Since picking up Skeptic magazine just a short while ago a new world has come to light. Skepticism seems to be more than a concept, it's a whole movement, one which I was to learn at the conference is much more active than I imagined.
The first talk I went to was about the dangers or otherwise of radiation from cell phones, power lines, etc. I was interested considering an article in Skeptic rather forcefully denied that cell phones could possibly cause any damage given the relatively minute radiation they produce. The speaker made less strong claims, but instead suggested we should be 'cautious, but not fearful'. Hm. Next up was 'amateur astronomers and UFOs'; a slightly odd prof from the uni telling us a tale of the time he and a student spotted UFOs (in the strictest sense, where UFO is Unidentified Flying Object) in the night sky on the observatory roof. He described seeing four white discs flying in a diamond formation crossing the sky in a little under 3 seconds. Bewildered, he and the student debated for a while, and watched in case they reappeared. Indeed they did, and as they flew overhead, they uttered the same word; "Pigeons!" The tale was to illustrate how easily our senses can be fooled, how our brains fill in the blanks, to the extent of blocking out most of a pigeon! It also illustrated the unwillingness of some to be told how foolish their brain is: the prof ended the tale by recounting another time a pigeon flew over while he was stood with a teenage boy. After explaining to the open-mouthed youth that his flying saucer was nothing more than the belly of a common pigeon, the boy took a step back, pointed a skinny finger at the prof and exclaimed "You're part of the conspiracy!!"
The next two talks were by the same chap, an Earth Science prof I hadn't come across in the department, who taught a couple of undergrad classes. He explained to us that he takes some time in his classes to explain the scientific method, the principle of falsifiability and why 'theory' does NOT mean some half-thought out vague idea. He makes the point that it's very easy to disprove something, as all it takes is one experiment, but to prove anything a great number of experiments must all point to the same conclusion. In the first talk he applied this simply to the creation vs evolution topic, using simple maths to prove that the dimensions of Noah's Ark (actually given in the Bible) could not, by any stretch of the imagination, carry all the animals and food required. Nor could the amount of rain needed to drown Mt Ararat fall in 40 days and nights without destroying the Ark itself (never mind where all that water came from). The point of this was to prove a literal interpretation of the Bible is impossible. Fine, but the point was raised by the audience that those hard-core creationists simply don't listen to reason (apparently a couple of them do take Earth Science classes). Our prof willingly agreed, but said that he hoped at least to reach those still on the fence, those that didn't have enough information previously to decide. A noble cause.
His second talk was about 'crystal powers'. This is one of those topics I know must be bunk, but that's never good enough for a scientist (how many Creationists say they know the Bible is true?), so I thought I'd get some good evidence from a Master. Unfortunately, he concentrated more on ridiculing the various claims and not on proving why crystals don't have 'healing energies'. Although he did give an amusing account of asking various exhibitors at a psychics fair what the crystal quartz does for you. The answers, needless to say, ranged wildly (some more wildly than others, including the assertion that quartz crystals were physical thought forms in Atlantis).
So far the conference had been entertaining, but not so thought-provoking. Maybe I'd picked the wrong talks, maybe I'd picked ones I already knew something about. So next I went for 'Why your perceptions are wrong', a fascinating round-up of the multitude of ways your brain fills in the blanks, such as with the pigeon 'UFO'. Passive thinking runs most of our lives, as we adhere to 'schemas', certain typesets we place every new 'thing' we encounter into, whether that thing be an object (it has four legs and a flat wide top, it must be a table), or a person (they have crazy white hair and a jacket with elbow patches, they must be a prof). Countless experiments reveal how our simple categorized perceptions, even those of ourselves, affect the way we behave and see the world.
The very last talk of the day was about 'Skeptical Activism'. Two speakers advocated the movement of skeptics 'out of the blogs and onto the streets', that the role of skeptics is not just to recognize the ills of pseudoscience and communicate them, but to actively campaign against their use. Examples given of successful campaigns (in one way or another) were the battle between Simon Singh and the British Chiropractic Association over libel, Boobquake and action over Power Balance (which I'd never heard of, but is apparently the 'power of holograms').
All of this was fascinating, and I was starting to feel quite comfortable in the Skeptic world, but I had one question in my mind. Would being a paid-up member of a Skeptic society, and taking part in the campaigning as the speakers suggested, make me an incredibly bias reporter? Does it create my 'schema', giving people a view of me that's hard to shift, automatically turning people off from what I write? The speakers admit you will always upset someone if you decide to take action, but perhaps it's a bit too risky for someone who's supposed to be 'impartial'. Still, it didn't do Simon Singh much harm, but he is rather more established than me! For now I'll remain interested in the Skeptical World, at a distance.
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N.B. Apologies to those Englishmen who think that skeptic should be sceptic. Me too, but I am in North America now!
Last note: I picked up my first assignment for the student newspaper this week, will soon be a published journalist, BOOYA! All gotta start somewhere :-)
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