Category: Skepticism

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Drawing extensively on new material, including the unpublished papers of Sir Peter Scott, Gareth Williams takes a wholly original look at what really happened in Loch Ness – and at the cast of colourful characters who did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

Why tomorrow’s technology still isn’t here

We love to imagine the future. But why are ground-breaking future technologies always just around the corner, and never a reality?

For decades we’ve delighted in dreaming about a sci-fi utopia, from flying cars and bionic humans to hyperloops and smart cities. And why not? Building a better world — be it a free-flying commute or an automated urban lifestyle — is a worthy dream. Given the pace of technological change, nothing seems impossible anymore. But why are these innovations always out of reach?

Delving into the remarkable history of technology, The Long History of the Future introduces us to the clever scientists, genius engineers and eccentric innovators who first brought these ideas to life and have struggled to make them work since. These stories reveal a more realistic picture of how these technologies may evolve — and how we’ll eventually get to use them. You may never be able to buy a fully driverless car, but automated braking and steering could slash collision rates. Smart cities won’t perfect city life, but they could help empty bins on time. Hyperloops may never arrive, but superfast trains are already here.

We always believe current technology is the best it could be. By looking to the past and the future, Nicole Kobie shows how history always proves us wrong and how what lies ahead may not be what we imagine, but so much better.

Bio

Nicole Kobie is a London-based technology and science journalist. Her bylines appear in Wired, where she is a contributing editor, PC Pro, where she’s the futures editor, and publications as wide ranging as Teen Vogue, New Scientist and GQ.

Nicole specialises in debunking government and startup PR around future technologies. Over the years she has reported on the limitations of flying cars and the slow research into computer-brain interfaces for Wired, the slow pace of self-driving cars for PC Pro, and the reality of quantum computing for IT PRO. Born in Calgary, Canada, she now lives in Tottenham, London.

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.

In 1797, a Gloucestershire surgeon called Edward Jenner protected a small boy from smallpox by inoculating him with cowpox. In 1977, nearly two centuries after that first ‘vaccination’, a hospital cook called Ali Maow Maalin recovered from the last natural smallpox infection. Thanks to Jenner’s insight, we no longer live with smallpox.

By then, it was clear that Jenner’s insight was merely the beginning.

During the 1870s, Louis Pasteur led a revolution in medical science by showing that microbes cause disease. He didn’t stop there; he went on to modify microbes to protect against disease. He had turned the phenomenon discovered by Jenner into a set of principles and those principles have underpinned vaccine development for the last century and a half.

We now have an array of vaccines produced by techniques that Jenner and Pasteur could never have dreamed of and as microbes are constantly evolving, so must vaccinology. This is the story of vaccinology’s evolution from a Gloucestershire barnyard to the cutting-edge biotechnology that brings COVID-19 vaccines to the high street pharmacy.

Bio

David Miles is an infectious disease immunologist who has worked mostly on diseases of childhood in Africa and the vaccinations that protect against them. He now lives in London and tutors on the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s online MSc course. His first popular science book, How Vaccines Work, was published in March 2023.

Website: https://www.variolator.com/
Twitter: @Variolator
Bluesky: @variolator.bsky.social

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.

Science of the people, by the people, for the people

Mass-Observation was founded in 1937 by one anthropologist working in Bolton and two surrealists working in London. For a brief moment in the late 1930s, before the surrealists quit, it sought to practice an experimental science of the people (studying the everyday lives of ordinary people), by the people (involving ordinary people as observers and writers), for the people (involving ordinary people as readers of this writing).

The democratic project was to make everyday life available for critique, to mobilise people as critics – of their own lives, the lives of others, and the conditions in which these lives were lived – and to facilitate public formation around emerging issues. This project was not particularly successful, but it did produce a fascinating book, May the Twelfth, based on ‘day-surveys’ by two hundred observers on 12th May 1937, the day of George VI’s Coronation.

In 2010, inspired by this book, the Mass Observation Archive at University of Sussex began collecting day-diaries annually on 12th May. For the next decade, they received a few hundred diaries every year, which they archived but were never really used by anyone.

Then on 12th May 2020 something changed. They received 5,000 diaries from people keen to record a day in the life of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Nick used these diaries to produce his own book, Everyday Life in the Covid-19 Pandemic.

