Ben Goldacre

HISTORIC MOMENT Today at 14:40 Dr Mark Russell from KCL pressed the button to execute the first ever job on the new OpenSAFELY service. Until today, OpenSAFELY was COVID only. Now we are open to critical analyses that improve all patient care, on GP records, securely, at scale. PICS! THREAD!

Just went to The Music Box on Cowley Rd to get my guitar fixed. I bought it in 1990 aged 16 for £85, from him. Now he's the only instrument shop left in Oxford. No smiling photos because (a) I'm not like that (b) as you'd hope from a great guitar shop he's appalled at the prospect of more customers.

Because of that, you can watch every line of code from Mark Russell as it executes in the system, live. He pressed the button with us all on a call (cheers! tearfulness!) at 1440. As of 1536, the dataset for incidence analyses is done, 3 more are running. Go! jobs.opensafely.org/evaluati…

planning a stern letter to the climate change denialists.

*EPIC FREE LECTURE ON THURSDAY IN OXFORD* Our heroic CTO Seb Bacon on open science, open code, OpenSAFELY and more!

Inaugural Lecture Klaxon! Our magnificent CTO Seb Bacon is a hero of the modern age, and now PROFESSOR Seb Bacon... Come to his inaugural lecture in Oxford! OpenSAFELY! OpenPrescribing! TrialsTracker! OpenCorporates! Open Code! Open Everything! bennett.ox.ac.uk/blog/2026/0…

How you pop to the shops, if it's minus 64° Celsius in your town. This is what I want from the internet, and culture: other people's fascinating lives. Not lies about crime in London invented by boring racists. youtube.com/watch?v=uPGIPnYk…

My old friend Patrick Mthews @HoxtonBeach slogged for years to build up a few small struggling cafes in London parks. Now they're a success, so the parks are rewarding him by giving the cafes to someone who offered them more money change.org/p/require-the-cit… veganconfidential.substack.c…