25 November 2015 There is a long history of debate about biological sex differences and their part in determining gender roles, with the 'biology is destiny' mantra being used to legitimise imbalances in these roles. The tradition is continuing, with new brain imaging techniques being hailed as sources of evidence of the 'essential' differences between men and women, and the concept of 'hardwiring' sneaking into popular parlance as a brain-based explanation for all kinds of gender gaps. But the field is littered with many problems. Some are the product of ill-informed popular science writing (neurotrash) based on the misunderstanding or misrepresentation of what brain imaging can tell us. Some, unfortunately involve poor science, with scientists using outdated and disproved stereotypes to design and interpret their research (neurosexism). These problems obscure or ignore the 'neuronews', the breakthroughs in our understanding of how plastic and permeable our brains are, and how the concept of 'hard-wiring' should be condemned to the dustbin of neurohistory. This talk aims to offer ways of rooting out the neurotrash, stamping out the neurosexism and making way for neuronews. Gina Rippon is Professor of Cognitive NeuroImaging in the Aston Brain Centre at Aston University. She has a background in psychology and physiology and uses brain imaging techniques such as Magnetoencephalography (MEG), functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate the relationship between patterns of brain activation and human sensory, cognitive and affective processes. Most recently her work has been in the field of developmental disorders such as autism. She has served as President of the British Psychophysiology Society (now the British Association of Cognitive Neuroscience). She also writes and speaks on the use of neuroimaging techniques In the study of sex/gender differences, recently featured in the BBC Horizon programme "Is your Brain Male or Female?". She is additionally involved in activities around the public communication of science, particularly in challenging the misuse of neuroscience to support gender stereotypes, and in work to correct the under-representation of women in STEM subjects. She has recently been appointed as an Honorary Fellow of the British Science Association.
7 October 2015 Water may seem the most ordinary of substances – it pours from our taps and falls from the sky – but you would be surprised at what a profoundly strange substance it is. It bends the rules of chemistry and defies easy scientific understanding. Without this rebel behaviour, however, none of us would exist. Alok Jha will change the way you look at water – showing how it has shaped life on earth, and how this molecule connects you and everyone else to the birth (and death) of the universe. Alok Jha is the science correspondent for ITV News. Before that, he did the same job at the Guardian for a decade. He has reported live from Antarctica and presented programmes for BBC TV and radio.
2 September 2015 There's been a trend recently for some eminent scientists to write off philosophy as a discipline which fails to meet the criteria for scientific enquiry. This is a bit of a puzzle for some philosophers, who didn't actually realise that they were supposed to be doing scientific enquiry in the first place. And anyway, say the philosophers smugly, these scientists are working with some pretty questionable epistemological principles. This is all quite sad, because science and philosophy are both brilliant and they'd both be even more brilliant if they could talk like grown-ups. But at some point, too many philosophers and scientists seem to have just stopped listening to each other. In response to this problem, this lecture is one of a pair (the other one being 'Why philosophers should listen to scientists') which are intended to get a better dialogue going between the two disciplines than has existed of late. Charlie Duncan Saffrey is a philosopher, writer and stand-up comedian who has studied at the universities of Liverpool, Warwick and Sussex, and this year he is a visiting lecturer at the University of Westminster. He is the founder and host of 'Stand-up Philosophy', a live philosophy night which brings comedians, philosophers and experts together to answer philosophical problems. He lives in East London with some actors and a small collection of seashells.
10 June 2015 The media love to sensationalise the dangers of illicit drug use, whilst downplaying or even ignoring the harms from legal drugs. Suzi takes us on a trip through the current scientific understanding of the harms, and also potential benefits of recreational drugs, both illegal and legal. Dr Suzi Gage is an Epidemiologist at the University of Bristol, investigating associations between substance use and mental health. When not staring at spreadsheets full of ones and zeros she writes the Sifting the Evidence blog on the Guardian website, and has a small obsession with synthesizers.
