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Science, Scepticism and Free Speech: a series of three lectures in London, UK and online starting March 27, 2024

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I received a March 1, 2024 announcement (email) from Sense about Science about a new lecture series starting in late March 2024,

Critical thinking, open inquiry and the freedom to question have been fundamental to the development of the scientific method and the expansion of knowledge. To explore these ideas further, we’re pleased to invite you to a series of lectures and discussions we are running in partnership with the Free Speech Union.

In Science, Scepticism and Free Speech, Professor Alan Sokal and Professor Paul Garner will make the case for why we should care about science but also question it, concluding with our director Tracey Brown and Toby Young discussing the relationship between science, the public and democratic decision-making.

Events will take place at 7.30pm on 27 March, 27 April and 29 May [2024] at the Art Workers’ Guild in central London. Tickets include a glass of wine, and each event will include plenty of time for audience questions.

f you can’t attend in person, we will send you a Zoom link to join online, free of charge, shortly before each event. Please put the dates in your diary now.

Here’s more from the events page,

We are holding a series of three lectures and discussions in partnership with The Free Speech Union, a public interest body that stands up for the speech rights of its members and campaigns for free speech more widely.

Critical thinking, open inquiry and the freedom to question have been fundamental to the development of the scientific method and the expansion of knowledge. The ideal of objectivity and the goal of truth require the discipline to abstract itself from individuals, from interests and from sentiment, all of which may explain why science is always subject to pressures on its integrity. 

SCIENCE, SCEPTICISM and FREE SPEECH is a unique series of three events – two lectures from eminent scientists and a final session bringing together public figures concerned with the relationship between science, the public and democratic decision-making. Each session will include plenty of time for audience Q and A. 

You are welcome to attend the entire series or individual events. It will also be possible to join online for free – sign up to our mailing list and we’ll send you a link shortly before each event. Join our mailing list to watch online

In-person tickets for each event are £10 for FSU Members, £16 for members of the public, £12 for under-25s. Tickets include a glass of wine on arrival.

The individual events:

What is Science and Why Should We Care?

Wednesday 27 March, 2024, 7.30pm, The Hall, Art Workers’ Guild, 6 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AT. 

With Professor Alan Sokal,Professor of Mathematics, University College London and Professor Emeritus of Physics, New York University. 

Professor Sokal will draw out the unique contribution of the scientific method to human progress and address contemporary trends which threaten to undermine it, in particular, politicisation and censorship.  

About our speaker 

Famous for his 1996 hoax [emphasis mine; more info. about the hoax follows after the descriptions for the events], Professor Alan Sokal is one of the most powerful voices in the continuing debate about the status of evidence-based knowledge. He is co-author (with Jean Bricmont) of Intellectual Impostures: Postmodernist Philosophers’ Abuse of Science, and author of Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture.  

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How We Learned to Question Medicine

Wednesday 24 April, 2024, 7.30pm, The Hall, Art Workers’ Guild, 6 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AT. 

With Professor Paul Garner, professor emeritus in Evidence Synthesis in Global Health at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.  

Professor Garner will argue that scepticism is integral to good science and make the case for using the tools of science to hold authority to account. Building on the themes of Professor Sokal’s first lecture, Professor Garner will share noteworthy examples where an insistence on robust evidence and research has led not only to scientific breakthroughs but to the exposure of malpractice. 

About our speaker 

Professor Garner stepped back from full-time employment in 2022 but continues as emeritus. He supports academic staff carrying out systematic reviews on infectious diseases, developing further research on post-viral syndrome, and continued collaborative work in developing guideline methods. He was previously Coordinator of the Centre for Evidence Synthesis in Global Health, Co-ordinating Editor of the Cochrane Infectious Diseases Group, and Director of the Research, Evidence and Development Initiative. Professor Garner is also on the Board of Trustees of Sense about Science. 

