The growing skeptical movement is tackling pseudoscience and woolly thinking head-on. The London chapter holds its latest event tonight. And it’s in a pub.

Matt Brown

Sid Rodrigues is a molecular geneticist at LGC in Teddington. He also co-organises London’s regular Skeptics in the pub event. On the third Tuesday of every month, the group gathers in the Penderel’s Oak pub in Holborn to critically examine some of the more off-beat ideas of the day.

Each meet-up has an invited speaker with a controversial viewpoint, who is then interrogated by the audience. Topics are varied, often weighty and provoke heated debate – for example, ‘How not to investigate the paranormal’ and the forthcoming ‘Why don’t creationists just shut up?’.

Nature Network London talks to Sid about the concept.

How would you define a ‘skeptic’?

A skeptic is someone who asks for good evidence, usually with regard to strange and controversial claims.

Are there any famous examples of skeptics?

The most notable skeptics are James Randi, who has his $1 million paranormal challenge in the US and Michael Shermer, who has his ‘Skeptic’ column in Scientific American.

How did you get involved with the skeptical community?

I started life out as a magician at Hamley’s toy shop in Regent Street and noticed magician James Randi had a TV programme called “James Randi – Psychic Investigator” in the UK. I was taken aback on how easy it was to test the claims of psychics on the show in a proper scientific manner; that this would be the most credible way forward for people making these types of claims. On the show, all but one of the psychics and other paranormal claimants failed the basic tests taken. I bought the book accompanying the series and then wrote to James Randi congratulating him on a fantastic show. Surprisingly he wrote back to me a few weeks later. We’ve been in contact ever since and things then spiralled from there.

Can you point readers to any good resources about skepticism?

The Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast is one of my favourites. Rebecca Watson has always been my favourite skepchick, she has a great blog to boot – I think she’s also planning a Skeptics in the Pub in Boston (hint, hint).

But There are loads of things out there. Most will be aware of Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science website and column in the Guardian, but there are also flavours for whatever your taste is. For podcast and net radio, check out Point of Inquiry and Little Atoms and for or a good reference site, the Skeptics Dictionary – by Bob T. Carroll – covers most topics of interest.

Give us a flavour of the sort of characters who talk at your events.

Most of the guest speakers are researchers and experts in their fields. We’ve had a number of parapsychologists, a few medics, a dash of historians, the odd physicist and a soupcon of philosophers in our time. We’ve been around for almost ten years and will be having our 100th Skeptics in the Pub in April, so the list just keeps growing.

What’s happening at tonight’s event?

We’re having a psychologist/parapsychologist from Liverpool Hope University give a talk on his search for enlightenment. Matthew Smith is a researcher in luck and destiny and was a PhD student of Prof. Richard Wiseman. A proportion of Matt’s post-grad research made it in to Richard’s pop-science best seller The Luck Factor. I think his talk will revolve around his mid-life crisis and possibly luck and destiny research, of course.

Do you ever get hostile audience reactions? Skepticism can attract a few cranks.

It depends on the speaker. If we have a proponent of a controversial theory/philosophy, they tend to bring a few of their supporters along and they can get a bit lairy…sometimes. If we have a sceptical speaker, they usually get a much harder time from the audience. For instance, Victor Stenger mentioned that he got asked some of the most difficult questions of his career when he gave a presentation last year. A mean feat for a pub meeting, don’t you think? Obviously, having one too many alcoholic beverages can exacerbate the over excitement of some attendees.

Join Sid and 100 other skeptics for said alcoholic beverages tonight, 7pm, Penderel’s Oak, Holborn. Entry is £2.

_Image courtesy of Bronwen Dekker _