Blue Monday, ‘Green Communications’

Blue Monday. Have you heard of the idea? Popular story goes something like this. Dr Cliff Arnall of Cardiff University came up with a Clever Mathematical Formula to find the Most Miserable Day of the Year. Various charities have used this to raise funds and public awareness of mental health, helpfully aided by a lovely […]

Dore research ‘is rubbish’, but I still can’t tell you so

The Dore website dore.co.uk has been redesigned recently. In the process they seem to have ‘lost’ all mention of the ‘Balsall Common’ study (Reynolds, Nicholson, Hambly, 2003; Reynolds & Nicholson, 2006), which though heavily criticised was the only research on Dore published in a peer-reviewed journal. They also seem to have dropped the various bits […]

ITV Yorkshire do Dore anecdote

Hi all, I’ve not vanished, just had a summer job which mostly involved being in muddy fields far from the Internet. For anyone else in Yorkshire, ITV Yorkshire are going to be doing a Dore anecdote / free advertising tonight in the 6 o’clock ‘news’. I’ve phoned them up this afternoon and explained the background […]

Dore NZ ‘voluntary liquidation’

Oh no, not again… Company Number 1259796 View Certificate Of Incorporation Company DORE GROUP (NZ) LIMITED (IN LIQ) EMAIL CERTIFICATE Incorporated 27-NOV-2002 View Online Extract Entity Type Company EMAIL EXTRACT Constitution Filed Yes CERTIFICATE OF GOOD STANDING Annual Return Filing Month June Print This Page Status Details Current Status In Liquidation From To Previous Status […]

An open invitation to Dr Rutherford of Dore

Dear Dr Rutherford, We have both been asked by the forum moderators at Dore Talk to move debate elsewhere. I understand you were also less than happy at having your reply to the Guardian ‘Bad Science‘ article mentioning my blog deleted by the newspaper moderators on grounds of libel, as was I – I’d far […]

DORE shut

*updated with info on administrators, Friday 31st May* DORE UK have shut down, officially confirmed. ‘It is with great regret that we have to announce that Dore has been put into the hands of advisors. As a result Dore is closing all of the UK centres which deliver the Dore Programme with immediate effect. We […]

DORE breakthrough published in, ummm ‘Leamington Courier’

DORE have chosen to distribute their news of a ‘Major Autism Breakthrough’ via the doubtless-estimable Leamington Courier. Now, I’m all for the public understanding of science, and particularly advances in educational psychology, or I wouldn’t be writing this blog. However, publishing science by press-release to local papers first is Not On, particularly when said science […]

‘Quackometer’ and Joseph Chikelue Obi

THIS IS NOT SOMETHING I HAVE WRITTEN. Most of this post is copy & pasted. I am reproducing it here because I do not like legal threats being used to silence people. Argue with evidence, not lawyers. From The Quackometer blog, these first two posts have attracted grumpy legal-type letters: Right Royal College of Pompous […]

‘Impossible Cure’

This blog post has been a while coming, because I wasn’t too sure I wanted to write it. I’m not particularly interested in critiquing case studies, since all they really show is promising leads for future systematic research, without interesting methodological issues for me to get my teeth into. I particularly don’t like critiquing case […]

Why are DORE so bad at research?

When I first heard of DORE, I thought they sounded like a good idea. There is not a lot of research into dyspraxia in particular (which I have), so anything that produces good results would be very welcome. The problem is that they keep publishing papers which are a bit rubbish really, with silly mistakes, […]