It attempts to provide a humanising, democratic account of the pandemic and how it was experienced in the UK – an alternative to the statistical accounts of epidemiology and the expert accounts of professional critics. It also attempts to revive the democratic project of the original Mass-Observation: science of the people, by the people, for the people.

In this talk, he discusses this project, his book, and everyday life in the Covid-19 pandemic.

Biography

Nick Clarke is Associate Professor of Human Geography at the University of Southampton. He studies governance and citizenship, taking approaches from human geography, political science, history, and cultural studies. His books include Globalising Responsibility (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), The Good Politician (CUP, 2018), and Everyday Life in the Covid-19 Pandemic (Bloomsbury, 2024).

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.

Ghostly encounters, alien abduction, reincarnation, talking to the dead, UFO sightings, inexplicable coincidences, out-of-body and near-death experiences… Are these legitimate phenomena? If not, then how should we go about understanding them?

In this fascinating talk based on research for his latest book, The Science of Weird Shit, Chris French not only provides authoritative evidence-based explanations for a wide range of superficially mysterious phenomena, he also explores further to draw out lessons with wider applications to many other aspects of modern society– where critical thinking is urgently needed.

Paranormal psychologist Chris French will show that belief in paranormal phenomena is neither ridiculous nor trivial; if anything, such claims can tell us a great deal about the human mind if we pay them the attention they are due.
Filled with light-bulb moments and a healthy dose of levity, The Science of Weird Shit is a clever, memorable, and gratifying journey– with a conclusion you won’t soon forget.

Brief Bio

Chris French is Emeritus Professor and former Head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit in the Psychology Department at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and a Patron of UK Humanists. He has published well over 200 articles and chapters covering a wide range of topics. His main current area of research is the psychology of paranormal beliefs and anomalous experiences. He frequently appears on radio and television casting a sceptical eye over paranormal claims. His second to most recent book is Anomalistic Psychology: Exploring Paranormal Belief and Experience and his latest book, published in 2024 by MIT Press, is The Science of Weird Shit: Why Our Minds Conjure the Paranormal.

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.

You moan about them in your kitchen, you are filled with horror and rage at their persistence in trying to feast off you, and you turn away in disgust when spotting them feeding on faeces.

They are everywhere, they are in their millions, and they are the best animals on the planet. Yes, indeed, these much-maligned creatures are some of the most morphologically diverse and ecologically important species alive. They have been shaping this planets evolution and are thanking are still helping all that is on the planet, including ourselves.

In this talk, Dr McAlister will highlight the morphology, ecology and how these have bio-inspired our species to better look after ourselves.

Brief Bio

Dr Erica McAlister is a Principal Curator, Diptera and Siphonaptera, at Natural History Museum, London. Her research focuses on museum Collections, conservation Issues, ecology, and all things Diptera. She has undertaken fieldwork across the globe and is currently working on new species descriptions.

As well as all of this she has published popular science books – The Secret Life of Flies, The Inside Out of Flies and the latest Metamorphosis: How Insects Changed the World) as well as appearing in and presenting on TV and Radio.

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.

 

Those who watched the coronation of King Charles III in May 2023 would be forgiven for thinking that England is the very opposite of a secular country. But appearances can be deceptive. This talk will compare the British and French traditions of secularism and suggest that, like France, England is on its way to becoming a secular society, but without having adopted the French lay principle (laïcité).

The talk follows the American philosopher Charles Taylor in distinguishing three major elements in the secularisation of Western societies: the decline of religious belief, the concept of religion as a personal choice of the believer, and the separation of church and state.

With regard to the first two elements, France and England are quite similar.

But in the separation of church and state, there are different historical contexts, which Michael will explain, and very different constitutional arrangements. He will argue, however, that the differences are less stark in practice than in theory.

Brief Bio

Michael Kelly is Emeritus Professor of French at the University of Southampton. Born and raised in Hull, Yorkshire, he studied at the University of Warwick and taught briefly in Caen and Coventry. He lectured at University College Dublin before taking the Chair of French at Southampton, where he worked for 30 years. He is a specialist in French cultural history, particularly focusing on ideas and cultural practices. He has also worked widely on language policy, especially on language education and on the relationship between languages and conflict. He has been a strong advocate for the study of other languages and cultures in the UK and in Europe. He was awarded an OBE in 2014 for services to higher education and European cooperation.

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.