The Hampshire Skeptics Society

Thinking Skills for a Complex & Divided World

Today’s complex problems demand we think beyond disciplinary silos, employing nuanced, evidence-based reasoning across different fields. Effectively tackling issues like pandemics or climate change, and bridging societal divides, requires understanding how different groups argue from their distinct worldviews.

A core challenge is educating future generations with these skills.

The Oxford Argumentation in Religion and Science (OARS) project addresses this directly by facilitating collaboration between science and religious education teachers in schools. The project aimed to break down subject boundaries and explicitly teach students how to analyse and construct arguments both within and between these different domains – fostering critical thinking applicable far beyond the classroom.

This talk, drawing on this project and other research, explores why such interdisciplinary reasoning and perspective-taking are vital skills for innovation and navigating our shared future.

Bio

Liam Guilfoyle is a Senior Lecturer in Science Education in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford, and fellow of Kellogg College. His research interests revolve around epistemic cognition (how individuals think about the nature of knowledge and the nature of knowing) and how this impacts many facets of life and learning.

Liam is particularly interested in epistemic cognition and practices in interdisciplinary contexts. He is also interested in researching and supporting teachers’ engagement with/in research.

He is the Course Director of the MSc in Learning and Teaching, which supports practicing teachers to be become more research engaged in their own school contexts.

Standard Stuff

Talks are usually (December is always an exception) on the 4th Wednesday of every month,  at 7:00 for 7:30, at The Winchester Club in Winchester.  Please take a look at the FAQs for more info.

Admission is £5 which also gives you an entry in the book raffle. We take cash and major cards (cards preferred).

The event is in two parts – the talk and then a Q&A after the interval. We encourage you to support the venue by indulging in the available drinks before and during the event.

You are also welcome to join us for a drink in the bar after the event

This talk is offered as an antidote to the doom and gloom that many of us can feel about the climate and ecological emergency, and the terrifying reality of natural disasters we either experience ourselves, or watch live on the news.

In this talk, we aim to show you that a world worth living in is possible, and to provide you with tangible actions you can start taking today, to make that world a reality.

Come and participate in this talk –

• If you want to reclaim your agency from forces outside of yourself that are seemingly controlling your destiny
  • If you are tired of feeling sad or hopeless about the future of our planet and our species
  • If you are motivated to take action, but unsure where to start
  • If you don’t feel ready to be a climate activist, but want to engage with the issue in other ways
  • If you have questions for a climate scientist who is also a climate activist

Our promise: you’ll walk away inspired and reassured, with practical tools in your hands, and clever concepts in your head, that you can immediately put to use.

Bors Bio

Bors trained as a social scientist and later as a climate scientist. For his day job, he runs a small research agency. His evening job is Extinction Rebellion, where he is the editor of XR’s new talk, called ‘The World We Want’ (TWWW).

TWWW is a brand new product, hot off the press in April. Join us and be among the very first to hear the talk, and give us your feedback.

Standard Stuff

Talks are usually (December is always an exception) on the 4th Wednesday of every month,  at 7:00 for 7:30, at The Winchester Club in Winchester.  Please take a look at the FAQs for more info.

Admission is £5 which also gives you an entry in the book raffle. We take cash and major cards (cards preferred).

The event is in two parts – the talk and then a Q&A after the interval. We encourage you to support the venue by indulging in the available drinks before and during the event.

You are also welcome to join us for a drink in the bar after the event

Eschewing conspiracy, populism and science denial

How can we encourage individuals to engage with beneficial ideas, while eschewing dark ideas such as science denial, conspiracy theories, or populist rhetoric?

With this talk, we will explore the factors underpinning individuals’ engagement with ideas, proposing a model grounded in education, social networks, and pragmatic prospection (i.e. whether individuals have a forward-looking mindset). Beneficial ideas enhance decision-making, improving individual and societal outcomes, while dark ideas lead to suboptimal consequences, such as diminished trust in institutions and health-related harm.

Using statistical analysis of survey data from 7,000 respondents across seven European countries, we test hypotheses linking critical thinking, network dynamics, and pragmatic prospection to the value individuals ascribe to engaging with ideas, their ability to identify positive and dark ideas effectively and how individuals subsequently engage with ideas and who they engage in them with.

Our findings reveal how interventions in education, network development, and forward-planning could empower individuals to critically evaluate and embrace positive ideas while rejecting those that might be detrimental to themselves and others.

Professor Chris Brown

Professor Chris Brown is Professor of Education (University of Southampton), Head of the Southampton Education School and Distinguished Visiting Professor, University of Tübingen.

Chris has a long-standing interest in how people go about harnessing great ideas to improve the human condition. Traditionally Chris’ work has focused on the education system, but more recently Chris has turned his attention to the ‘ideas-informed society’ more generally, and how we can ensure ideas are available and used effectively to the benefit of everyone.

