Two events — one local, one not.

Here are the next two events I'll be attending. First (tomorrow) we have the second anniversary of Winchester Skeptics in the Pub, with our honorary president doing the ... honours:

Then on Saturday (South West Trains' engineering works permitting) I'll be attending CFI's Blasphemy event at Conway Hall:

(And on Sunday evening we've scheduled the recording of Skepticule Extra's twentieth podcast episode — though given the current state of my voice, that might have to be postponed again.)

"What Genetics Can Really Tell Us" — Adam Rutherford — Winchester SitP

The ubiquitous Adam Rutherford gave a fascinating talk at Winchester Skeptics in the Pub on Thursday evening. Ubiquitous? Well, he's been on telly this week, and last, with his new BBC Four series The Gene Code (which reminds me — I wonder if there are any of those fridge magnets left...), and his previous series The Cell began a re-run that very evening. Also he's had several recent Radio 4 appearances: Science Betrayed, for instance, and last week's Start the Week with Andrew Marr.

Adam's appearance at TAM London 2010 detailed his experiences on the Alpha Course, but on Thursday he was on his own territory with a talk entitled "What Genetics Can Really Tell Us". We learned, for instance, that compared to indigenous Africans the majority of western humanity is extraordinarily inbred. We learned that except in a very few cases there isn't a "single gene" responsible for specific human attributes — or diseases. This is something the tabloid press (or at least the Daily Mail) hasn't yet caught on to, and we saw slides of several articles that claimed that "the gene for" various specific things had been found. Bizarrely, several of these disparate characteristics were attributed, in different articles, to the same gene. Adam also managed to outline the history of genetics (including the scientific principles) in about 20 minutes, which is no mean feat.

I should also mention that despite this being the first time Adam had delivered this talk he was engaging and funny throughout. While he may or may not keep the bingo cards (don't ask) in subsequent talks, if you get the chance to hear him on this subject don't pass it up. It's unlikely, however, that he'll be able to arrange a flypast of the International Space Station every time he delivers his talk. (During the break we all paraded into the pub car park to watch the ISS go by.)

Winchester SitP's regular venue, The Roebuck — now under new management — has been done up, which contributed to the general success of the evening.

Stand-up Maths at Winchester Skeptics in the Pub

Last night, back at the Roebuck Inn after a single enforced expulsion to the Slug and Lettuce in the the city centre, Hampshire Skeptics Society hosted Matt Parker, the Stand-up Mathematician, at Winchester Skeptics in the Pub. And a highly amusing time was had by all.

Matt's talk was titled "Clutching at Random Straws" and dealt with our innate tendency to detect patterns where none exist. His subjects included — amongst other delights — the deeply significant alignment of the ancient Woolworth civilisation, the explicable causal links between human birth-rate and preponderance of mobile-phone masts, and the likelihood of there being two or more people with the same birthday in any given group of people — such as those attending a Skeptics-in-the-Pub night.

The Q&A session was equally lively, and included Matt expounding his views on environmentalism and organic farming, as well as giving a quick rundown of the pros and cons of the Alternative Vote and First Past The Post voting systems (as follows, paraphrased):

If you're first past the post, it means you got the most votes. So let's say you've got four people who are running for an election — the person who gets the most votes might have 26% of the votes, and everyone else got just under 25. In which case they would get in on just 26% of people voting for them. So in fact 74% of people may adamantly not want them. And so that's kind of the thrust of this — you need a bigger vote than anyone else, but you don't need a bigger vote than everyone who's against you. And proportional voting is that if you vote for one of your guys, and it seems like they're not going to get in, you get to have a second choice, so your vote goes to the second choice, and if they're not going to get in, it goes to the third choice. You get to the final two people, and the person who is ranked higher more than the other person, gets in.

Say one guy was ranked above the other 52% of the time, and the other guy was ranked higher 48% of the time, that means 52% would rather have one than the other — more people for than against, rather than just more people for one than for the other. In an apolitical sense, I think AV is the fairer way to decide which candidate has the fewest people against them.

