This week, I’ve chosen something that could perhaps more properly be called a weekend gawp than a weekend read. Before reading Sophie’s Travellettes post, I was already aware of City Hall station on New York’s subway, having read about it somewhere else at some dim and distant point in the past. But I’d never seen pictures, and, by golly, does Sophie have some pictures to share! Her post is well worth a look.

This week, I’ve chosen to feature two articles on passwords.

I’ve read a lot about passwords recently, but these two articles stand out as approaching the problem from different angles. In this Wired article, Matthew Honan – whose live was turned upside down after hackers essentially destroyed his online life last summer – argues that passwords are broken, and that we need to look for another security solution.

On the other hand, in this Lifehacker post, the brilliant Alan Henry describes how we can use tools that are already available to virtually every computer user to build a hack-proof password system – or, at least, something close.

I think the combined effect of these two articles is brilliant. The first convinced me beyond all reasonable doubt that something needed to be done, whilst the second told me how to do something right now to improve my own security. And it worked: a couple of weeks ago, I spent half a day changing a whole load of passwords across a whole bunch of online services, so that I no longer use the same password on different sites – one of those dumb things that everyone knows they shouldn’t do, but almost everyone does. Perhaps the combination will have the same effect on you, too!

2D posts appear on alternate Wednesdays. For 2D, I pick two interesting articles that look at an issue from two different – though not necessarily opposing – perspectives. I hope you enjoy them!

Before I read this article by the BBC’s Ed Lowther, I hadn’t realised that it was even possible for MPs to vote both ‘Aye’ and ‘No’ during the same division. Lowther’s careful discussion of the arguments for and against makes for a genuinely interesting read, and highlights the lack of any other mechanism for actively abstaining from Parliamentary votes. It’s a relatively short article for a Weekend Read, but it’s well worth reading.

Perhaps the most important things to say at the start of a review of Bad Pharma is that I think that Goldacre argues convincingly for a sound central thesis. I accept the argument that there are serious flaws in the pharmaceutical industry’s approach to the research, discovery, production and marketing of drugs, and in the pharmaceutical industry’s relationship with doctors (and vice versa). Goldacre’s clear elucidation of many of the issues deserves praise, and makes this a worthy book.

I also, for the most part, enjoyed the conversational tone which Goldacre employs throughout. Normally, I’m irritated by excessive informality in tone, but Goldcare seems to strike a well-judged balance between formality and informality which worked well for me.

I hope, then, that it’s clear that I think this is an excellent book which is well worth reading, for both a general and specialist audience. This is an unambiguous recommendation. But there were a few niggles within that I felt I couldn’t ignore in the context of a review.

Firstly, there are occasions when Goldacre uses slightly sensationalist language without a clear explanation as to why. For example, he repeatedly refers to things – particularly emails – as “secret”, which he seems to use as a synonym for “unpublished”. To me, there is an important difference between something being unpublished, and something being secret. The latter refers to something that has been deliberately hidden and guarded, whereas the former is something that has merely not been conducted in the public sphere. Perhaps Goldcare has a justification for calling things “secret” which isn’t made explicit on every occasion, or perhaps he doesn’t. I don’t know, but I think that use of the term should be openly justified. There are other similar examples where I’d quibble over the use of particular words, too. But these are minor, minor points.

Goldacre argues that the drive for private profits lies behind much of the wrongdoing in the pharmaceutical industry. I think this is probably fair, but there were two points here that I don’t think he discussed in quite the detail I would have liked.

Firstly, the fact that drug companies pursue profits is not really the fault of the drug companies: it is the way we have chosen to structure our society. It could be argued that the pharmaceutical industry should be brought into the public sector, which could serve to remove the drive for profit. I think this is probably unworkable, and could’ve been demolished as a suggestion in a couple of paragraphs, but to me, omitting this discussion meant that there was a bit of a mismatch between saying that profit is the root of all evil within the industry, and a bunch of solutions that don’t address that central point.

