Saturday, September 11, 2004

MMR - a post-mortem I was going to post something insightful about the end of the MMR scare in the UK, but I closed my browser window at the wrong moment and it went the way of all data. In summary, the principal reasons for the scare taking hold were: The public being attuned to Government secrecy, and therefore not trusting Government statements The public not understanding the way the science was presented The irresponsible media running away with ideas of a Government cover-up The responsible media treating both sides of the argument as equal, even though one side had all the science behind them, and the other only had appeals to coincidence and no scientific backing. Why did the case "for" MMR (or perhaps "against" emotional conclusion-jumping) never get aired properly on the news programmes? It is obviously far too late to expect a sense of public duty from the British media, but it would be interesting to see some transcripts of Today programme stories about MMR twelve months ago, and compare them to the calming words of BBC correspondents today. 11:02:29 PM    comment []

Climate change very bad, but no longer very very bad - official Jamais Cascio reports at WorldChanging on work by the New Greenland Ice Core Project. The results of their recent research seem to put a catastrophic reversal of the Gulf Stream out of the question for now. Of course, slow steady increases in temperature are not really a walk in the park. 7:22:40 PM    comment []

British Library put Folios online The British Library have scanned and put on line their collection of Shakespeare folios. 9:19:17 AM    comment []