The story so far:

In January 2004, in an astonishing display of common sense the government downgraded cannabis to a class C drug. This didn’t play well in the shires and in January 2009 it was reclassified as Class B. Last week, Professor David Nutt, head of the government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, said what every rational person knows – that the reclassification was a political decision which completely ignored the scientific evidence. He was sacked by the Home Secretary. Over the weekend two other members of the council resigned in protest.

This has lead to a lot of discussion of the relationship between scientific evidence and government policy. Today the Daily Mail (who else?) published one of the most ill-informed articles on the subject that it would be possible to write. It’s written by that most highly respected of science writers, A N Wilson. In the future, this article will no doubt be used as the basis of introductory level courses on the philosophy of science where students will compete to find the largest number of logical fallacies in the piece.

Let’s pick off some of the easier targets.

But [Professor Nutt] was not content simply to give advice, of course. What he appeared to want to do was to dictate to the Government, and when it refused to acknowledge his infallibility, Professor Nutt started to break ranks and to denounce the country’s law on drugs.

That’s putting a more than slightly biased slant on events, of course. Professor Nutt was employed for his expertise on drugs. He can’t be expected to change his opinions to fit in with government policy. Science doesn’t work like that.

The trouble with a ’scientific’ argument, of course, is that it is not made in the real world, but in a laboratory by an unimaginative
academic relying solely on empirical facts.

Oh no! Those troublesome scientists with their “unimaginative” empirical facts. If only they had a bit more imagination so that they could make up facts that better fitted the policies that the government want to implement.

Try saying that ecstasy is safe in the sink estates of our big cities, where police, social workers and teachers work to improve the lives of young people at the bottom of the heap.

Ah, yes. But nowhere has Professor Nutt suggested that ecstasy is safe. He is saying that it is less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. That doesn’t mean it’s safe. This is a blatant misrepresentation of his views.

If you add together all the winos and self-destructive alcoholics, then throw in the smokers who’ve died of respiratory or cardiac disease, the total will far outstrip the number of young people who die after taking an ecstasy pill – and you could conclude from this that smoking and drinking are more dangerous than ecstasy.

Well, yes. No-one is likely to disagree with this. But saying this in the middle of the article strongly implies that this is how Professor Nutt and his colleagues reached their conclusions. And that, of course, won’t be the case at all. This shows, at least, a terrible lack of knowledge of the scientific method or, perhaps, a shameful attempt to misrepresent the amount of work that will have gone into Professor Nutt’s research.

Going back in time, some people think that Hitler invented the revolting experiments performed by Dr Mengele on human beings and animals.

But the Nazis did not invent these things. The only difference between Hitler and previous governments was that he believed, with babyish credulity, in science as the only truth. He allowed scientists freedoms which a civilised government would have checked.

Ok, now we’re really on dodgy ground. This is getting dangerously close to saying that all scientists are one experiment away from becoming Dr. Mengele. It’s like Wilson has never heard of Godwin’s Law. Originally, the online version of this article had a picture of Hitler next to these paragraphs. This has been removed in the last hour or so.

It’s also worth pointing out that the Mail is sending out mixed messages here. Surely a comparison to the Nazis is showing some kind of grudging respect to the scientists.

In fact, it is the arrogant scientific establishment which questions free expression. Think of the hoo-ha which occurred when one hospital doctor dared to question the wisdom of using the MMR vaccine.

Isn’t it astonishing that the Mail is still banging on about this? Wakefield was wrong. And his deeply flawed study would had been given no publicity at all if it wasn’t for papers like the Mail jumping on the bandwagon without doing the smallest amount of research on the story.

And to every one who thinks otherwise, I would ask them to carry out a simple experiment. Put a drug, bought casually on the street corner, and a glass of red wine on the table when your teenager comes home from school. Which of them, in all honesty, would you prefer him to try?

See? That’s Wilson’s idea of a scientific experiment. He doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about. He needs (in fact most journalists who write about science in the popular press need) a course in the scientific method and basic statistics. It should be law that you can’t write about science until you’ve read and understood Bad Science.

I’m glad to see that Wilson is getting pulled apart in the comments. But people reading the paper won’t see the comments. The Mail needs to publish a retraction. And Wilson needs to be stopped from writing about things he knows nothing about.

