Kat Banyard is author of The Equality Illusion and is a founder and Director of UK Feminista - an organisation supporting grassroots feminist activism. She is also the founder of FEM Conferences – an acclaimed series of national feminist conferences.

Kat was previously Campaigns Officer at the Fawcett Society – the UK ‘s leading campaign for women’s rights, and was a regular spokesperson for the organisation in national print and broadcast media. In 2007 she was profiled in Observer Woman magazine as one of ‘The New Feminists’. Prior to her work at Fawcett, Kat worked for the Northern Refugee Centre in Sheffield setting up women’s groups.

• 

On this week’s show, Neil Denny Rebecca Watson are joined by Tracy King and DC Turner, and special guest Tim Minchin.

Tracy King is the Managing Director of February Marketing is the organiser of TAM London and co-organiser of The Big Libel Gig. She speaks on a range of topics including viral marketing, advertising psychology and using marketing in science communication and critical thinking. She is the Producer of Tim Minchin’s “Storm” movie, a regular writer for Skepchick and The Skeptic Magazine (UK), and her work has appeared in Nature and elsewhere.

DC (Dan) Turner is a designer and animator with a unique style of character design. He has worked for brands including Sony, Vodafone, Barclays, ITV, PKR, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, T Mobile and Woolworths. As well as animated shorts, he designs and builds award-winning Flash games and composes soundtracks.

Tim Minchin is.. well you know who Tim Minchin is.

• 

Michael Brooks, who holds a PhD in quantum physics, is an author, journalist and broadcaster. He is a consultant at New Scientist, and the author of the acclaimed non-fiction title 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense and the techno-thriller Entanglement. Michael’s latest book is The Big Questions: Physics.

His writing has also appeared in the Guardian, the Independent, the Observer, the Times Higher Education, the Philadelphia Inquirer and (his proudest byline) Playboy. He has lectured at New York University, The American Museum of Natural History and Cambridge University. As well as contributing to traditional outlets for science, such as BBC Radio 4′s Today Programme and Material World, he has a regular live slot on the George Lamb Show on BBC’s 6 Music radio station, where he is regularly asked to explain everything in the universe.

Stuart Clark is one of the UK’s most widely read astronomy journalists. A former editor of Astronomy Now, He has a PhD in astrophysics and until 2001 was director of public astronomy education at the University of Hertfordshire. In 2001 the Independent ranked him alongside Stephen Hawking and Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, as one of the ‘stars’ of British astrophysics teaching. A regular contributor to such magazines as New Scientist and BBC Focus, he is the author of several books, including Galaxy. But it was his first work of narrative nonfiction, The Sun Kings, that established him as a popular science writer par excellence. Stuart’s latest book is The Big Questions: The Universe.

• 

The Queen and the Prime Minister have expressed warm welcomes towards Pope Benedict XVI, but no one else seems to care about his arrival. The pope landed in Scotland yesterday, but was welcomed only by sparse crowds, and thousands of tickets to that evening’s open mass remained unsold. I guess when you alienate yourself from women, children, gays and anyone else with any sense, that doesn’t leave many left.

Watch Channel 4’s news coverage here.

[Via Atheist Media Blog]

Shots fired at Afghanistan Koran protest

Despite the Koran burning event’s cancellation, at least two people have been killed and nine injured in violent protests in Afghanistan. In Kabul, police prevented protesters from marching into the city centre, but still they blocked a road chanting “death to America”. As tyres were burned and stones thrown, police fired warning shots into the air, and were met by Taliban fire.

Read the BBC’s news coverage here.

British Science Festival

The British Science Festival is underway in Birmingham. Although you’ve already missed Dr. Petra Boynton on ‘the science of pulling’, you can still catch ‘the rap guide to evolution’, ‘archaeology through the ages’ and other events. And if the kids get restless, Cadbury World is only around the corner.

Find out more and buy tickets here.

