this is not ordinary hypocrisy: this is melanie phillips hypocrisy

Melanie Phillips' dedication to personal liberty - and the enraged argument that the Labour government seeks to control every part of our lives - has one or two blind spots, most obviously relating to drugs policy. Here, the government can't act quickly enough to stop adults from making their own decisions about risk or harm, though Phillips does her best to dress her paternalism as concern for the little children.

But this is not ordinary hypocrisy - this is Melanie Phillips' hypocrisy, where the claim that Professor David Nutt's research is selective and inadequate must be married to Phillips' own "people who agree with me" use of research i.e. a response from 29 psychiatrists is "far too few for a reliable assessment," but a quote from one psychiatrist who happens to agree with Phillips means we should dismiss everything that Professor Nutt has argued.

My favourite piece of non-argument is this:

Nutt claims his arguments are 'scientific'. Does that mean that scientists such as Professors Parrott and Appleby or Dr Murray are not scientific?

Because only one person at a time is allowed to scientific: it's a shiny hat which is passed from person to person. The idea that there might be competing evidence which needs to be reasonably assessed is a subtlety that escapes Phillips: there's only the good kind of science, which says drugs are bad, and the wrong kind of science which "create[s] a culture of social acceptability for illegal drug-taking" and will lead to you "getting sucked onto the drug escalator" (which should be slang for something but, sadly, isn't.)

That said, it was a close match between the line above and the following awesomely inane rhetorical questions:

One might as well say that you run more risk of a car accident than being murdered. So what? Does that mean murder should be regarded as any less serious?

For ten points, explain the difference between an accident and murder. For a further billion points, explain what the hell Melanie Phillips was trying to say in the previous quote.

Above all, remember this: how do we know that Professor David Nutt is probably talking sense? Melanie Phillips is on the other side of the argument.