Matt Parker is in the business of communicating mathematics, and we need more of his clear and direct style. He's available to lecture in schools and other places, as well as having a presence on the interwebs — as, for example, below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ3GGWrDwMM

David Allen Green at Winchester Skeptics in the Pub

David Allen Green, also known as legal blogger Jack of Kent, was the latest speaker at Winchester Skeptics in the Pub on 24^th November at the Roebuck Inn. Fresh from the #TwitterJokeTrial appeal dismissal David gave us his account of proceedings in an engaging talk without notes or PowerPoint. The issues raised by the Paul Chambers Twitter affair and others have implications beyond the internet social media within which they would initially appear to be confined. Issues of privacy, publication, and the status of conversations conducted online via Twitter or Facebook, or any online forum where the distinction between public and private conversation space becomes blurred, are all considerations that can lead to unexpected (and undesirable) consequences.

One of the problems is that the phenomenon of online social media is still relatively new, and people will inevitably be testing its limits, whether intentionally or unintentionally. And because it's new, the resolution of such tests seems often to be the job of the courts. For the hapless participants this is likely to be unnerving, extremely expensive and potentially life-changing.

David Allen Green, aka Jack of Kent, has made a name for himself as the foremost explicator of these matters. He's a media lawyer with a reputation for clear legal analysis set out in a way understandable to non-lawyers (that is, the rest of us). I met him briefly at the Penderel's Oak in Holborn, the evening before TAM London 2009, and one thing I particularly remember from our brief conversation was his statement that as a lawyer he was in a position to say things about current legal cases that non-lawyers could not, because he knew precisely how far he could go while staying within the law. He confirmed in his SitP talk that his writing is deliberately "legal-proof".

He explained how he got into blogging and how he became a Skeptic (with a K), saying that his skepticism was founded on no more than an insistence that there should be a critical or evidence-based approach to issues when appropriate. He stressed that skepticism shouldn't be used as a means to specific ends.

He has given talks on witchcraft trials from a strictly legal standpoint, maintaining that the existence or not of witchcraft — in the sense of supernatural powers — was never an issue. He detailed his involvement with the Simon Singh libel case, and the importance of libel reform. He also touched on a couple of other cases he's been involved with, Dave Osler and Sally Bercow, but went into more detail about Paul Chambers, whose case is ongoing, though looking pretty grim at present.

In addition to his Jack of Kent blog — so significant in letting the world know the salient details of Simon Singh's battle with the British Chiropractic Association — David Allen Green has also been blogging regularly at New Statesman. They must be pleased with his efforts, as he is now the New Statesman legal correspondent. He also writes the Bad Law? column at The Lawyer.

The Q&A was understandably centred around the Paul Chambers #TwitterJokeTrial case, and its implications for establishing a dividing line between public and private conversation space. In response to a question David gave the example of a Daily Mail article that appeared to intentionally humiliate a civil servant making extensive use of Twitter. The question is, was it reasonable for Sarah Baskerville to treat Twitter as a private medium for off-the-cuff comments about her work and colleagues? Personally I think one has to be mindful of the reach of internet social media, but given Twitter's informality this is easy to forget.

This was an excellent talk about serious issues, delivered by an insider with a gift for explication of complex matters.

I had a couple of questions for David, which I would have asked if I hadn't felt that they'd likely derail the Q&A conversation, centred as it was on the public/private demarcation issue. The first is about the Simon Singh libel case: at a point fairly late in proceedings it appeared that the BCA themselves had posted a libellous statement on their website, to the effect that Simon Singh had been malicious in his article. On his Jack of Kent blog David wrote that if Simon decided to countersue, the case would be over. The BCA amended their website, but the offending statement was still accessible if one knew the correct URL. At the time I thought this was a sign that the BCA knew they were going to lose, and that this hastily amended (but not immediately deleted) libel was a ploy to end the case without losing face over their original suit. I'm curious as to whether this incident had any eventual bearing on the case.

My second question is: whatever happened to Jack's Climate Quest?

Book review: Don't Get Fooled Again by Richard Wilson

On 23^rd February 2010 Richard Wilson spoke at the second Winchester Skeptics in the Pub, and he was selling copies of his book. I had previously checked out the book on Amazon, so when his price on the night showed a considerable discount, plus the opportunity to have the authorial signature, I snapped it up.

