Continue reading »]]> Thanks to Edinburgh and Horsham Skeptics in the Pubs for submitting proposals for our £500 SitP grant project.

Simon Clare from Horsham Skeptics in the Pub wanted to help set up SitPs around Kent, and requested funding to run pilot events in Canterbury, Maidstone and Ashford. His goal is to establish new SitP groups in Kent.

Keir Liddle of Edinburgh Skeptics asked for funding in order to make events more inclusive by having a signing interpreter.

We think both projects deserve funding, so we have removed the competitive QEDcon Unicorn’s Lair element from this grant scheme and instead Edinburgh Skeptics will receive £150 to support a pilot event and Simon Clare will receive £500 for his project in Kent.

In parallel with this SitP grant project, we have also been running a Small Grants Project, and the five £1,000 grants have already been announced. In general, we have been receiving high quality applications from SitP organisers, but in low numbers, so we are keen to know if we should be altering the way that the grants are being offered or structured. If we run the grant programmes again next year, are there ways that we could improve them? If you have any suggestions, then please drop us a note.

Continue reading »]]> We are delighted to announce the final three awards for our small grants:

Edinburgh Skeptics on The Fringe

Edinburgh Skeptics in the Pub have been running a successful programme of events during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. This grant of £1,000 will help support a range of potential ideas, from hosting events in larger venues to greater cross-promotion of science/rationalist events at The Fringe.

Camp Quest

Camp Quest UK provides a community where young people can be challenged and have fun with workshops in science and philosophy and a range of outdoor activities.

We are providing a grant of £1,000 to help with training for the mentors and expanding the reach of the event.

Adam Smith, in association with the Rationalist Association

This grant of £1,000 will provide seed funding for a new venture; the Rationalist’s Parliament. The aim is to experiment as to how the British Parliament could take a more rational approach to debating policy.

In addition to generating evidence-based research on current issues, commissioning opinion pieces from researchers and holding public debates, it is hoped that the Rationalists’ Parliament will show what skepticism in policy making may look like.

Continue reading »]]> We are delighted to announce the first two recipients of our small grants. The remaining three grant recipients will be revealed next month.

Private Health Screening Awareness

£1,000 has been granted to a group headed up by Dr Margaret McCartney, a Glasgow GP and author of The Patient Paradox. Dr McCartney has been vocal in raising concerns about the pitfalls of private health screening in the UK, having discussed the issue in her FT column, the BMJ, Vogue and Radio 4’s Inside Health. For example, Dr McCartney explained why private health screening worries her and and other GPs in this blog for the Guardian.

Last year, Dr McCartney and her colleagues created the website http://www.privatehealthscreen.org/ in order to improve public awareness about private health screening tests and raise the quality of debate in the media. The grant will be used to support an on-going campaigning to improve knowledge of the issues involved with private health screening.

Margaret said on hearing of the award “I am delighted that the Good Thinking Society are able to support us to try and get better information to people who are being sent fliers advertising tests which are not supported by the evidence – and which do harm.”

Safek Savir

Safek Savir (Reasonable Doubt) is a skeptical podcast broadcast in Hebrew. They have been podcasting for two years, outputting more than 120 shows. Last year they produced a trial video-cast, which garnered over 20,000 views and generated a large amount of discussion in the comments.

Safek Savir will be using the grant of £1,000 to support their video production in order to start producing a monthly, high quality video-cast that will hopefully reach a wider audience than those already engaged with their podcast.

Yaron Assa from Safekk Savir commented “With Good Thinking’s support we will be able to extend our reach with richer and more accessible skeptical content. We look forward to repaying this honour by further promoting the passion for science, skepticism and rational discussion in new and exciting audiences.”

Continue reading »]]> We had hoped to award our small grants by mid-January, but evaluating the proposals has taken longer than anticipated.

The bad news, of course, is that some proposals were unsuccessful, and those involved have already been notified.

However, the good news is that we now have a list of five proposals that we will be backing to a smaller or larger extent. We are currently in discussion with the applicants, looking at the details of each proposal and the extent to which we can provide funding. Although some grants will be finalised this month, we will announce the full details of projects and levels of funding between now and April as they are finalised.

Continue reading »]]> As some of you will know, Good Thinking was planning to offer a £500 grant to a SitP group at this year’s QEDcon.

Yesterday, @mjrobbins tweeted: “I just think SITPs competing with each other is against everything that @SITP is about. I hope nobody applies.” He also tweeted: “If @QEDcon had any sense, this sort of divisive and pointless exercise wouldn’t be happening.”

I had not considered that offering a grant might would be divisive, controversial or lead to a suggestion that SitPs might boycott the grant project. However, Good Thinking would certainly drop the idea if there is a general feeling from SitP groups that this is a bad idea. On the other hand, we would continue if SitP groups feel positive about the project and are still willing to submit proposals.

On a personal note, I have found it disappointing that a small-scale, low-cost, well-meaning, potentially beneficial pilot project has prompted such a negative response from one or two quarters.

