Speakers: October 18, 2010
Ben Goldacre, MD
Dr. Goldacre is an award-winning British writer, broadcaster, and medical doctor who specializes in confronting dodgy scientific claims made by scaremongering journalists, uninformed politicians, pharmaceutical corporations, PR companies and quacks. He has written the weekly "Bad Science" column in the Guardian since 2003 as well as articles for the British Medical Journal. His book Bad Science has sold an astounding 240,000 copies and is being published in 18 countries.
David Gorski, MD PhD FACS
Dr. David Gorski is a surgical oncologist at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit specializing in breast cancer surgery. He first became interested in pseudoscience and "alternative" medicine around 2000, when quite by accident he wandered into the Usenet newsgroup misc.health.alternative and began to examine the claims he found there in a critical fashion. Since then, he has accumulated considerable experience refuting quackery and pseudoscience online. For the last five years, he has been a prolific blogger as managing editor of Science-based medicine, consistently ranked as one of the top ten medical blogs.
Michael Shermer, PhD
Dr. Michael Shermer is an American science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and Editor in Chief of its magazine Skeptic, which is largely devoted to investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. Shermer is also the producer and co-host of the 13-hour Fox Family television series “Exploring the Unknown.” He has made numerous other television appearances and has written a number of books that attempt to explain why people believe weird things.
Speaker: October 19, 2010
James Randi
James Randi has an international reputation as a magician and escape artist, but today he is best known as the world's most tireless investigator and demystifier of paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. Randi has pursued "psychic" spoonbenders, exposed the dirty tricks of faith healers, investigated homeopathic water "with a memory," and generally been a thorn in the sides of those who try to pull the wool over the public's eyes in the name of the supernatural. He has received numerous awards and recognitions, including a Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 1986. On October 19, 1993, the PBS-TV "NOVA" program broadcast a one-hour special dealing with Randi's life work, particularly with his investigations of Uri Geller and various occult and healing claims being made by scientists in Russia. He is the author of numerous books, including The Truth About Uri Geller, The Faith Healers, Flim-Flam!, and An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural. His lectures and television appearances have delighted — and vexed — audiences around the world. In 1996, the James Randi Education Foundation was established to further Randi's work. Randi's long-standing challenge to psychics now stands as a $1,000,000 prize administered by the Foundation. It remains unclaimed.
Webpage of the James Randi Educational Foundation
Moderator
Joe Schwarcz, PhD
Joe Schwarcz is Director of McGill University’s Office for Science and Society. He is well known for his informative and entertaining public lectures on topics ranging from the chemistry of love to the exposure of quackery. Professor Schwarcz has received numerous awards for teaching chemistry and for interpreting science for the public, and is the only non-American ever to win the American Chemical Society’s prestigious Grady-Stack Award for demystifying chemistry.