Northern Doctor’s Antidote and the new blog
I used to have another blog, Northern Doctor’s Antidote, that I started in 2008. When it kicked off I can recall reading in one blogging guide that it was inexcusable to let a blog slowly languish, to let it atrophy and die a slow lingering web-death. I felt that was indeed happening so I pulled the plug. No valedictory message and no fuss. After all, let’s not over-egg it, no one really cares. Or very few anyway.
I had a lot of fun with the blog. The ‘antidote’ bit of the name came from Adam Smith’s quote:
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
I still believe that but my views since 2008 have, perhaps, become more nuanced. The way the science is presented to the world is a serious problem and medical journals are, in many ways, deeply flawed. In addition to that there is a lot of nonsense out there; it would be a lifetime’s work to debunk all the myths, half-truths, woo, Big Pharma and media guff in the world. I certainly plan to continue blogging in that vein and doing my wee bit but I needed a new home. I have posted a handful of the old Northern Doctor posts here just to kick things off.
Goodluck my Boy Prefer the webcam pic rather than the half slice of prev – more the Euan I recall, half grin, half grimace against the chutzpah of it all. Guess you’ll change it.
I have a proposal for you – a stocking filler for the hypochon in the family entitled ‘what’s my chances Doc?’ – hypertension, statins, bone density etc and how NNT makes a mockery of it all.
(my other stocking filler would sell better though – ‘diseases of the rich and famous’.)
Cheers Ben, hope you’re well.
My mum told me I had to change the last pic – she told me I looked too scary. I like your suggestions – but sadly I fear you are right and people are more interested in a celebrity cervix etc than their own.