Weird Science

I am writing this on the train home from the first conference put on by the Centre for Inquiry London which was held at Conway Hall in London (left), the home of the South Place Ethical Society. I have had an enjoyable day at the conference, entitled Weird Science (nothing to do with that 1980s movie). The first speaker was the psychologist Professor Richard Wiseman whose book Quirkology I have been reading (my edition has a great cover with a freaky photo like the ones Richard showed during his talk on the front - see below - can you tell what is strange about the cover photo?). Richard started out as a professional magician and included quite a lot of magic tricks to demonstrate perceptual illusions. When he was being introduced we were told that he had been working late last night with that pointy bearded mind fiddler Derren Brown testing alleged psychic mediums. Richard’s performance was very slick and funny which is more than can be said for the second speaker, his collaborator and fellow investigator of all things that go bump in the night, Professor Chris French, who was plagued by technical issues with the laptop he was using to make his presentation - all clips of him on TV. The highlight of his talk was listening to supposed satanic messages in Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin. After lunch it was the turn of the first Provost of the Centre of Inquiry London, introduced by Andrew Copson from the BHA, the philosopher and former postman, whose blog I follow, Stephen Law, who seemed surprised by the large turnout for the event he had organised. Stephen said that they were planning to change the name to Centre for Inquiry UK. His talk was about Creationism and included talking about the infamous Ken Ham and his Answers in Genesis organisation in the USA. Stephen was heckled a bit by questioners in the audience, particularly by someone bringing up Karl Popper’s famous falsifiability test for any scientific theory. The last speaker was Ben Goldacre from the Guardian, whose excellent book Bad Science I read whilst on holiday in Italy this year. He spoke a lot about pseudoscience and wanting to "slam his cock in a door". It was an amusing presentation but he tried too hard. I thought Richard Wiseman was funnier.
(top photo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Conway_Hall_South_Place_Ethical_Society_night.jpg)