UPDATE:It now appears that UCL have changed their mind.
http://www.badscience.net/?p=432

Reposted from:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience/

I've always said you'd get a lot more kids interested in science if you told them it involves fighting - which of course it does. This week, for example, Professor David Colquhoun FRS - one of the most eminent scientists in the UK - has been forced to remove his quackbusting blog from the UCL servers where it has lived for many years, after complaints from disgruntled alternative therapists.

They objected, for example, to his use of the word "gobbledygook" to describe Red Clover as a "blood cleanser" or a "cleanser of the lymphatic system". Somebody from the "European Herbal and Traditional Medicine Practitioners Association" complained that he'd slightly misrepresented one aspect of herbalists' practice. One even complained about Colquhoun infringing copyright, simply for quoting the part of their website that he was examining. They felt, above all, that this was an inappropriate use of UCL facilities.

Now I don't want to get into the to and fro here, but it is striking that none of them engaged the prof himself on the issue of the ideas. They ran to the provost, or rather, to teacher; and the provost asked Colquhoun to take his blog elsewhere, on the grounds that it was bringing the university too much flak.

This episode reveals some unfortunate contrasts. Firstly, in a world where most orthodox "public engagement with science" activity consists of smug, faux-radical "science meets art" projects, Colquhoun - a world expert on single ion channels - was showing the world what science really does. He took dodgy scientific claims, or "hypotheses" as we call them in the trade, and examined the experimental evidence for them, in everyday language, with humour and verve. I would say his blog is a treat for the wider public, and arguably a rather good use of the time and resources of a public servant who has devoted his entire life to academia, on its relatively low wages, never once working for industry.

Secondly, giving special attention to a blog shows that we may not have got to grips with new forms of social media yet. I've heard Prof Colquhoun speak about quackery in UCL lecture theatres. Was the electricity, the publicity material, the room rent, a misuse of public funds and resources? I've done talks myself, in universities and schools: are they all guilty of wasting public money on robust, challenging, childish and sarcastic discussion of ideas?

But lastly, if you're worrying about the appropriate use of a science departments resource, Prof Colquhoun is the bloke who made the fuss in Nature about British universities giving away science degrees in quackery. The people who run the BSc "science" degrees have refused to answer questions from David, and from me, about what "science" they teach.

Nobody is making the jokers behind these quackery BScs take their gobbledygook - a word that sounds best being snorted through Colquhoun's impressive nasal hair - off university webservers. Courses in gobbledygook make money.

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