Secondly, that motivation doesn’t (presumably) apply to the public sector. I think there are issues in public sector research that are not dissimilar to those seen in the pharmaceutical industry. In particular, there seems to be a frequent problem of publicly funded studies being underpowered. Granted, Goldacre talks a lot about public bodies like the MHRA, but I think that exploring the problems specifically with publicly funded research would have been an interesting exercise, and might have helped reduce criticism that Goldacre is unfairly singling out the pharmaceutical industry.

I also have slight concerns about Goldacre’s demand that every study should be published. In principle, I agree with this completely, and can see the argument for it. But I worry that there are probably oodles of really bad quality trials that are unpublished. So firstly, where do these get published? No journal is going to want to publish a terrible study. And secondly, given that Goldacre also describes a paucity of the skills required to critically appraise studies, is there not at least some risk that bad trials will not be recognised as such? I’m not sure how we navigate around this problem. I suspect Goldacre would argue that if all trials are brought out into the open, then the wheat will separate itself from the chaff, but I’m not entirely convinced.

Overall, I should emphasise again, this is a great read, and an important book. I think it is well worth reading, and I think the niggles I have with it are testament to the fact that the book was engaging and made me consider its arguments. It comes highly recommended.

Bad Pharma is available now from amazon.co.uk in paperback and on Kindle.

It seems a remarkable statistic, but this is the 2,000th published post on this blog.

In fact, the total is somewhat higher than that, as there have been some posts that have disappeared over the years through various times I’ve broken the site and had to restore from a backup, and that sort of thing. There are also some things which I’ve published as pages rather than blog posts, which don’t count towards that total. But, regardless of all of that, as of the publication of this post, there are 2,000 blog posts up on this site, ready to read. My contribution is still outgunned by yours – there are (at the time of writing) 4,893 published comments. And some 1.3 million unpublished spam comments have been caught before publication on here by Akismet.

Later this year, I’ll have been blogging for a decade, which seems a ludicrously long time. I’ll have to celebrate in some way. Maybe I’ll bake a cake.

Anyway, this is just a quick post to share that bit of statporn… and, of course, to thank you for continuing to read the blog!

I freely admit that my choice for this weekend’s read is a bit odd. I’ve chosen this piece over on Medium, about a marital argument about communication. It was written by Caitlin Shetterly.

This article fascinated me because of one sentence: “Maybe a third of those phone calls and texts had content that was constructive; the rest was all a big long fight about our communication.”

I don’t know how people who know each other can have an argument by text. Of course, I’ve read text message arguments that people post on Facebook and so forth, and I’ve even occasionally strongly disagreed with strangers in an irritated fashion online. I may even have sent the odd curt or sarcastic text message. But I don’t think I’ve ever actually argued via text message, and certainly not via a long series of messages.

I just don’t think text messaging is a medium that lends itself to argument: it’s too ambiguous and emotionally disconnected. To me, having an argument implies feeling and wanting to express a high level of emotion: yet how can anybody do that through text? It pretty much baffles me.

Anyway, the article is worth a read!

I’ve read two very interesting articles on the Pope’s resignation recently. The first, by Stephen Crittenden of The Global Mail, casts the resignation as an act that almost heralds the end of Catholicism. He gives a strong argument to suggest that the Vatican is in total crisis. It’s certainly a dramatic take on the situation, and is well worth a read.

From a totally different perspective, Xuyang Jingjing writes in the (similarly named but very different) Global Times about the particular challenges the Pope’s resignation poses for Chinese Catholics. The fact that I was previously unaware of the difficult relationship between China and the Vatican probably reveals more about my own ignorance than anything else, but it made the article far more intriguing for me.

2D posts appear on alternate Wednesdays. For 2D, I pick two interesting articles that look at an issue from two different – though not necessarily opposing – perspectives. I hope you enjoy them!

There are few things that are further from my area of expertise than coffee retailing, but here’s a thought that occurred to me last week, and that’s been festering ever since.

