Harvard Campus at Cambridge, MW.

The talk I gave today was scheduled for 30 mins but stretched out to 2 hrs as a result of lots of questions and discussion. I was assured by the head of the department that this is in fact a good sign since it means people were interested enough to firstly, stick around and then have their interest piqued enough to want to probe further. Apparently you should only be worried if half the group gets up and leaves to do experiments. So, even though I got a sort of hammering (and almost missed my bus), it was a productive hammering nonetheless. And having people from Harvard Medical School hold you captive for 2 hrs and offer suggestions and pose probing questions can only be a good thing.

The Blue Man group - hard to take seriously after Arrested Development took the piss.

Boston Skeptics also invited me to be the guest speaker at SiTP on Tuesday night in Cambridge, near Harvard Square (you can watch the video here).

Boston Skeptics in the Pub – Rachael Dunlop – Sept. 15, 2009 from Maggie McFee on Vimeo.

I did spark a slight panic, only made clear to me when I received a text message from Brian Dunning. After I had not arrived by 6:30 pm, the organisers became worried that they had no way to contact me me to find out my whereabouts…or did they?

As is the way of Web2.0, Rebecca put a call out over Twitter to find someone who could contact me. I was alighting from a cab out the front of the pub when I got a text message from Brian Dunning telling me I was required “immediately” at the pub! In the meantime, rumours circulated that I had been kidnapped by Ben Affleck who is in town shooting a film. Sadly this was not true, the much more mundane excuse of being stuck in traffic as a result of Ben Affleck being in town was all I could profer up. Actually, in hindsight, I should have been more worried about being abducted by Adam Sandler and forced to watch his awful excuses for comedy filums. You may not be surprised to learn that Adam has brought monkeys to the set of his movie; I know this because they were evacuated from a large hotel last night when a gas leak was detected. He should stop doing this – they almost always out-act him. But then perhaps this is not a bad distraction.

A strange creature has emerged from the depths of Lake Champlain in Vermont. So, naturally we call him "Champ" the pleiosaur.

Speaking of strange creatures, it seems NSW shares something in common with the state of Vermont in the USA. I spotted this notice on the side of a delivery truck in Boston. Just prior to leaving Sydney, news broke that an Australian crytozoologist had spotted what he believes to be a pleiosaurs in a river near Sydney. It seems this is not an isolated problem. Emblazoned on the side of a truck in Boston, I discovered that Vermont has a similar problem. Their pleiosaurs is named as “Champ”, and the creature has apparently been spotted over 300 times.

Boston is also the epicentre of the unusual performance art group, The Blue Man Group. And you haven’t seen Boston until you’ve seen them, or so the poster says. I must admit I have some trouble taking the Blue Man Group seriously, although I’m sure they are a top class bunch of blokes. But after Arrested Development did a show centred around Tobias attempting to join them after mistaking a poster for a depression support group for the group, it is a little hard to think of them with a straight face.

Even with such a busy schedule I did have time to look around Harvard University yesterday. As you can imagine it is a very impressive campus, reminiscent of its English counterpart, steeped in history and rich in perfectly manicured gardens and historical buildings. Harvard Yard is a large expanse of grassed and tree covered area where students loll about on garden chairs reading texts or playing frisbie. The library towers over the yard at one end, literally dwarfing all other buildings.

The imposing Harvard Library towers over the Yard.

I had just enough time to wander through the maze of colleges, where students live in semester, to get to the numerous Law school buildings. The surrounding areas are very English in their architecture and garden design. Like Cambridge in the UK, Cambridge, MA is steeped in academia and culture. The town itself is dominated by a student population owing to the numerous universities and colleges in the are. And all highly prestigious; from MIT, to Harvard and Tufts University.

One thing that struck me today at Harvard medical school in the Cell Biology Department, was the cramped environment. Just like the labs I saw at Vanderbilt, a private university with plenty of cash to throw around, the lab space was small, dark and very basic. But despite this, some of the best scientific work in the world is done in the Harvard Medical School and surrounding research facilities.

Sorry for my lack of blogging of late. I am away from home, flitting about the East Coast of the USA for a series of talks and conferences, covering science communication, scepticism, and science. I have already done Dragon*Con which was amazing, Vanderbilt Uni at Nashville, NECSS in NYC and am currently on a bus (with wifi) to Boston to do SiTP and a talk at Harvard Medical School. We are currently speeding through New England on the Interstate 90, on the outskirts NYC (see the pic left) on the awesome BoltBus!*

I was thrilled to be a speaker at the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism (NECSS) in NYC on Saturday September 12. A joint effort of New York City Skeptics (NYCS) and The New England Skeptical Society (NESS), NECSS was a huge success. The one day conference was a sell out with over 400 people attending and many people turned away at the door. It’s hard to believe that in a town of over 9 million people, the NYCS are only 2 years old. But, based on the success of Saturday’s conference, a skeptical group in NYC is certainly something that the city wants. The line-up was stellar and featured Professor Paul Ofitt, Richard Wiseman, George Hrab, the SGU team doing a live podcast, Carl Zimmer, John Rennie, John Snyder and many others all overseen and slickly mc’eed by Jamy Ian Swiss.

