In the National Science Foundation’s biennial report (April 2002) the woeful state of the public’s understanding of the scientific process was documented. In this study 30% of adult Americans believe that UFOs are space vehicles from other civilisations; 60% believe in extrasensory perception; 40% think that astrology is scientific; 32% believe in lucky numbers; and 70% accept magnetic therapy as scientific. In trying to explain how so many people can endorse such unscientific notions Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine, points out that this is an example of confirmation bias. By this he means that most of the time in evaluating a new idea we sort through the body of data and select those that most conform with what we already believe and ignore or rationalise away those that do not. He suggests that science needs to be taught not as a database of unconnected facts but a set of methods designed to describe and interpret natural phenomena. (

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Current known risk factors for coronary heart disease do not explain all of the clinical and epidemiological features of this disease. Additional environmental factors probably contribute and the role of inflammation in exciting the vascular pathology is increasingly being investigated. In a recent study from Iran the role of Helicobacter pylori in …