Jon Ronson on ... something critically important.

Jon Ronson's low-key laid-back documentaries are marvels of understated profundity. He's just started a new series of his long-running BBC Radio 4 programme Jon Ronson On... and the first episode is all about confirmation bias. Not to be missed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01rlrjz/Jon_Ronson_On_Series_7_Voices_in_the_Head/
(available until 11th April)

Brilliant stuff, featuring Uri Geller (who admits to confirmation bias, but doesn't seem to realise that's what he's doing). Here's a clip:



Here's the blurb from the BBC website:

Writer and documentary maker Jon Ronson returns for another five-part series of fascinating stories shedding light on the human condition. 

In the first programme, he investigates confirmation bias - or why so many people look for evidence that confirms their pre-existing beliefs. 

Jon believes he may be susceptible to confirmation bias himself. Over the last two years he has kept noticing that the time on his phone is 11.11. After looking on the internet, he found out there are many other people also doing this, including Uri Geller who first started noticing the number 11 over twenty years ago. Jon has also discovered that a particular community of people believe 11.11 is a sign for a new spirit guide who will come to earth, coincidentally known as Monjoronson. He speaks to the owner of the Monjoronson web domain, Ron Besser, and asks if it is possible that Jon himself is the spirit guide they're looking for.

Jon talks to other people who have been affected by confirmation bias, including an Oxford academic who believes her fate can be determined by looking at two lip balm pots. 

The journalist David Aaronovitch says he believed the delusions he had while suffering intensive care psychosis after a routine operation were real. 

Lotfi Raissi, the first person to be charged in connection with the September 11th attacks, tells Jon he believes his arrest was down to confirmation bias because he fitted a certain profile. A judge found there was no evidence to link Raissi to any form of terrorism. 

Finally Jon speaks to the lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who believes people who are prone to confirmation bias are more likely to be recruited to police forces.

Producer: Lucy Greenwell
A Unique production for BBC Radio 4.

My QED 2012 experience — part 1

For me the stand-out features of QED this year were the range of speakers and the socialising. Unlike last year I didn't stay at the conference hotel so I had to carry everything for the day with me — which turned out to be a raincoat and a fairly large camera bag. These, I'm happy to report, didn't impede me much.

Like last year I arrived on Friday, catching an earlier train than I'd expected from Euston, and took my time ambling from my lodging to the Mercure Piccadilly Hotel for a relaxed meal before the Mixer, which was scheduled for 8 but seemed to be in full swing some time before that. By 8, however, wandering through the packed bar area was like swimming through a sea of skeptic celebrities. It's not called the Mixer for nothing and is one of the things that makes QED special. Whether or not they had read Hayley Stevens' blog, many people seemed to be taking her advice about talking to 'strangers'.

As for the event itself, I shall blog about it in short bursts, with photographs:



On Saturday, after Andy Wilson's official opening — not much more than a welcome and some housekeeping, Deborah Hyde kicked off with the historical context of the werewolf myth. Being the first speaker at an international conference can be, I imagine, a bit daunting, but Deborah displayed no sign of nerves even as her microphone was replaced or adjusted only seconds into her talk. Last year's first speaker was Bruce Hood, and I seem to remember he did take a few minutes (though not many) to get into his stride.

Deborah's talk was a new one, though she had given us a sneak preview at Portsmouth Skeptics in the Pub about a month earlier. In her QED talk she outlined the popular myths, and how it might have been reasonable, given the context and specific examples, to believe that werewolves were real. Bringing the myth down to earth, she included some real wolves.



Next was Steve Jones, explaining what is meant by natural selection — immediately illustrating the diversity of speakers and topics at this year's QED: from an investigation into the historical basis of popular myths we had moved on to why evolution, as understood by Charles Darwin (though he never used the word in his Origin of Species), is an undirected process. The example Steve used was the generation of effective shapes for nozzles used in the industrial manufacture of powder, by applying random but small variations to successively more effective shapes, thus refining the efficiency and durability of the nozzles without knowing precisely why they work. It's apparently an engineering technique still in use today.



The last speaker before lunch was David Aaronovitch. I was particularly keen to hear what he had to say as I attended the CFI Conspiracy Theories day at Conway Hall, at which David was scheduled to speak, but he had to withdraw due to ill health. So I was not entirely pleased when he began by announcing that his talk would be completely new and unike any of his previous talks. Nevertheless it was lively and off the cuff — conspiracy theories are everywhere so it's not as if there's a dearth of material — and well worth hearing. He spoke mostly about the conspiracy theory that's grown up around the affair of Dominique Strauss-Kahn — that the allegations against him of attempted rape are part of a sting organised by the French government (or more particularly by factions loyal to Nicolas Sarkozy).