2 September 2014 This isn't just a simple talk; it's a call to arms. Every day, we hear claims about what is good for our health, bad for the environment, how to improve education, cut crime, and treat disease. Some are based on reliable evidence and scientific rigour. Many are not. These claims can't be regulated; every time one is debunked another pops up – like a game of whack-a-mole. So how can we make companies, politicians, commentators and official bodies accountable for the claims they make? If they want us to vote for them, believe them, or buy their products, then we should ask them for evidence, as consumers, patients, voters and citizens. The Ask for Evidence campaign has seen people ask a retail chain for the evidence behind its MRSA resistant pyjamas; ask a juice bar for the evidence behind wheatgrass detox claims; ask the health department about rules for Viagra prescriptions; ask for the studies behind treatments for Crohn's disease, and hundreds more. As a result, claims are being withdrawn and bodies held to account. This is geeks, working with the public, to park their tanks on the lawn of those who seek to influence us. And it's starting to work. Come and hear what the campaign is going to do next and how you can get involved.
22 July 2015 Homeopathy is one of the most widely debunked forms of alternative medicine – yet homeopathic remedies adorn the shelves of respected pharmacies and are funded by taxpayers on the NHS. How big of a problem is this? Using information and personal experiences gathered during his last 6 years of campaigning against homeopathy, Michael Marshall will highlight how much money is spent on homeopathic remedies, how this gives undeserved credibility to homeopathy, how such remedies can lead to genuine harm and what you can do to help. Michael Marshall is the Project Director of the Good Thinking Society and the Vice President of the Merseyside Skeptics Society. He regularly speaks with proponents of pseudoscience for the Be Reasonable podcast. His work has seen him organising international homeopathy protests and co-founding the popular QED conference. He has written for the Guardian, The Times and New Statesman.
6 May 2015 From developing theories and defining natural laws, science is a human construct. How does it work? What can it solve? How do you think science works? What does being a scientist mean to you? Dr Sylvia McLain talks about the history of science and its culture and the rise and fall of theories and laws and discusses what science means to us in the modern age. Dr Sylvia McLain is a biophysicist at the University of Oxford, runs a research group in the Biochemistry Department and teaches at St. Peter's College. She has an undergraduate degree in Zoology, a Masters in Education and a PhD in Chemistry. She is a failed house cleaner and fast-food server, and spends her spare time reading far too much and being altogether far too opinionated.
14 January 2015 Science and medicine have transformed our lives immeasurably, and never in history have they been more central to our lives and well-being. Yet despite this, there is often a glaring disconnect between the findings of actual science and media reporting of such topics, and consequently there is often a needless chasm between public perception and the evidence on many contentious topics. This can lead to needlessly adversarial and counter-productive discourse of everything from vaccination to climate-change. In this talk, physicist and science journalist Dr. David Robert Grimes discusses the frequent problems in reporting science from misunderstandings to bad statistics to false balance, and discusses the factors that influence this and how such problems can be remedied. Dr. David Robert Grimes (@drg1985) is a physicist and writes regular opinion and analysis pieces on scientific issues for the Irish Times and the Guardian science, and is a regular panelist on science issues on radio and television. He is joint-recipient of the 2014 Maddox Prize for Standing up for Science.
