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Saturday 6 November 2010

Swansea SitP said their first words!

So we have now launched!!!!

To all of those who came I hope you had a much fun as I did if not more! And to those who couldn’t make it, see you at the next one! By my reckoning we had about 30 people turn up! everyone i spoke to seemed to have a good time and the barman even told me how good he thought it was and was looking forward to the next one! to quote him “its a really “fresh” idea!” lol!

After getting there a little early to setup with some help from @Thyrisis and @RobEarls people slowly began to trickle in. Soon the place was filling up pretty nicely! I had written a little intro to skepticism but couldn’t remember it all so I just introduced Dean who very kindly pointed out that I hadn’t given my talk, the bugger!

Dean gave a great talk on his experiences of mixing science and comedy, including a hilarious version of “why did the chicken cross the road?” that's too long for me to recount here! but it ended in “because there was a big cock on the other side!” After explaining how he got into science, how he got into comedy and his attempts trying to combine the too he talked about his experiences with the media, including certain newspapers and TV companies, and there propensity to ignore the facts, quote mine to extremes and give nutjobs a platform. He talked about his application to NHS Tayside for the position of homeopathic doctor and of his letters from science to media. Among these stories and others he drew from them lessons in critical thinking such as “just because a person is in a position of authority doesn’t mean they know what they’re on about, in fact they often don’t!”

The Q&A was pretty good with questions ranging from delving into what he does as a neuroscientist to his recent blog post where he made very clear his position on animal testing, or at least I thought so!

It was a very enjoyable night and it was great to see so many of you there!

Look forward to seeing you at the next one!

p.s. here’s Dean’s most recent application for a homeopathic position in the NHS