Well, readers of Saturday’s newspaper (or the website www.badscience.net) may be forgiven for thinking that Ben Goldacre, scourge of the charlatan, has gone soft. (Read the article online)

Taken brutally out of context, and subjected to skim reading, this article look almost like an approval of homeopathic remedies to treat all manner of ailments. The print version is a worse offender (missing the phrase “Bring on the placebos” – at least in my newspaper), but generally speaking about 60% of the people I have shown the article to so far think it was basically saying that “modern medicine has had its chance, now we need to try the homeopathic stuff.”

Shocking.

I hope I am not alone in being dismayed by this. To me, the article read like a sly dig at homeopathy – basically pointing out the fact it does nothing and has no real evidence to support it working – but on re-reading, and after speaking to others it may have been a bit too sly.

From speaking to people who have already bought into the snake oil sales pitch of homeopathy, this article was too close to support for them to see the reality. The only thing I can hope is that 99.9% of badscience’s audience are not that way inclined. (Although from the feedback on mobile phone towers I am not so sure…)