Irish Minister for Science in anti-science scandal

Conor Lenihan, the Irish Minister for Science, had planned to attend the launch of a book in which evolution is described as “a fairytale for adults”, until widely criticised for his decision. Lenihan said he “remains to be convinced” by the author’s arguments, but defended his original decision saying that “diversity of opinion is a good thing”. His withdrawal was reportedly in response to a request from the author, but opinions on the matter are diverse.

Read more here.

[Via NeuroLogica]

Imam in the box

Dragons’ Den here we come! The imam of a large Parisian mosque has invented an easily-erectable ‘mosque in a box’, suitable for Parisian’s on the move. Simply pop one up in your office space to recreate the feelings of a traditional place of prayer suitable for all your spiritual needs. Available in polystyrene and deluxe models.

Watch the BBC’s news coverage here.

********************************

Please feel free to leave a comment and I will do my best to reply as quickly as possible. Until next time, take care of yourself, and each other.

If you come across something that you think our readers would enjoy, send a tip my way at will [at] skeptic [dot] org [dot] uk.

• 

Ian Sample is an award-winning science correspondent at the Guardian. He was named investigative journalist of the year in 2005 by the Association of British Science Writers. He was previously a feature writer for New Scientist and holds a PhD in biomedical science from Queen Mary, University of London. Ian’s first book is Massive: The Hunt for the God Particle.

• 

Helen Keen is a stand-up comedian and writer, she was a finalist in the 2005 Funny Women competition and the Hackney Empire New Act of the Year competition and has been nominated for the Leicester Mercury Comedian of the Year award. She won the first Channel 4 New Comedy Writing Award in 2005. Since then she has written for, among others, Channel 4′s Friday Night Project and BBC Radio 4′s The Now Show and is currently developing scripts with BBC3, Channel 4 and BBC Radio 4. Helen’s award winning show about space, It is Rocket Science!, is being re-launched at this years Edinburgh Festival and is currently being developed into a show for Radio 4. Helen is also co-hosting a new show, Starstruck!, at Edinburgh with Astrophysicist Dr Sophia Khan.

• 

Timothy Garton Ash is the author of eight books of political writing or “history of the present”. They include The Magic Lantern, The File, History of the Present and Free World. His latest is Facts Are Subversive: Political Writing From a Decade Without a Name. He is Professor of European Studies and Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His essays appear regularly in the New York Review of Books and his weekly column for the Guardian is widely syndicated in Europe, Asia and the Americas. He has received many awards for his writing, including the Somerset Maugham Award and the George Orwell Prize.

• 

It is with sadness that I inform you that Mary Evans died peacefully in her sleep on the morning of 29 June. She had been suffering from Alzheimer's for the last four years. Further details of Mary's life can be found here.

• 

Rebecca Skloot is a science writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Discover, and many other publications. She is the guest editor of The Best American Science Writing 2011 , a contributing editor at Popular Science magazine, and has worked as a correspondent for WNYC's Radiolab and PBS's Nova ScienceNOW.

Skloot served for eight years on the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle, where she was a vice president and judge for their yearly book awards. She has a B.S. in biological sciences and an MFA in creative nonfiction. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, her debut book, took more than a decade to research and write, and instantly became a New York Times best-seller.

• 

Anil Ananthaswarmy is a consultant editor of New Scientist in London. He has worked at the magazine in various capacities since 2000, most recently as deputy news editor, and has written more than 250 news and features articles. He is also a contributor to National Geographic News. He studied electronics, electrical and computer engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (Bachelor of Technology), and the University of Washington, Seattle (Master of Science), and worked as a software engineer in Silicon Valley before training as a journalist in the University of California Santa Cruz's renowned science writing programme. Anil is the author of The Edge of Physics: A Journey to Earth's Extremes to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe.

• 

James Hannam is a historian of science specialising in the relationship between science and Christianity in the Medieval and Early Modern eras. He took Masters (2003) from Birkbeck College, University of London and a PhD (2008) in the History and Philosophy of Science at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. James' reviews and articles have been published in the academic journals British Journal of the History of Science, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliography Society, Science and Christian Belief and Perspectives on Science and Faith. James Hannam is the author of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science.

