this string is finally broke
And a cannonball blew my eyes away”

As he turned away to walk, his Ma was still in shock
At seein’ the metal brace that helped him stand
But as he turned to go, he called his mother close
And he dropped his medals down into her hand

Bob Dylan, MTV Unplugged

Happy Ada Lovelace Day

It's Ada Lovelace Day, a chance to celebrate women in science.

Why do women in science need celebrating? Because, sadly, they get under-represented. Whilst it seems that males choose to pursue science more than females, such that a 50:50 split may be unlikely (see the chapter "Gender" in Pinker's The Blank Slate), there are still hurdles in the way - the current Boots Christmas Catalogue, for example, has science toys listed only in the section for boys. This is unacceptable, and such barriers must be dropped.

For Ada Lovelace Day day, the organisers are asking people to highlight a female scientist. There are many to choose from, but today I shall pick Mary Anning. Like many children, I thought dinosaurs and fossils were cool, and I still do. She hunted fossils and discovered the first examples of the ichthyosaur, pterosaur and plesiosaur. I loved reading about those discoveries, and also have a vague recollection of the seventh Doctor meeting her in an old issue of Doctor Magazine which was, I think you'll understand, Very Exciting.

Despite her accomplishments, she still didn't get the full recognition she deserved in her day.

In addition to the above, at school I let all the students I taught know that it was Ada Lovelace Day as well as my colleagues.

As ever, there's an XKCD that is just a wonderful fit for the day, which I shall leave you with:

Thoughtful LOLZ

Saw this outside a church:

My first thought was "God".

Though it does highlight a problem for the Church in this country.

Church attendances are dropping year on year (the latest stats released this year from the C of E for example show a 2% drop on the previous year), which is unsurprising, given the increasingly secular proportions of the UK.

Of course, as Neil deGrasse Tyson has pointed out: "...religiosity drops with education, especially with science education, but does not drop to zero, not even for members of the National Academy? I think that’s an amazing statistic, which tells us something about the human mind that is not yet understood." It may seem like a losing battle for the Church, and religion in general, but the truth seems to be that religion is probably here to stay for quite some time. So long as we can end up with a secular state (which is the fairest way for all religions), I'm ok with that.

But not until then.