An occasional series

People who have been quoted rubbishing Professor Niall Ferguson.

Today, in the Mail: Tom Jefferson.

Tom Jefferson, from the University of Oxford's Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, told the Mail: 'I am not interested in what the guy was getting up to at home. My question is, how on Earth was somebody with his kind of track record wheeled in front of ministers in the first place? Why did the Government listen to this person? Who made that decision and why?'

Mr Jefferson, who is actually based in Italy, wrote on March 2 "There does not seem to be anything special about this particular epidemic of influenza-like illness."