Really proud to see Bec Crew of the Save Your Breath for Running Ponies! blog has won the Best Australian Science Blog prize for Australia’s Science Week!! (Not just because I’d said that I’d dye my hair if I won, and now I don’t have to! Wahoo!) Ms Crew, who is based in Sydney and has been blogging for about 10 months on fascinating, left-field animal discoveries, takes out The Big Blog Theory national title for the best blogger contributing to the communication and understanding of science online. Ms Crew, 26, was chosen as one of 10 national finalists by a panel of four judges. Running Ponies then attracted the most online votes of the finalist’s blogs. “I’m so excited and more than a little stunned that my little blog could win this competition. I look up to all of the other finalists as exceptional science communicators and I’m happy just to be considered in the same league as them,’’ Ms Crew said today. Inspired to write about bizarre animal, insect and dinosaur discoveries, Ms Crew was determined to show the public that it was important to challenge themselves with science and have fun with it. It was Digital Cuttlefish who first told me to check out her blog and it’s been one of the best reads I have in my bloglist – so go check it out and definitely check out her blogging as she tours Australia for Science Week!
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www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ope-1Zb5t-k Have a good weekend! ShareThis

Firstly – there is a podcast of a similar kind of lecture by the South Australian science communicators – you can hear that here! Introduced by the acting branch president for Sci Comm in WA Sarah Lau (at least I think that’s what she said?) – the ASC are a national body with about 400 members around Australia and many of us at the workshop today are members. They’re keen on what kind of events are useful and how they help professional development and skills. You can find their site here – ASC! They hope people have brought some ideas! Yike! Otherwise, they’ll be giving us some templates to work on. This is a relief, I thought of talking about a future potential SkeptiCamp, but I have nothing particular in mind. I’m sitting next to a SciTech projects manager (SciTech is the hands-on science center in Perth and they do outreach), an education officer from the Perth Zoo and a scientist who is doing work on promoting an understanding of radio astronomy in Australia. They have lots of projects, so that helps! [Funniest overheard: '...Then the kids shouted "YOU'RE NOT A REAL NUMBAT!!!'" :p ] Presenters today: Prof Leonie Rennie – who I interviewed for the Skeptic Zone podcast (she remembered me! Said a friend of hers considers me to be  the best interviewer on the show, wahhhh!); Associate Prof Nancy Longnecker from UWA and Dr Jesse Shore, the current ASC national president. He’s originally from the US and is now an Australian – he has his own sci comm consultancy, which is at Prismatic Sciences. He pointed out that the term ’science communicator’ is about communicating science to various audiences and how making sure that it helps getting out to people in effective means. As President of Australian Sci Communicators, he mentioned the Inspiring Australia: A National Strategy for Engaging with the Sciences report, which is the first about the growth of science communication in Australia. ‘It’s rather exciting to see it!’ He says that ASC are mentioned twice in one page in one paragraph, but their submission is very much reflected in the overall report and they are working on raising their profile. There are 15 recommendations in the report and they hope to be involved further, depending on funding. He talks about two of the recommendations – one is about using media more effectively in Australian society; the other recommendation is on building an evidence base for science engagement in Australia and evaluation in its broader sense (he’s on a standing committee for that). They aim to address what practitioners are doing, what universities are doing. Around ten of the recommendations needs evaluation to see if they’re effective, ‘we recognise evaluation can come across as an arid accounting exercise – everything else seems creative – but it’s not! It’s really the Julius Sumner Miller question – why is it so? It underpins your scientific research and finding the evidence to justify your opinion. It gives you a foundation of evidence and all the rest is opinion and you can be wasting your resources.’ So, this is about putting that evaluation central and how important that it underlies the research in other aspects of science communication. First speaker is Prof Nancy Longnecker – she recognises that there’s a spectrum of career experiences and there’ll be a lot of hands on and discussion for this morning session. What are the measurable objectives, what kind of evaluation we need, survey design, and in a future session, data analysis. Define what are your communication objections, do they align with your organisation? What are the imperatives? Who are your key stakeholders? It’s not always the obvious, what is going to win you advocates? Set your priorities. Set your messages – these are different from objectives. But they help you achieve them. This is a iterative process and requires flexibility; see what opportunities you have with the resources to hand. What are you communicating? What are you hoping to achieve? What do you want people to do/ know? How will you know if you’ve made any difference? Not that there’s anything wrong with ‘have a good time’, but how will you know this? There’s a lot of politics behind the scenes and you have to tune into this in order to be successful! You can get derailed quite easily! She gives an example of how there can be a lot of agreement but you have to align the internal as well as the external stakeholders – there’s many factors that influence the struggle for resources. Is your specific communication objective compatible with your organisation’s strategic goal(s)? Internal expectations and hierarchies – this is very important and often overlooked. Have to have your own team onside and able to support it! We then get into discussion groups – what does our event aim to do? How does your objective relate to an important organisational objective? Describe a specific, realistic, measurable objective. Remember that we’re in a timeline of activities. Consider how you will know if you have achieved this objective. I end up chatting to three very nice scientists, one who describes an event planned for National Science Week, involving getting interaction with radio and optical telescopes in shopping precincts! This is the improvement of the understanding and awareness of the SKA project. Some suggestions include having external observers to the interaction the presenters have with the audience, a meta-analysis of the interaction. What is the average time of engagement? Maybe even use a clicker to see how long they interact. Perhaps have give-aways after a certain time period? Specific, measurable objectives within a certain time-frame (even longitudinal can be considered?) Increasing awareness is a gradual process and it can be difficult to measure impact and if its in a general community area, it’s stealth and passing traffic – it has funding and evaluation and impact has to be shown. Cumulative impact is important and we’ll look at how to measure that. There’s some discussion about raising awareness and bringing a different target group into SciTech, which is the Science venue in Perth – what is realistic in terms of getting new audience? Specific objectives should include should it be just at that venue or elsewhere, in terms of where SciTech does outreach? Someone asks about events where you’re targeting scientists themselves? She brings up the example of media skills workshops, how confident afterwards do scientists feel? Is it an attitudinal thing? A director of a science experience program at a university talks about helping kids to learn and be more enthusiastic about science as a future career and how they do a survey afterwards. It’s pointed out that you need a baseline (a bit tough if you have a self-selected group!) to find out how they felt before! A pre-and-post comparison. She talks about an agriculture camp, where she talked about how getting funding and support and enrollments – what they had to articulate is it a problem that those who do not go into science still have a pro-science attitude? It’s not just about pulling students into studying science, but improving a better awareness and understanding of cost, et al. % of people who fulfill objective (objective carefully defined, target % set, time period) Increase understanding of X increase awareness of related issues exposure to a brand – therefore increase participation in using that brand change attitude about  values related to X reach a specific audience So – what type of evaluation would be most appropriate for an event? You need to think about why you’re doing it in the first place, why is it appropriate, approaches and methodologies. Some of the reasons include accountability and reporting; opportunity for improvement next time; opportunity to learn and share experiences about what’s effective. What do you need to know about your audience, how well is your resource working and what does it communicate to others? What is your audience learning and/or understanding? Some of these might include changing misconceptions to understanding. So – identify your objectives! Measure it against something – not just the ‘big picture!!’ How on earth can you measure your ‘increase in knowing science’? Be objective, minimise bias! Just getting back a ‘yes, that was fun!’ isn’t good enough. Decide on your methodology/ies – quantitative or qualitative? Will it just be a pile of surveys that collect dust, will you analyse and do something with it? As an example – Shore says that he ‘overdid his report partly as a learning experience for himself and so that it could be handed onto ministers – not all of the info was useful, but he put in photos, attendances, and changes from year to year – so people could see how reliable it was and increasing his own credibility by making sure it was good.’ So, there was an additional benefit in creating a report on an event. Types of evaluation: Front-end – what do you know about your audience? This is about planning your event better ahead of time Formative – as you go along (trialing a questionnaire) Remedial – you’ve put it out and in terms of a resource Summative – we’ve done the event, created the resource, what kind of resource was it? There’s notes on this that she gives to us, but that’s basically it. On the assumption that most people think about summative evaluation – tells about the impact of resource after it’s completed and used – generally results used as feedback. We return to the Astronomy in shopping centres example that the scientist next to me is currently involved in – you can get estimate of numbers, but how can qualitative comments really have impact on the people reading the report? Really getting at people’s perceptions of the event actually are! ‘We need to do more listening and recording’. He talks about Astrofest and 4000 people – and all of his evaluation is mostly comments from people who delivered the content… but more was needed by the people who attended. Also, bringing in the science community together – if it brings together other groups, then it’s valuable too. Can you demonstrated increased collaborations across industry groups and organisations and stakeholders? We have a general discussion about the balance and interaction of quantitative and qualitative and the need for a blend; there’s a variety of ways to check if things are worth the time and resources and have specific measurables, both pre-and post. The scientist from the Perth Zoo talks about getting support for causes and how making the contributors ‘want to do it – not just tokenism’, which we all agree is very important. Another scientist talks about the difficulty of using phone surveys to check on how people comply with requirements in fishing, after they get information from a boat show. [About now I discover how terribly embarrassing to discover that Dr Shore has read my blog... hello! Agrh....] Over morning tea, I talk to some of the others about mind-mapping (which was promoted as a useful way of organising ideas, not only for clients but for the scientists) and the ‘profession of science communicator’. Do they think that you need qualifications to be one? It’s compared to the profession of ‘writer’ – while one can be a writer with qualifications (such as a B.A), it isn’t strictly necessary. Due to the relative new-ness of the Science Communication degree (my former student tells of how it was only in the UK that anyone outside Australia heard of it as a field of study!), there’s many great Science Communicators without that qualification – I mention Robyn Williams, et al. Will this necessarily change? Probably not, but it’s certainly something (as evidenced by all the networking that is going on) that seems to help in terms of connecting with fellow professionals and finding common links and outcomes. After morning tea – surveys and how to determine the impact of an event, with Prof Leonie Rennie. Why do we want to know what impact we had with an event? Due to sponsor? But is it doing us much good? What about next time? Is the ‘warm fuzzies’ really enough? We have to have more than just ‘these numbers went through.’ What do we want to measure? The effect we had? Will behaviors change, what will they do differently? Did they learn? How can it be done better and what worked well and what didn’t? How do we measure? It has to be easy to administer, easy to answer – FAST, Focused, Clear and unambiguous. Easy to analyse and can there be a longitudinal impact? Have a think about the people you’re trying to reach and are they targeted? Checking the phrasing and wording of questioning – why you enjoy and whether or not you enjoy something are two different questions. You have to know what is meant by the responses you get and that it doesn’t take long. Matching up the pre-and-post test – make sure they can be sure that it’s the same person responding, especially if it’s anon! Phone follow ups are difficult as they are time consuming – getting number, pinning people to be a specific time… average of three phonecalls to just get one person on line! What with? True/false mixed responses, very easy to code and enter. Yet very polarising and not much detail. Social desirability response bias or response set can also influence people towards ‘yes’ (hence anon answers being useful!). It also has to be clear what the words mean – what does ‘interesting’ mean to different people! Likert scale is also popular. The ‘undecided’ middle category can be problematic! A bimodal response distribution can occur, when in fact you want to add it up. There’s some methodological problems with these. The Likert instrument will have many different items, and if some are negatively worded rather than have the responses swapped around. If you have a generally positive response, then you discover a polarity – you’re mainly using ‘agree’ and ‘disagree’, creating a ceiling effect. If you use a Rating scale, you can get less of a ceiling effect. Also, an audience member suggests – if the pre-test is all positive, how know if there’s a difference in the post-test? Semantic Differential – as a scale, needs more than one item and code by assigning a number, showing an attitudinal response to an event, in this case. Also show the ‘undecided category or don’t understand’. Open-ended questions – ‘three words to describe your response’ – most will say ‘interesting’ and then there might be a massive list of words that are unique. Check how you administer it, get it reviewed for face validity and be sure it’ll find out what you want to know – clarity, timing, format, attractiveness. [She also tells a hilarious story of putting numbered stickers on people to help track of them in a museum, using the museum staff to make sure that they could give post-tests that would match the pre-tests, as there were alternative exit points for the venue: 'Number 34 is heading for the stairs! Going to exit number five! Get them!!'] For the next session, we have a look at some model examples that have been used, to stimulate ideas or a template when creating a survey. Longnecker points out ‘The advantage of having some similarity, if there’s some questions that can be used in different circumstances, then there’s a larger pool that can be drawn upon in the final results – comparing with other people is very useful!’ Shore mentions about the issue of ‘circle vs tick or cross’, if people see it as exclusionary. In groups, we talk about font size, about what if at an event you discover that you’re talking to tourists rather than your target audience of locals! The importance of open-ended ‘what do you want?’ question. Then it’s further talk – and we end up talking about a variety of issues. One fascinating impact of all the promotion of the S.K.A – younger generation are sick of hearing about it after all this time! The saturation now turns them off, so they’re instead focusing on different aspects that will result from the science used. Discussion about a study done at a market, where they discovered that their participants ended up mostly being tourists rather than their original target audience of locals! pre and post-surveys with the influence of different mood and people remembering what they wrote last time – ‘humans are variable creatures!’ Controlling for unrelated change. Testing for consistency by rating the same group on the same thing, and how they change! Someone used the same question twice by accident and discovered variability with their respondents. Respondents getting the before and after on the same page – not a problem as it allows for self-reflection. time interval – what about the time between pre and post-test? Often impact diminishes over time or get different kinds of responses. Often get more attitudinal responses. Can’t assume that the immediate impact is the same as they’d feel down the track. Self-reporting and leading questions – will they always say that there’s an improvement? Asking why they responded why they did gets some interesting results. Minimise bias – there won’t be repercussion for honesty on the survey. Physical structure of a survey – the font, the text formatting. If a captive audience in a classroom vs actually at the venue (e.g. at SciTech). ‘Shorter is almost invariably better – I always try to fit things on no more than one page… there are no rules, but there are good practices that is more likely to get you the information you want. You have to figure out how long it’ll take people.’ Prepare, administer, collect and analyse in a way that gives you the greatest confidence that you got the best outcome in terms of finding out what you need to know. Validity of responses – outliers. With patterns and missing responses? Suggestion that alternating higher and lower responses or using what can be used; a case by case judgment and throw out what cannot be used at all. Potentially confusing if use too many forms of survey tools – get the right kind of questions and get the answers efficiently is key. If want the data for other things – what’s the deal with ethics? A pain, but a necessity and is more than a necessity – state by state have different national requirements. With research in science centres, there’s a sign-up and tell people what the data will be used for, what the participation will involve. With children, there has to be a carer. When using the best tool for the job – looking at higher level analysis of many variables. It’s not easy, much revision and discussion. If you’ve got the same kind of questions, can see bigger picture, but needs to be discussion and talking to each other. The examples given of the survey we have can also use feedback, for example! As Shore concludes – maybe a number of tools and disciplines can join together, a way of starting together to get a peer review of their Science Communication subject. The conclusion includes how great it is that there’s a bunch of people who have a similar sense of wanting to improve! ShareThis