The initiative is called Saving Lives, Reducing Harm, Protecting the Public, and…

The most eye-catching proposal in the document is the one to force schools to introduce statutory lessons in ‘educating children and young people about healthy, nonviolent relationships’

This stuff is going to be taught to five year olds. But just like sex education being taught to youngsters this will be tailored to the appropriate age too. Five year olds won’t be taught the same stuff or in the same way as 14 year olds. That really would be daft.

The Mail doesn’t like it and tries to drag Harriet Harman in and imply a ‘feminist agenda’. Harman is involved but only because she happens to be borrowing the top job while the boss is away. Why the Mail had to raise a non-related point about her becoming embroiled in a row over rape laws is anybodies guess. Even if Harriet has had some input into it, so what? What’s wrong with trying to reduce the amount of women and girls being beaten shitless?

The Mail does admit that it is a cross government initiative, which contradicts the mystrious critics named only as ‘Others’ who say it is part of Harmans’ ‘feminist agenda’. But how can that be? This report contains more than just this part about wife-beating/domestic violence. Another thing that undermines the ‘feminist agenda’ is…

unless there are plans to segregate the classroom into ‘bad boys’ and ‘good girls’ whilst these lessons are taking place, then it’s obviously not just boys who are being taught about domestic violence, it’s all the kids.

Here, though is a critic that James Slack, the reporter, can name…

Margaret Morrissey, of family lobby group ParentsOutloud, said that PSHE classes were in danger of being ‘hijacked by pressure groups’.

She added: ‘I do not really want my youngster to be indoctrinated with these things.

‘There will always be those who want to cram our school curriculum with social issues that need to be taught by parents and society.’

At this point, I would like to quote from Enemies of Reason…

Do you like the irony? A pressure group is saying that classes were being hijacked by pressure groups? But surely this article has been ‘hijacked’ by a pressure group, then? Or is it only the wrong kind of pressure group that this pressure group objects to? So, sure, a ‘critic’ has said that the curriculum (not ‘already overstuffed’, mind) is being crammed with things, but just things they disapprove of. And who are ParentsOutLoud anyway? Well have a look at the website and see what you think. Now don’t be cruel about the fact that an education pressure group can’t spell or write things properly; that’s just nasty of you. We all make mistakes and doubtless there’ll be one from me just centimetres away from this. No, look instead at the kind of articles they have – roaring about ‘health and safety’, complaining about Government targets, attacking Ed Balls – it’s a bit like if the Daily Mail ran a pressure group, what that pressure group would be. So naturally their interests dovetail nicely with the Mail’s when a ‘critic’ needs to be found of any Government plan involving kids.

Around the middle of the article is where the Mail starts pushing against the feminist agenda even more, muddying the waters and discretely moves the goal posts…

The Government claims that violence against women is costing Britain an astonishing £40billion.

It has emerged they are carrying out five separate reviews into the causes and how women can be better protected.

This is despite evidence showing that boys and young men are more than twice as likely to fall victim to violence, and that young women are becoming increasingly aggressive.

There it is, boys are twice as likely to be victims of violence and girls are getting more violent too. That is the correct. I do not know the figures, but it is. The Mail is trying to destroy the feminist arguement by shouting that boys are a bigger victim than girls and Harriet is just looking after the girls. But just like any comparison, it needs to be like for like and this is not it. Boys and men are victims of domestic violence too, but not in the same numbers as women. It would be good if boys as victims were included in this report too, they may well be, but to try and beat Harman with the feminist stick by making incompatible comparisons between these two levels of victims is wrong.

A quarter of all violent assaults in England and Wales are carried out by women, and it is the most common reason for females to be arrested, recently overtaking theft and handling stolen goods.

So three quarters of all violent assaults are carried out by men.

Another quote that fits the Mails strange logic…

Jill Kirby, of the Centre for Policy Studies, said Miss Harman and the Government should not be creating the impression violent crime is men against women, when the statistics show this is not the case.

She added: ‘It is young men who are most likely to be the victims of violent crime. It is a distortion to suggest otherwise. It appears that everything must be viewed through the prism of 1960s feminism.’

It may be most likely to be a young man that will be a victim of violent crime, but it is also men that are most likely to be the person being violent. Whether against other men or women, women are still the fairer sex.

The Daily Mail on the other hand by miscomparing and it’s choice of people and organisations it quotes is giving the impression that the violence is the other way round, women against men.

*No, I’m not going to finish the joke as it is only funny to a five year old. Unless of course their mother really does have two black eyes.