Dr Nick Brown - Spotting science that just doesn't add up (SitP Online)
Live event link: https://www.twitch.tv/sitp
We've teamed up with other Skeptics in the Pub groups around the country to organise regular talks online during lockdown!
The skeptical movement rightly suggests that people should place more faith in peer-reviewed scientific articles than in YouTube videos or written claims made by random people on the Internet. However, science is not always particularly reliable either. In this talk, I will give some examples of how peer-reviewed scientific work that may attract a lot of public attention and even influence public policy decisions can contain remarkably elementary errors (not all of which are necessarily accidental). Some of these errors can be detected even by readers with relatively little mathematical or statistical expertise.
About the speaker: Ten years ago, Nick Brown was a British IT manager living in France. Now he is an Irish psychologist living in Spain. He received his PhD from the University of Groningen in 2019, with his thesis being entitled "Can Positive Emotions Improve Physical Health?" (spoiler: there's no good evidence). His work on debunking bad science has been featured in The Observer and Science, but nobody has paid him any money for it yet.
About Skeptics in the Pub - Online We are a coalition of UK-based Skeptics groups. Formed as the Covid-19 epidemic brought our country to a standstill, we are working to deliver high quality online events focussing on Science, reason, and critical thinking.
New to Skeptics in the Pub or Twitch or both? We anticipate that Twitch or SitP may be new for some of you so we will have early doors at 6:45 to welcome new attendees and answer any questions you may have. A useful guide to Twitch here: https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-twitch-4143337 You don't need a Twitch account to watch the talk only if you want to take part in the chat. You won't need an account to ask questions in the Q&A though.
More details on accessibility, inclusion and safety here: https://www.skepticsinthepub.org/online-safety
Safety & Comfort
We aim to be an inclusive organisation, welcoming attendees from all backgrounds, ethnicities, and genders. The directors reserve the right to remove any attendee whose continued presence represents a real or perceived threat to the smooth running of our events, or the security and comfort of other attendees. Anti-social behaviour will not be tolerated.