• 

Sue Armstrong is a science writer and broadcaster living in Edinburgh. As a foreign correspondent she worked for a variety of media including the New Scientist and BBC World Service. She has also undertaken a variety of assignments writing reports for the World Health Organisation and UNAIDS. Sue's latest book is A Matter of Life and Death: Inside the Hidden World of the Pathologist.

Join Neil this Friday evening at 19.00 on Resonance 104.4FM in London or via the live feed at www.resonancefm.com worldwide.

• 

Martin Robbins is a researcher and science writer. he currently works in R&D solving scientific problems for a small software company, and previously worked as an ecological modeller for the British Antarctic Survey. The common research theme in Martin's career to date has been understanding complex systems in various domains. Martin is the proprietor of the Lay Scientist blog, and a regular contributor to the Guardian's Comment is Free. He is currently writing a book about Bad Science in the Developing World.

Richard Wilson read Philosophy at University College London and his first book, Titanic Express, recounts his search for the truth about the death of his sister Charlotte, who was killed in Burundi in 2000. He now works for a human rights organisation and lives in London. Richard's latest book is Don't Get Fooled Again: The Sceptic's Guide to Life.

Join Neil and Richard this Friday evening at 19.00 on Resonance 104.4FM in London or via the live feed at www.resonancefm.com worldwide.

• 


Some of you will be aware of the fact that Michael was a long-term sufferer from bipolar disorder and you may recall that on a previous occasion I sent out an email via the paranormal email network announcing his death by suicide. On that occasion, it transpired that I, along with dozens of others, had been the victim of a hoax and Michael was in fact still very much alive. The hoaxer was Michael himself, in one of his manic phases. I was, therefore, somewhat suspicious when I received an email a few days ago ostensibly from Bryan Thalbourne, Michael's brother, informing me that Michael was in hospital in a coma having been found unconscious at his flat. Since then, I have been informed by Bryan of Michael's death. On this occasion, I have taken steps to try to ensure that the emails are genuine (e.g., by contacting third parties) and I now believe that, unfortunately, they are.


Yours in sadness,
Chris.
 

• 

Hello Everyone,

Apologies for the mass mailing, but you are receiving this email because you are either a scientist or a skeptic or someone connected with Oxford, or maybe all three. I am writing because you might be able to help British science by helping Evan Harris MP to retain his seat in parliament.

Along with Richard Dawkins, AC Grayling, Colin Blakemore, Lisa Appignanesi and many others, I am supporting the campaign to keep Dr Evan Harris in Parliament as a voice for science, secularism and free expression.

Evan has been the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West & Abingdon since May 1997 and he is the Lib Dem spokesman for science. But our support for him is not party political; and it goes beyond the interests of his constituency. Indeed, you can see further below a long list of the vital issues that Evan has championed.

Ordinarily, Evan should be safe at the election, but boundary changes and an aggressive campaign to unseat him mean that we might be about to lose science's best friend in Parliament.

How can you help?

If you are based in the Oxford West & Abingdon constituency then please consider voting for Evan. If you are not in that constituency, then please forward this email to anybody you know who might live in his constituency.

If you can help in other ways, then please contact Evan's team directly by emailing ikhanoxford [at] googlemail.com or visit www.evanharris.org.uk/pages/help-Evan.html.

Why should you help?

Over the past 13 years, Evan has been a fearless spokesman for evidence-based policy-making, opposing religious privilege, and promoting freedom of expression. He has led many campaigns inside and outside parliament, including:

* reforming libel laws, which stifle academic free expression (Evan set up and heads the parliamentary wing of the libel reform coalition in Parliament which supported me in my successful defence against the British Chiropractic Association and which is helping press for law reform)

* promoting the necessity for liberal updated laws allowing stem cell research (Evan coordinated colleagues, scientists, clinicians and patient groups campaigning for the passage of the HFE Bill)

* abolishing the blasphemy law (Evan laid the amendments and built the coalition which forced the repeal)

* helping to expose the fraudulent research that led to the costly and damaging MMR/Autism myth (Evan was the most vocal MP defending the vaccine at the height of the media scare);

* repealing the laws of seditious libel and criminal defamation whose presence in our statute back gave cover for their use by oppressive regimes against writers and journalists abroad

* supporting scientists who do regulated and licensed medical research involving animals in the face of extremist intimidation (Evan was closely involved in the Pro-Test campaign supporting Oxford scientists);

* working with English PEN and Rowan Atkinson, to defeat the Government on their sweeping proposed religious hatred laws (Evan organised the campaign which led to that victory).

