Ben Goldacre
March 6th, 2008 by rui
Ben Goldacre will be speaking at The Big Chill festival 2008 A-Z line up | Ticket info
Ben Goldacre – Biography
The Guardian’s Bad Science columist – Ben is an award winning writer, broadcaster, and medical doctor who has written the weekly Bad Science column in the Guardian since 2003. He appears regularly on Radio 4 and TV, and has written for the Guardian, Time Out, New Statesman, and the British Medical Journal as well as various book chapters.
He has won numerous awards, including ‘Best Freelancer’ at the Medical Journalists Awards 2006, the Healthwatch Award in 2006, ‘Best Feature’ at the British Science Writers Awards twice, for 2003 and 2005, and the Royal Statistical Society’s first Award For Statistical Excellence in Journalism (£250 and an engraved crystal paperweight!).
Ben says "I do not present myself as a ‘leading expert’, and I rarely even mention being a doctor, on the grounds that ‘arguing from authority’ is one of the biggest problems in the way that science is misrepresented by the media. However, if you were to ask my mother, she would tell you that Ben studied Medicine at Magdalen College Oxford where he also edited Isis, the Oxford University Magazine. He left in 1995 with a First: before going on to clinical medicine at UCL, he was a visiting researcher in cognitive neurosciences at the University of Milan, working on fMRI brain scans of language and executive function, worked at Liberty the human rights organisation, and was also funded by the British Academy to do a Masters degree in Philosophy at King’s.
Ben Goldacre will be speaking at The Big Chill festival 2008 A-Z line up | Ticket info