1 October 2014 The James Webb Space Telescope, a collaboration between space agencies in the US, Europe and Canada, will succeed the Hubble Space Telescope as the foremost space telescope in 2018. Its unprecedented size, sensitivity and suite of instruments will revolutionise our view on the Universe, from showing us how the very first galaxies formed to revealing the atmospheres of planets outside our own solar system, where life may be forming. Sarah Kendrew will give an overview of the mission and the exciting science it will do after launch. She'll talk about where the mission is right now, from her personal involvement in one of JWST's 4 instruments, MIRI. Sarah Kendrew is an astronomer at the University of Oxford. She works on optical and infrared instrumentation for the observatories of the future, and researches how stars form in the Milky Way Galaxy. Website: http://skendrew.github.io/ Twitter: @sarahkendrew
2 July 2014 The Alpha Course runs in 162 countries and has been attended, according to their website, by 25 Million people. Over a 9 week period, students are guided through Christian theology ostensibly to “Explore the meaning of Life”. Simon Clare, an unabashed atheist, signed up to his local course in Brighton, wondering if his faithlessness would be challenged. Spoiler: He wasn't converted but he was surprised at what he learnt about faith. The new Archbishop Of Canterbury, Justin Welby, found his faith at the home of the Alpha Course and his election suggests that the Alpha model of spreading the word is now at the heart of Christianity's struggle for survival. As well as giving an overview of the course from biblical history to singing in tongues, Simon will discuss what atheists can learn from the Alpha Course. Simon Clare runs Horsham Skeptics in the Pub and is a founder member of the South East Skeptics Society.
8 May 2014 It's easy to think of pseudoscience existing in a glass case at a museum – something to be examined and critiqued from a safe distance, but not something to touch and to play with. Using examples taken from his own personal experiences in skepticism, Michael Marshall will show what happens when you begin to crack the surface of the pseudosciences that surround us – revealing the surprising, sometimes-shocking and often-comic adventures that lie beneath.Michael Marshall is the Vice President of the Merseyside Skeptics Society and Project Director of the Good Thinking Society. He regularly speaks with proponents of pseudoscience for the Be Reasonable podcast. His work with the MSS has seen him organising international homeopathy protests and co-founding the popular QED conference. He has written for the Guardian, The Times and New Scientist.
3 April 2013 Martin Robbins reports on dangerous pseudo-medical practices outside the Western world, from homeopaths in East Africa to flat earthers and anti-vaccine campaigns in Nigeria. In this talk, Martin will be talking about his visits to homeopathic projects in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Martin Robbins is a writer, podcaster and journalist covering science, pseudoscience and evidence-based politics. He is a columnist at VICE and blogs for The Guardian and New Statesman. He has written for the Times, the Telegraph, and the Independent.
2 April 2014 Most debate about whether aid works is focused on typical cases of aid, such as improving sanitation or access to clean water. The effectiveness of these cases is very hard to measure accurately. Even the best cases are hard to evaluate. However, there are extreme cases, such as the eradication of an infectious disease like smallpox, which are both more important and far easier to measure. In this talk, Lloyd Chapman will examine those spectacular successes, and the dramatic impact they have for the overall success of foreign aid. Because the long tail of the very most effective projects have such impact, just evaluating those can give us a (substantial) lower bound on the effectiveness of aid. Lloyd is a maths PhD student, interested in using his quantitative skills to research the most cost-effective ways to reduce poverty and suffering and communicating the information to other people to encourage them to think about what they can do to help.
1 April 2015 Studying comedy offers us fascinating insights and important possibilities. The talk will explore a path through evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, health care, pedagogy, cultural anthology, the performing arts, and other academic fields, looking at the work of comedy and humour scholars. The talk will also briefly look at stand-up comedy, and Tim's doctoral research in which he argued that laughter rarely has much to do with anything being objectively funny, but is more connected to human relationships. Dr Tim Miles wrote jokes for BBC radio as an undergraduate, subsequently running his own comedy club booking the then unknown Al Murray and Graham Norton. Having taught in Higher Education for ten years he was awarded a PhD by the University of Surrey in 2014, his doctoral research examining ways of analysing live stand-up comedy.
3 June 2014The discovery of the Higgs boson made headlines around the world. Two scientists, Peter Higgs and François Englert, whose theories predicted its existence, shared a Nobel Prize. The discovery was the culmination of the largest experiment ever run, the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. But what really is a Higgs boson and what does it do? How was it found? And what will the LHC do next? Jon Butterworth, a leading member of the ATLAS experiment, will talk about all this and more.Professor Jon Butterworth is also Head of the Department of Physics & Astronomy at UCL, and writes for the Guardian.
