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Evan Harris calls for inquiry into five breaches of Government’s own code of practice within five days of publishing them. Lord Drayson Science Minister Dept of Business Innovation and Skills 1 Victoria Street London 5th April 2010 Dear Paul, I am writing to you to urge you to launch an inquiry into the Home Office’s breach of the [...]

Responding to the publication of the Principles for the Treatment of Independent Scientific Advice by the Government, Dr Evan Harris MP, Liberal Democrat Science spokesman and a leading voice in the campaign to protect independent science advice, said: “This document imposes a brand new and nebulous requirement on scientific advisers to [...]

By refusing a Commons debate on the Wright committee’s proposals, the government shows it is not interested in reform Originally posted on the Guardian’s Comment is free On Thursday of last week, Sir Thomas Legg reported that more than half of MPs needed to pay back money they’d claimed in the previous [...]

Press statement: Responding to the announcement from the Editors of the Lancet that they are retracting the Wakefield Paper entirely, Dr Evan Harris, Lib Dem science spokesman who helped expose the ethical and methodological problems with the paper back in 2004, said, “I welcome this, but it could and should have been [...]

Bad Science Dr Ben ‘Bad Science‘ Goldacre and myself will be at the Oxford Union tonight, for an event on “AIDS denialists, MMR, Homeopaths, Gillian Mckeith, libel laws and the rest of the Daily Mail”. We’re there from 8pm on Monday 1st February, and it’s a free event, so do come along [...]

I was on Channel 4 News last night talking about the MMR Scare – up against Richard Halvorsen – which you might like to take a look at. more about "Default Viral Title Player", posted with vodpod In the interview, I make a [...]

This article was originally published in Times Higher Education on December 18th 2009. Principled stand This week, the Government published its version of the principles for the treatment of scientific advice (http://nds.coi.gov.uk/content/detail.aspx?NewsAreaId=2&ReleaseID=409612). Given that the purpose of the project is to try to fix the broken relationship between the Government and independent [...]

Evan Harris is now, newly, on Facebook. If you’d like to show your support, please visit the page here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dr-Evan-Harris-MP/29265518599 [...]

I’ve just heard that three more ACMD members have resigned, after the Council met with Alan Johnson. The latest resignations represent a deepening in the crisis of confidence of scientists in the Government – in particular, in the Home Secretary. That they come after Alan Johnson met the [...]

The Home Secretary has now responded to my letter. It is set out below, interwoven with my original letter, and accompanied by comments from me, after consultation with Professor Nutt and Richard Garside (of CCJS at King’s College) This is still all in the aftermath to Professor Nutt’s sacking by the [...]

Following the sacking of Professor David Nutt by the Home Secretary, Chris Huhne (Lib Dem Shadow Home Secretary) and I, who both opposed the sacking, tabled an urgent question in the House to the Home Secretary. Mysteriously (since he agrees with the Home Secretary) the urgent question was awarded to [...]

Very interested in the on-going libel case of the BCA suing Simon Singh for libel. Jack of Kent has been covering the case excellently. I am an MP who campaigns for science, evidence-based policy and free speech,  so this case is pulling all my levers. I met Simon earlier this [...]

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