My battle against dry eye: I never thought things would get *this* bad…
Readers might remember that I got nice new frames for my spectacles lately. Of course, the same visit to the optometrist revealed me to have ‘dry eye’, a condition associated with being pregnant,...
View ArticleI’m not saying Greenfield’s a pseudoscientist. I point to her...
Like a good sharknado, Susan Greenfield is (a) ridiculous and (b) back for more. We all remember this defence of her claim that internet use causes autism, don’t we? I point to the increase in autism...
View ArticleWhat’s the deal with that Swiss government homeopathy report?
A letter in today’s Irish Times bemoans a recent column on homeopathy. The column had drawn attention to a report by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council that was dismissive of...
View Article‘Rethinking Psychology’ is now available
Alright, there really is no humble way of putting this. My new book [*blush*], having been trailed as “imminent” for several months, is now officially available. In all good booksellers, as they say...
View ArticleWorld tour continues
An announcement from the Irish Skeptics Society, just circulated: Dear all, On Wednesday next, May 11th, we are very happy to welcome back Professor Brian Hughes, School of Psychology, NUIG, who will...
View Article“Are psychics the new psychologists?”
The Sunday Independent ran a short piece on psychics the other week, in which I was quoted as referring to “unreliable forces” when I had actually said “unreliable sources.” My bad, I’m sure. The...
View ArticleStephen Hawking RIP
Stephen Hawking is dead. Far be it from the likes of me to write him an obituary. You can see several of these elsewhere, many of them heartfelt and insightful. Two thoughts come to mind at this time....
View ArticleUm Starbucks, could you not?
The Starbucks I go to is now selling magic beans. Well, matcha tea lattes actually, which are like magic beans in the sense that they possess special powers: Detox the body High in antioxidants Helps...
View Article‘Psychology in Crisis’ is now available
About the Author Imprint: 2018 Psychology in Crisis Author: Brian M. Hughes Publisher: Palgrave, London ISBN-10: 1352003007 ISBN-13: 978-1352003000 Click here to view on Palgrave Macmillan Click here...
View ArticlePsychology in Crisis: My interview with the ‘Medical Error’ podcast
Here I am discussing psychology, the replication crisis, medical error, CFS/ME, the PACE Trial, political collapse, human extinction, and more… ‘Medical Error Interviews’ is a podcast out of Canada,...
View ArticleFact-checking the racists: A look at the psychological approach of Ireland’s...
Releasing the Genie Notwithstanding frantic after-the-fact efforts to rehabilitate the town’s reputation, there is little doubt that alt-right/far-right extremists successfully infiltrated that public...
View ArticleMarriage causes germs (kind of)
Yesterday morning I watched an interesting breakfast TV show here in Accra, on Ghana’s GTV. Interesting for three reasons: (a) because it illustrated the passionately articulate and comfortably...
View ArticleWho let the dogmas out?
Have you ever noticed how irrationalities (a) tend to cluster, (b) tend to offer hope to the desperate, and (c) tend to appeal to folks with strongly held dogmatic beliefs? No? Well here’s an...
View ArticleTwo takes on the expensive, unproven, and childishly-named quackery known as...
I have recently been quoted in not just one, but two recent articles about the controversial psychotherapy, the Lightning Process (insert your own “lightning-never-strikes-twice” joke here). Quite...
View ArticleCOVID conspiracies and the psychology of vaccine hesitancy
There’s a lot of talk about a vaccine for COVID-19. However, vaccines only work if people take them, and for that we require people to think cogently and coherently about the coronavirus. But if that...
View ArticleIs the stampede of COVID-19 science encouraging substandard research?
It seems that just about everyone is doing COVID-19 research these days. To date, more than 3,500 COVID-19 trials have been registered with ClinicalTrials.gov this year (compared to, for example, just...
View ArticleNo More Mr NICE Guy…
The newly released draft NICE guidelines for the management of “myalgic encephalomyelitis (or encephalopathy)/chronic fatigue syndrome” continue to cause a stir. And rightly so. The new guidelines not...
View ArticleBeware the COVID-sceptic doctors
It turns out that not all medical doctors are infallible. Who knew? Some of them, it seems, dally at the margins of pseudoscience. Take for example the latest BMJ Op-Ed from the doctor who cured...
View ArticleOff the PACE and not NICE
Here is a video of a lecture I gave in Belfast just before COVID, entitled “Off the PACE and not NICE: Challenges with Evidence in ME/CFS.” The lecture was part of a conference organised by Hope 4 ME...
View Article[Class Recording] Is Psychology a Science?
We are under attack! Well, at least at my university we are. A cyber attack that is. As a result, all our IT systems are down and there is widespread disruption. Coming in the middle of a pandemic...
View ArticleAuthors defend statistical errors, editor sees no evil
Let’s have another go, shall we? Last December we wrote about a paper published in Occupational Medicine, in which the following information was presented in a table: The study concerned a group of...
View Article‘Cancel culture’ paranoia and other right-wing hysterics reveal medical...
Historian David Olusoga has been speaking about the ironies of ‘cancel culture’: Olusoga, whose work has explored black Britishness and the legacy of empire and slavery, said that people “feel...
View ArticleEight (or more) logical fallacies in that paper bemoaning the new NICE...
“No one comes up here without a damn good reason.” * * * Regular readers will recall that I have previously written about the UK’s new healthcare guidelines for ME/CFS, as published by the National...
View ArticleGetting it Right: Addressing Myths about the 2021 NICE Guideline for ME/CFS
Earlier this month, on World ME Awareness Day, I spoke at the Hope 4 ME & Fibro NI conference in Belfast. The event was hosted in the Stormont Parliament Buildings by Alliance Party MLA, Paula...
View ArticleThe cries for help are getting louder. And that’s a good sign
Earlier this year, I wrote about a draft academic paper that had attempted to condemn the new NICE guideline for ME/CFS. As regular readers might recall, the paper had claimed that NICE was guilty of...
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