8 January 2014Tom Cruise and John Travolta say the Church of Scientology is a force for good. Others disagree. Award-winning journalist John Sweeney investigated the Church for more than half a decade. During that time he was intimidated, spied on and followed and the results were spectacular: Sweeney lost his temper with the Church's spokesman on camera and his infamous ‘exploding tomato' clip was seen by millions around the world.John Sweeney tells the story of his experiences for the first time and paints a devastating picture of this strange organisation, from former Scientologists who tell heartbreaking stories of families torn apart and lives ruined to its current followers who say it is the solution to many of mankind's problems.
25 March 2013Sanal Edamaruku has been a force for reason all his life. As president of the Indian Rationalist Association he's continually challenged the gurus and godmen who have such a pervasive influence in society. But it's an uphill struggle: a wave of increasing fundamentalism and intolerance may be responsible for his current predicament: when he returns to India it's likely that he'll be arrested for “outraging religious feelings” after he debunked a Catholic “miracle” statue in Mumbai.
The Little Atoms Road Trip: A Scientific Odyssey across America Neil Denny is the producer and presenter of the Little Atoms Radio Show and podcast. Neil was the recipient of a Travelling Fellowship from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, and in May 2012 he embarked upon a month long, 6614 mile road trip across America. The aim of the trip was to produce a series of podcasts which present a wide-ranging overview of science and skepticism from an American perspective. While many in Europe consider America to be the home of conspiracy theories, creationism and climate scepticism, the USA is also a scientific powerhouse.However many of those involved in science in the US are also fighting encroaching irrationality. To be an atheist in America is still considered to be a brave and transgressive act. Creationists continue to push for the teaching of "intelligent design" alongside evolution in science classes. Campaigners are fighting to protect the right to legal and safe abortion, for the use of stem cells in medical research, and are fighting against the growing anti-vaccination movement.Driving from San Francisco to Boston and calling in at Phoenix, Santa Fe, Chicago, Philadelphia and New York along the way, Neil recorded 39 interviews with scientists and science writers including Ann Druyan, Leonard Susskind, Kip Thorne, Priya Natarajan, Paul Davies, George Church, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Mary Roach, Edward Stone and Sara Seager. He recorded interviews at some major sites of scientific interest, including NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, The Los Alamos National Laboratory, and The American Museum of Natural History. He also spent a less scientific day visiting Kentucky's Creation Museum. The podcasts from Neil's trip can be found here. Find out more about Little Atoms here, and follow Neil on Twitter.
What every parent needs to know about Steiner Schools: Anthroposophy and Spiritual Science Part of Oxfordshire Science FestivalWith Michael Gove and the coalition approving new Steiner Schools to open under the Free School Programme, it is timely to look closely at the origins and beliefs of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the occult movement of Anthroposophy. Steiner was a mystic who believed he had direct clairvoyant access to cosmic knowledge. As such he developed an esoteric belief system based on karma, reincarnation, astrology, homeopathy and gnomes. His visions gave insights into architecture, art, dance, agriculture, medicine, education, science and diet. His racial hierarchy of spiritual developmental resonated in Germany in the early 20th Century turning a personal belief into a worldwide movement. Today we find hundreds of anthroposphically inspired organisations in the UK alone: everything from Steiner Schools, Biodynamic farms to banks, pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies, charities and cheese makers.Andy Lewis has been trying to lift the veil on the inner secrets of the movement and will discuss how this secretive movement has direct impact on public life.
The Scienceogram: Why more spending on science makes sense Cancer kills almost a third of us, and yet we spend just £10 per person per year looking for a cure—and it's by far the best-funded medical condition. Our investment in science is woefully small compared to the scale of the problems it's trying to solve. Dr Andrew Steele (physicist, optimist and FameLab UK winner) explains why our miniscule spending on science doesn't make sense, and why it's vital that we make science funding a political issue.A 15-minute video of the talk from TEDxHull is available here.
Ruth Gordon
Scientology ➡️🗑️