Sep 26 2008

Fishy results from Durham

Published by Dougal at 7:24 pm under Bad Science, Politics

After what seems like a hundred years, Durham County Council have decided to release the “results” of their fish-oil “trial”. What they have released are not results, because what they did was not a trial.

In short, they

  1. Gave fish oil to as many kids as would take the pills.
  2. Got laughed at by everyone.
  3. Took the huff, said it was never going to be a real trial. Took their ball home too.
  4. Refused to answer any questions. Even refused Freedom of Information Act requests. The whole thing became Super Top Secret.
  5. Decided they would release the results after all.
  6. Didn’t have a control group.
  7. Compared the GCSE results of some of the few compliant subjects (~600 out of 3000 starters) with another group of kids chosen after the fact, on the grounds they were quite similar. Really.
  8. Ignored another 200-odd compliant subjects because they presumably couldn’t match them against anyone. Science, it works bitches!

Ben Goldacre has the full press release on this sorry affair.

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