Some drop science:An Evening with the Man from Albuquerque.

"Some drop science, while I'm dropping English" - Express Yourself, NWA.

Ben Radford was 'dropping' both science and English last night at The Monarch in Camden. He'd come all the way from Albuquerque in New Mexico specially to deliver his Science Vs. Pseudoscience In a 'Fake News' World speech to London Skeptics in the Pub (or at least that's what our host Carmen said, while also making sure to draw attention to her, admittedly amazing, new green skirt) so I could hardly complain about having to take two Overground trains from Honor Oak Park to Kentish Town West in the drizzle and cold to get there.

I was disappointed that they've taken their delicious veggie hot dogs off the menu but at least I got a seat. Better still they were playing The Day I Die by The National when I arrived. Best of all it was London Skeptics in the Pub. I've written many times about how happy attending London Skeptics in the Pub makes me. With or without veggie hot dogs.

Ben Radford's evening was more of an informal chat than anything with a particularly clear narrative. He could almost have plonked himself on the old sofa on stage and delivered it from there but, with a beer on the go - not the standard format in the US we were told, he kicked off by telling us what he considers to distinguish between science and pseudoscience.

Well, after a little introduction that is. He was keen to let us know that if need be he'd be happy, later, to answer questions about evil clowns (cue a little aside about Donald Trump and Boris Johnson) or chupacabras if we were interested and he also ran down a few of his achievements. There's nothing wrong with these curriculum vitaes if they're brief and interesting and Ben Radford's definitely was.

Science, averred Ben (he seemed a friendly chap so I'll call him by his first name), is a process. It's not a result. Pseudoscience is stuff that looks a bit like science but isn't. Homeopathy, astrology, and other assorted woo. When alternative medicines are proven to work they become, quite simply, medicines. If pseudoscience can be proven to work it becomes science.

Pseudoscience, however, is a word, unlike 'alternative', that has negative connotations so those who advocate pseudoscience, of course, don't like it. But that doesn't change the fact that it wasn't tarot card reading or divination that got a man to walk on the moon and it wasn't pseudoscience that was responsible for the global eradication of smallpox.

No. That was science what did that! So why do so many people now mistrust scientists? It can't all be down to Michael Gove claiming people have had enough of experts. For a start, the distrust of scientists is not restricted to the UK and surely people in other countries don't take a blind bit of notice of anything Gove says. We'd be better off here if we ignored him too.

A lot of the time scientists get the blame when the media misrepresents them. I'm not the type to blame everything on the media (and I'm certainly not one of these people constantly accusing the BBC and The Guardian of a Tory bias, FFS) but the fact remains that some journalists do end up screwing up and misrepresenting scientific ideas.

Not, in the case of the huge majority of journalists, for malicious reasons or due to any personal bias. Most news has now moved away from print media to online and that's meant that the money has fallen out of the market. Journalists simply don't have the time to read reports in full or even ask simple questions like how large, or small, a sample size used in a scientific study had been.

It's important these questions are asked so that the public can be provided with accurate information. Most scientists aren't also journalists and some are pretty rubbish at getting their ideas and findings across. A skill in science does not necessarily translate into being a skilled communicator. That's why those who have both, think Jim Al-Khalili, Marcus du Sautoy, and Maggie Aderin-Pocock, often end up on television!

Those who aren't Aderin-Pocock or du Sautoy are often reliant on journalists to convey information on their behalf but resources, in these days of social media memes, are simply not poured into newspapers and, even less so, into anything resembling investigative journalism. A science journalist is often a science journalist in name only. Last week they may have been writing about, and these are Ben's quite American examples, basketball or cars.

That lack of specific expertise applied to a subject like science can only result in poorer quality journalism at the end of the day. Ben told a story about a reporter from the Boston Globe who'd been taken in by a man who claimed he was able to locate dead bodies with a dowsing rod. I don't know if the reporter had had a stressful day or he was just unsuited to his job but he didn't seem to think the fact that the dowsing corpse locator was finding these dead bodies in, of all places, graveyards!

All of us, not just journalists, need to question people who claim supernatural powers. We can't just accept these claims at face value without asking for proof. We don't need to know lots about science to do this. We don't need to understand advanced mathematics or quantum physics. We just need to know what science is and how it works.

It matters. If psychics really are psychic why aren't they using their powers to do good and improve society? There are many supposed psychics out there who claim they have knowledge of where missing people are. In that case why aren't they finding them? Are they so busy appearing on television and doing book tours that the very real abuse and rape of kidnap victims simply isn't a priority to them?

So if you don't believe 'psychics' are frauds, you have to accept that they are complicit in evil. Equally, if you DO believe these supposed psychics are frauds, you still have to accept they are complicit in evil.  There's some sort of unspoken belief that these people wouldn't appear on television if they were obviously fraudulent. Uri Geller's fifty years in the spotlight should be enough to disprove this.

