Ben Goldacre: Battling Bad Science

http://www.ted.com Every day there are news reports of new health advice, but how can you know if they're right? Doctor and epidemiologist Ben Goldacre shows us, at high speed, the ways evidence can be distorted, from the blindingly obvious nutrition claims to the very subtle tricks of the pharmaceutical industry.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate.

• Category

  Science & Technology

[Anthony Khodanian]

Are you kidding me right now? DId you completely sleep through chemistry class? Its chemical composition makes it highly absorpent of light and thus heat. Without carbon dioxide in our atmosphere the world would freeze over, however too much and the world gets too hot. CO2 traps in heat, which most of the time is a good thing, heat is good for not freezing, its just that there is too much in the atmosphere now.

[RzzRBladez]

High information density

[TheCrunchyDog]

I sure hope you're a vegan, given that you know all this!

Or do you just research it out of interest, rather than actually giving a shit?

[TrishBov]

Its pleasing to hear someone who speaks as fast as me lol.

[Chris Thigpen]

Great video!

[E11JK]

Milk = Biggest waste of money

[aaron4820]

and you wonder why people can use "well if we evolved from apes how come there are still apes? CHECKMATE ATHEISTS!"..... as a legitimate argument..

[Andy Day]

what's the difference between a placebo trial and a shamanic ritual. There's an creative energy deep within us that responds to belief. when you believe something beyond doubt it manifests. This is how real magic works,it's how stage hypnosis works, it why placebo works. once everyone believed the four minute mile was impossible, no one could do it. Then Banister did it. It could be done. Once everyone knew it could be done everyone started to do it. The only thing that changed was the belief.

[ncooty]

Seems as though there's a problem on both the supply and demand sides of that relationship. Public knowledge of science--both as content & method--is very poor.

[JoeNumberwang]

I really want some of the pseudo science idiots (Spirt Science videos idiots in particular) to comment on this page - don't need to hear anything more about fucking crystals and fluoride government dumbing down stupidity.

[TejasM14]

news outlets are a small part of the problem. Much worse is the problem of mainstream science which is sponsored by big pharma and agro causing the skewing of drug trials from how they actually act. it is speculated that a significant percentage of the drugs which we consider fool proof are actually no better than placebos.

[michael spittler]

sceptizism combined with humor and good will... how good can one guy get? :-)