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Theme : expertise
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Ask me no questions, I'll give you the facts
Just caught Ben Goldacre's programme on Radio 4. Ben, for those who don't know, is the man behind the Guardian's Bad Science column. He is keen on using science to debunk snake oil merchants and puncturing the scientific claims that they make. When he first began writing, I thought he was a naive positivist. But, the more I read and occasionally chat to him, the more I sympathise with and learn from his approach to the new politics of science, expertise and evidence. He is tackling some...
from : jackstilgoe
31st March 2008
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Trust me, I'm the head of immunisation at the Department of Health
Vaccines are an interesting condensation point for debates about science, the public good, personal freedom and choice. As the UK government found a few years back with the MMR vaccine, you get in trouble if you are on the one hand telling people to choose everything to do with their healthcare and on the other coercing them into vaccination for the public good. The evidence, as we found out, won't win arguments that messy. There's a nice book co-authored by Demos friend Melissa Leach that...
from : jackstilgoe
10th March 2008
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Inconvenient uncertainties
Finally caught the Channel 4 climate change debunking last night. Smelt bad from the start and the stink only got worse. But a fascinating deconstruction (someone French once called this "blowing up in slow motion"). It showed that the current winners ("swindlers") of the climate change debate have a fragile position. The evidence is massively in their favour, but they're just not as good at talking about uncertainty as their Exxon-funded chums, who argue through polished...
from : jackstilgoe
13th March 2007
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Another normal disaster
I'm fascinated that we apparently already know what caused the derailment in Cumbria. Some bars separating the point blades broke and the inspection to check they were OK didn't happen. Job done. Blaim laid. Except that accidents are always, always more complicated and more interesting than that. I've just been having another look at Normal Accidents by Charles Perrow, emeritus Yale Sociology professor. It's a wonderful book, written in 1984, post-Three Mile Island but pre-Chernobyl and...
from : jackstilgoe
26th February 2007