It should be abundantly clear by now that fraudulent psychics provide no useful service and in fact do a great deal of harm. Exploiting people at their lowest ebb, giving false hope, and diverting attention and resources from services that could actually be beneficial to those who've suffered bereavement, the kidnapping of a family member, or other unspeakably awful crimes.

Psychics have been known to tell people who have been going through a bad patch (and who hasn't?) that they're 'cursed'. They're treating people down on their luck as suckers but how do we skeptics and hopefully rational thinkers tell someone they're being taken for a sucker without looking like you're calling them a sucker?

That won't change their mind. My friend Tony recently posted a Facebook status update which read:- "Just out of interest. Has anyone ever "won" an argument or more importantly changed someone's beliefs/opinion by saying "you're an idiot, you're a moron" or "you're wrong, I'm right" or even "I'm not listening to you" and walking away. Just curious if this has ever worked for anyone on any subject" which pretty much spelt out loud that calling people suckers (or idiots, or morons) doesn't tend to change their mind. In fact they will more likely come to the conclusion that you're the one who's being an arsehole and will further entrench themselves in the viewpoint you were, ostensibly, seeking to change.

Gentle persuasion, dialogues instead of monologues, and an understanding of why the person you're talking to has chosen that stance in the first place would be more helpful. But many of us don't have the time to do this - and many don't have the time to listen even when we do. 'Fake news' (like 'elite', 'heresy', or 'bubble') has become devalued as a term now that people use it to simply describe anything they disagree with.

It renders it meaningless. Everything, it seems, can be fake news if you want it to be. Climate change, Russian collusion in US elections, allegations of sexual assault and financial impropriety by the British PM. It's not difficult to fact check but many, on all sides of the debate, choose not to if a story fits their own confirmation bias.

A little bit of effort before a share of a story could go a long way. At the very least we need to stop sharing stories that have obviously, and blatantly, been fabricated to serve an agenda. Don't share them for satirical purposes, don't share them for shits and giggles, don't share them because you WANT to believe them, and don't even share them so you can post your total and utter disgust and disagreement with the offending article beneath it.

Hate filled rags like the Daily Mail and the Daily Express (as well as considerably viler (which is saying something) Internet pages) factor in your outrage. They juice it. They write, and post, stories designed specifically to outrage you so much you share them. It's all about likes and shares for them. They don't care if you agree or not. You've done their work for them. In their minds, you're their useful idiot.

An ex-colleague of mine, Phil, had a tendency to share articles from the Mail (which he hilariously called the Daily Fail and the Daily Maul) and Express. Some days he shared so many that it seemed, and he pretty much openly confessed, that the first thing he did on waking up in the morning was look up the websites of periodicals he strongly disagreed with just so he could make himself angry and then waste his life arguing with complete and utter strangers on the Internet about politics.

He'd never done anything specifically to hurt me or anyone else but I defriended him because I was so bored of seeing the Mail and the Express crop up in my timeline. If I want to know what those papers are saying, or spewing, I know how to access them. I felt a bit guilty about defriending Phil as I'd previously only removed, and in one case blocked, people because (a) I had no idea who they were/they were asking me if I'd like to see their nude photos or (b) they were abusive, hateful, and, in the most extreme case, fond of making rape threats.

Phil didn't do any of that shit but he did amplify the voice of those who did so my only option was to remove him. I mean, I could have left Facebook like other friends (Ben, Adam) but the truth is although I don't post as often these days I still 'lurk' an awful lot. I work, and live, on my own. It's a small lifeline. Sadly.

I realise the last few paragraphs have been a massive digression but, firstly, it's my blog so I'll write about what I want and, also, Ben's talk was of a very discursive nature at times so I feel I've been true to the house style. The evening covered some ground that had been covered before and, in that as well as Ben's conversational and genial manner, it was almost like a cosy chat with an old friend.

Ben Radford's style was amicable, informed, educational without being condescending, and it made for a nice evening out. The Q&A touched on sexed up documents, the meat lobby, the anti-vaccination movement, Tom Cruise, the flying spaghetti monster, zealotry, and the plague among various other topics. I've not even been able to find a space to include Ben's digression into the urban myth of people killing pets, or even babies, by trying to warm them up in the microwave but I got the impression Ben could have spoke all night about that, or anything else.

Almost as if he was on holiday. Which, in a way, he was. I wasn't though. I headed up to Chalk Farm, jumped on the tube, and went home. Ben Radford, sadly, did not bring the New Mexico weather with him but he did bring a wealth of knowledge and experience and we were fortunate to experience the generosity of the man in sharing it with us.

Next time you're tempted to spend an evening at home writing abuse to Brexiters and alt-right sympathisers, don't. Go on the London Skeptics in the Pub website instead, have a look at their list of forthcoming events, and get at least one of them in your diary. November will see David Robert Grimes (who I've had the pleasure of seeing speak twice before) with The 'Irrational Ape:why flawed thinking puts us all at Risk, and how Critical Thinking can save the World' and you could do a lot worse things than be there.