There is a problem with the so-called public health profession. No, it’s not that they want to ban all our pleasures – we can deal with that through reasoned argument and by ignoring them. The problem is that the public health folk do insist on using (or rather misusing) evidence that is wholly or partly incorrect.
So I had to smile – wanly I admit, but smile nevertheless – when one of the apologists for the nannying fussbuckets writes about health claims in national newspapers:
It seems that the majority of health claims made, in a large representative sample of UK national newspapers, are supported only by the weakest possible forms of evidence.
Now this is undoubtedly true – even of the Guardian – but does it mean that Mr Goldacre is prepared to accept that much of the newspaper coverage of alcohol is both inaccurate and partial? And that the actual evidence for passive smoking causing more risk than, for example, pollen or diesel fumes is pretty thin?
Somehow I expect Ben and his mates will carry on pimping for public health fanatics – a bunch of people who cheerfully twist any statistic to promote their prohibitionist agenda. And who weep not a single tear when over 500 people lose their jobs because of the latest public health gimmick. A gimmick supported by what a judge called “little better than guesses”.
And, Ben, this statement of yours is almost certainly untrue:
People who work in public health bend over backwards to disseminate evidence-based information to the public.
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