* defending the importance of independent scientific advice (Evan was first politician to defend the rights of expert science advisers following the dismissal of Professor David Nutt);

In all these campaigns Evan has worked on a cross-party basis, and by and large he has been successful. Many in the science community know him and hold him in very high regard.

Evan's constituency is marginal and he faces a strong challenge in the current General Election from the Conservative Party, which has been moving campaigning activity and substantial financial resources from neighbouring safe Conservative seats. There have been boundary changes and only a 7% swing would see Evan replaced by someone who does not share his commitment to science.

The task of holding the seat has been made more difficult by the delivery throughout the constituency, of a glossy leaflet attacking Evan for his pro-science and pro-choice record (view at www.thestraightchoice.org/leaflets/2533). This was paid for by a "Pro-life" group and will undoubtedly have done some damage.

Keith Mann, an animal rights extremist, who served three terms in prison for offences including possession of explosives, has not only made defamatory and inflammatory personal attacks (http://fromdusktildawn.org.uk/evanharris) on Evan distributed across the constituency but is even standing against him in the Election.

The next Parliament is likely to be a challenging one for science and an important one for issues to do with free expression and strong advocates there will be more important than ever. We believe that it is important for Evan's voice to continue to be heard.

Many Thanks,

Simon.

• 

Jonathan Balcome is an independent animal behaviour research scientist and a consultant for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine He is the author of Pleasurable Kingdom: Animals and the Nature of Feeling Good, and most recently Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals.

Christine Ottery is a journalist and blogger published on Guardian.co.uk and Comment is Free, Timesonline.co.uk, Newscientist.com and Theecologist.co.uk. She is also a researcher for George Monbiot and multimedia Science Journalism MA student at City University.

• 

Ian Sinclair is a British writer, documentarist, film maker, poet, flaneur, psychogeographer, metropolitan prophet and urban shaman, keeper of lost cultures and futurologist. His books include Downriver, White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings, Lights Out for the Territory, Dining on Stones, London Orbital, and most recently, Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire. He is the editor of London: City of Disappearances. He lives in Hackney.

Join Neil this Friday evening at 19.00 on Resonance 104.4FM in London or via the live feed at www.resonancefm.com worldwide.

• 

Conservative: 2%
Labour: 5%
Liberal Democrats: 93%

Votes were cast on the specific issue of libel reform.

Following the debate, a total of 55 people voted online. 26% of the online voters were female and 29% of online voters lived in London.

Reasons why individuals voted Liberal Democrat included:

"Convincing argument from Evan Harris"

"Appear to be more principled on the topic."

"Most considered and thoughtful contributions to the debate. If it is a hung parliament there will be a need to maintain a high profile for libel reform." and

"On the issue of whether corporations should be stopped from suing Lib Dem was the only one that said yes. Labour and Conservative didn't appear as knowledgeable of the issues as Lib Dem"

One individual who voted Labour also stated:

"I would vote for the LibDems over Labour, but my MP Jeremy Corbyn is fully on board with the Libel Reform movement and I agree with him on many other issues as well."

Perhaps the strong Liberal Democrat vote by those watching the broadcast is not surprising as Evan Harris has been an long-standing and outspoken supporter of Simon Singh's defence against the British Chiropractic Association libel claim, however on the sole issue of libel reform the Liberal Democrats gained a clear majority of votes.

There were over 100 simultaneous connections made by 359 different devices to the live broadcast, which was watched by individuals and groups in 28 different towns/cities (including at least two overseas).

