| Date: | 2010-10-20 01:19 |
|---|---|
| Author: | Stefano |
| category: | Meetings, Opinion |
| slug: | tamlondon-2010-remarks-and-comments-%e2%80%93-part-2-of-n |
TAM London 2010 was highly different from the first European edition in 2009. If I had to describe the 2009 edition in just three words, these would be: showmen/women, music, science. For this year edition, the three words would be very different: interviews, feelings, activism.
First, interviews. For the sake of argument, I will consider interviews board of discussion as well. A concrete number of guests speakers were interviewed, such as Randi (by Ince), Stephen Fry (by Tim Minchin, more on this later), a panel discussion about skepticism initiatives, the Tim Minchin night with the interview at the team for the "Storm movie", and the interview of Melinda Gebbie by Rebecca Watson. My personal opinion is that interviews should be kept to a minimum at an event such as TAM, as I feel they tend to become boring when too long. Twitter messages I spotted during interviews tend to validate that I'm not the only one holding this opinion. Finally, Tim Minchin interviewing Stephen Fry was unfortunately characterized by Tim's strong lack of experience.
Second, feelings. This TAM was consistently characterized by depth: emotional, philosophical, of thought. A broad set of topics was analyzed, with strong focus on skepticism, education, and scientific methodology. Insightful quotes were uttered and propagated through twitter. I personally interpret the overtone of wisdom-oriented topics, compared to the cheerful 2009 showmanship as a natural intellectual growth from a "young" to a "mature" TAM.
Third, activism. Both the speakers and the audience realized that if a line exists between being scientifically curious, inquisitive, looking for evidence to support claims, and being an activist for truth and correct scientific dissemination, this line is blurring.
It is blurring because, I believe, the point of skepticism is all about doing the right thing in front of daily quackery: getting people informed to prevent their exploitation. One would think that education is a good step to protect against exploitation. Unfortunately it's not enough: quoting James Randi, "education doesn't necessarily make you smart. It just makes you educated." It is a moral duty to protect people from being scammed, exploited and controlled, because it's the right thing to do. Some of the world's problems are also due to credulity of false claims and exploitation of credulity.
Everybody is occasionally a skeptic: checking the tyres and the engine before buying a car is skepticism. It is a method of inquire that promotes rejection of quackery by verification of claims through supporting, testable evidence. It is a legal trial applied to notions. Activist skeptics apply the "check the tyres" approach to every important claim they encounter. This applies also, but not exclusively, to misrepresentation of research performed by news: there's a lack of interest about the peer review mechanism in scientific journalism. Unfortunately, sensationalism trumps correct dissemination anytime, leading to wrong, awkward, counterproductive dissemination, generally focused on increasing fear, uncertainty and doubt in the general public. I already wrote about this on my previous post "The challenges of scientific communication", on page 3.
Skepticism is in the nature of the curious, positive mind. Through skepticism, the scientific method, and evidence-based verification of claims is the only method that gives answers to the mechanisms of the world we live in, and in particular its many problems. With good and true knowledge on these problems, we have a chance to find good and true solutions. If we have wrong and false knowledge, we will only find wrong and false solutions.
In the next post, I will write about the audience, the speakers and the talks, commenting on some of them and highlighting their important points.