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcYHGlNUQvw Thanks to Ms Information for the find! Yeah, it’s that double-rainbow… ShareThis

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZWaWrvJ7nA With thanks to Desiree (go check out Skeptically Speaking!) ShareThis

ASTRONOMICAL AWESOMENESS - Why do we ask why?
Speakers include: Cheryl Praeger (UWA), Carley Tillett (Scitech), Carmelo Amalfi (Murdoch) and Megan Argo (Curtin). Hello and we’re starting – it’s probably about as crowded as it was last time, which means pretty packed! Our host, the very lovely and vibrant Renae, how is mentioning that all the shows are podcasted. She came over and said hello to both myself and @Grendels (apparently she read the last blog post that I did of the session? Cool!) The people that will be talking about why we search – Prof Megan Argo of Curtin, the ‘ultimate ask-the-astronomer’. Cheryl Praeger, a mathematician and WA Scientist of the Year too! Carmelo Almafi, a science communicator, journalist and ‘media junkie’; Carley Tillet of SciTech who creates the ‘awe inspiring visualisations’. (You read that right – three are women!) Starting with the astronomer Megan Argo, who describes herself as someone ‘who enjoys watching seeing galaxies explode’. She asks about people with kids and the ‘why game’… (oh man…). As a scientist she ‘plays the same game – but with bigger toys‘. Science is about answering the questions, in her case, about galaxies and stars (with bigger and more expensive toys). Has been a standard in human history, the question about a grander scheme of things, for a long time. She mentions the S.K.A, the LHC, et al. Does this take away the ‘magic’ behind it all? She says no. ‘There’s so much more out there that we can look at.’ ‘Up until last week, we thought 150 times the mass of the sun, was  as large as stars could get. Last week, some people at Sheffield found some 300x the mass of the sun!’ We’ve always tried to explore things, and that’s the point of experiments. An eagerness for the S.K.A, as these kinds of technologies end up with finding out things that they never realised they could find. So, that’s why she does as she does. Cheryl Praeger – she thought rather literally about the ‘awesome way that we have the ability to live and explore and understand the world’ – so, she went for navigation, as a mathematician. An astronomer, Wright, accompanied the explorers to the Azores in the time of Queen Elizabeth, to find out how to get maps accurate enough – that was at the end of the 16th century. There’s heaps of maths in astronomy, and she points out that a lot of innovative maths help us measure the universe. Sometimes the ‘why’ is rather obvious – Queen Elizabeth did it for tactical reasons. The Internet, very much depended upon, has produced new mathematical challenges. We have a new area called the ‘topology of the internet’ and that helps us to find out how to search efficiently. Her research area is the field of symmetry and she gives a basic overview of some of the progressions in economics and geology (she has four more minutes left! She’s doing a bit of a history lesson and paper flies out everywhere). ‘I can’t help it – I just do and never stop… if I see the suggestion of some beautiful structure, I’ll pull out all stops to prove it,‘ she concludes. Very cool. She mentions the necessity of pooling expertise and working with colleagues to solve problems. The why? Always almost involves people with a common goal. Carmelo Almalfi - why ask why? He has two answers – one is ‘because we can’ and the other? ‘Because we should’. As a journalist 20 years ago, there were a great many unanswered questions, and thinking of the changes that have taken place during that time, the question why has not lessened in importance. He’s not a scientist, but a science communicator – and explaining to editors about the reason why to publish findings is really tough. He mentions hearing about the first planet that they thought might feature life and with two hours to go, wanted to hold the front page. How much that cost and how much effort that took was significant. When you make sure there’s a correct number of a ‘0′ in the writing up of a few light-years is as important as anything. ‘The voyagers have left Mars – we’re possibly going to land on something new – that’s the point – because we can do these things. It’s there and because we can. The S.K.A program is taking astronomy to a new resolution (bad pun alert!!!) – and we can all be interested, if not just involved.’ Carley Tillett - thirty years ago, Sagan and co would say we are ‘children of the stars!’ – but where the hell is Australia and where’s our level of participation? What happened to us going out into space and the endeavor of Australians being explorers? She points out that we don’t have a space agency. She doesn’t even think many realise this – that NASA isn’t ours! Every day we see research from all the other countries… but not Australia! She considers this one of the biggest travesties, and she thinks more about how we could just could tell 100 and they’d pass it on – we don’t have such an agency. Why is that important? She likes to think we could look further. The gains from investing could help us on earth. We are VERY good at mining and supporting mineral investigations – why not exploit that and allow the next generation something more to aspire to that is out in space. She mentions Prof Steve Smith and how he talked about how our mineral wealth is finite – particularly the precious elements. With only 20 years left of extraction, what next? Compare to NASA, where there are certain countries are stockpiling rare minerals and it’s going to be harder to get solar panels and electric cars. Instead of being set on earth, to use what’s in space instead – which is where Australia’s talents in mining can be used. About now Grendels makes the following Tweet… pictured… which gets a laugh… AND SHE READS IT! Ooops. This fires her up to refer to the documentation she carries with her! Immediately she seizes her handbag and refers to ‘Section Five – by memory!’ – “Lost in Space: Setting a New Direction”, a Senate report! ‘They know we’re lost in space! They know we’re going nowhere!’ With about 100 pages, it documents the economic gain from space and this amazing knowledge that constantly moves overseas. We’re talking about a multi-trillion billion dollar economy and how an economy similar to ours (Canada) shows that there’s something that we could better spend our money on. Not a space policy unit, she argues – Australia NEEDS a Space Agency! She refers to the changes on www.Space.Gov.Au (which she also keeps in her handbag!). It USED to just be a list of fifteen links! That was it! Now there’s a proper picture – but still, what could be done by Australia, rather than just developing a website a little better? She points out that people can apply for a five million dollar grant to collaborate with research institutions, and yet she suspects that people don’t know about it! (Could SciTech use it?) Just in case, on the off-chance, she encourages people to check it out and put in an application. This is only seed funding, while NASA is going to asteroids and doing it now – what a waste if Australia is left behind, as there isn’t the same kind of collaboration unless you have a Space Agency. Therefore – ’space is awesome, especially if you get to go there!’ A question from the audience that she answers – near-earth asteroids are the next goal by NASA; the goal is to look up and find out about them that could be hazardous and send possible astronauts and maybe mine them. Eventually – Mars? They briefly mention that the S.K.A will not be likely to give us answers about the potential for alien life and there’s also a short discussion about the L.H.C and what it might do and how it’s about the Big Bang and may pose some answers in that regard. Tillett, in response to a question about the Higgs Boson / God Particle and whether it is like a philosophical or religious quest – knowing that we don’t know everything is quite important – and there’s a filling of a void of our understanding with a variety of things. People seem to need to have a desire to know and hopefully the philosophy won’t stop asking why. Praeger adds that we should never stop asking why. Grendels argues (via Twitter) that it is more of a profound consequence for physics, not philosophy. How can we best convey an interest and an excitement? Amalfi suggests National Science week and the contacting of events and scientists (particularly universities), not just MPs. ‘Just keep asking’. Argo mentions Galaxy Zoo and SETI at Home (there’s an interview I’ve conducted with Dr Pamela Gay about Galaxy Zoo on the Skeptic Zone podcast). Question from audience: given 75% is either dark energy or matter… what’s the difference between belief in this and belief in God? Apparently, according to Argo, there’s ‘more evidence for dark energy/matter’ (the audience goes ‘Ooooo!’). Perhaps it might not be what they think – we don’t know all the answers. But on God? ‘I’m not qualified to comment…‘ How does one deal with astrologers, asks an audience member – how does one deal with pseudoscience of that kind? Argo makes an Ophiuchus joke and point out that the midwife has more of an influence. Certainly, there’s opportunities at astronomy centres for people to learn more, says Tillett. She also hopes people are going to be involved in the future looking for asteroids and how sad that talent in Australia goes overseas. She’s very passionate about how we have developing countries that know more than us in regards to efforts in space. They question our own spending habits and where it could be better used. Argo agrees that the S.K.A is a big project $3 billion dollars by consortiums. But Australians spent 9.6 billion on gambling! She suggests perspective. While charity is certainly worthy and needs to be done, she doubts that money that could be used for science would really be used in such a fashion. Almalfi says that to go physically into space is where he draws the line and he thinks it is ‘ridiculous’ and that we’re ahead of ourselves. Why bother? We need to not put the risk on our bodies in such a fashion. ‘Should we just trust robotics?’ asks SciTech host, Renae and there’s a varied reaction. We are introduced to ‘laser-beam eyes!’ and how it measures the composition of rocks! About then, the notion of Justin Bieber going into space distracts us via TweetStream. But why wouldn’t we use these kinds of technologies be used in collaborations to help learn more about space? I think she’s mentioned ’space agency’ about five times already. ‘We may as well have an Australian flag on it!’ Someone asks about private space industry – why? Not answered! Just ‘it has to be government’. Do scientists engage with the general public enough and should they continue to be funded, asks an audience member? We can’t say in the long term that human space exploration shouldn’t be done, they challenge Almalfi and they make the analogy to the traditional explorers of the seas (although referring to astronomers as ‘retired people’ is a little odd!!). Accountability as well as communication, says Praeger, is done via research councils and so forth. We have to try to have that kind of communication. (At the same time, @Grendels asks @Astro_Soichi his opinion whether space exploration is worth it!) The asking why and the needing to act is being raised too – is there any ethical boundaries? Praeger says that these issues are mirrored in ethics committees and all scientific experiments that involve animals or humans have to go through these. Tillett points out that the risks are known, the same way explorers go to the Arctic – the best is to ask that it’s done wisely, with enough money to make it safe and go to near-earth asteroids instead. ‘I don’t believe any space agency would be ridiculous about risk’. Someone else Tweets that it is a ‘purely technological challenge that can be overcome with enough research, it’s not a deal-breaker’. Praeger continues that science is always developing. Again, an audience member asks about how to be active and express an opinion, especially to politicians. Tillett gets excited about what potential funding could go to – Tillett says put it into training and encouraging teachers and that there’s such a demand for maths and science in the workplace that there’s not enough in schools! Argo mentions how she was inspired when she was five and how it’s also an issue in the UK. Tillett wants to just MOVE SCITECH as it’s so small a venue!! Especially promote the hands-on factor and how with the new National Curriculum, they could cater to that – and also how funding has to continue on for over ten years, just to maintain things. ‘Stars and Dinosaurs!’ says Almalfi and how there should be monuments to both. How soon until space exploration isn’t $250 grand a person to give it a go (such as Virgin spacecraft and only for a few hours?). Tillett believes that the first few flights are sold out – and maybe the cheapness of future space exploration worries her as all the agencies have had strong and strict controls and perhaps the dollar rather than the research might change things. Should the more regular travel be privatised and exploration be government? Tillett says that’s what’s happened with NASA and the commercialisation of low-earth orbit has happened. Lockheed-Martin will most likely be such a privatised group. ‘If people are willing to pay for it, why shouldn’t they’, asks Argo (about now, Grendels starts to talk in Russian! :p ). Tillett promotes her ‘crazy nuts’ enthusiasm for a Space station, as ‘perhaps we DON’T belong there, as it’d be so wrong that it’d be right!!’ The idea of sentient beings in space and robots – perhaps sentient beings? The idea of the role for robots should be shared with humans, argues Tillett. The end of the earth eventually, points out Argos, so we may as well go into space – just after Renae jokes about conceiving in space and giving birth on Mars. Argos discusses how some of the maths (such as multiple universes and the singularity), while is theoretical in the maths that Praeger uses, is still not achievable. There’s a core group of science communicators and journalists, says Almalfi, who says that there’s more science in the media (and not just media, but the internet) – anything goes, you can search and check what you like – the problem is that if you go to the internet and you look for credible, useful information that is funded by governments and industry, there’s more responsibility in the correct articulation by journalistic ethics which that may not exist in a competitive area and a need to sell a story. He doesn’t think that a blog measures up, ‘unless they are a person who talks to a scientist every day’ – and that he never takes what he does as a journalist lightly. Science can be very objective, he says. Are scientists more accountable than journalists? Grendels tweets. Praeger talks about how expertise has changed, how policy has changed over time – but there’s peer-review requirements that may not have the same priorities in communicating in other ways? ‘Behavior has to be changed by what’s valued by the community.’ Are media releases made by departments and are they potentially damaging, asks Tillett? Praeger says that even grant-writing has changed, and what the outcomes might be – to make it much more… (’Sexier?’ asks Renae!) … easily communicated. Almalfi says that journalists are sensitive in terms of getting info from scientists and will rather try to get a phone-call instead of relying on a paper release. “Journalists need to find the scientists and find the research paper they need – re: peer review, it’s sensitive for journalists too, as the lingo is tough and if it goes over my head, I’ll go to the scientist and ask for layman’s terms”. Argos says that it used to be frowned on, to be a science communicator. And how Sagan wasn’t seen as ’serious’ – but now grant application asks that a certain percent, even a small amount, is about the requirement to have an abstract to get it across clearly in layman’s terms for press requirements. She does a lot of public communications and the press releases are freely available; however, the original papers aren’t as easy to get access or even understand. She is grateful for the journalists who can ‘bridge the gap’. Would we as tax payers like to know more about what is going into science? 2%? Higher? The audience agrees! Well, it’s the end of the evening, my battery is running out… the last questioner says that he has doubts whether if oil and gas can get it right, whether space exploration will be done right as well? Almalfi says ‘Give that man a cigar!‘ while Tillett says that ‘we can make ways to get close, at the very least – move forward and up!’ An audience member finishes with ‘we can’t even cure the common cold – the challenges and how to address them will have a lot of flow-on effects that will benefit us in ways – and it’s worth finding out’.
A great free night out, thanks very much SciTech! ShareThis

