Either it is true that a medicine works or it isn't. It cannot be false in the ordinary sense but true in some alternative sense. If a therapy or treatment is anything more than a placebo, properly conducted double-blind trials, statistically analyzed, will eventually bring it through with flying colours. Many candidates for recognition as orthodox medicines fail the test and are summarily dropped. The alternative label should not (though, alas, it does) provide immunity from the same fate.

Public sharing is an important part of science.

How any government could promote the Vardy academies in the North-East of England is absolutely beyond me. Tony Blair defends them on grounds of diversity, but it should be unthinkable in the 21st century to have a school whose head of science believes the world is less than 10,000 years old.

The solution often turns out more beautiful than the puzzle.

We animals are the most complicated things in the known universe.

I think the world's always a better place if people are filled with understanding.

How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that, wherever you happen to be born, the local religion always turns out to be the true one.