Facebook gives you cancer!

And Twitter gives you piles. Well it does if you sit on your phone! OUCH.

I bet you trying to guess where I'm going with this one, well it's all in the pursuit of eradicating pseudoscientists out of practice. I noticed a remark Ben Goldacre made in his Bad Science column last week in the Guardian. It's always a fantastic read about the way eminent researchers pick and choose the bits of supposed rigourous reasearch to make their product/trial/paper look better than it should, or discredit others. The big pharmaceuticals are past masters at this malpractice. Ben Goldacre even managed to spend about 1/2 a year having a pop at Dr Gillian McKeith for her "Dr" status, that she purchased off the internet for a quid. Surprinsingly she's no longer a Dr!

Anyhoo back to the plot. last week Ben reported on how Professor Baroness Susan Greenfield. The Oxford University professor is head of the Royal Institution of Great Britain started to spout on about the horrors of social network sites that are frying our brains - well- "generation Y's" delicate brains. Apparently she bleats on like some quack snakeoil doctor in the gold rush. Didn't we have all of this when TV first came in?

Doktor Baroness Greenfield, continued to pick out randon bits of research to back up her rants, making little or no sense. It makes for interesting reading, as does the replies from readers on Ben's on Bad Science website forums:

http://www.badscience.net/2009/05/professor-baroness-susan-greenfield-cbe/

The way the Ben teaches us about the way the Media twists the results of empirical data is very interesting and even makes the whole subject of strict clinical trials interesting. His reports on the way the more recent Omega oils trials were handled by the scientists and media also exemplify malpractice of picking out the bits that make your product look useful - when in fact it's was all very very questionable.