Top-rating story this morning, from the Sydney Morning Herald – a major newspaper in NSW – about the AVN’s failure to comply with the HCCC. Its investigation was sparked by two complaints, one from Toni and David McCaffery, whose four-week-old daughter Dana died from whooping cough last year. The couple, from Lennox Head, allege they were subjected to months of harassment and abuse by Ms Dorey and anti-vaccination campaigners, accusing them of lying about the cause of their daughter’s death. They received anonymous letters and emails that said whooping cough was not fatal and vaccinations were not needed. Mrs McCaffery, whose daughter was too young to be vaccinated when she caught whooping cough, said Ms Dorey also tried to get her baby’s medical records from the hospital without permission. ”Instead of love and healing in the weeks after Dana’s death, we got ugliness … it has been terrible,” she said. Mrs McCaffery also complained that Ms Dorey had quoted misleading statistics, spread misinformation through seminars and the internet, and gave poor telephone advice. News just in – The Northern Star today has a  story today and they ask people to reply by sms 0428264948 or email opinions@northernstar.com.au to the question ’should the AVN comply with the HCCC recommendations?’ Radio shows so far this morning on the news:
ABC Local Radio Brisbane, Madonna King.
Ken McLeod on Radio 2UE and Toni on 2UE earlier (MP3 Link) Further updates – it’s on the FRONT PAGE of the Sydney Morning Herald! ABC News – Anti-vaccination campaigners slapped with safety warning. (Thanks to Mark!) I’m certain there’ll be more – see the #STOPAVN hashtag on Twitter for updates. ShareThis

By the way, Perth people! Tomorrow is the FINAL Profs and Pints, all about astronomy! Will see you there! Profs and Pints at the Flying Scotsman – Velvet Lounge from 6.00 – 8.00pm – where we question the astronomically big to the astronomically small and challenge why we always seek answers – even if it costs the big bucks, or seems to have nothing to do with our everyday lives. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrYPJ4Yc31g ShareThis

I am holding a legally-purchased copy of Cosmos Magazine. Why? This magazine features an informative and detailed article about vaccination and I strongly urge people to support this publication – rather than illegally scan it and feature it on a website, as the Australian Vaccination Network has done on their site. The NSW Health Care Complaints Commission’s investigation (under section 94A of the Health Care Complaints Act 1993) has established that the Australian Vaccination Network’s website: Provides information that is solely anti-vaccination Contains information that is incorrect and misleading Quotes selectively from research to suggest that vaccination may be dangerous. On this basis, the Commission recommended to the AVN that it should include a statement in a prominent position on its website to the following effect: The AVN’s purpose is to provide information against vaccination, in order to balance what it believes is the substantial amount of pro-vaccination information available elsewhere. The information provided by the AVN should not be read as medical advice. The decision about whether or not to vaccinate should be made in consultation with a health care provider. The Commission recognises that it is important for there to be debate on the issue of vaccination. However, the AVN provides information that is inaccurate and misleading. The AVN’s failure to include a notice on its website of the nature recommended by the Commission may result in members of the public making improperly informed decisions about whether or not to vaccinate, and therefore poses a risk to public health and safety. Pose with your purchased copy of the Cosmos magazine and show your support for the promotion of science (and you may even enter in their ‘Where In The Cosmos’ competition they’re running!)
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Too much going on at the moment to get into some ‘proper’ blogging – but I will once things calm down. In the meantime, prepare to have your teacup slapped out of your hand. www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2PM0om2El8 ShareThis

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8PU7NMx178 “Coming soon, it’s all NEW on Discovery! Take a sneak peek at Bad Universe, a new series starring Phil Plait, an astronomer on a mission to debunk all the the junk myths about the universe.” ShareThis

More photos and details at Comics Alliance: Unbeknownst to the dastardly fanatics of the Westboro Baptist Church, the good folks of San Diego’s Comic-Con were prepared for their arrival with their own special brand of superhuman counter protesting chanting “WHAT DO WE WANT” “GAY SEX” “WHEN DO WE WANT IT” “NOW!” while brandishing ironic (and some sincere) signs. Simply stated: The eclectic assembly of nerdom’s finest stood and delivered. ShareThis