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Science Under Pressure: Restoring Public Confidence

Wednesday 29th May, 2024, 7.30pm, The Hall, Art Workers’ Guild, 6 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AT. 

In this concluding conversation, our two speakers, Tracey Brown, Director of Sense about Science, and Toby Young, General Secretary of the Free Speech Union and Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Sceptic, will reflect on the issues raised in the earlier lectures and debate how the relationship between science and the public might be improved. When does healthy scepticism become a refusal to accept well-evidenced truth? How can we uphold science without succumbing to ‘scientism’? How can the public distinguish between relevant expertise and those who merely have strong opinions and loud voices? 

About our speakers 

Tracey Brown OBE is the director of Sense about Science, where she has turned the case for sound science and evidence into popular campaigns, including AllTrials, a global campaign for the reporting of all clinical trial outcomes. Tracey leads Sense about Science’s work on transparency of decisions, to ensure the public has access to the same evidence as decision-makers. This has included drafting the Principles for the Treatment of Independent Scientific Advice, and the Transparency of Evidence framework, now internationally emulated. In 2022 she led the What Counts? inquiry, and a national survey of the public’s experience of policy information during the pandemic, calling for all policy announcements to meet an evidence transparency standard. Tracey is honorary Professor, Science, Technology and Engineering in Public Policy at UCL.  

Toby Young is the General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, a non-partisan, mass membership public interest body that stands up for the speech rights of its members. He co-founded four schools and a multi-academy trust in West London, served as a Fulbright Commissioner and is the author of four books, the best known of which is How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (2001). He is an associate editor of the Spectator, where he’s written a weekly column since 1998, and Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Sceptic. He was formerly an Associate Editor of Quillette and is the author or co-author of three peer reviewed academic articles. 

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Sokal Affair

As promised, here’s more about the hoax that Professor Alan Sokal perpetrated, from the Sokal affair Wikipedia entry, Note: Links have been removed,

The Sokal affair, also called the Sokal hoax,[1] was a demonstrative scholarly hoax performed by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University and University College London. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of cultural studies. The submission was an experiment to test the journal’s intellectual rigor, specifically to investigate whether “a leading North American journal of cultural studies—whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross—[would] publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions.”[2]

The article, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”,[3] was published in the journal’s spring/summer 1996 “Science Wars” issue. It proposed that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. The journal did not practice academic peer review and it did not submit the article for outside expert review by a physicist.[3][4] Three weeks after its publication in May 1996, Sokal revealed in the magazine Lingua Franca that the article was a hoax.[2]

The hoax caused controversy about the scholarly merit of commentary on the physical sciences by those in the humanities; the influence of postmodern philosophy on social disciplines in general; and academic ethics, including whether Sokal was wrong to deceive the editors or readers of Social Text; and whether Social Text had abided by proper scientific ethics.

In 2008, Sokal published Beyond the Hoax, which revisited the history of the hoax and discussed its lasting implications.

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So, it’s either in person in London, UK or by Zoom if you are on the mailing list. So you can, Get tickets for Lecture 1; Get tickets for Lecture 2; Get tickets for Lecture 3, or Join Sense about Science mailing list to watch online

2014 Maddox Prize winners and more ( a letter writing compaign)* from Sense about Science*

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The UK’s ‘Sense about Science’ organization announced the two winners of its 2014 John Maddox (aka, the ‘standing up for science’) Prize in late October 2014 (from the Oct. 28, 2014 announcement),

I am delighted to share that last night [Oct. 27, 2014] Dr Emily Willingham and Dr David Robert Grimes were announced as the winners of the 2014 John Maddox Prize, at our annual reception held with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.

After lengthy deliberation, this year’s judges (Tracey Brown, Philip Campbell, Colin Blakemore and Martin Rees) awarded the prize to these two people who embody the spirit of the prize, showing courage in promoting science and evidence on a matter of public interest, despite facing difficulty and hostility in doing so.