I'm glad I did. The book's subtitle, The Sceptic's Guide to Life, may be a bit ambitious as an aim, but the content offers excellent advice on how to check if what you're being told can be believed.

He covers dubious advertising, news stories that are no more than uncritical rehashes of press releases, manufactured controversies and much else besides, all with examples and copious footnotes (so if you have any doubt you are free to check his sources — many of which are available for free on the web).

By way of example he goes into detail about Trofim Lysenko's bogus attempts to reform Soviet agriculture — a subject he dealt with in his SitP talk — as well as examining Clarence Cook Little's initially successful efforts in the 1950's to obfuscate the growing concern about a link between tobacco and lung cancer.

There's a chapter about AIDS denialism — the claim that there's no evidence HIV causes AIDS, and that anti-retroviral drugs actually cause AIDS. He deals with the tendency to invent neologisms to disguise and defuse serious problems, whether factual or ethical, and he even goes into some detail on the religious question, in response to the "new atheist" publishing phenomenon.

He touches on corruption in high places, mentioning the secrecy surrounding MP's expenses (the book was published before the recent widespread scandal — which is probably a good thing, else it would  be twice the length and dominated by a single issue).

This is a comprehensive overview of matters that should concern us all, by someone who appears to be of a generally liberal/left persuasion (something that he doesn't conceal — nor should he). It covers a selection of sceptical subjects, but gives the overall impression that these are but a fraction of what's going on, and with which we should be engaged. In the modern world he could probably write another book with entirely different examples, and we should therefore be eternally vigilant.

Richard Wilson's blog of the same name, Don't Get Fooled Again, can be found at http://richardwilsonauthor.wordpress.com/

Richard Wilson, Don't Get Fooled Again: The Sceptic's Guide to Life (Icon Books Ltd, 2008), Hardcover, £12.99
ISBN-10: 1848310145, ISBN-13: 978-1848310148

D. J. Grothe on The Pod Delusion

When I launched my occasional sceptical podcast Skepticule in September last year I lamented the apparent dearth of British sceptical podcasts. Little did I know that at the very same time a weekly UK-based sceptical podcast, The Pod Delusion, was also in the process of being launched. Though I had reservations about the variable audio quality of the first few episodes of The Pod Delusion, which perhaps is inevitable when a variety of independent contributors are involved, this now seems to have settled down.

Audio quality, though important, is secondary to content, and the latest edition of The Pod Delusion has scooped the global sceptical podcast community by releasing an interview by Jon Treadway with the new president of the James Randi Educational Foundation, D. J. Grothe. (And by the way, the audio quality is fine.)

D. J. comes to the JREF from the Center for Inquiry and the well-respected podcast Point of Inquiry. I've related elsewhere on this blog how I discovered sceptical podcasting — Skepticality was the first, but Point of Inquiry runs it a close second, and D. J. has some exciting revelations about the future of Point of Inquiry as well as sceptical podcasting from the JREF.

He also announced that there will be a second TAM London in 2010. This is great news. TAM London was a defining event for me last year and I'm delighted to hear that there will be another this year. I only hope the venue will be big enough, and that the registration will be less of a lottery.

The relevant Pod Delusion episode is available here:
http://poddelusion.co.uk/blog/2010/01/08/episode-16-8th-january-2010/

or you can subscribe in iTunes here:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=332231975

or with any podcatcher using this feed:
http://www.ipadio.com/phlog_rss.asp?phlogid=9216

You can listen to an extended version of the D. J. Grothe interview here:
http://www.ipadio.com/phlogs/PodDelusionExtra/2010/01/08/The-Pod-Delusion-DJ-Grothe-Interview

and this is also downloadable from RapidShare here:
http://rapidshare.com/files/333329812/PodDelusionExtra_DJGrothe_20100108.mp3

It seems that UK scepticism is at last taking off; we've already had the relaunch of the UK Skeptic magazine, and later this month I shall be pleased to attend the inaugural Winchester Skeptics in the Pub. Things are looking up.