Some of the most recurrent news issues to hit the headlines in recent times are panics over health – MMR vaccines causing autism, obesity epidemics, bird flu, most recently swine flu, often accompanied with fearful warnings about mass contamination and incalculable death tolls. Most of which, it would appear, fail to materialise. 

For those who are becoming sceptical about the latest media frenzy about health, Ben Goldacre is the perfect antidote. His book Bad Science, published in 2008, is an extended and revised compilation of the weekly columns he writes for The Guardian newspaper, in which he insists on using sound, scientific fact to debunk and refute spurious claims and unnecessary panic. In these articles you will find Goldacre’s forensic analysis of the distorting effects on real science of consumer product marketing, the pharmaceutical industry’s often far too cosy relationship with some prominent medical journalists,  and of pseudo-science and plain quackery masquerading as fact. With the satirical astringency of a radical pamphleteer, he famously exposed the scientific limitations of a certain celebrity ‘health expert’ by obtaining a ‘certified professional membership’ from the American Association she claimed membership of – for his pet cat.

Goldacre is not merely an amateur sceptic – he knows what he is talking about. Working as a junior hospital doctor in the NHS, he is also a qualified psychiatrist. Having won numerous awards for his medical journalism, Goldacre substitutes the voice of truthful reason in place of fear, inaccuracy and, on occasions, sheer falsification.