The Queen’s English takes a big hit from The Daily Mail, UK:

A simple vitamin pill could prevent millions from suffering the agony of Alzheimer’s.

The tablet, costing as little as 10p a day and made up of three vitamin B supplements, cut brain shrinkage linked to memory loss by up to 500 per cent.

Let’s see now, the tablet cut brain shrinkage by up to 500%? In my experience, most things can only be cut up to 100%. Because when you cut 100% of something, usually it’s gone.

However, when you’re talking of cutting shrinkage, it’s technically possible that you not only reverse the shrinkage, but go on to cause expansion. Presumably, cutting shrinkage by 200% means doubling the size? So cutting shrinkage by 500% would mean the brain expanded to five times the original size.

Granted there are some people who would clearly benefit from this. (For example, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck both immediately come to mind.) But on the whole, expanding the brain to five times the original size is probably not to be regarded as a positive medical development.

When I read that sentence in the Daily Mail, my first thought was that it must be just a typo. They probably meant to say “up to 50 per cent”. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. Because, the article goes on to say:

Vitamin B cut the amount of shrinkage by 30 per cent, on average, the journal PLoS ONE reports.

In those with the highest amounts of homocysteine in their bloodstream at the start of the study, it halved the shrinkage and in one extreme case, it cut it five-fold.

So that’s their story, and they’re sticking to it.