After an equally lively Q&A session it was time for lunch. Topics had already ranged far and wide. More next time.

(Click here for part 2.)

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This is my 600th blogpost. I thought you'd like to know.

Conspiring to persuade

I spent yesterday (Sunday) in London at the CFI's Conspiracy Theory Day.

My motivation for attending this event was David Aaronovitch's scheduled appearance. He's written a book on conspiracy theories and I missed out on an event last year at which he spoke. So I thought this would be a good way to catch up on what I missed.

It turns out Aaronovitch is not well and regrettably had to withdraw. Stephen Law, Provost of CFI UK, decided to fill the gap with someone from "the other side" and so we had a talk by 9/11 truther Ian R. Crane. The audience, too, comprised a fair proportion of conspiracy theorists (though I dare say not all of them care for that characterisation).

I took many photographs of the various speakers (in poor light, so they might not be good enough to display), and James O'Malley of The Pod Delusion was there to record audio of the event. Professional video cameras (on tripods, the whole bit) were also in evidence. It seems therefore that the event will be archived. I intend to write about the various talks in more detail, but for now I'll offer some brief and fairly random thoughts.

Chris French and Robert Brotherton from Goldsmith's Anomalous Psychology Research Unit, as well as Karen Douglas from the University of Kent's School of Psychology, gave accounts of research showing that conspiracy theorists differ from religionists in a fundamental way. Believers in the one true faith tend to discount all other religions as false, whereas people who buy into one particular conspiracy theory are likely to endorse several others as well. It's apparently rare for someone to believe in only one conspiracy theory while discounting all others.

Jamie Bartlett and Carl Miller talked about the fall-out from their 2010 paper "The Power of Unreason" and the role of the internet in that fall-out. All the talks were followed with Q&A sessions, during which the make-up of the audience became more apparent. Despite explicit statements by the earlier speakers that their areas of concern did not include the veracity or otherwise of the conspiracy theorists' claims, several questions focussed on such detail. This was not surprising given the audience composition — the event had been publicised and anyone was free to buy a ticket.

The final speaker was Ian R. Crane, who touched on the definition of conspiracy theory (as previous speakers had been careful to elucidate) but soon went on to present the "9/11 truth" viewpoint. Some of the characteristics described in previous talks were amply demonstrated in the style of Crane's presentation. Whereas French, Brotherton and Douglas made their points by quoting from research papers, sometimes illustrating the results on screen using graphs or lists of references, Crane had his source texts on a table next to him. This was not apparently to enable him to quote directly from those texts, but rather so that he could pick one up and wave it in the air when he mentioned it. As Bartlett and Miller had already described when they mentioned the use of evocative videos with emotional appeal, Crane's presentation relied much on theatricality.

The final session was a discussion panel with all speakers, responding to questions from the floor. It lasted only half an hour, but even in that time things got a little heated. Many questioners seemed oblivious to the idea of a "question" and tended to use their time to address the hall, much to the consternation of the organisers and the increasing impatience of an excitable audience. But on the whole it was an excellent day, and the chance to hear the other side was a welcome additional benefit. I hope David Aaronovitch gets well soon.

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Here's another view of the event:
http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/09/british-humanist-association-conspiracy.html

A Moral Maze — of science and morality (BBC Radio 4)

On Wednesday BBC Radio 4 concluded the present series of the Moral Maze, its weekly live panel discussion on topical issues of morality. Unlike most other radio discussion panels, the Moral Maze adopts a cross-examination format, calling witnesses one by one to be quizzed by the regulars. As it's a live show, things can sometimes get a bit heated. (This also depends on which of the regulars are on the show in any given week, and who is chairing the panel — David Aaronovitch has temporarily replaced Michael Buerk for the latter part of this series. Melanie Phillips' more incendiary views often spark fireworks, though she wasn't on this week.)

The topic on Wednesday was science and morality, and two of the witnesses were Giles Fraser and Jerry Coyne. Fraser doesn't seem to have learned from his encounter with Sam Harris (but Fraser's views appear remarkably ill-defined at the best of times, especially on Thought for the Day). He impaled himself categorically on one horn of the Euthyphro dilemma by stating that God's morality is not intrinsic to God but external to him (which surely makes him less of a god). But theology has never been Fraser's strong point.

Jerry Coyne dealt patiently with his interrogators' questions, but clearly could have used more time to develop his responses. In some ways he was an untypical choice for this topic (maybe they couldn't get Sam Harris), but nevertheless he did well.

The audio can be streamed from the Moral Maze website or direct from iPlayer:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b011jv8m
Check out Jerry Coyne's two posts on his blog Why Evolution is True:
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/i-iz-on-moral-maze-today/
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/moral-maze-podcast/