It's with some sadness that I see Carl Philips has announced a hiatus for his blog Ep-ology. At the start of the year Carl took on the challenge of writing one post a day about epidemiology and 'unhealthful news'. Six months on, he has amassed an archive that is essential reading for anyone interested in how epidemiological research is conducted, peer-reviewed and published in the real world, and why the media reports it so badly.
Hopefully Carl will be back in the near future, but whatever he does, he's left a body of work that is worth catching up on. If you haven't been reading him this year, do it now. It's witty and incisive stuff and is much more in the spirit of skepticism than some of the self-proclaimed skeptics' sites out there.
I should also mention Dave Atherton's new(ish) blog Lifestyle Reviews. Dave is a regular commenter here and elsewhere, and he's great at unearthing little-known studies and reports.
On Saturday he looked at the claim that supermarket booze has got cheaper since 2007. This, of course, is a reason/excuse often given for why so many pubs have closed in the UK since the smoking ban. Although often given, few people have bothered to check whether it's true. Dave has, and according to his figures, there hasn't been any real change. If true, this is interesting not only in the context of the smoking ban but in the context of the supposed rise in binge-drinking (which is a myth anyway). Go take a look.