The call for 2014 nominations was mentioned in an Aug. 18, 2014 post. Here’s more about each of the winners (from the 2014 John Maddox Prize webpage on the Sense about Science website),

The judges awarded the prize to freelance journalist Dr Emily Willingham and early career scientist Dr David Robert Grimes for courage in promoting science and evidence on a matter of public interest, despite facing difficulty and hostility in doing so. …

David Grimes writes bravely on challenging and controversial issues, including nuclear power and climate change. He has persevered despite hostility and threats, such as on his writing about the evidence in the debate on abortion in Ireland. He does so while sustaining his career as a scientist at the University of Oxford.

Emily Willingham, a US writer, has brought discussion about evidence, from school shootings to home birth, to large audiences through her writing. She has continued to reach across conflict and disputes about evidence to the people trying to make sense of them. She is facing a lawsuit for an article about the purported link between vaccines and autism.

A Nov. 1, 2014 post by Nick Cohen for the Guardian newspaper discusses one of the 2014 winners in the context of a post about standing up to science ignorance and Ebola in the US, scroll down abut 15% of the way),

The joint winners confronted beliefs that are as prevalent in Britain as America: that vaccination causes autism, that homeopathic medicines work, that manmade climate change does not exist and that adding fluoride to the water supply is a threat to health. (I didn’t know it until the prize jury told me but Sinn Féin is leading a vigorous anti-fluoride campaign in Dublin – well, I suppose it’s progress for the IRA to go from blowing off peoples’ heads to merely rotting their teeth.)

David Robert Grimes, one of the winners, said that, contrary to the myth of the scientific bully, most of his colleagues wanted to keep out of public debate, presumably because they did not wish to receive the threats of violence fanatics and quacks have directed at him. If we are to improve public policy in areas as diverse as the fight against Ebola to the treatment of drug addicts, they need to be a braver, and more willing to tell the public, which so often funds their research, what they have learned.

Grimes makes a useful distinction. Most people just want more information and scientists should be prepared to make their case clearly and concisely. Then there are the rest – Ukip, the Tea Party, governors of Maine, Sinn Féin, David Cameron, climate change deniers – who will block out any evidence that contradicts their beliefs. They confirm the truth of Paul Simon’s line: “All lies and jest, still the man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”

Lydia Lepage (a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh and a member of the Voice of Young Science, which is run by Sense About Science) over on the Conversation writes about both winners in an Oct. 28, 2014 post (Note: Links have been removed),

Willingham is a freelance science journalist whose evidence-based article: “Blame Wakefield for missed autism-gut connection” drew intense criticism and a lawsuit from Andrew Wakefield, the discredited scientist known for his now-retracted 1998 Lancet paper on the alleged link between vaccines and autism. She criticised the “red herring and the subsequent noxious cloud that his fraud left over any research examining autism and the gut”.

Willingham’s self-declared passion is “presenting accurate, evidence-based information”. She says:

Standing up for science and public health in the face of not only unyielding but also sometimes threatening opposition can be tiring and demoralising.

Grimes is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford in the UK, working on modelling oxygen distribution in tumours. He has been awarded the Maddox Prize for reaching out to the public through his writing on a range of challenging and controversial issues, including nuclear power and climate change.

Grimes continues to present the evidence, despite receiving threats, particularly surrounding discussion on abortion in Ireland. Following his article on six myths about cancer, in which he addressed the “dubious and outlandish” information that can be found on the internet, he received physical and digital hate-mail.

Sense about Science next announced an ‘Ask for Evidence’ website, from a Nov. 2, 2014 announcement,

We are excited to announce that Ask for Evidence online is now live! And people are already using it to ask for the evidence behind claims they’ve come across. Check out www.askforevidence.org

It’s our new interactive website that makes asking for evidence and getting help understanding that evidence as easy as possible. You can use it to ask politicians, companies, NGOs and anyone else for evidence behind their claims, while you’re on the train, walking down the street or sitting in front of the TV. And if you need help understanding the evidence you’ve been sent, that’s there too. With the help of partners and friends we’ve built a help centre that has captured what we’ve learnt over the past 12 years answering thousands of requests for help in understanding evidence.