Chris has written or edited some 21 books and nearly 100 journal articles in the broad sphere of research, evidence and ideas-use.

Ruth Luzmore

Ruth Luzmore is a Research Fellow in Southampton Education School, and a lecturer at the National Institute of Teaching and Education, University of Coventry.

Ruth has nearly two decades of experience in England’s state education system, from teaching assistant to headteacher.

Her research focuses on how school leaders design and implement professional development, with current work on the Ideas-Informed Society initiative and the EU Horizon-funded MEGASKILLS project.

Standard Stuff

Talks are usually (December is always an exception) on the 4th Wednesday of every month,  at 7:00 for 7:30, at The Winchester Club in Winchester.  Please take a look at the FAQs for more info.

Admission is £5 which also gives you an entry in the book raffle. We take cash and major cards (cards preferred).

The event is in two parts – the talk and then a Q&A after the interval. We encourage you to support the venue by indulging in the available drinks before and during the event.

You are also welcome to join us for a drink in the bar after the event

Fertility is measured and reported in many different ways and each measure provides a different piece of information. Considering these rates and averages together can then provide greater and more nuanced insight into past and unfolding patterns of social and family change in the United Kingdom.

This presentation provides an overview of recent fertility patterns in the UK, drawing comparisons with countries worldwide.

Following this, we show the results of a more in-depth investigation of young people and their family plans. We look in detail at whether economic uncertainty and concerns about the environment are related to young peoples’ plans to have children.

Bio

Dr. Bernice Kuang is a researcher at the University of Southampton, on the Fertility Trends project, studying fertility patterns across the constituent countries of the UK. She completed her PhD in Social Statistics and Demography at the University of Southampton, and her masters in public health, with a concentration in demography, at Johns Hopkins University.

She has worked on various USAID and privately funded population health projects as a technical advisor in reproductive health. Bernice’s main research areas are fertility, partnership formation and dissolution, and family planning.

Standard Stuff

Talks are usually (December is always an exception) on the 4th Wednesday of every month,  at 7:00 for 7:30, at The Winchester Club in Winchester.  Please take a look at the FAQs for more info.

Admission is £5 which also gives you an entry in the book raffle. We take cash and major cards (cards preferred).

The event is in two parts – the talk and then a Q&A after the interval. We encourage you to support the venue by indulging in the available drinks before and during the event.

You are also welcome to join us for a drink in the bar after the event

Vegan pet food: a diet change revolution begins

Vegan pet foods use plant, mineral and synthetic sources to supply necessary nutrients, and the vegan food sector is rapidly growing. Very recent, large-scale studies into health outcomes, environmental sustainability and other key consumer concerns are supporting the emergence of a new disruptive vegan pet food industry.

At least 20% of livestock environmental impacts in wealthy nations such as the US and UK appear due to pet food. Global implementation of vegan dog foods alone would spare from slaughter six billion land animals annually, save more greenhouse gases than emitted by the whole of the UK, and would free sufficient food energy to feed the entire EU human population.

Eleven studies now exist in dogs, and three in cats, showing equivalent or superior health outcomes when vegan pet foods are used.

Veterinary Professor Andrew Knight is one of the leading researchers in this field. He will summarise key recent research and developments, which are proving game-changing for the plant-based diet and sustainability sectors.

This is no longer just about human consumption; pet diets are now an important part of this field.

Bio

Prof. Andrew Knight BSc (Vet Biol), BVMS, MANZCVS, DipECAWBM (AWSEL), DipACAW, PhD (Griff.), PhD (Winch.), FRCVS, PFHEA  is a veterinary Professor of Animal Welfare affiliated with the Murdoch University School of Veterinary Medicine and Griffith University, both in Australia, and with the University of Winchester in the UK.

An experienced small animal veterinarian, he s also a UK, European, American and New Zealand Veterinary Specialist in animal welfare.

In 2024 he received a PhD focused on vegan pet food (health, behavioural and environmental implications). He also received a PhD in 2010 critiquing scientific and educational animal use.

He has around 150 academic and 80 popular publications, and an extensive series of social media videos and several websites (including www.sustainablepetfood.info), on vegan companion animal diets, climate change and the livestock sector, invasive animal research, educational animal use, humane clinical and surgical skills training, and other animal welfare issues.

His studies on vegan pet food are regularly reported in news outlets globally. He often works with animal advocacy charities, and is frequently interviewed by the media. He has received over 20 awards and research grants for this work.

Standard Stuff

Talks are usually (December is always an exception) on the 4th Wednesday of every month,  at 7:00 for 7:30, at The Winchester Club in Winchester.  Please take a look at the FAQs for more info.

