The Ockham Awards
Since 2012, The Skeptic has had the pleasure of awarding the Ockham Awards – our annual awards celebrating the very best work from within the skeptical community. The awards were founded because we wanted to draw attention to those people who work hard to get a great message out. The Ockhams recognise the effort and time that have gone into the community’s favourite campaigns, activism, blogs, podcasts, and outstanding contributors to the skeptical cause.
The winner of this year’s Ockham award for Skeptical Activism is Dr Cyriac Abby Philips, a doctor and expert on the harms caused by alternative medicine in India, who has faced legal threats and intimidation for his skeptical work.
Other past Ockham winners include Dr Flint Dibble, the BBC’s Disinformation Unit, Dr Elisabeth Bik, Dr Natália Pasternak, and Professor Edzard Ernst.
While we recognise the best in skepticism, our awards are also an opportunity to highlight the danger posed by promoters of pseudoscience with our Rusty Razor award. The Rusty Razor is designed to spotlight individuals or organisations who have been prominent promoters of unscientific ideas within the last year.
This year’s Rusty Razor went to Reform UK, the political party headed by Nigel Farage MP, for their widespread embrace of climate change denialism and antivaccine beliefs.
Previous Rusty Razor winners have included Elon Musk, Dr Aseem Malhotra, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Dr Mike Yeadon, Dr Didier Raoult, Andrew Wakefield, and Gwyneth Paltrow.