Head to the Australian Skeptics website for a news item on the event! I would like to think that there’s several factors that contributed to the sparse attendance of Meryl Dorey and Judy Wilyman’s second lecture at the State Library of Western Australia (called the Alexander Library) in central Perth on Tuesday, 20th July. There may have been a few that were significant, but hopefully each played a part. When I met up with fellow members of the Perth Skeptics Meetup.com group last night, we only saw a handful of men waiting outside for the lecture to start. There was no crowd outside, even before the 6.30pm official start. Unlike the last time they lectured (on 1st June), there were no parents I could see, no babies in arms or children, and a few sparse flyers and pamphlets on just one, rather than a splashed array of paperwork on two tables. Overall, we were the youngest standing outside the hall before it started. The first time? The venue pretty much filled the 200-seat capacity. This time? Less than a third, probably only 50 people – and as one of the Perth Skeptics reported: A good deal of people left either during the seminar or in the break before the question time. There was a significant difference in the running of the event the second time too. For the first lecture, both myself and Dan of the Perth Skeptics Meetup.com group were flagged with a circle and a ’star’ on a piece of paper they had from internet bookings. I even read via comments on the AVN blog that we were touted as ‘the reason’ that there were two security guards specially hired (apparently I’m nicknamed ‘The Black Cat‘? Well, a childhood hero of mine was Nancy ‘The White Mouse‘ Wake… ). The second time? Well, the security guards remained – with just as boring a job as it must have been last time, with well-behaved skeptics only politely handing out our flyers or taking notes (including live-blogging). There was no list of names to be seen; a fellow skeptic was able to buy a ticket at the door – clearly bookings ahead of time just weren’t popular for Dorey the second time around. What could have happened? Why was this such an obvious failure for the efforts of the Australian Vaccination Network to promote their ‘Never Inject Them‘ spiel the second time around? Was the packed 200-seat lecture theatre the first time round filled with people who felt that their support was only needed once a year? Were they that turned off or disinterested in the kind of content that the AVN claims is necessary for parents? I have a few ideas myself as to what might have led to the shocking absence of the intended target audience of Dorey and Wilyman. Firstly – the free public information seminar by the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research (TICHR) on ‘Vaccination. The Experts, The Facts’. Held on July 1st, it featured the latest scientific evidence surrounding childhood vaccination. It ‘provided an opportunity for parents, health professionals and members of the public to hear from and ask questions of the State’s leading experts in immunology, infectious diseases and vaccination.’ Hosted by Professor Fiona Stanley AC, the evening consisted of informative presentations and a panel discussion with Dr Peter Richmond, Paediatrician, head of The Vaccine Trials Group; Clinical Associate Professor Deborah Lehmann, Infectious Disease Researcher; and Mr Bruce Langoulant, Chairman, The Meningitis Centre. You can view the presentation slides and other useful information here and I live-blogged the presentation at ‘LiveBlogging Vaccination. The Experts, The Facts’ at Podblack.com.’ Of all the resources, the TICHR seminar was probably the most likely to catch the attention of those parents who were just questioning, just wondering whether the messages promoted by the likes of the AVN have any weight to them. I was particularly impressed with how Professor Fiona Stanley stressed that they ‘was not on any side – they are there for the kids.’ How did the AVN respond? Judy [Wilyman] spent a good deal of her time accusing Telethon of using anecdotal evidence to sway the viewers to the pro-vaccination side. Her last half hour consisted of anecdotes about the horrors of vaccination. Go figure. There was also a specially created website I made in preparation for the AVN’s first appearance at the State Library – called “Vaccination Facts – A Response To Meryl Dorey And The AVN At Perth’s State Library“, it features a variety of useful links and resources for anyone who may be searching for news about the lecture. Perhaps that ranked highly in searches for the AVN’s appearances at the State Library? In addition – we have probably all seen the HCCC ruling and the investigation by Lateline (’Anti-Vaccination Group Accused of Harassing Parents’), which was blogged at The Sceptic’s Book blog – ‘The AVN’s Reputation In Tatters‘.That news story and the efforts of many to ‘pass it on’ via Facebook and Twitter, blog-posts and email, might have allowed it to gain the attention of interested community members in my town. What might have also contributed? The pro-skepticism flyers we handed out the first time around to those attending and the kind efforts of fellow skeptics interstate to supply the Perth Skeptics with an updated flyer. These can be made available on request of the podblack.com site and it is greatly appreciated just how many took time, effort and even donations to make these available. Will we ever know? Could it have been a combination of these factors? What I do know is that it must have hit the AVN hard to discover that maybe the West coast isn’t as welcoming of content that promotes of Andrew Wakefield’s discredited research. What will remain with me as a result of these lectures by the AVN? The first time Meryl Dorey presented, before the Q&A session, she proudly announced that despite emails being sent – urging not only Margaret Allen, the Chief Executive Officer and State Librarian but several politicians and health ministers to stop the lectures – that they succeeded in their goal to be at the Perth Alexander Library and they were very appreciative of the venue’s unquestioning support of the AVN. She mentioned how she thought she was being compared to a bikie-gang presentation by critics and pretended to manically rev up a motorbike, ‘brrmming’ loudly and laughing with obvious glee at how she ’showed those skeptics!’ No, not really Meryl. Your laughter only demonstrated how little you seem to care about both sides of the story and an astounding lack of sympathy and understanding of science, as reflected in the Lateline program. It is a pleasure to know that the people of Perth, for whatever reason, have voted with their feet and do not support your return. Let’s hope it stays that way. Many thanks again to the people of the Perth Skeptics Meetup.com group, the Skeptic Zone podcast, the ABC Lateline program for such a well-timed report on the HCCC and the AVN, various supporters and internet groups nationwide and internationally who sent advice and encouragement – and the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research for making available a wonderful seminar and a continuing interest in what is being presented to the local community in the name of ‘health’. ShareThis

Daniel Keogh, who was interviewed in Token Skeptic episode #30, gives some suggestions as to what makes a good science blogger! Oh – and vote vote vote – head to Science Week’s The Big Blog Theory, found at this link – notice that there’s a microblogging category as well as science blogging (which is where you can find mine and others)! Do read all the entries in the running, there’s wonderful writers in the finals and it’s great that we’re all being recognised! www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pcaZC8itqk ShareThis

Tune in (or listen online or podcast later) 105.7 ABC Darwin! They called in order to have me on ‘The Guestroom’, which is a ‘journey into someone else’s life every day of the week’ with host Leon Compton. Very flattered that they considered me! I’ll see how many podcasts of friends I can blatantly name-drop throughout the entire thing. But you don’t want to know that. You want to know what kind of songs I requested, which they might play on the show! I had a few, but here’s two. This one came to mind because of Digital Cuttlefish: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCfj-Su1L3g This one came to mind as well – and is for Prof Barbara Drescher. Why? Because she plays it better, harder, faster, with accuracy – and with more class. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISzoUdtMSH4 ShareThis