Admission is £5 which also gives you an entry in the book raffle. We take cash and major cards (cards preferred).

The event is in two parts – the talk and then a Q&A after the interval. We encourage you to support the venue by indulging in the available drinks before and during the event.

You are also welcome to join us for a drink in the bar after the event

A unified theory of reasonableness – and how to be unreasonable for the right reasons.

We’re living in an age of division. From abortion rights to immigration, gun control to climate change, civil debate has gone out the window. Manners, order, and respect are being eroded. Why can’t we all be reasonable?

The trouble is, what’s ‘reasonable’ to one person is outrageous to another. Is it okay to let children play in the garden while others are working from home? To do your makeup on a train, or recline your seat on an aeroplane? What’s the right way to breastfeed? To protect your neighbourhood? To protest against injustice and oppression? In a world where we all think we’re being reasonable, how can we figure out what’s right?

Looking back through history and around the world, Kirsty Sedgman set out to discover how unfairness and discrimination got baked into our social norms, dividing us along lines of gender, class, disability, sexuality, race… Instead of measuring human behaviour against outdated standards of rules and reason, On Being Unreasonable argues that sometimes we need to act unreasonably to bring about positive change.

Bio

An award-winning cultural studies scholar based at the University of Bristol, Dr Kirsty Sedgman has spent her career studying how we construct and maintain our competing value systems, working out how people can live side by side in the same world yet come to understand it in such totally different ways.

Her research asks how audiences find value in cultural participation. How are these experiences made meaningful within their lives?

Kirsty is the author of numerous academic publications and is Editor of the Routledge book series in Audience Research.

She has also spoken on the BBC’s Front Row and World Service programmes, at BroadwayCon in New York and IETM in Croatia, and on numerous podcasts and local radio shows.

Her writing has appeared in The Stage, Exeunt, and the BBC’s Expert Network, and her work has featured in outlets like the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, and the New York Times.

Her book, “On Being Unreasonable“, was published in February, 2024.

Standard Stuff

Talks are usually (December is always an exception) on the 4th Wednesday of every month,  at 7:00 for 7:30, at The Winchester Club in Winchester.  Please take a look at the FAQs for more info.

Admission is £5 which also gives you an entry in the book raffle. We take cash and major cards (cards preferred).

The event is in two parts – the talk and then a Q&A after the interval. We encourage you to support the venue by indulging in the available drinks before and during the event.

You are also welcome to join us for a drink in the bar after the event.

The Loch Ness Monster: a creature that should have died out with the dinosaurs, or a legend built on hoaxes and wishful thinking?

Drawing extensively on new material, including the unpublished papers of Sir Peter Scott, Gareth Williams takes a wholly original look at what really happened in Loch Ness – and at the cast of colourful characters who did extraordinary things in pursuit of one of evolution’s wildest cards.

Bio

Gareth Williams MD ScD FRCP FRCPE is Emeritus Professor and former Dean of Medicine at the University of Bristol. He graduated from Cambridge, trained in London and Geneva and specialised in diabetes and obesity, building up an internationally recognised research group in Liverpool.

He has published over 200 papers on diabetes, obesity and neuroendocrinology, and edited and contributed to 20 medical textbooks including the prize-winning Textbook of Diabetes and the chapter on diabetes for the Oxford Textbook of Medicine.

Since retiring, he has written books for general readers about the history of medicine and science: Angel of Death: the story of smallpox (shortlisted for the Wellcome Medical Book Prize 2010), Paralysed with Fear: the story of polio (2013), A Monstrous Commotion: the mysteries of Loch Ness (2015), and Unravelling the Double Helix: the lost heroes of DNA (2019).
He is currently finishing Super-Bomb: how British scientists created the Manhattan Project.

Gareth has served as President of the Anglo-French Medical Society and Chair of the Trustees of the Edward Jenner Museum, and is proud to be an Ambassador of the British Polio Fellowship.

He is often to be found playing classical music or jazz on the flute and saxophone.

Standard Stuff

Talks are usually (December is always an exception) on the 4th Wednesday of every month,  at 7:00 for 7:30, at The Winchester Club in Winchester.  Please take a look at the FAQs for more info.

Admission is £5 which also gives you an entry in the book raffle. We take cash and major cards (cards preferred).

The event is in two parts – the talk and then a Q&A after the interval. We encourage you to support the venue by indulging in the available drinks before and during the event.

You are also welcome to join us for a drink in the bar after the event.

Thoughts on the Frontiers of Early Medieval England

It would seem that those who wielded power in England in the centuries before the Norman Conquest became somewhat obsessed with establishing borderlines: whether to keep out their neighbours, to control new land or to simply assert their identity as rulers. Ryan Lavelle airs his current thoughts on the ways in which these edge-y manifestations of ‘England’ were used by political classes, both those at the centre and those on the boundaries, as well as where the realities of life on the edge ensured that a degree of frontier fuzziness remained.