• 

If anyone is interested in attending meetings or would like to get involved in helping to organise them then you can register your interest or offer assistance here.

• 

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction novelist, blogger and technology activist. He is the co-editor of the popular weblog Boing Boing, and a contributor to Wired, The Guardian, Popular Science, the New York Times, and many other newspapers, magazines and websites. A visiting senior lecturer at the Open University, he was formerly Director of European Affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation), a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties. He is currently on the advisory council of the Open Rights Group.

His novels are published by HarperCollins UK and simultaneously released on the Internet under Creative Commons licenses that encourage their re-use and sharing, a move that increases his sales by enlisting his readers to help promote his work. He has won the Locus and Sunburst Awards, and been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and British Science Fiction Awards. His latest novel is Makers, and his last, New York Times Bestseller Little Brother, was published in May 2008. A new young adult novel, For the Win, will be published in May 2010.

Little Brother was nominated for the 2008 Hugo, Nebula and Locus Awards. It won the Ontario Library White Pine Award, as well as the Indienet Award for bestselling young adult novel in America's top 1000 independent bookstores in 2008.

Join Neil and Rebecca this Friday evening at 19.00 on Resonance 104.4FM in London or via the live feed  worldwide.

• 

In the Land of the Free is a documentary feature that examines the story of Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox and Robert King. They are known as the Angola 3 and have spent almost a century between them in solitary confinement in Angola, the Louisiana State Penitentiary in the USA. Herman and Albert are still held in solitary confinement after thirty six years. The film is directed by Vadim Jean (Leon the Pig Farmer, Hogfather).

Join Neil this Friday evening at 19.00 on Resonance 104.4FM in London or via the live feed at www.resonancefm.com worldwide.

• 

Ian McEwan has written two collections of stories, First Love, Last Rites and In Between the Sheets, and 12 novels including The Cement Garden, The Child in Time, The Innocent, Enduring Love, Atonement and Saturday. He won the Booker Prize for Amsterdam in 1998. Ian's latest novel is Solar, to be published by Jonathan Cape on the 18th March 2010.

Adam Rutherford has a PhD in genetics, is an editor at Nature, hosts the Nature podcast, writes for the Guardian, fronted the BBC4 series Cell, and recently hosted a documentary about morality on Radio 4.

Join Neil and Adam on Friday evening at 19.00 on Resonance 104.4FM in London or via the live feed at www.resonancefm.com worldwide.

• 

Stephanie Merritt was deputy literary editor of The Observer from 1998-2005 and is now a feature writer. She has contributed to a variety of newspapers and magazines as well as radio and television. She is the author of two novels, Gaveston (Faber, 2002) and Real (Faber, 2005), one non-fiction, The Devil Within, (Vermilion 2008) and the screenplay for Real, commissioned by Gabriel Byrne’s Plurabelle Films. She also curates the Talks and Debates programme at Soho Theatre. Stephanie’s latest book, written under the pseudonym S.J. Parris is Heresy, a historical murder mystery starring Giordano Bruno.

Join us on Friday evening at 19.00 on Resonance 104.4FM in London, or via the Resonance FM live feed worldwide.

• 

Stuart Clark is one of the UK’s most widely read astronomy journalists. A former editor of Astronomy Now, He has a PhD in astrophysics and until 2001 was director of public astronomy education at the University of Hertfordshire. In 2001 the Independent ranked him alongside Stephen Hawking and Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, as one of the ‘stars’ of British astrophysics teaching. A regular contributor to such magazines as New Scientist and BBC Focus, he is the author of several books, the most recent of which is Galaxy. But it was his first work of narrative nonfiction, The Sun Kings, that established him as a popular science writer par excellence.

Marcus Chown’s first book, Afterglow of Creation, has just been re-published in paperback by Faber & Faber.

Join us on Friday evening, 19th February at 19.00 to 19.30 on Resonance 104.4FM in London or via the live feed worldwide.