Finally,. there’s the latest announcement about an effort to influence the World Health Organization’s (WHO) new policy on reporting the results of clinical trials, from the Nov. 11, 2014 announcement,

Following our pressure, the World Health Organization is drafting a policy on reporting the results of clinical trials.

We have to grab this fantastic opportunity with both hands and make sure that the most influential health body in the world comes out with a statement that strongly supports clinical trials transparency.

But you only have until Saturday 15th November 2014 to add your voice.

The draft WHO policy does not call for the disclosure of the results of past trials, only future ones. The vast majority of medicines we use every day were approved by regulators a decade or more ago and so were tested in clinical trials over the past decades.

So email the WHO to tell them their policy should:

  1. Call for the results of all past clinical trials to be reported, as well as all future clinical trials.
  2. Require results to be reported within 12 months, rather than permitting delays of 18-30 months. The USA’s FDA Amendment Act, the newly adopted EU Clinical Trials Regulation and pharmaceutical companies including GSK and LEO Pharma all agree that 12 months is enough time to report results.
  3. Encourage researchers to put results on publicly accessible registers, in useful, standardised formats.

Email ictrpinfo@who.int today.

Be sure to include your name and contact details as the WHO will not consider anonymous comments.

You can also use the full AllTrials response to write your email if you wish.

Read the full AllTrials response.

I am encouraged to see a move towards more transparency in reporting the results of clinical trials whether or not this bid to include past clinical trials is successful, although that would certainly be excellent news.

* (a letter writing campaign) was added to the head and ‘sense about science’ was changed to ‘Sense about Science’ on Nov. 14, 2014 1015 hundred hours PDT.

AAAS 2012 the last day, Feb. 20, 2012

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Hopefully I’m still making some sense as it’s been an exhausting few days and I’m not even going to the parties or expected to attend the 6:30 am meetings.

This last day featured one of my favourite talks. It was called, “Good Natured: From Primate Social Instincts to Human Morality” and was given by Frans B. M. de Waal. What really made the talk fascinating were the video clips which illustrated de Waal’s experiments with various animals. (I’m miffed that I can’t find any of these clips to embed in this posting because just hearing or reading about the animal’s behaviour isn’t the same.)

The best I can do is offer is this brief clip of de Waal speaking with Carl Zimmer (science writer mentioned in my Jan. 13, 2012 posting about his book on science tattoos). Here’s de Waal describing his experiments with Capuchin monkeys and the discovery he and his colleagues made about the concept of fairness amongst monkeys,

(You can check out more video clips of events held by the Templeton Book Forum here.)

At his AAAS 2012 talk, de Waals featured clips of elephants working cooperatively or not. Apparently, some of the elephants discovered that they could trick their partners into doing all of the work while still receiving the reward. de Waal is careful to note that his work is with mammals.

The very last session I attended was titled, “Misreporting Fukushima: A Failure of Science Journalism with Global Repercussions?” My hat’s off to Tracey Brown (Sense about Science) who moderated the session. Thank you and your colleague for keeping on time and for managing to get as many as questions heard and answered as possible. (There were lineups of people trying to ask questions and I’ve seen moderators disappoint a significant percentage of the questioners in this type of situation.) Brown did something simple, she aggregated the questions and gave a warning (10 mins., I think) before she wrapped up the session.

As for the ‘misreporting’, it’s one of the topics that people can talk about forever. It was good to hear from scientists and journalists (from the UK, Germany, and China) and audience members (from Japan, Canada, US, India, etc.) and, as you might expect, many dissenting opinions and perspectives were offered. I very much appreciated the civil and thoughtful discussion.