So I haven't been active on this blog for a long time but today two things happened to motivate me to write here again. Firstly I gave a speech on why a UK wide badger cull would be a success, and secondly I attended my first skeptics in the pub talk.
As part of a university course I had to write a debate siding with the pro badger cull lobby. They argue that badgers should be culled in order to reduce bovine TB in cattle. Armed with access to scientific journals and DEFRA reports, I went in search of the evidence that Owen Paterson used to back up his plans for the cull. Surprisingly or not, I did not find any. You see, there aren't any papers which provide conclusive evidence that a cull would effectively reduce TB, in fact there is a lot of evidence that it could increase bovine TB incidence. And even the governments own reports show that all trials so far have been ineffective.
Slightly put out but determined none the less, I started writing my talk. And today I gave a 12 minute long argument for culling badgers in the UK. It made sense, all of the data was from scientific reports and I made nothing up. After my talk was over I realised with shock that I, a fairly intelligent undergraduate science student, had managed to debate something I knew was scientifically unsound, using peer reviewed scientific articles. All I had done was carefully select my facts and figures.
Of course a brief scan of my references would tell you that my argument had several gaping holes in it, but a lot the general public take media reporting of science at face value, and often the supporting evidence is not provided for scrutiny. Even I am occasionally guilty of laziness when reading about science. We need to make sure that we are able to see past the media spin and truly understand the evidence in order to make science based decisions.
This brings me on to the second thing that happened today: I had a lovely evening out with a friend and a glass of wine at a skeptics in the pub talk. This was a really interesting talk about a campaign called Ask for Evidence by a charity called Sense About Science, which is trying to improve the evidence behind stories reported in the media and claims from politicians and companies.
After my foray into the world of twisting science for political means, I felt like this talk really helped to show how the public can question the sweeping claims about science made to us every day. The campaign challenges people to chase up the evidence behind scientific claims, and also gives access to a group of people who can help to decipher any evidence provided. I would really recommend you check out their website here because I think its a really important thing to get involved in.
You don't even have to leave the house to get involved with this, it won't cost you anything AND you get to feel smug about calling out the media, government and big businesses. We might even learn something along the way.
Right, I'm off, if you know anyone looking for a political spin doctor, please point them my way, it could be a new career path...
References (because evidence is important!)
ANOTHER link to Ask for Evidence because I think it's such a cool campaign: Ask for Evidence
If anybody in Aberdeen is interested in going to a skeptics in the pub talk in the future: Skeptics in the pub, Aberdeen
The 2011 DEFRA report for the bovine TB eradication programme: TB eradication 2011
A 2007 DEFRA report finding that culling is ineffective: 2007 DEFRA TB report
If you have access to scientific papers: Donnelly et al, 2006. Positive and negative effects of widespread badger culling on tuberculosis in cattle. Nature 439