• 

Dr Karen James is a postdoctoral research assistant in the Department of Botany of the Natural History Museum, working on the development of a DNA-based identification system for plant species. She also coordinated the museum’s Darwin bicentenary science campaign including a survey of the museum’s Darwin specimens and a Galapagos mockingbird conservation genetics project. She is the director of science for The HMS Beagle Trust which aims to build a modern seagoing version of HMS Beagle for scientific research, public engagement and learning.

Join us on Friday evening, 12th February at 19.00 to 19.30 on Resonance 104.4FM in London or via the live feed worldwide.

• 

Discovering that your child has an autism spectrum disorder is a frightful experience; it happened to one of my oldest friends. First you’re happily and optimistically watching your child develop like any other excited parent – and then you’re watching your child regress and the gap between him and normal kids his age inexorably widen. You wonder what’s going on inside his mind; you worry about his care should something happen to you; and as he gets older you worry about how people will react to him when he passes puberty and non-standard behaviour becomes more scary than cute. With the number of diagnoses growing – the US Centers for Disease Control puts the rate at about 1 in 150 children; the advocacy organisation Autism Speaks says 1 in 110 – small wonder that terrified parents grasp at anything that looks like it might be a cure or a preventive measure. The coincidence of timing – MMR is administered at roughly the same age at which children begin displaying the symptoms of autism disorder – means that vaccines seem an entirely plausible cause.

Wakefield’s paper, which studied a sample of only 12 children, provided a plausible and simple answer: vaccines. That was helpful for Wakefield, who had a second career as a plaintiff’s expert in autism litigation. You can see the temptation: vaccines, unlike genetics, have manufacturers who can be sued. as Forbes has a nice piece on this type of conflict of interest, and proposes that academic journals should include opposition-side expert witnesses in the peer review panel for any author who has acted as an expert witness in litigation.

In the more than ten years since its publication, Wakefield’s paper has spawned an entire movement of anti-vaccinists. Utterly predictably, once-vanishing “childhood” diseases are on the rise, bringing back all the dangerous complications doctors invented vaccines to eradicate in the first place. There are the inevitable celebrities, most notably Jenny McCarthy. And, since everyone loves a good conspiracy theory, the sad thing is that retracting the paper merely fuels the martyred conviction of anti-vaccine groups that Big Pharma has won again.

In this situation, no one has won. The Lancet‘s reputation is damaged. Wakefield is likely to lose his licence to practise medicine. Children have died of diseases like whooping cough that were so long gone doctors don’t even recognise the symptoms. Despite lowered vaccination rates the number of autism cases continues to rise. And parents of autistic children are still desperate and frightened.

Tony Blair’s government must take some of the blame. The UK has sometimes backed invasive and expensive legislation on the basis that “If it saves the life of just one child…” But in this particular case, despite public loss of confidence after BSE, Blair basically told parents with concerns to shove it, take the vaccine, and shut up. He was, we now know, scientifically right, but he was culturally wrong. A more painstaking approach might have meant less rejection of the government’s backing of the MMR vaccine.

When I started The Skeptic the big topics we were concerned about tended to be psychic fraud. That stuff is small fry. It may be annoying that people believe in astrology or believe in the physical effects created by the occasional washed-up stage magician, but you don’t die of that kind of gullibility. The big stuff is science fraud, especially because while the scientific process can undo the damage and rebuild the truth, the consequences for innocent bystanders often can’t be undone.

Wendy M. Grossman, http://www.pelicancrossing.net

• 

Christopher Hird is a leading figure in UK independent documentary making. He is chair of the Channel Four Britdoc Foundation; a trustee of the Grierson Trust, the Wincott Foundation and Index on Censorship. In January 2008 Christopher Hird started Dartmouth Films, and has produced such films as Cameron’s Money Men, Inside the Saudi Kingdom, Black Gold, and most recently, The End of The Line.

A former journalist working on The Economist, the New Statesman (of which he was deputy editor) and the Sunday Times, where he was editor of the investigative section, Insight. A casualty of the Murdoch regime, he moved into television starting as a reporter on Channel Four’s current affairs programme before co-founding Fulcrum TV, of which he was joint managing director for more than 20 years before it closed in 2007.

