Reprint
80 pints of discourse, please, barman
The Sunday Times, 18 March 2011
By Brian Deer
Skeptics in the Pub are groups of ordinary people who meet to discuss science, politics and plain nonsense. They are a growing influence.
There were bores in beards, women in sensible shoes and teenage boys in jeans at half-mast showing off their underwear. Last Wednesday, at the Victoria pub near New Street station in the centre of Birmingham, an 80-strong throng was locked in debate about an issue of the day. But this wasn’t a political party meeting, a campaign or a pressure group. This was an altogether different entity called Skeptics in the Pub.
Although imported from Australia in the late 1990s, after a slow initial take-up it has spread across Britain in the past three years as a new face of idealism and conscience. Some 28 autonomous groups have sprung up to debate science, critical thinking and, it must be said, all sorts of nonsense. I’ve spoken at three of them in connection with my work exposing Andrew Wakefield, the doctor struck off over the MMR scare.
A typical meeting — and most groups host one or two a month — pulls a crowd of more than 100, with a demographic to shame modern political discourse. Skinny youths sip from beer glasses half as big as themselves before slipping out with roll-up cigarettes; junior doctors tap their lips, considering the finer points of argument. Science is conversation’s new black.
What has inspired this movement, whose slogan is “pursuing truth through reason and evidence”? Patrick Redmond, a tutor at a local college and the compere of last week’s event in Birmingham, picks out television as the surprising catalyst. “What the BBC has been doing has something to do with it,” he says. “You’ve got Brian Cox, and series like Bang Goes the Theory [which puts scientific theories to the test] have been out doing roadshows.”
Ah, Brian Cox. The pop star turned particle physics professor turned television heartthrob is the influence mentioned by Skeptics in the Pub organisers everywhere. Other big names on the circuit include Ben Goldacre, the psychiatrist whose book Bad Science has sold an astounding 280,000 copies in Britain, and the author Simon Singh, who became a Skeptics hero after being sued for libel over a “quack-busting” report about chiropractors.
“I don’t really know why it’s happening but it’s a remarkable phenomenon,” says David Colquhoun, professor of pharmacology at University College London and a fellow of the Royal Society.
In the 1960s he marched to ban the bomb but last year he witnessed the same kind of idealism and enthusiasm at a packed meeting of the Westminster Skeptics where Cox spoke on science policy and the general election.
It’s not just in Britain. The Skeptics are increasingly global, with 30 groups in the United States, 10 in Canada, 15 in Australasia, 10 in mainland Europe, four in Israel and two in South Africa.
The topics of debate vary from the sublime to the quirky. Coming events at Skeptics groups around the country include: what genetics can really tell us; how to create your own cult — the Scientology way; you are probably not a Jedi — the census campaign and why it matters. Other meetings will consider crop circles and why ghosts aren’t naked.
Is this a movement, a campaign or something else altogether? Even those on the inside profess not to know. “No one understands what ‘skeptic’ means,” says Simon Perry, a sofware developer who is the main man behind the Leicester group. “It’s very vague, which is intriguing in itself.”
For some it is a situationist experience, spawning a recent jape, for instance, at the expense of Boots the chemist. Last month Blake Hutchings, a Coventry songwriter and Skeptic, made local headlines by “overdosing” himself with homeopathic pills to illustrate the alleged uselessness of the products. Although the principles of homeopathy would presumably make “underdosing” riskier, Hutchings emerged from his ordeal unscathed.
For others the Skeptics can mobilise campaigns such as in the defence of Singh’s libel case. After accusing the British Chiropractic Association of “happily” promoting “bogus treatments”, Singh was hit with a lawsuit in which he was initially defeated. The Guardian, which had published the piece, settled, but Singh did not. He fought on, alone at first. Then, in May 2009, a Skeptics in the Pub group gathered in Holborn, central London, to support him. “I expected there to be six people sitting round a table, and I opened the door and there were about 300,” recalls Singh. “When I was more depressed than at any time in my life, they gave me the strength to carry on.”
He continued, triumphed in the Court of Appeal and triggered a government commitment to reform.
“When the libel laws change, and they will,” he says, “the Skeptics in the Pub movement will be able to pat itself on the back for one of the greatest advances in free speech in a century.”
The subject matter is not always so highfalutin. The Birmingham meeting heard a talk that was less momentous but no less interesting by Matt Lodder, an art historian. His lecture was on the history of the tattoo. Apparently the t-word was brought to this country from Tahiti by Captain Cook; and a 5,000-year-old man, recovered from permafrost in the mountains between Italy and Austria, was found to be tattooed in more than 30 places — although which one said “Mum” remains unclear.
The Skeptics in the Pub, Cox and the bad science phenomenon are just a few signs of something wider stirring. I spoke at Lafayette College, in Pennsylvania, 10 days ago on Wakefield and the MMR scare — and we broke the fire regulations twice over in a hall unexpectedly swamped with hundreds of students. In Toronto a similar scrum that formed at Ryerson University was reported in no fewer than 150 blogs and produced a storm of messages.
Technology is bringing together those with scientific interests who were previously isolated. A software kit, developed by Perry in Leicester, to start a local Skeptics in the Pub website can be downloaded in minutes, after which Twitter, Facebook and Skype kick in. “I think the idea of a search for truth is what interests people today,” says Perry, as a contrast to what he sees as the political parties’ unappealing quest for power. “People are tired of bullshit.”
Maybe, but it isn’t all consensus. The Skeptics have spawned sceptics, particularly over “alternative” medicine. Some talks have been accused of picking on soft targets — such as homeopaths — and of overegging the dependability of science. “There is something about this that doesn’t fit comfortably with me,” says Michael Brooks, a science author who has spoken at half a dozen meetings. “They sometimes don’t recognise that intelligent, educated people believe things that are unbelievable because it’s in our nature to do that.”
Other doubts are raised over the use of technology that can potentially be deployed to bully. Perry told me he had developed a toolbar, soon to be launched, that can file complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority against misleading website claims “in 30 seconds”.
I’m just happy to see such a strong interest in picking apart the scientific method — even if last Wednesday the debate was all about tattoos.
Brian Deer’s MMR investigation features in Science Betrayed, starting on BBC Radio 4 at 9pm this Thursday.
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