The speaker will be Síle Lane, Campaigns Manager with the UK charity, Sense About Science, who are involved in a range of projects aimed at promoting science and informing the public.
- Why do Department of Health guidelines say 2 Viagra tablets a week is sufficient?
- Are inarticulate children really twice as likely to be unemployed in their thirties?
- Can wheatgrass juice "remove poisons from the blood stream"?
- Should you buy MRSA resistant pyjamas before you go into hospital?
Evidence matters in many of the decisions we make - as patients, consumers, voters and citizens. The Ask for Evidence campaign encourages everyone, whatever their experience, to ask for evidence for every claim made in policies, newspaper articles, adverts or products. Over 50 organisations joined and leading voices of science, media, stage and comedy supported it. Síle will talk about the background to the campaign and how we learnt that even a small number of people asking questions can make a big difference.
Síle Lane joined Sense About Science in February 2009 from a career as a stem cell researcher. Sense About Science is a UK charity founded to equip the public to make sense of science and evidence. With a network of over 5,000 scientists, scientific bodies, research publishers, policy makers, the public and the media we promote public understanding of evidence and challenge pseudoscience. We work with scientists to share the tools of scientific reasoning to help people make sense of current discussions rather than taking them back to school. Síle became Campaigns Manager in 2011 and is developing a new dedicated campaigns unit to popularise our approach to standing up for science, including launching the Ask for Evidence campaign last September.