When I was in Sydney, I saw the musical ‘Wicked!’ Yes, someone who investigates paranormal claims, superstitions and the scientific measurement of belief… watching witches? Well, it’s all part of further research – and a love of drama! Earlier on, in a blog-post I wrote about sports, theatre (or theater!), dramatic arts and study superstitions in relation to psychology and traditions. It’s interesting to note when I tell people about what I want to look at, they more often than not act really resistant to my researching paranormal beliefs… but if I say it in conjunction with ‘sports‘ or ‘drama‘, they get really excited and / or interested! ‘Why yes, I’ve known an entire rowing team who did not wash their socks for the whole season, in order to make sure they kept their winning streak…’ said a physical education teacher from a boy’s school, when we were doing a 50 Mile Walk supervision. Thankfully the kids did change their ‘lucky’ socks on the walk because I seriously wouldn’t have liked to see / smell the state of their feet… But then, there’s plenty of items in the news that crop up again and again yearly about sports superstitions – it’s pretty much commonplace in ‘quirky’ reports about teams and seasons, from hockey (no black cats indeed!), football (all sorts, including Aussie and even their fans!), soccer and volleyball, just athletes in general – even how gifts of knives and coins are a part of a NASCAR racer’s interactions. The familiar can be funny and not as worrisome, after all. More recently there’s been a study into luck and charms that taps into some of the observations I’ve made from my research – a recent paper by Damisch et. al. shows some of the beneficial effects in regards to task performance (although I should point out that the phrasing of questions regarding gestures that can be interpreted different ways – such as what they studied, in regards to crossing fingers). Activating a superstition boosts participants’ confidence in mastering upcoming tasks, which in turn improves performance. Improved performance boiled down to not only persistence at the task, but an improvement in “self efficacy assessment”; if you’re making more of a concerned effort, it pays off. Is this an adaptation that may then pay off, rather than being the pejorative ’silly habit’? When it comes to traditions in the dramatic arts, people tend to get relaxed and kind of blase at times, saying ‘oh, break a leg, uh huh.’ But they’re not always positive, as discussed in the use of scary elements in Macbeth – a friend mentioned he was even yelled at for whistling onset whilst waiting for filming to start during his job as an extra in a production! Some of the questions I’ve had about superstitions have resulted in a few investigations – for example, when can drawing upon superstitious beliefs of the audience be of use in directing a performance? Audience belief is a very, very tricky thing. Actors know very well for example that those lines one audience found funny, the next night one doesn’t get a single laugh – and vice-versa, dark, scary sections seem to be relieved by laughter in the audience one night, and then come across as deathly serious and gloomy the next. It is only really possibly to manipulate audience belief if one can be reasonably confident that almost everyone in an audience shares a particularly belief. When it comes to compensatory magic, incantations and charms, it is fair to say that hasn’t really been the case for many centuries – except to say that more audiences are sceptical of such things today than would not be sceptical. The Expressionists, Symbolists and others got away with some pretty way out, almost clairvoyant style performances partly because there was widespread interest – if not necessarily belief – in such ideas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. What is certain though is that that oldest of all Romantic homilies – the “suspension of disbelief” – still lies at the heart of the vast majority of performance. Bertold Brecht famously wrote that treating stage action as though it were real, and identifying with the psychic and emotional journey of the characters, had the potential to reduce the critical faculties of the audience. He wanted a thinking audience, and he thought the best way to do that was to remind audiences all the time that what they are doing is watching a play, not ‘real’ people. Even so, even in Brechtian performance, one is encouraged to allow oneself to ‘go with the flow’ to a certain degree. Strictly speaking, Brecht did not want to destroy illusion, but to create a self critical and divided audience member, who could both cry with the actor, and think to him or herself “That’s so annoying! I know how false and silly this all is, and yet I’m still crying!” I have to say that’s how I see performance myself today. When I was a kid, my father told me that he still cried while watching The Wizard of Oz, and I thought “That’s sooo stupid.” Now I do it myself after attending ‘Wicked‘ in Sydney – even while recognising that is IS ’stupid’! Anyway, the biggest superstition you cans still rely on in the theatre is that, in different ways and with different nuances of meaning or experience, we still all treat the theatre as a kind of collective magic; as a kind of glittering fabrication which we will into some KIND of life — even if it’s that of an overtly animated automaton — through this act of sitting together, usually in the dark and staring at a stage. No matter how old and cynical I become, I, like everyone else, am constantly amazed and enchanted by such small acts of beautiful magic and belief in the auditorium. Can drawing on superstitions for auditions be of use to build up confidence? If it helps someone to audition, then by all means.  I would however suggest to any young or relatively inexperienced performer who might be auditioning, that they should be prepared to have all of their most deeply held and cherished views, values and ideals challenged at some point or another over the course of their education. Not necessarily overturned, by any means, but certainly challenged. As that great Enlightenment figure Voltaire once said: “Doubt everything! It is only through doubt that we learn the truth.” References: Bleak, J., & Frederick, C. M. (1998). Superstitious behavior in sport: Levels of effectiveness and determinants of use in three collegiate sports. Journal of Sport Behavior, 21, 1-15. Damisch L., Stoberock B., & Mussweiler T. (2010). Keep your fingers crossed!: how superstition improves performance. Psychological Science, 21(7). Foster, D., Weigand, D., & Baines, D. (2006, June). The Effect of Removing Superstitious Behavior and Introducing a Pre-Performance Routine on Basketball Free-Throw Performance. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 18(2). Schippers, M.C. & Van Lange, P. A. M. (2006) The Psychological Benefits of Superstitious Rituals in Top Sport: A Study Among Top Sportspersons. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 36 (10) , 2532?2553. Vyse, S. A. (1997). Believing in magic: The psychology of superstition. New York: Oxford University Press. ShareThis

New episodes out for the Token Skeptic podcast! The first is for all of those keen on psychogy of deception, illusion and how we can be fooled – Token Skeptic #29  features an interview with Prof Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, talking about their new book ‘The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Decieve Us’.