Simon Singh

Responses to @mjrobbins specific criticisms/comments:

1. “SITPs will spend more taking part in the competition than @SLSingh gives out.”

The first stage of the application is very cheap and simple – just 200 words by email. The SitPs offering the best ideas will be invited to QEDcon. They will be given guest passes. They may incur travel costs (perhaps £50-£100), or they may already be at QEDcon. Overall, we expect to be handing out much more money than the expense of participating. Those who are invited to pitch will also have the opportunity to meet other skeptics and attend all the other events at QEDcon.

2. “It seems a spur of the moment fix for the failure (?) of the @GoodThinkingSoc grants.”

Thanks for the concern, but we have a list of five proposals that we are planning to fund. We are currently in discussion with the applicants to finalise the details of the funding. We tweeted about this earlier in the week.

3. “the site itself describes ‘grilling’ in a ‘Dragon’s Den’ style competition…”

…and immediately goes on to say: “but in a less confrontational, more supportive way (Unicorn’s Lair? Kitten’s Krib?)”

4. “Pointless”

That might be right, that might be wrong – we don’t know, but with this small-scale experiment we hope to find out. If the £500 grant project fails, then we will not repeat it. If it succeeds, then it might grow. We applied the same approach to our inaugural blog prize project last year – that was an experiment that succeeded and it will happen again (with some improvements). Had the blog prize initiative failed, we would not have regretted trying it.

Finally, it may have helped if @mjrobbins had emailed or called me before tweeting, as it might have avoided various misunderstandings.

Finally, finally, it may also have helped if @mjrobbins had accepted an invitation to talk on the phone immediately after tweeting.

Continue reading »]]> Good Thinking is keen to fund scepticism. This year, at QED, we want to give £500 to a Skeptics in the Pub group.

If you can come up with an idea that requires this sort of funding you’re in with a chance. All you need to do is submit a short proposal (max 200 words) to us here at Good Thinking. We’ll then select our favourites and those chosen will be asked to pitch their proposals to a panel at QED. Think Dragon’s Den, but in a less confrontational, more supportive way (Unicorn’s Lair? Kitten’s Krib?). Ideas could cover almost anything: skeptical activism, improving your particular SitP group, providing a resource to support all SitP groups and so on.

The proposer will be grilled by both the panel and the audience. At the end, the panel will decide on the winner and they will walk away with £500 to use for the proposal.

You don’t have to already have a ticket for QED to enter, but one of your SitP group must be willing to travel to Manchester at your own expense to pitch your idea live at the event.  QED will facilitate entry to the whole event if you don’t already have a ticket.  The den will be one of the break out sessions away from the main stage.

Interested? Send your proposal (and/or any queries) to us here by close of 3rd March. We’ll announce those who have been successfully short-listed soon after.

[edit 06/02] If you’re not able to make it to Manchester that weekend, by all means feel free to appoint a proxy who can present for you.

Continue reading »]]> Crispian Jago of Winchester Skeptics in the Pub describes the voting process for the Golden Duck:

Science, reason, and good thinking are concepts that resonate well with the good folk of Winchester. When Winchester Skeptics in the Pub started inviting science writers, broadcasters and academics to come down and talk about various topics from a perspective of empirical evidence rather than faith and superstition our audience quickly outgrow the largest pub venue we can find. Winchester Skeptics is now based in a 180 seat auditorium at the Winchester Discover Centre.

We were very keen to team up with the Good Thinking society to help choose the winner of the inaugural Golden Duck award. Myself and two of our regular members presented a compelling case for each the three shortlisted nominees.

Marina de Joslin detailed Prince Charles’s Integrated Health Foundation and its consistent and irresponsible promotion of pseudoscience and quackery along with his incessant and unqualified meddling and underhand government petitioning to attempt to influence anti-scientific policy.

I considered the case for David Tredinnick, the MP for Holland and Barrett who has used his seat in parliament to advocate homeopathy and radionics. Tredinnick’s parliamentary expense claims for new age astrology software and training courses to enable him to investigate the links between alternative health and astrology make claims for decadent duck dwellings and moat sanitation services seem relatively rational.

Finally James Thomas put forward the case for the former doctor Andrew Wakefield whose unethical, flawed and now discredited study into the possible links between childhood autism and the MMR vaccination was at the root of the current rise in vaccination preventable diseases.

All candidates fared well in the voting, but it became clear that the one thing the good thinking people of Winchester really can’t stand is a doctor who blatantly abandons and abuses the scientific method. Winchester Skeptics are pleased to nominate Andrew Wakefield for the inaugural Golden Duck Award.

And Ben Makin of Edinburgh Skeptics in the Pub adds:

Edinburgh Skeptics cast our vote in one of our monthly “in the pub” meetings.  The contest came down to a decision between Prince Charles (channelled on stage by Ash Pryce) and Andrew Wakefield.  We voted for (against?) Andrew Wakefield in the end, after an impassioned description of the MMR vaccine fraud from a doctor which ended with the frustrated cry “children have died”: a reminder that while the event might be fun, the issues are serious. Ed Skeps plans to hold a more structured debate on the topics highlighted by the Golden Ducks when the awards are voted on next year.

