I had the very great pleasure of listening to two first-rate speakers at Skeptics in the Pub Westminster this evening – Professor David Nutt and Dr Evan Harris MP. Professor Nutt went through the advice that had been given by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) to Alan Johnson and the frankly [...]

Today, thirtieth September, is apparently Blasphemy Day. It would be quite wrong, on that basis, to call it the two-thousand-and-ninth year of our Lord, so I will call it 2009 CE. Blasphemy comes from the Greek βλαπτω, meaning ‘I injure’ and φημη, reputation. I do not know quite how one can injure the reputation of [...]

An excerpt from the Anti-Anti Vax Discussion Panel at The Amaz!ng meeting 7 in Las Vegas. It’s worth quoting a line from Joe Albietz about why vaccination matters: Medical progress has been phenomenal over the past century. We can save the life of children born at three hundred grammes, we’ve turned childhood leukaemia from a [...]

The speaker at this month’s Skeptics in the Pub London was David Aaronovitch, speaking on his new book, Voodoo Histories and the subject of conspiracy theories more generally. It was an enjoyable evening, and Aaronovitch made a cogent set of interesting arguments – I will probably buy his book – but I can’t help but [...]

I’ve spent a very pleasant evening in the company of the Sceptics in the Pub London, where the speaker was Dr. Aubrey de Gray, Chief Scientific Officer with the SENS Foundation. In brief, de Gray (Wikipedia article) set out the work of the SENS foundation which, as I understand it, looks at ageing as a [...]