Jenny McCarthy Jokes and Logical Fallacies

What to do when you get the sore, swollen throat of strep throat or the painful, yellow oozing of an infected cut? Take an antibiotic.

What to do when you get the pesky coughing and sneezing of the common cold/flu or the itchy spots of chicken pox? Take an antiviral?

Not always.

The trouble with antiviral medications is that, unlike their widely used counterpart the antibiotic, they tend to damage human cells as well as nasty virus particles. Antibiotics (which kill bacteria not viruses) do minimal damage (relatively) to our own nearby cells.

The paper that initiated the great MMR hoax has been thoroughly discredited and retracted by the journal that published it, but the anti-vaxxers still claim -- and hoodwink some parents -- that more research is required to establish whether or not vaccines cause autism. I thought therefore that it was time to repost my comments on a rather more surprising source that happily promoted the bogus claim that "more research is necessary".

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Gillian McKeith is back. The show that she inflicted on Canada last year has reached the UK.

Eat Yourself Sexy is not being shown on Channel Four, but is on the much less viewed Discovery Channel on Monday nights.

This is the blog I wrote about the show last September when it aired on the W Network in Canada.

Hangovers offer rich pickings for complementary therapists. It's the perfect fodder for alternative medicine. Give them an affliction almost completely characterised by a progressive recovery and they will be tumbling over themselves to offer 'cures'. Staring bleary-eyed at the Sunday supplements the recommended homeopathic regime of nux vomica suddenly seem like a good idea. Rational individuals try to reason through the fog of hangover and decide to take one pill (sorry pillule – don't want to sound too allopathic) and then wait 24 hours. Hangover cured. Personally, I’d like to see a decent double-blind RCT looking at homeopathic nux vomica versus a bacon butty.