SGU are joined live on stage for Q&A by Paul Offit and Jamy Ian Swiss

The day kicked off with a talk from Paul Offit, the director of the education centre at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, author of “Autism’s False Prophets“, “Vaccinated” and the co-inventor of the vaccine for rotavirus. Paul talked about the public perception of vaccines as a result of the campaign by the anti-vaxers including Jenny McCarthy, in the USA. (See what they have to say about him here at pauloffit.com).

I was on a panel discussing Skepticism and Media with John Snyder, pediatrician and contributor to the Science Based Medicine blog, and Howard Schneider, journalist and academic at Stony Brook College. Our esteemed moderator was John Rennie recently retired editor-in-chief for Scientific American magazine and a recipient of the Carl Sagan award for the public understanding of science. Rennie also penned one of the most downloaded articles for Scientific American called “15 answers to creationist nonsense” in 2002 (I interviewed John for the Zone – listen to upcoming episodes for full details John’s work). We were invited to give a brief overview of our involvement with the media with an emphasis on conveying skeptical information, then John Rennie opened up the panel for discussion. John Snyder spoke about the damage of “false balance” in journalism and whilst balance is important in most stories, when it comes to giving a platform to anti-vaxers, it can do more harm than good.

L-R: Me, John Snyder and Howard Schneider. We were later joined by Carl Zimmer.

Naturally Howard came to the defence of journalists, by asserting that it is not their responsibility to educate the public, rather the public should research the information presented to them to determine where the truth lies. This was where things began to get feisty and interesting!

According to audience members, it was during Howard’s presentation that I was apparently shaking my head and indicating to John Rennie that I has something to say. On the topic of false balance, I suggested to Howard that if he was to do a piece on the Holocaust deniers, he would not get an opinion from a holocaust denier, not would a journo consider a flat-earther a legitimate part of a science based story.

This discussion was in response to John Snyder’s presentation about the NBC Dateline piece on Andrew Wakefield, “A Dose of Controversy” that had recently aired in the USA. This credulous piece by Matt Lauer and co., gave substantial air time to the discredited scientist and his quackery for autism, including invasive techniques such as colonoscopies on children for which there is no evidence of a benefit. John and I asserted to Howard that when it comes to important health issues such as vaccination, any hint of false claims such as they cause SIDS autism, cancer, contain aborted feotuses, toxic levels of heavy metals plants a seed with parents, scares them and as Paul had also stated, people are very hard to “unscare”.

A packed house. Photo by Tim Farley.

This opinion was echoed very succinctly (more so than I did) by an audience member once questions were opened up to the panel. Questions ranged from why are parents who do not vaccinate not held responsible for the death of those who die as a result of a loss of herd immunity to why are the authorities not doing anything about the anti-vax lobby?

It was a lively and interesting panel which I thoroughly enjoyed and it didn’t finish after we left the stage. The four of us continued our discussions in the green room, to the bemusement of several other participants who were milling around. John made a very good point about the social aspects of vaccine deniers and asked why the social and psychological issues of this area are not addressed. We all agreed that this is a story that has not been covered and would certainly be a worthwhile endeavour.

Howard then asked me how much time anti-vaxers should be given by the medias and my emphatic answer was none. I suggested to Howard that unless journos “went in deep” (John’s phrase) and challenged everything they said, instead of letting them state their piece largely unopposed as was my experience, then they deserved no platform at all. Eventually it was agreed that the anti-vax lobby need be treated as different beasts when it comes to balance in journalism. Because they don’t deserve a platform for their lies and misinformation. Even Howard seemed to agree (mostly).

I interview Travis Roy (aka Scooter) on stage after the conference. Photo Tim Farley.

I am very pleased that the feedback since the conference has been overwhelmingly positive for our media panel. Let’s hope we can do more like these, especially given the (perceived?) gap between what scientists really get up to and how it is reported in the media (this was also an underlying topic discussed throughout the weekend).

NECSS was a huge success and plans are already underway for a bigger and better event in 2010. Thanks to NESS and NYCS for putting on a well organised and top notch event. I hope to be a part of the con again one day!

*BTW, I thoroughly recommend the BoltBus from NYC: $14 on a very comfy bus with free wifi and power points, plenty of leg room and space – thanks to Rebecca and Scooter for the tip off).

The NSW Committee with Dick Smith, L-R Eran Segev, Philip Peters, Peter Rodgers, John Sweatman, Dick Smith, Richard Saunders, Rachael Dunlop and Peter Bowditch

This month was our biggest month ever with around 100 people attending to see a talk by Dick Smith. Dick is one of the founding members of Australian Skeptics and is known in Australia for his electronics chain Dick Smith Electronics, his “Dick Smith” range of foods (including “Dick Heads matches”) plus his legendary aviation achievements including flying to both poles solo, in a helicopter. Whilst Dick retired from active sceptical service some time ago, he is always around to give us a helping hand.

Pub and Think Tank regulars, Jason Brown (@drunkenmadman), Happy Singer (@HappySinger) and Alan Conradi.

Dick Smith holds the floor

If you are in Sydney, come along on the first Thursday of each month, to the Crown Hotel in central Sydney for a great night of sceptical fun! You can see more photos here.

A very busy pub night, with our youngest sceptic to date!