Join us at the usual time, 19.00 on Friday 5th February on Resonance 104.4FM in London or via the Resonance live web feed worldwide.

• 

Payments will be calculated and donated to S.H.A.R.E. by February 20, and a copy of the check posted on the Playing Gods Web site. Just in case you need some encouragement, I will happily autograph each board game as well, and throw in a free Expansion Pack ($5 value).

Does the creator of this blasphemous indie board game need your money? Of course I do. But the people in Haiti need it more. I’m happy breaking even on the deal.

I don’t see heartless pikers at Milton Bradley, Hasbro, or Parker Bros. donating jack squat!

What do you say? If you donate money, I’ll donate my games and time. You get an autographed Playing Gods game and Haitians get desperately-needed money via a skeptic / humanist charity. Everybody wins.

You can order at http://www.playinggods.com. You don’t need any special code: all profits from anything you buy between now and Feb. 20 will be donated. If you’d like to inquire about bulk orders, you can contact me at balls@playinggods.com.

If you’re not interested in this awesome offer, please pass it along to someone who might be.

Thanks!

Ben Radford

• 

Thanks to Dr Stephen Law of CFI UK for the footage

CFI also have an event on Saturday 6th March titled “Monsters vs Aliens“, featuring three experts on UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster and Sasquatch.

• 

UPDATE: 1:12pm: Andy Lewis wrapping up and taking questions.
–
UPDATE: 12:37pm: Andy Lewis on stage. Live streaming audio. Apologies for the slight distortion, it’s not possible to rectify while Andy is talking.
–
UPDATE: 11.48am: Singh continuing to fight libel case because:
“I think I am right.
It is important (child health)
It is doubly impoitant (free speech).
I might win?!”
–
Also thankful for the support shown.
UPDATE: 11:43am: When the BCA filed suit against Singh, the Guardian was also apparently being sued by Matthias Rath, Tesco & Elton John. Guardian also apparently still £175,000 out-of-pocket from Rath case, despite Goldacre winning.
–
UPDATE: 11:32am: Discussing chiropractic, and Daniel Palmer.
–
UPDATE: 11.29am: Singh talking about a systematic review of acupuncture.
–
UPDATE: 11:27am: Placebos in acupuncture – needles in wrong locations, needles not inserted deeply enough, even retracting needles which deceptively appear to penetrate the skin.
–
UPDATE: 11:23am: Singh moving on to James Lind’s clinical trials on scurvy and controlled testing.
–
UPDATE: 11:18am: Simon Singh currently on stage talking about acupuncture and its representation in the media.
–
UPDATE: 10:54am: We have permission to stream Andy Lewis’ talk. Currently it looks to be audio only but I’ll try to find a way to stream video too. Andy is scheduled to talk at 12pm. The stream will be below.
–
UPDATE: 10:44am: Unfortunately we couldn’t find a stable internet connection through which we could stream the 10:23 event, though the event itself went smoothly (excepting a lone protest from a black car sporting large flags and loud music).

We are instead hoping to potentially stream talks from CFI UK’s alternative medicine event today, again below. Announcements will be made here and via our Twitter account if we can gain the appropriate permission.

This article will be posted online automatically at 9:45am on Saturday 30th while we are trying to engineer the feed. If successful, the video will go live at 10:23am when the event starts. If not, here’s a low-quality copy of a lecture given by Prof. Chris French on the myths and methodology of the placebo effect instead.

Streaming .TV shows by Ustream

The conduct, content, opinions and ideas provided in broadcast events neither represent nor are endorsed by The Skeptic Magazine, Skeptics in the Pub, or its affiliates.

• 

Stewart Brand trained originally as an ecologist. His legendary Whole Earth Catalogue (1968-1985) won the US National Book Award in 1972. Brand, whose previous books include The Media Lab, How Buildings Learn, and The Clock of the Long Now, is president and co-founder of the Long Now Foundation and co-founder of the Global Business Network. Stewart’s Latest book is Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, Published in January 2010 by Atlantic Books.