Continue reading »]]>

Adam Finn, Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Bristol, had this to say upon hearing of Wakefield’s victory in the Golden Duck:

In the past, a small minority of people thought that vaccines were unsafe, unnecessary and/or unnatural. However, a large majority accepted them as one of the many benefits of modern life, alongside central heating and mobile phones. Luckily for the few doubters, the majority (a majority of a size politicians can only dream of) protected them too, as a result of so-called herd immunity.

That all changed in the 1990s when the widely-reported doubts of one rogue doctor punched a massive hole in public confidence in one of our safest and most effective vaccines against measles mumps and rubella. While the misinformation has finally been corrected and MMR coverage rates in children reaching immunisation age have gradually recovered to pre-Wakefield levels, the legacy is many, many thousands of unimmunised children born over the last 15 years whose parents decided MMR was too risky at the time and subsequently have forgotten all about it. Measles rates are up and they will only decline when this accumulation of susceptibles has either had the vaccine or the disease.

The same is true of mumps and we watch nervously for signs of a rise in rubella and, with it, the devastation it brings to the unborn children of pregnant mothers who get the disease.

In medicine, the personal legacy most of us hope for is to have brought some benefit to our patients. A few make genuine advances in treatment and prevention. Doctors and scientists who have played their part in the development of safe effective vaccines are among those who have done most, although their beneficiaries aren’t personally aware of the suffering they avoided. They changed history – but the only history we have is the one that happened.

So in handing the wooden spoon, or rather Golden Duck, to one who got it so badly wrong, let’s remember for a moment the countless millions worldwide who are now alive and healthy because of vaccines. Only for a moment – then get on with our busy lives and leave vaccines to do their job in the background.

Continue reading »]]> Good Thinking is delighted to announce the results of the 2012 UK Science Blog Prize.

• Winner: David Colquhoun - DC’s Improbable Science
• Winner: Suzi Gage - Sifting the Evidence

• Runner Up: Dorothy Bishop – BishopBlog
• Runner Up: Ed Yong - Not Exactly Rocket Science
• Runner Up: Oliver Childs, Henry Scowcroft and Kat Arney – Cancer Research UK Science Update

• Shortlisted Blog : Stuart Clark: Across the Universe
• Shortlisted Blog : André Tomlin: The Mental Elf
• Shortlisted Blog : Athene Donald: Athene Donald’s Blog
• Shortlisted Blog : Neuroskeptic: Neuroskeptic
• Shortlisted Blog : Dean Burnett: Brain Flapping

The judges deliberated long and hard but in the end could not separate the relative merits of David and Suzi and thus decided to split the award this year. Simon Singh, who helped judge the prize, said: “It was hard to compare such a diverse range of blogs, on a wide variety of topics. Bloggers ranged from teenagers to emeritus professors, from doctors to astronomers. In the end, it seem fairest to recognize this diversity by splitting the prize between two excellent bloggers.”

We would like to thank the judges for all the time they spent in the process and we would especially like to thank everyone who entered. It became a constant refrain among the judges that they were both hugely impressed with the quality of the science writing and gratified that this gave them an opportunity to discover blogs that otherwise may have passed them by.

Continue reading »]]>

Click here to purchase tickets for the evening from Eventbrite

Good Thinking, in association with Soho Skeptics, are delighted to present the inaugural UK Science Blog Prize awards evening.

At the start of October, Good Thinking asked for nominations to find the best UK science bloggers. Over one hundred blogs were entered. This evening, we’ll be revealing the runners up and presenting the grand prize of £1,000 to the overall winner.

Attending on the night will be a number of the judges, including Ben Goldacre and Simon Singh. Also appearing will be our very special guest, Helen Arney, who will be providing a musical interlude.

However, the main part of the evening will be given over to the short listed bloggers, some of who will be giving brief talks either based around their blog subject or on blogging in general.

The short-listed bloggers are (in no particular order):

• Stuart Clark: Across the Universe
• David Colquhoun: DC’s Improbable Science
• Ed Yong: Not Exactly Rocket Science
• André Tomlin: The Mental Elf
• Suzi Gage: Sifting the Evidence
• Dorothy Bishop: BishopBlog
• Neuroskeptic: Neuroskeptic
• Oliver Childs, Henry Scowcroft & Kat Arney: Cancer Research UK Science Update
• Dean Burnett: Brain Flapping
• Athene Donald: Athene Donald’s Blog

You can purchase tickets for the evening here: http://2012scienceblogprize.eventbrite.com/. It is being held at Penderel’s Oak in London starting at 7pm on Sunday 25th November.

Come along to hear some fascinating talks, applaud the winners but most importantly to show your support for all the science based bloggers in the UK.