Since arriving in London, I'd been intending to meet up with fellow sceptics, humanists and affiliated people. It took a while, but I got around to doing some stuff.  I've been involved in three things in the past two weeks: the Protest The Pope march at London Pride 2010, a meet-up of the Central London Humanist Group last week, and a talk by Simon Perry (he of Quacklash fame) at the meeting of Westminster Sceptics on Monday night.  I'll blog about each of these in turn. 

On Saturday 3 July, participating the the London Pride 2010 parade and march from Baker Street to Trafalgar Square, I joined the 'Protest the Pope' section in the walking group of the pride march.  We had a large placard stating that we 'Protest the Pope', the particular relevance of which for London Pride 2010 is the Pope's position on equality of sexual orientation, on 'biological differences' between people, on denying the freedom of choice to women, on Ratzinger's own criminal acts as a concealer of pedophilia in the church, etc.¹ It must be noted that we were not out there to protest Catholicism or religion generally, but rather the particular positions that the pope has taken and on the ways in which he has affected government policy and pressured policy in the UK. 

The march went well.  To choruses like "Say yes to condoms, say Nope to the Pope", we handed out fantastic stickers protesting the pope's state visit to the UK and pamphlets about the organisation.  [As a state visit an invitation extended by the British head of state to the head of state of the Vatican it will be paid for by the UK taxpayer and should cost upwards of 30 million pounds.²] We also protested the things mentioned in the paragraph above, in addition to abstinence only sex advice and more.   It was a pleasure to be involved in a well-organized march on behalf of the LGBT community, but also in support of a crusade in which I believe - trying to protest the power of religious leaders in secular societies.   

I hope that in the future I can participate in similar protests as part of the on-going movement toward a secular society in which separation between religions and the state is constitutionally protected and in which individuals are better educated about alternatives to religious morality, of which secular humanism is one I find particularly attractive. Specifically, I would like to see increased activity in South Africa, in the mode of what Michael Meadon, Jacques Rousseau, Tauriq Moosa, Angela Butterworth, and many others have been trying to promote as and how they can (I would link to more of you, but I just can't do it Captain).  I hope that it becomes more widespread and more formalised and I intend to do my bit when I return to South African.  Later in the week I'll comment briefly on my experience of the Central London Humanist Group and the Westminster Sceptics - all of it positive. 



End Notes
1. On this, yes, there are biological differences between men and women, for example,  I happen not to have particularly large breasts.  The point is that, for those things that 'count' there may be greater variation within one gender than between genders such that it is difficult to claim what is meant by 'a single biological difference' that is totally unaffected by culture or social context. It also isn't obvious that 'biological differences' imply anything about gay marriage commitments either, unless we tie it to 'consummation' that, for whatever reason, can only occur between a penis and a vagina.    
2. Notwithstanding the fact that the reason that the Vatican is itself treated as a sovereign state is because of a deal - the Lateran Accords - between the then pope, Pope Pius XI, the King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III and the fascist Benito Mussolini. 'What?' I hear you say, "We're held to deals made by a monarch and a fascist?" Indeed we are. It's contract law, see. It made the Vatican a sovereign state, see. And we can't interfere with sovereignty in international law, see? The treaty was adopted into the Italian constitution in 1947, so some may say, "Ahah! Your grievances are irrelevant." But, I don't get how one country (Italy) can decide at one of its weakest points in history on the continued existence of a theocracy that affects the world internationally.  Granted, this happens all the time in the middle east, but I will support my position by saying I object to all theocracies, not just the Vatican. I do need to consider this more, but genuinely consider it to be a problem. 

Playing host to this month's Carnival, I've had the fun of trawling the web for a few interesting posts by Africans on relevant topics (scepticism, science, etc), and having read submissions I've received for the carnival.  If you'd like to host a Carnival then get hold of Mike at michael{dot}meadon{at}gmail{dot}com and volunteer for a position as host, vacancies as early as next month!  Take a look at the guidelines here.  Anyway, here are the relevant posts for this month's Carnival of the Africans.  

Mike from Ionian Enchantment submitted two posts. First, In praise of deference, in which he articulates a position where he argues for deference to those with more scientific expertise than oneself.  I need to reiterate that his conclusions differs from appealing to authority - I believe {X} simply because {Big Name Y} believes {X}.  Read the article for his discussion. Mike proposed a second article, The Cost of Truth is Eternal Vigilance, in which he explains why one needs to be vigilant about one's own biases and the biases of others when trying to make propositions about states of the world, parodying his example '2009 was the rainiest year ever!'

Angela, the Skeptic Detective,  has three fantastics posts.  First, 'Atlas V makes you feel like you're tripping', in which she examines sonic booms and speed - a physics fun time.  In the second post, 'How to win friends...' she examines the 'work' of Mike Adams, a 'health ranger' and his beliefs in naturopathy and the natural way.  Good skeptic defence Angela.  Her third post, 'Paranormal Investigators', looks at paranormal beliefs, specific South African urban legends, and their (in)validity as investigated by the South African Society for Paranormal Research. 

At Communicating Science, The African Way, Muza Gondwese asks whether 'To snip or not to snip'.  She presents the evidence about male circumcision in several African countries and says that there is some evidence that it helps to prevent HIV transmissions (helps to prevent minimally she highlights).  She discusses policy implications for Malawi and the situation in Swaziland.  A timely post for those considering the role of prevention in HIV - look at the science, do a cost-benefit analysis. (I understand this is a contentious topic, but it's still worth reading her piece). 

