I write about misuses of evidence in plenty of different spheres: scaremongering journalists, obvious quacks and naturopaths, and flaws in the way that evidence is used in mainstream academia, medicine and in (government) policy. One of the things I always found interesting is the same tricks are used to distort medicine in all of those domains.

Positive findings are around twice as likely to be published as negative findings. This is a cancer at the core of evidence-based medicine.

These corporations run our culture, and they riddle it with bullshit.

Just just because there are flaws in aircraft design that doesn't mean flying carpets exist.

I spend a lot of time talking to people who disagree with me - I would go so far as to say that it's my favourite leisure activity.

You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.

If I was writing a lifestyle book it would have the same advice on every page, and you’d know it all already. Eat lots of fruit and vegetables, and live your whole life in every way as well as you can: exercise regularly as part of your daily routine, avoid obesity, don’t drink too much, don’t smoke, and don’t get distracted from the real, basic, simple causes of ill health. But as we will see, even these things are hard to do on your own, and in reality require wholesale social and political changes.