Migrants and benefits: fact or myth?

David Cameron made a speech yesterday promising a crackdown on abuse of the welfare state by migrants. If you suspected that this crusade is based on dodgy assumptions, you’d be right.

Full Fact has analysed the facts and found that this is not exactly a case of evidence-based policy making. But then it rarely is in this age of tabloid hysteria and poll-driven policy.

No wonder Cameron’s speech is already unravelling. And as with Nick Clegg’s recent speech, no matter what protestations they make about the good side of immigration, merely to discuss the subject in terms of the anti-immigrant agenda is to validate that agenda.


Postscript: Chris Dillow has published a very good blog post on the facts about immigration, and the causes of popular irrationality.

Bring out your dead!

Construction workers building tunnels for Crossrail beneath the City of London have unearthed a medieval plague pit. And it seems that the dead bodies are piling up:

While the fast-train project promised to relieve congestion in the capital, work on Crossrail has now turned up so many bodies that archaeologists at the Museum of London admit that storage is becoming a problem.

Fortunately, there is little danger of bubonic plague breaking out again. Even so, the Daily Mail will have a field day. Instead of one its customary cancer scares, there will probably soon be a headline that says:

Will Crossrail give you black death?

Junk science

One downside of our celebrity culture (are there any upsides?) is that celebrities’ opinions on all manner of topics are taken seriously, even when these celebrities are completely ignorant.

For example, BBC1’s Question Time regularly invites comedians onto the panel, presumably because someone in the BBC’s management thinks this will make the programme more ‘relevant’.

But celebrities need to be careful. They have a duty of care because many people are influenced by what they say. Celebrities’ opinions are widely reported, so that when they promote junk science such as unfounded health scares or quack remedies, they can cause widespread harm.

The charitable trust Sense About Science has just published Celebrities and Science 2012. This report charts the rise and fall of celebrity fads, endorsements and claims about science and evidence, and subjects a selection of these dubious claims to serious scientific review:

• In 2011, Simon Cowell was responsible for the intravenous vitamin craze. This year, Cheryl Cole and Rihanna are reported to be following the trend.
• Cowell meanwhile has moved on to inhaling pocket-sized oxygen shots and has also employed someone to ‘heal’ his house.
• January Jones has been taking dried placenta pills.
• Patsy Palmer has been rubbing coffee granules on her skin.
• Goldie Hawn supports an education programme that aims to increase children’s emotional wellbeing with lessons about the brain.
• Several athletes in the London Olympics were flaunting brightly coloured ‘Kinesio’ sports tape, which makes unfounded claims to help mend injuries.

But there has also been some progress, and the report gives due credit to celebrities who have set a good example by talking sense about food fads, vitamin supplements and alternative medicine.

One Liberal view of this issue is that, if people want to rub coffee granules on their skin, it is their business. But there is a vital distinction between making a purely personal choice to do something irrational and setting a bad example by promoting junk science or harmful behaviour.

This matters to Liberals because Liberalism can trace its roots to the Age of Enlightenment, when blind faith and superstition gave way to the power of knowledge based on empirical evidence and the scientific method, and when the human mind was liberated from a dogmatic state of ignorance that had shored up despotic rulers. Defending and promoting enlightenment values is something Liberals should continue to do.

Even Simon Cowell is not powerful enough to unravel several centuries of enlightenment, but celebrity promotion of junk science should be subject to scrutiny and ridicule, and Sense About Science is performing a public service by doing just that.

Robert Whitaker – a critic of psychiatry

I spent the earlier part of this evening live tweeting (look for #DCPconf) a public lecture by the American health journalist Robert Whitaker.

He is a critic of the the medical model of psychiatry, which sees medication as the answer to mental distress. You can read his articles and find links to his books at Psychology Today.

NHS reform? It could be worse...

BBC & NHS: Is there a link?

Former Tory MP and minister Steve Norris asks whether there is a link between the problems of the BBC and NHS.

His answer is not what you might expect.