Pathetic when critics have to rely on attacking typos in their critiques

The authors of the NZ Fluoridation Review are correcting a few mistakes in the report which slipped through proof-reading.

I described one of the mistakes in my blog article “Did the Royal Society get it wrong about fluoridation?”

This is little more than a “typo” where the words ‘one IQ point’ had been wrongly substituted for ‘one standard deviation.’ Anne Bardsley, from the Office of the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor, tells me

“The corrected version will be uploaded shortly with a note to this effect on both the Royal Society and PMCSA websites.”

Local anti-fluoride activists had made a lot of this mistake – as had the “great man” Paul Connett – in their attacks on the review. If anything this showed that they had not read past the executive summary because the body of the review presented it correctly.

It is pathetic when critics have to rely on attacking typos in their critiques of a serious scientific review. Now even that has been taken away from them.