Ross at the Science of Sport wrote an intriguing post on 'The mental edge or physiology' in sport, in which he tries to understand the role of psychology and 'mental toughness' in sport against physiological superiority.  One of the problems, evidently, is that of measurability: how do we measure mental toughness? Is it the same across sports? Is there a consistent and falsifiable theory of mental toughness? He tries to navigate some of these problems in a post accessible to the layperson (so, no, there aren't any discussions of falsifiability and demarcation). 

The Skeptic Blacksheep has has two fascinating reports, the first 'My experience with Simply Slim' recounts the author electing to 'test' this herbal diet tablet and its banning in South Africa, she then recounts some of the fallout of her post on her experiences in the second post, where she was told by a marketing professional that people complaining of side effects are suffering from Munchausen's Syndrome and evidently not the effects of a double dose of sibutramine - the drug the Medicines Control Council foud in the 'herbal tablet'.  Oh conspiracies!

Mark Widdicombe has three good posts.  The first, 'Good News', in which he describes the Lancet retraction of Andrew Wakefield's paper linking the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism and bowel disorders (a skeptic victory).  The second, 'Witch Professor' in which he entertainingly describes an interaction with the eponymous
doctor, has to be read for entertainment value.  Finally, in 'Smoke signals', he reports on his experiences quitting smoking, doing his best to evaluate various methods for quitting smoking.

And finally we get to me. I reviewed two pieces of research.  The first, 'Making money vs. Windfalls - Are you hardnosed' in which I reviewed a 2002 article investigating the methods of experimental economics - giving windfall cash to people and watching them behave. The second post, 'Neural Evidence for inequality aversion when giving away other peoples' money' applies the critique from the 2002 paper to a new paper from Nature investigating inequality aversion using FMRI.  I also have a more entertaining piece, looking at whether ANCYL (a South African political organisation) knows what evidence is: 'Untrue, Fabricated, False Lies'.

I wanted to promote a podcast - Beauty and the Beast - Numbers and Public Policy - that I recently listened to by Andrew Dilnot, one of the authors of the book The Tiger That Isn't. His co-author is Michael Blastland.  Dilnot gave a lecture at the LSE which was put up on the web at UChannel, a fantastic resource for lectures and presentations given at various universities and other institutions.

Dilnot's lecture centred around the appalling nature of numeracy in the British population, and the world population in general.  Specifically, the lack of a general understanding of basic statistics. He discusses how there are regular mishaps in interpretations of data, by journalists, by government and by the public.  He makes the point that people should be more skeptical about the numbers that they see and that they should be made aware of all kinds of statistical 'rules of thumb' that good quality practitioners know.  For example, regression to the mean where "individuals far from the mean on the first set will tend to be closer to the mean on the second set". 

To use Dilnot and Blastland's example, consider that you are a government official thinking of installing speed traps, you make an observation of the number of accidents in several locations over a period of time, say six months, and see that in several places there are numerous accidents.  You install these cameras in these 'danger areas'.  You then observe that for the six months following the installation of the cameras there was a 'decrease' in the incidence of accidents and your policy 'worked'.  Well... no.  You are actually observing regression to the mean.  The sample that you have of two six month periods constitutes a sample of almost zero.  With any given time series data (i.e. observations of specific events over time) there will be deviations around a mean.  The government, because it observed a freakishly high incidence of accidents in one area, assumed that its policy instrument of installing speed cameras was effective simply because the incidence went down.  This is not accurate.  What you need to have is a measure which gives you what the mean number of acccidents are in a specific location and observe a statistically significant decrease - i.e. a decrease for which we can impute a correlation with the use of speed traps holding other factors significant (such as that the skill of drivers wasn't suddenly higher, or that people had suddenly stopped drinking alcohol, or that the number of drivers on the roads was different). 

Dilnot considers this and other factors that affect public opinion and makes the point that far too many people blithely accept numbers that are thrown at them by people in 'authority', be it the media or government.  They need to be aware of the types of behavior displayed by data and be aware that people will manipulate how something is portrayed to aggrandize their own actions (far too much is said, for example, on the effects of anti-smoking legislation, it's normally nowhere near as effective as claimed).

Anyway, listed to the podcast, I think it is worthwhile.  I am always in favour of skepticality improving broadcasts and information (Dilnot also tells a great story of being thought of as a literary philistine and asks why the same doesn't apply to numeracy).  Thanks Andrew Dilnot, LSE and UChannel.  I'm going to keep an eye out for the book when I am next in the UK.

I am hosting the third Carnival of the Africans on October 28th.  Please send all your posts on things skeptical, scientific and social scientific to simon.d.halliday{at}gmail.com (which I do without the 'at' sign in order to confound bots of evilness, &c) by 8am (GMT+2) of October 27th (one day prior to the carnival). 

I start my second year of PhD coursework on Monday the 20th, so please do me the little favour of getting the posts into me that day early so that I can get all of the reading done.  Send in posts that are preferably, but not exclusively, written and published during the last month.

The Carnival of the Africans is a carnival based on similar principles to that of the Skeptic's Circle, but with a distinctly African flavour - science by Africans for Africans if you will.  If you plan to send in a post, please make sure to look at the guidelines set out by Ionian Enchantment here. Closer to the time I will do my best to contact specific people if I have read blog posts that I would like to have included in the carnival. Please send me the URLs of, or links to, up to three posts that you would like to have included in the line-up of the carnival. 

If you would like to take a look at previous carnivals, then take a see that past two carnivals:
Ionian Enchantment hosting the Carnival of the Africans #1.
the little book of capoeira hosting the Carnival of the Africans #2.

I look forward to hearing from you soon! Remember that carnivals are a fantastic way to promote your blog and to get your name out there into the blogosphere. I anticipate fantastic posts.