[Neil Jones]

Booker is a bit of an idiot when it comes to science of any kind it seems.

Read this.
George Monbiot: The patron saint of charlatans is again spreading dangerous misinformation | Comment is free | The Guardian
Here is an excerpt the article goes on to show what an ignoramus Booker is on cliamte change too at the end is the quote "The Sunday Telegraph continues to employ a man who cannot tell the difference between summer and winter. "

If journalists have any remaining function, it is to help people navigate this world: to try to understand the crushingly dull documents that most people don't have time for, to smoke out the fakes and show how to recognise the genuine article. But we mess up too. The most we can promise is to try not to make the same mistake twice.

So what can you say about a man who makes the same mistake 38 times? Who, when confronted by a mountain of evidence demonstrating that his informant is a charlatan convicted under the Trade Descriptions Act, continues to repeat his claims? Who elevates the untested claims of bloggers above peer-reviewed papers? Who sticks to his path through a blizzard of facts? What should we deduce about the Sunday Telegraph's columnist Christopher Booker?

This week Richard Wilson's book Don't Get Fooled Again is published. It contains a fascinating chapter on Booker's claims about white asbestos. Since 2002, he has published 38 articles on this topic, and every one of them is wrong. He champions the work of John Bridle, who has described himself as "the world's foremost authority on asbestos science". Bridle has claimed to possess an honorary professorship from the Russian Academy of Sciences, to be a consultant to an institute at the University of Glamorgan, the chief asbestos consultant for an asbestos centre in Lisbon, and a consultant to Vale of Glamorgan trading standards department. None of these claims is true. Neither the institute at the University of Glamorgan nor the centre in Lisbon have ever existed. His only relationship with the Glamorgan trading standards department is to have been successfully prosecuted by it for claiming a qualification he does not possess.

None of this deters Mr Booker. Armed with Bridle's claims, for the past six years he has waged a campaign against asbestos science. White asbestos cement, he maintains "poses no measurable risk to health". He contends that "not a single case" of mesothelioma - the cancer caused by exposure to asbestos - "has ever been scientifically linked with asbestos cement". A paper commissioned by the UK's Health and Safety Executive, he says, "concluded that the risk from white asbestos is 'virtually zero'".

Booker tells me he has read this paper. Oh yes? The term he quotes - "virtually zero" - does not appear in it. It does show that white asbestos (chrysotile) is less dangerous than brown or blue asbestos. But, while there is uncertainty about the numbers, it still presents a risk of mesothelioma, which depends on the level of exposure. People exposed to a high dose (between 10 and 100 fibres per millilitre per year (f/ml.yr)) have a risk (around two deaths per 100,000 for each f/ml.yr) of contracting this cancer. Only when the dose falls to less than 0.1 f/ml.yr does it become "probably insignficant". But Booker's columns contain no such caveat. He creates the impression that white asbestos is safe at all doses. The paper he misquotes also cites five scientific studies of exposure to asbestos cement, which record "high levels of mesothelioma mortality".

Two years ago, John Bridle's misleading CV and dodgy record were exposed by the BBC's You and Yours programme. So the BBC immediately became part of the conspiracy: in Booker's words "a concerted move by the powerful 'anti-asbestos lobby' to silence Bridle". He suggested that the broadcasting regulator Ofcom would clear Bridle's name. In June this year it threw out Bridle's complaint and published evidence even more damning than that contained in the programme. So has Booker changed the way he sees "Britain's leading practical asbestos expert"? Far from it. He tells me that "my view of Ofcom has plummeted": it too has joined the conspiracy.

We are not talking about trivia here. This is a matter of life and death. How many people might have been exposed to dangerous levels of asbestos dust as a result of reading and believing Booker's columns?