The first of our monthly guest hosts is Becky Hogge. Becky Hogge is a freelance writer and researcher. Formerly executive director of the Open Rights Group, and a former technology director of openDemocracy, she is currently a board member of the Open Knowledge Foundation. Becky writes and broadcasts on technology, civil rights and intellectual property in the digital age for publications such as the New Statesman, The Guardian and Index on Censorship. Read Becky’s New Statesman review of Whole Earth Discipline.

• 

If you like the 2009 event, you may also like the DVD from the 2008 event, preview below.

• 

At 10:23am on Saturday 30th January, over 300 individuals from branches of Skeptics in the Pub will simultaneously consume an overdose of commercially available homeopathic medicines. The nationwide protest, organised by the 10:23 campaign from Merseyside Skeptics, will either unfold as one of the largest mass suicides since Jonestown, or will yet again confirm that science, evidence and rational thought actually do work.

The confirmed locations of the overdoses are as follows:

UK

Birmingham: High Street

Edinburgh: Secret Location

Glasgow: Tie Rack in Central Station

London: Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, Holborn

Leeds: Leeds Mainline Rail Station, main entrance at 9.30-10 am

Immediately after the protest, Dr Simon Singh, Prof. John Garrow and Andy Lewis will take to the stage of London’s Conway Hall for Trick or Treatment: Alternative Medicine on Trial, the first event in 2010 from CFI UK.

The protest, comes after a Boots representative, Paul Bennett, attracted ridicule from the national press after admitting to a parliamentary select committee last month that Boots knowingly sells homeopathic remedies to the public for which it has no evidence of effectiveness. The Science and Technology Select Committee are due to release their report on homeopathy around the time of the protest, at the end of January.

While dispensing sugar pills may seem harmless, in reality the endorsement of homeopathic potions by leading health providers can have grave consequences. As well as potentially undermining trust in medicine and medical advice, customers may be misled into believing that they are treating their illness – for example a Panorama investigation famously revealed that homeopaths were advising customers to take ineffective pills in place of Malaria prophylactics on holiday. In extreme cases, such as the ‘healing therapist’ Russell Jenkins, deaths may occur.

The 10:23 Campaign, so named in recognition of Avogadro’s Constant (the limit of dilution which is exceeded by homeopathic preparations) aims to raise awareness of homeopathy and its basis within long-discredited 18th century pseudoscience, selling remedies to the public which have no scientific basis and no credible evidence for its efficacy beyond the placebo effect.

As ever, this is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate JREF’s Law (namely ”there is no topic of parapsychological discussion upon which James Randi has failed to comment”) by directing attention to Randi’s lecture at Princeton in 2001, which contained the following segment on homeopathy. Randi’s commentary in 2002 for the BBC is worth reading also.

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Also, for handy links to upcoming psychology-related radio shows, TV, and public lectures, the Research Digest publishes Twitter updates from @researchdigest.

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In defense of the introduction of this law, the Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern said back in May that due to the fact blasphemy is an offence in the Irish Constitution (again highlighting the pervasive influence of the Catholic Church in the founding of the Republic of Ireland) he was obliged to include it in an update of the defamation laws. To remove blasphemy from the constitution would require a referendum of the people of Ireland, and Mr Ahern reckoned that the “current economic environment” was not conducive to this.

The law does include a fairly broad get-out-of-jail clause, specifying that “It shall be a defence to proceedings for an offence under this section for the defendant to prove that a reasonable person would find genuine literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic value in the matter to which the offence relates”. However one could argue that the number of “reasonable persons” in a world that outlaws blasphemy is questionable…

I personally found point 4 of this new law to be particularly interesting, where they attempt to distinguish between “religion” and mere “cults”.

“In this section “ religion ” does not include an organisation or cult—

• the principal object of which is the making of profit, or

• that employs oppressive psychological manipulation—

• of its followers, or
• for the purpose of gaining new followers.”

I assume telling people they are going to live an eternity of torment and pain for not following your god counts as oppressive psychological manipulation, no?

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