This blog is a great fan of “Bad Science”. But this week, Ben Goldacre has pretty well gone out of his depth when he dipped his toes in the murky pool of social science research.

He applauds what he believes to be the first randomised controlled trial in social research. So far so good. An excellent idea to apply scientific methods to social sciences…. He makes some reasonable specific points but, overall, he is completely missing the point.

For instance, he suggests there should have been randomised trials for Drug Treatment Orders as alternatives to prison, with prisoners allocated at random to one or the other. In this specific case, he shows a lack of social understanding that seems almost wilfull for a doctor. Continue reading →