Brief Bio

Ryan Lavelle is Professor in Early Medieval History at the University of Winchester. His research focuses on power and its limits, and he has written and edited a number of books on Anglo-Saxon England, including Alfred’s Wars (2010), Danes in Wessex (edited with Simon Roffey, 2016), Cnut: The North Sea King (2017), and Places of Contested Power (2020). He hopes that soon he will be able to add a book on early English borders to that list.

Standard Stuff

Talks are usually on the 4th Wednesday of every month,  at 7:00 for 7:30, at The Winchester Club in Winchester.  Please take a look at the FAQs for more info.

Admission is £5 which also gives you an entry in the book raffle. We take cash and major cards (cards preferred).

The event is in two parts – the talk and then a Q&A after the interval. We encourage you to support the venue by indulging in the available drinks before and during the event.

You are also welcome to join us for a drink in the bar after the event.

Why do some prime ministers manage to get things done, while others miserably fail? What is a ‘special adviser’ and how did they take over British political life? And why is the House of Lords more functional than most people think?

Most of us have a sense that our political system doesn’t seem to work, but struggle to articulate exactly why. And for good reason: our political and financial institutions are cloaked in secrecy, archaic terminology, ancient custom and impenetrable jargon.

Now, expert political journalist lan Dunt is lifting the lid on British politics to expose every aspect of the setup in a way that can be understood and challenged. From Downing Street to Whitehall, the Commons to the Lords – and based on his latest book – this talk is an indispensable overview of our political system – and how we might begin to fix it.

Brief Bio

Ian Dunt is a British author, political journalist, author, and broadcaster. He is the Editor of Politics.co.uk and a host on the Oh God, What Now? podcast.

Ian specialises in immigration, civil liberties, democracy, free speech and social justice and appears regularly on the BBC, Sky, and Al-Jazeera as well as a variety of radio stations. He also writes lifestyle columns for other publications and websites.

After acquiring a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and a Master’s in International Relations, Dunt studied for his Diploma in Journalism and Media Law at the London School of Journalism. Beginning his career at PinkNews, he then became a political analyst for Yahoo! and political editor of Erotic Review, before taking the reins as editor at politics.co.uk in 2010.

A vocal critic of Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, Dunt penned Brexit: What the Hell Happens Now? in 2016 and started the Remainiacs podcast alongside other pro-Remain commentators the following year.

Standard Stuff

Talks are usually on the 4th Wednesday of every month,  at 7:00 for 7:30, at The Winchester Club in Winchester.  Please take a look at the FAQs for more info.

Admission is £5 which also gives you an entry in the book raffle. We take cash and major cards (cards preferred).

The event is in two parts – the talk and then a Q&A after the interval. We encourage you to support the venue by indulging in the available drinks before and during the event.

You are also welcome to join us for a drink in the bar after the event.

Conspiracy theories often allege that important world events can be explained as the result of secret plots by the powerful. They propose alternative understandings or descriptions of events, commonly highlighting threats to our health, wellbeing or liberty.

But why would explanations which make the world appear more threatening be appealing compared to mainstream explanations?

Morbid curiosity describes the tendency to seek out information about threatening or dangerous situations and is associated with an interest in threat-related entertainment, such as horror films or true crime. Can a morbid curiosity about potential threats lead people down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories?

Across three studies, we found evidence suggesting a relationship between morbid curiosity and conspiracy theories. With those higher in morbid curiosity having higher general belief in conspiracy theories, a higher perception of threat in conspiratorial explanations of events, and a greater interest in learning more about conspiratorial explanations of events, compared to mainstream explanations.

Greater curiosity about the minds of dangerous people was consistently the strongest predictor of conspiracy theory belief and interest, suggesting a desire to learn more about the motivations of dangerous ‘others’ being key to the appeal of conspiracy theories.

Brief Bio

Dr Joe Stubbersfield is a senior lecturer in Psychology at the University of Winchester, UK. His research draws on social learning, cultural evolution, and cognitive anthropology, and focuses on how biases in cognition shape way that information spreads through social networks, particularly misinformation, conspiracy theories, and urban legends.

Standard Stuff

Talks are usually on the 4th Wednesday of every month,  at 7:00 for 7:30, at The Winchester Club in Winchester.  Please take a look at the FAQs for more info.

Admission is £5 which also gives you an entry in the book raffle. We take cash and major cards (cards preferred).

The event is in two parts – the talk and then a Q&A after the interval. We encourage you to support the venue by indulging in the available drinks before and during the event.

You are also welcome to join us for a drink in the bar after the event.