Not all our politicians are corrupt. Some are weirdo nutters too.

As evidence, here's Ben Goldacre's latest Bad Science column from the Guardian. It's a joy. Some are just ignorant (yes, Brooks Newmark, we're looking at you), prompting this reply from cleverclogs MP Dr. Evan Harris:

“The honourable Member for Braintree cited evidence from The Sun, so I want to refer to a recent edition of the British Medical Journal”).

Others are pretty much certifiable, which has never been a bar to high office in the UK:

“It is no good people saying that just because we cannot prove something, it does not work… I believe that the Department needs to be very open to the idea of energy transfers…

“In 2001 I raised in the House the influence of the moon, on the basis of the evidence then that at certain phases of the moon there are more accidents. Surgeons will not operate because blood clotting is not effective and the police have to put more people on the street.” 

 “I am talking about a long-standing discipline—an art and a science—that has been with us since ancient Egyptian, Roman, Babylonian and Assyrian times. It is part of the Chinese, Muslim and Hindu cultures… Criticism is deeply offensive to those cultures,” says Tredinnnick: “and I have a Muslim college in my constituency.” 

Any attempts to challenge Tredinnick’s ideas are based, he explains, on “superstition, ignorance and prejudice” by scientists who are “deeply prejudiced, and racially prejudiced too, which is troubling.”

Well done, David Tredinnick. See, not all Tory MPs are selfish, baby-eating arms dealers. Some of them are mentally unwell.

Not that the government's any better. They have a Drugs Advisory Council which recommends how we should regulate recreational drugs. Their chairman, Professor Nutt, pointed out that having Ecstasy in the same division of harm/illegality as crack cocaine, is a bit silly - it just persuades potential drug users that the state doesn't know what it's doing. The government ignored all the council's sound advice, and sacked Nutt for pointing out (quite calmly) that they seem to prefer the Daily Mail's moral judgments over actual medical fact. I know this is hardly a surprise, but it's still depressing.