Ben Goldacre’s much anticipated book, ‘Bad Science’, is published this week.

Goldacre is an NHS doctor whose ‘Bad Science’ column in the Guardian newspaper has attracted a devoted following, thanks to its well-argued, passionate, and often extremely funny attacks on charlatanry in alternative medicine and credulity/laziness in science journalism.   

He is also a strong advocate for public access to the published results of scientific and medical research, as one important way to address the "distorting mirror" effect of the media. The Bad Science website makes a point of always linking to the original research articles behind a given story, and in this respect reflects a positive wider trend both in traditional media (which we are gradually starting to include links to research articles from the news stories on their websites), and in the blogosphere where sites such as ResearchBlogging.org bring together accessible discussion of the latest research, always accompanied by a link through to the original article or articles under discussion.

‘Bad Science’ is available from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.