Frankenstein is the logo of a column in the Guardian nespaper called Bad Science, and a website of that name. It is also the title of a book by the column’s author, Ben Goldacre (HarperPerennial, £8.99).

A full-time NHS doctor, Goldacre somehow finds time to conduct a one-man campaign against so-called ‘quacks’, particularly homeopaths, nutritionists, cosmetics companies and ‘unprincipled’ multinational pharmaceutical corporations.

He did part of his medical training in Oxford, and acknowledges his debt to Ian Chalmers, one of the pioneers of evidence-based medicine, who helped to set up the Cochrane Collaboration.

The gold standard of this movement is the randomised, controlled trial, and Goldacre has made it his business to look into the evidence for almost every bit of media hype about health — both the scare stories and the ‘miracle cure’ stories. The Frankenstein image seems to derive from the GM foods controversy, by the way.

One of his bugbears is that journalists, and the public in general, don’t understand the scientific method.

On his website, he lists his forthcoming talk at the Oxford Literary Festival, but complains that ‘Literary types put me in tiny rooms’. However, it’s worse than that: his event cannot be found (by me, at least) in the index at the back of the literary festival programme. I would have expected it to be listed under ‘science events’.

He may be paranoid, but perhaps they really are all persecuting him.

Ben Goldacre will talk in the McKenna Room, Christ Church, as part of the Oxford Literary Festival on Sunday at noon.