Cliff Arnall, a Welsh seasonal disorders specialist, inspired by a commission from a British travel company, has claimed for the past few years that the Third Monday in January is the most depressing day of the year.

I call bullshit on that.

This morning, I saw enough extra light on the horizon at 6:50 a.m. to make me think the corner has been turned.

When I lived on the Prairies, I usually found just the teeniest extra bit of heat in the sun (so long as I was out of the wind) at this time of year. Again, that would raise my spirits, knowing that spring was, at most, six months away. :^)

But enough about me. Here's how Ben Goldacre, the Guardian's "bad scientist" columnist, dealt with Arnall in 2006:

So these equations are scientifically uninformative, and driven by money. But is there more to it than that? Because in my more extremist puritanical moments, I am of the opinion that these equation stories - which appear with phenomenal frequency, and make up a significant proportion of the total science coverage in the UK - are corrosive, meaningless, empty, bogus nonsense that serve only to caricature and undermine science.

And what's really interesting about Cliff is that he seems to me to be a man driving that peculiar anti-science agenda. He thinks his ludicrous "unhappiest day of the year" scientific equation "gets people talking about depression when the people who run psychology [sic] aren't getting the message across. Peer-reviewed papers do not do what psychology ought to do - help people talk about their feelings and get the most out of life."

"Anyway you can see I am clearly a media slut," he says proudly on his website, in the bit where he lists his media appearances. No, Cliff. A "media slut" is an academic who bends over backwards to get his ideas in the papers. You'll get your cheque from Walls for this article, as you say, but that's because you are a "corporate whore".