One hundred things we didn’t know a year ago. Except we did.

The BBC is running a story containing 100 facts we didn’t know last year. Aside from the 101st fact that we did know quite a few of those things if we’d ever read a book before 2005, there were quite a few interesting nuggets in there, notably:

7. Baboons can tell the difference between English and French. Zoo keepers at Port Lympne wild animal park in Kent are having to learn French to communicate with the baboons which had been transferred from Paris zoo.

29. When faced with danger, the octopus can wrap six of its legs around its head to disguise itself as a fallen coconut shell and escape by walking backwards on the other two legs, scientists discovered.

50. Only 36% of the world’s newspapers are tabloid.

53. It takes 75kg of raw materials to make a mobile phone.

65. Actor James Doohan, who played Scotty, had a hand in creating the Klingon language that was used in the movies, and which Shakespeare plays were subsequently translated into.

99. The Japanese word “chokuegambo” describes the wish that there were more designer-brand shops on a given street.

Renewable energy trends in 2005

Just as the UK government starts to become convinced that nuclear is the only option for future power needs, renewable energy has started to become more affordable. This slightly US-centric article looks at some of the trends in renewable energy in 2005 that will lead to even more green energy sources in 2006.

I couldn’t make this stuff up: how does Dr Gillian McKeith manage it?

'Dr' Gillian McKeith I owe a lot to Ben Goldacre, author of the ‘Bad Science’ column in The Guardian. It wasn’t so long ago that my lovely wife, Sarah, decided we needed to eat more healthily.

She was right. We did.

Now ‘Dr’ Gillian McKeith is a ‘nutritionist’ held in high regard by many. Channel 4 even has a show in which she goes round to people’s houses, investigates their diets (and, erm, their faeces) and points out that they eat rubbish and need to eat better food.

Like that wasn’t blindingly obvious.

But since Channel 4 has such faith in her, we thought, surely her advice would be worth following.

No sooner can you say ‘we loves a nice book shop’, then a copy of one of Dr Gillian’s books was sitting in Sarah’s hands and Dr G’s advice was being followed. This included many things including eating lots and lots of blue-green algae pills every day, and regular shots of aloe vera.

Have you ever had aloe vera? Imagine what evil must taste like. Then take that thought and make it real. You now have aloe vera. For the record, ten out of ten people we know who tried it said “That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve tasted in my whole life.”

But we were following the book so…

Anyway, one day Sarah was reading bits to me. I can’t remember the exact words, but one sentence set off massive warning bells in my head. Dr Gillian was claiming that something was bad because it contained “inorganic iron”. Now, even giving her some benefit of the doubt (eg she meant that it was iron from inorganic sources or she was using the phrase informally), that still struck me as strange.

Iron, of course, is inorganic. Only things that are based on carbon are organic (hence “inorganic chemistry” and “organic chemistry”, the latter being the study of anything with carbon in it, the former being the study of everything else). To anyone with so much as an A-level in chemistry or biology, let alone a degree, implying that “organic iron” is better than “inorganic iron” is kind of like saying that “light-emitting lasers” are not as good as “dark-emitting lasers”.

A quick Google search and Dr Ben Goldacre’s remarkable research into Dr Gillian popped up on my screen. Oh the horror. Dr Gillian’s PhD is as worthless as a “Charles Kennedy: 10 more years!” T-shirt and her degree is in modern languages (or something equally arts-based).

I forward the links to Sarah and before you know it, algae pills and aloe vera are in the bin. Thank you Dr Ben Goldacre. Thank you Sarah.

But today, I read in the New Scientist the following words of wisdom from Dr Gillian’s book Miracle Superfood: Wild blue-green algae:

Some algae enthusiasts believe that if you eat blue-green algae on a regular basis, you will connect with something essential and ancient. Richard France, a macrobiotic counselor, states it is not inconceivable that on subtle vibrational levels, unique genetic memories and messages of harmony and peace are stored in algae, which have grown undisturbed for aeons in a pristine environment. This information may be passed on to us at a cellular level, encouraging harmony among our own cellular family…. [algae] may even have special vibrational fields. Dr Gabriel Cousins describes it as subtle, organised energy fields. These vibrational energy fields are the life forces of the algae, which he believes have the ability to regenerate mind, body and immune forces.

Odd that in the whole time I was taking those pills, at no point did I feel connected to plankton, algae, amoeba or any other primeval-y organisms. Maybe I just didn’t buy enough of them.

Or maybe, just maybe, she’s talking complete cobblers. Does she even have as much as a GCSE in “combined sciences and woodwork”? Had I read those words before the diet of unpleasantry began, we could have avoided giving her even as much as a book’s worth of cash. Still, at least we didn’t give money to Mr Yousaff.

Plagiarism or not: you decide

I’m a big fan of Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science column in The Guardian. I’ve also started reading Spiked, the magazine formerly known as Living Marxism but still not known for good writing.

Today, I had a sense of déjà vu come over me. An article debunking a recent study into homeopathy just appeared on Spiked. Yet, looky here. What’s this over in Bad Science? It’s an article debunking homeopathy that appeared a few weeks ago, that used more or less exactly the same arguments and ammunition.

They’re not exactly identical so it’s quite possible that two people independently came to the same conclusion. Yet Bad Science has become almost compulsory reading for science journalists and science readers, so it seems odd to me that Spiked’s author wouldn’t have read the piece.

Just as an aside, is Timandra really a name? Either poshest parents ever or pseudonym of the year…

UPDATE: Judging by her web site, I’m going for poshest parents ever.

Spiked!

If you haven’t heard that Living Marxism (I know, I know…) has transformed itself into Spiked, now’s a good time to have a gander. There’s very little hint of Marxism and there’s some good writing there. In common with New Statesman, there’s also some appalling writing there, but that can’t be helped. As an example, there’s a vaguely interesting but badly written article on mental illness in children there.

Ebola reservoir might be found

The BBC is reporting that fruit bats might finally have been confirmed as the reservoir for Ebola. It’s been a suspicion for a long time among many virologists that bats were carriers of Ebola (and potentially other filoviruses), so it’s good news all round if it’s true: we can now work on ways to contain the disease. If we don’t, there a good chance that most of the great apes of Africa are going to get wiped out very soon as Ebola makes its way westwards.