sawyl | A science hero in action

Here's a great example of Professor David Colquhoun, science hero, in action. Following the recent decision to set up regulatory structures for complementary therapy practitioners, Colquhoun decided to phone Skills for Health, "a vast bureaucratic enterprise devoted to HR-style box-ticking", to find out how their competencies were defined. Here's the part of the transcript where DC tries to find out who actually wrote the standards:

DC	Uh I'm afraid your bureaucratic jargon is a bit much for me there. "The owners of those competencies"? I'm not sure what that means
Flack	Why do you want the information?
DC	haha, well if you want me to be entirely blunt, it's because I'm appalled that this black magic is appearing on a government web site
Flack	. . . can I say that as an organisation funded by a number of sources, one being Department of Health England, none of our work condones the practice you've just suggested. Our work supports best practice in areas that are evidence- and research-based
DC	Ah would you mind pointing me to the evidence for homeopathy and distant healing?
Flack	Uh [pause] there is [pause]
DC	Yes, go on
Flack	Well homeopathy is a contentious issue, because every newspaper article I read seems to suggest that homeopathy, in itself, is not an appropriate, uh, not an, uhm, appropriate, uh, therapy.

Other highlights include the moment when the flack fails to spot DC's joke about Charles talking to trees and responds with a panicky not-my-bailiwick, until the humourousness is explained. Go read the original. You know you want to.