4th Estate

Ben Goldacre is a writer, broadcaster and medical doctor from the UK who is best known for his ‘Bad Science’ column in the Guardian newspaper, examining the claims of scaremongering journalists, quack health products, pseudoscientific cosmetics adverts, and evil multinational pharmaceutical corporations, as well as wider themes such as the medicalisation of everyday life and the psychology of irrational beliefs. He has a background in medicine and academia, trained in Oxford and London, works full time for the NHS, appears regularly on radio and TV, and has written for publications as diverse as Time Out, the British Medical Journal, New Statesman and The Lancet, as well as writing and presenting ‘The Rise Of The Lifestyle Nutritionists’ and ‘The Power of Placebo’ in 2008 on BBC Radio 4.