  You can directly download the mp3 here: (Token Skeptic 29 – On The Invisible Gorilla – An Interview With Daniel Simons And Christopher Chabris) or you can subscribe on iTunes.  The second episode – Token Skeptic #30 (as I’ll be very busy for the rest of the week, so I thought I’d get this out early) is is one for all the ABC TV fans who have enjoyed the Hungry Beast pro-skeptical investigations and have checked out the offerings for Science Week here in Australia. It’s Daniel Keogh, talking to me from the ABC Ultimo studios, during the time I was in Sydney for a Philosophy education conference. Download the mp3 here: Token Skeptic 30 - On Science Communication, Hungry Beasts And Professor Funk – An Interview With Daniel Keogh. Daniel is responsible for this particular segment that has been very well-recieved – ‘Gardasil For Guys’: For a teaser of some of the content – here’s a short transcript from some of the ‘Invisible Gorilla’ interview that was relevant to both episodes – why might people be anti-vaccination? Kylie: I was particularly impressed by Chapter Five in the book (‘The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Decieve Us’), looking at vaccinations and the vaccination myths that are out there. What led you to tackle this issue, because I was really surprised to find it the book? Chris: I’ll start with that. In the book we sort of progress from perception – we talk about what we pay attention to and what we notice – into memory. And then from memory, into questions of confidence, which is sort of a natural connection; we have different levels of confidence in our memories, we’re certain of our memories when they’re really not accurate. And from there, we sort of moved into the direction of ‘well, what about our confidence about what we know and where do those beliefs come from?’ The illusion that you’re talking about here is called ‘The illusion of cause’. It’s the illusion that we understand what causes what in the world. In fact, we’re drawing that conclusion from evidence that doesn’t support that conclusion, that something is causing another thing. For example. if two things only happen to occur together, there’s an association between them: ‘Kids who watch more television are more aggressive’. Well, it’s natural to assume that watching more television made them more aggressive. But it could equally go the other way – it could be that kids who are more aggressive are more likely to watch television – or there could be some third factor that causes both of them, maybe their parents don’t pay much attention to them, so the kids watch TV and go out and are aggressive, you could create an infinite number of explainations. But our minds for some reason, like to jump to the causal conclusion. That one must be causing the second one. In fact, it can be even easier, we don’t even need the kind of statistical data like TV and aggression! We just need one good story, for example, one’s personal experience, having their child be vaccinated for measles, for example (or any one of the childhood vaccinations, but measles tends to be focused on) and then be diagnosed with autism unfortunately, shortly after that. Those two things might be connectly closely in time (say, the vaccination preceeded the diagnosis) and, this is crutially important, there has to be some sort of plausible reason or some belief that would let you connect those two things. So, ‘Vaccination involves injecting strange, foreign subjects into the body and autism is a noticible change in behaviour.’ So you can see how those things might inform the belief that ‘one causes the other’ - and being told later that people have done studies, with hundreds of thousands of subjecst, finding that there is no difference in the rate of autism between people who have been vaccinated and people who haven’t been vaccinated – that information can have very little effect on the causal belief you’ve formed, based on the vivid story of personal experience. And that’s the illusion we’re talking about in that chapter, this illusion of cause – believing that you’ve detected that one thing causes another, when in fact, all you’ve got is that one thing came before another one, or that one thing happens in the presence of the other, but there’s no causal relationship. Daniel: Let me just amplify one thing about this – we’re not saying that people who do this are in any way dumber or less educated or less intelligent… Kylie: No… Daniel: …in comparison to anyone else. This is just what all of us do naturally – we reason based on anecdotes and stories, and examples. And it’s very hard to reason based on statistics, it’s not something we do naturally, any of us, even scientists. So, if you look at the people who are the proponents of this link between vaccines and autism, at least in the United States – on average they are better educated than the general public and they’re higher income than the general public. So, these are not people who are lacking in education or resources. It’s something we do very naturally, because we accumulate anecdotes really well and in many ways it’s a lot like accumulating this belief that you’ll always notice unexpected things, because you’re only aware of the ones where you noticed it. In the case of vaccines and autism, the only cases that get reported are the ones where people think there is a link. The anecdotes are: ‘My kid got vaccinated and now they have autism.’ It doesn’t get reported: ‘My kid got vaccinated and he DIDN’T get autism!’ Because that’s not newsworthy. So, we don’t accumulate those numbers we would need in our minds, those anecdotes in our mind that would give us the right pattern. Instead, we accumulate the ones that get publicised, and that leads to the wrong pattern. It happens very naturally: we accumulate anecdotes and when we do that, we give a lot more weight to them than we probably should. Listen to the whole show at Token_Skeptic_29_-_On_The_Invisible_Gorilla! ShareThis

This is with very big thanks to Espilon Clue, who features the majority of the speech. There are some arguments he makes at the end, and Dr Phil Plait responds in the comments – I hope Dr Plait includes in the promised ‘blog-follow-up’ he has planned, the post by Tribal Scientist. You can see his comment in the comments as well. The wonderful photo is by Brian Engler! Some notable parts: Instead of relying on the merits of the arguments, which is what critical thinking and evidence-based reasoning is about, it seems that vitriol and venom are on the rise.
… Let me ask you a question: how many of you here today used to believe in something — used to, past tense — whether it was flying saucers, psychic powers, religion, anything like that? You can raise your hand if you want to. [lots of hands go up] Not everyone is born a skeptic. A lot of you raised your hand. I’d even say most of you, from what I can tell. Now let me ask you a second question: how many of you no longer believe in those things, and you became a skeptic, because somebody got in your face, screaming, and called you an idiot, brain-damaged, and a retard? [Very few hands go up] … In times of war, we need warriors. But this isn’t a war. You might try to say it is, but it’s not a war. We aren’t trying to kill an enemy. We’re trying to persuade other humans. And at times like that, we don’t need warriors, what we need are diplomats. So after all this, I think I can sum up my points like this: first, always ask yourself what your goal is. […] Is this argument necessary? What is your goal? What are you trying to accomplish? Before you talk, before you leave a comment, before you engage a pseudoscientist, before you raise your hand, before you sign that email, ask yourself: is this going to help? Is this going to allow me to achieve my goal? And you also need to ask yourself: will this impede me from achieving my goal? Is this just to make me feel better, or am I trying to change the world? And second, and not to put too fine a point on it, don’t be a dick. […] But seriously, don’t. Don’t be a dick. All being a dick does is score cheap points. It does not win the hearts and minds of people everywhere, and honestly, winning those hearts and minds, that’s our goal. And I asked you two questions at the beginning when I stood up here in the first place. The first one was, if you used to believe in something. And the second one was if you lost that belief because someone was a dick to you. My goal, my personal goal is have everyone in the world raise their hand when they’re asked that first question. And the other part of that goal is to never even have to ask the second one. ShareThis

Just as I’ve been enjoying reading the very skeptically-minded breakdown (and an excellent one at that) of ‘Is that a fallacy in your pocket or can you cite some sources? A Response to “Feminism at TAM”‘ – here’s some more skepticism! www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMNEP6Vwqs0 From the official site: “In October 2008 Tim worked with Animator Martin White to create this video for “If You Open Your Mind Too Much Your Brain Will Fall Out (Take My Wife)” for the forthcoming series of ITV’s ‘Comedy Cuts’. Heroically, in the interests of art Tim sat naked* in a space craft and sang about proof, rationalism and his wife, giving rise to the alternate title for the piece: “I will give you my piano, one of my legs and [most of] my clothes” ShareThis

By the way – if you know anyone attending the Meryl Dorey Talk At The Perth Library – send them the link to Vaccination Facts. This was created earlier in the year (New Website For Those Attending The Perth AVN Lecture) in order to cater for parents who have questions regarding the ‘truths’ touted by the Australian Vaccination Network. The Perth Skeptics will again be addressing the claims being raised by these anti-vaccination presenters, next Tuesday (20th July) at the Alexander Library in the city. The previous presentation by the AVN was blogged at Meryl Dorey Of AVN Returning To Perth And The Alexander Library and at LiveBlogging At The AVN Lecture In Perth – Judy Wilyman. I strongly suggest that people also check out ‘Live-Blogging The Telethon Institution Lecture On ‘Vaccination. The Experts. The Facts.’ Big thanks to Rikki B for this find! www.youtube.com/watch?v=gftC9C8vV9A ShareThis