All the major coffee shop chains and many local coffee shops have loyalty schemes these days. These are often of a particular type: buy X coffees and received the Yth coffee free. The generosity of such schemes varies widely: X=5 at McDonald’s, X=9 at Caffe Nero, and X=15 at Starbucks. Some chains do something slightly different – Costa, for example, gives points equivalent to 5% of the customer’s spend to be redeemed on future purchases, but let’s set those alternative schemes to one side.

The thing that links all of the common schemes is they are effectively fixed ratio reinforcement schedules. That is, they entice customers to buy more coffee by promising a freebie every X visits. But a wealth of literature from psychology reveals that this isn’t really very effective in getting people to form habits, not least because their motivation to consume drops off immediately after claiming free coffee Y.

A far more effective method of getting people to form habits is to build a variable ratio reinforcement schedule. As with gambling, this means that the punter / customer never knows when the win / free product is going to materialise. This keeps motivation consistently high.

In practice, what I’m suggesting is that the ratio of visits to free coffees is kept the same (X+1:1), but that the free coffees are dispensed at random. This would appeal to me: I’d love to come to pay for a coffee and be unexpectedly told that this one’s free. An infrastructure change would be necessary for some coffee shops – stamp cards wouldn’t really work well for this – but, for example, Starbucks already uses swipe cards which could be made to work this way fairly easily.

Alternatively, instead of randomising at the individual customer level, the tills could be set to randomise across all customers. Or, to make it even simpler, with every coffee purchased, each customer could be given a scratchcard with a 1 in X+1 chance of winning a free coffee. The latter might even be preferable, as there would then be two “special” visits: the one in which the customer wins, and the one in which they redeem their winning scratchcard. The customer would feel rewarded for their loyalty twice as often at no extra cost to the vendor.

If judging on cost alone, why would I visit retailer A, where there is no chance of getting my drink for free on a particular visit, when I could visit retailer B, where there is a 1 in X+1 chance? Economic discounting would probably play against traditional schemes: I’d probably rather have the chance of a free coffee today than the certainty of a free coffee after X visits.

Of course, retailers would have to be careful about how they presented this scheme: it would likely be to the detriment of any brand to associate themselves with gambling. Yet this seems like it should be a minor point, which should be easily overcome.

So here’s the thing: this idea appeals to me as a consumer, a wealth of literature suggests that it could increase trade, yet (to my knowledge) no-one uses it. Why not? Where’s the rub? What have I overlooked in my assessment? Tell me why I’m wrong!

Hayley B Elkins wrote a blog post late last year following the shootings at a school in Sandy Hook. It’s not about the shootings, but rather about Hayley’s relationship with guns, and how it has changed over time. Looking on from the UK, I always find the US obsession with fire-arms difficult to understand. Yet this very personal piece was moving and informative in a way that’s utterly atypical of writing on this topic. It’s a truly brilliant read.

This short, classic, harrowing book documents Nyiszli Miklos’s experience as a Jewish GP recruited under the threat of certain death to assit Dr Mengele in his “medical research” at Auschwitz. It describes the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, from the transport to Auschwitz and the so-called “selection” process on arrival, to the disposal of their ashes.

Miklos adopts a largely neutral, clinical tone in his description of the events. Somehow, this dispassionate tone makes the descriptions all the more powerful. Occasionally, Miklos’s neutrality slips, and his obvious abhorrence becomes clear. Sometimes, he lays bare his struggle with the diabolical ethical dilemmas he faced, challenging the reader to consider whether they would have reacted in the same way.

This is a simple, short book, yet the descriptions of some of the most appalling acts in the history of humanity make it challenging to read. The matter-of-fact tone merely underlines the seemingly unthinkable horror of the events which occurred at Auschwitz. The book’s brevity also contributes to its power: it says no more than it needs to.

This is clearly not the sort of book for which it would be appropriate to assign a star rating. I include it here only because I was unaware of this historically valuable volume until very recently, which probably reveals a degree of historical and litererary ignorance on my part. I guess that others might, however, be similarly unaware of it, and I hope that this will inspire them to read it. We must learn about and from history’s greatest mistakes if we are to avoid repeating them.

Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account is available now from amazon.co.uk in paperback and on Kindle.