A little while ago I blogged about going on a ‘mini tour‘, giving talks at Hackney, Liverpool and York. Well, it’s now all done and dusted, I had a fantastic time, and I hope everyone who came to see me enjoyed themselves!
On November 28th I was very privileged to have the honour of speaking at the very first Hackney Skeptics in the Pub. Alice and James did a great job of hosting the event, and it seemed like a great crowd to be a part of. It was held at the Hackney Attic, a very nice venue with some very good food. The group will have a bright future, I highly recommend it!
Ignite Liverpool 8 was held on December 1st, and I volunteered myself to give a 5 minute talk on ATP. I was a little nervous this time, as I did try and introduce a lot of tricky concepts (like enzymology and active transport) all in just 20 slides! The whole evening was fun and informative, if you missed it you can view a video of the entire event here.
This Monday (December 12th) I took my “Scientific Method” talk to the York Skeptics. Once again I was well looked after, and as it was a bit of a homecoming for me (I did my first two degrees there) I got to catch up with friends old and new. Big thanks to Rob, Drew and the rest of the organising committee for putting the event on. They’ve got Simon Singh coming up in January, so keep an eye on their web site.
It has to be said that the star of the evening in York was my old mate Paul Hopwood. Rob had revealed on Twitter that he was bringing some placebo bands, so I asked at dinner if anyone knew the ‘applied kinesiology’ tests. Paul revealed that he’d demonstrated them the day before, and was happy to do it in front of an audience. He commanded the stage with aplomb, and carried out the tests pretty much flawlessly on a willing victim volunteer. Hopefully Paul will demonstrate his skills again at an open mic night!
As I’ve still got some strong ties to York, and one June Tranmer engaged in a debate on acupuncture on the event’s Facebook page, I thought I’d take a look at alternative medicine in York. It was slightly depressing to see just how much woo there is there. Obviously there are the ghost tours, but they are all about theatrics, drama and storytelling. They are an art form and not masquerading as science, so I don’t have a problem with them. The same can’t be said for June’s clinic. They offer 27 (count them) different therapies, covering all sorts of evidence-free ‘treatments’. My old university isn’t free from it either. I looked into the Complementary Medicine Research Group, and found their opening paragraph to be rather pro-woo. Not only that, I learned that Dr Hugh MacPherson from the group also works as an acupuncturist. At that point, someone in the crowd offered up a very telling anecdote about Dr MacPherson, but I won’t repeat it here in case it’s libelous!
Once again, I’d like to thank everyone involved in all the talks I given over the last two weeks. I’m always available to do more, so if you’d like me to speak about science at your society just drop me an email: tom at skepticcanary.com. Cheers!