World Conference of Science Journalists – Troublemakers Fringe, Penderel’s Oak Pub, Holborn, 1st July 8pm – Midnight

June 24th, 2009 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, science comms | 16 Comments »

Come and see me, Vaughan from Mindhacks.com and Petra from drpetra.co.uk talk in a pub on Wednesday.

Next week the World Conference of Science Journalists will be coming to London. A few of us felt they were might not adequately address some of the key problems in their profession, which has deteriorated to the point where they present a serious danger to public health, fail to keep geeks well nourished, and actively undermine the publics’ understanding of what it means for there to be evidence for a claim.

More importantly we fancied some troublemaking and a night in the pub.

As a result, you have the opportunity to come and see three angry nerds explain how and why mainstream media’s science coverage is broken, misleading, dangerous, lazy, venal, and silly. Join our angry rabble, and Read the rest of this entry »

Giving it some chat on the Today Programme, Radio 4, about dumbing down and why scientists often don’t like media scientists

April 27th, 2009 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, science comms | 71 Comments »

I was just on the Today Programme on Radio 4 talking about dumbing down science in response to this piece in New Scientist by Kathy Sykes (who I like, and regard with some hope as a bit of a mate by the way).

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I won’t talk about it too much here since I’m hopefully going to write something on the subject for either New Scientist (if Graham Lawton gets back to me: hello Graham!) or elsewhere writing a piece on the same subject which will hopefully come out in the 9th May edition of New Scientist.

Read the rest of this entry »