Monday, December 15, 2014

Richard Dawkins debates homeopathy with Dr. Peter Fisher (2007)

Richard Dawkins made a television documentary called "The enemies of reason" in 2007. A large portion of the first part of the documentary is on homeopathy. You can watch it here. While I think it was a pretty good documentary that consisted of legitimate criticism, it was edited for television and was focused on "gotcha" moments. I think it also missed out on an educational opportunity to explain the rigorous methods of a well conducted randomized controlled trial. I recently ran across Dr. Peter Fisher's defence of NHS funding for homeopathy in the 'uncut' interview with Dawkins from the documentary.

This was probably the best defence of homeopathy I have ever seen. Despite this, with his usual style, Dawkins had Dr. Fisher on the ropes the entire time without even citing the evidence for a lack of homeopathic efficacy. Admittedly Dr. Fisher is an easy target, however I would hate to have to debate Dawkins on any subject. He finds common ground, concedes valid points, asks great questions, and lets his opponent talk him/herself into tight corners. From my biased perspective, in this interview Dawkins essentially had Dr. Fisher admit that homeopathy is a form of placebo. However, is there any context in which homeopathy could provide a safe, cost-effective treatment that is completely placebo? Probably not, however water is pretty cheap and safe.


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Wednesday, December 03, 2014

Nature enables sharing of articles

The journal Nature now enables subscribers to share articles for free though hyperlinks to a proprietary document format. The hyperlink to the article can then be subsequently shared by anyone. A year subscription to Nature costs $200 and an article costs around $30. While this is a somewhat awkward model in my opinion, I appreciate that such a prestigious journal can demonstrate some flexibility and adapt to the changing publishing business.
Here is a link to a paper on the identification of the remains of Richard III in the proprietary ReadCube format.


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