Britain seems to be having a bout of “Tall Poppy Syndrome“. You see, we have this bright young thing on University Challenge. She slaughters the competition, and allows herself a smile when she gets the right answer. Except, people hate her. [Daily Mail] [Guardian]
Update: Her team won! The BBC have a Have Your Say about this.
Right now, with schooling and education standards falling even lower according to the Cambridge Review on education, you’d think we’d celebrate success.
But no! We fall even deeper into the mire of conspiracy and superstition. What’s the racist and obnoxious Jade Goodey ever done apart from whore her death around the media? But somehow we (the media would have us believe) respect and celebrate her, as if being a fat foulmouthed media tart is something to aspire to.
If more people were a little more like Trimble and a little less like Goodey, we might have an economy. Or an industry. Or at least enough people with enough sense not to vote Labour back in.
Now, onto MMR: Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science blog keeps track of MMR hoaxes and other media nonsense. However, not everyone likes their work critiqued, especially when they get it so very wrong. In fact, LBC’s lawyers came down on him when he put the following recording of Jenni Barnett talking crap on LBC. She said she welcomed a debate – which she did by closing off the comments and removing the post from her blog. Nice.
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Related to this is the BBC’s “Street Science” series on MMR:
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And here is a segment on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour about the dangers of not using the MMR vaccine:
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There’s a couple of very good books if you want to get a handle on urban legends, bad science and conspiracy nonsense.
