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Cultural Dwarfs and Junk Journalism is Martin Walker’s fourth book charting the development of the corporate science lobby that has grown rapidly since New Labour came to power in 1997. One of the most recent exponents of the Lobby is Dr Ben Goldacre who has regurgitated a bad ‘Science’ column in the Guardian newspaper since 2003.

Like other quackbusters Goldacre claims to write factually based and scientifically accurate articles about health, medicine and science either supporting scientists and doctors or criticising individuals involved in alternative or nutritional health care. Goldacre’s writing, however, actually reflects the ideology of powerful industrial, technological and political vested interests.

 

Goldacre who it is claimed is a Junior doctor working in a London NHS hospital is actually a clinical researcher working at the centre of New Labour’s Orwellian spin operation that puts a sympathetic gloss on anything shown to create adverse reactions  from MMR to Wi-Fi, while at the same time undermining cost-effective and long tried alternative therapies such as acupuncture and homoeopathy.  Goldacre is involved with public health researchers well known for trying to prove that those who claim to be adversely affected by pollutants in our modern high-technology society, suffer from ‘false illness beliefs’.

 

Cultural Dwarfs and Junk Journalism, investigates Goldacre’s role in industry lobby groups and puts another point of view in defense of some of the people whom he has attacked, belittled, satirized, castigated, vilified, maligned and opined against in his junk journalism.

 

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Cultural Dwarfs and Junk Journalism: Ben Goldacre, quackbusters and corporate science, is available from the Slingshot Publications web site as a free download, from mid-day on Wednesday January 2nd.

To be effective as a campaigning document, it is important that this book is distributed far and wide as quickly as possible. Please forward this publication information together with the Slingshot Publications web site address. Another thing that will help with the book’s distribution is the writing of  even very short reviews for different web sites, this helps get the book onto Google listings.

Martin J. Walker is journalism tutor; senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (Berlin, Copenhagen, Prague, Sydney and Toronto); bureau chief in Moscow and the US (The Guardian), European editor, and assistant editor; was an international correspondent; is editor-in-chief emeritus of UPI.

 

This book is free and can be downloaded from the Slingshot Publications site: slingshotpublications.com. Please distribute it as widely as possible and if you think that the work is worth it, consider making a small donation. Also on the Slingshot site, is Martin Walker’s last book, The Fate of a Good Man. The book tells the story of Jim Wright, the investigation into him, his prosecution and trial by the Big Pharma regulatory agency, the MHRA. A good read at £5.00

Interview with Martin Walker: journalism, writing books, learning online German with tutors

Published by Richard Ahrene in 2022

Martin Walker has settled into a very comfortable existence as an author and unofficial Cultural Ambassador of Le Périgord, sharing his time between Washington, DC and Le Bugue. On Le Bugue's market day, we got together for coffee and talk. RA: How did you master German so quickly? MW: I started listening to Lotte Lenya, reading Der Spiegel every week, and memorizing Kurt Weil songs. Additionally, I studied with German tutors online. RA: Getting back to food, tell us about your wine and the winemaker you use...Continue reading →