The next European Skeptics Congress will be held on 16–18 October 2026 in Liverpool!
The congress will be organised in collaboration with the Merseyside Skeptics and will build on the successful QED format. See escliverpool.org for general information and the latest updates. Early bird tickets are now available! Get yours today!
News from Europe and beyond
News headlines from Europe about skeptical activism, mythbusting, science related policy decisions, consumer protection, frauds, health scams, alternative medicine, bad scientific practices, pseudoscience. and more!
An amusing story about a monthly wailing noise that has been troubling the people of Swansea in Wales for the last two years (Google ‘Swansea siren’). Until recently the source of the sound was a mystery but much importance was attached to the fact that the city was heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe during the Second World War. Maybe the noise was the ghost of the warning sirens that sounded 75 years ago (http://tinyurl.com/jv7b26r)? Officials spent more than a year investigating the sounds, which start before dawn and go on into the early morning. Now the source has been traced to Vale Europe nickel refinery in nearby Clydach which is required to test its emergency evacuation procedure once a month. But will this explanation satisfy everybody?
The Swedish Skeptics Association (aka Vetenskap och Folkbildning, or VoF) has awarded science editor Maria Gunther and medical journalist Amina Manzoor of the science editorial at DN (Dagens Nyheter) with the prize Enlightener of the Year 2016 (DN is the largest morning paper in Sweden). The Swedish Skeptics Association hereby wants to emphasize the importance of leading media understanding the value of maintaining a permanent and accurate reporting of current scientific research.
Says Dan Katz, Press Officer at VoF: “It is imperative that the established media helps the public to navigate the arbitrary flow of information which bombards us all on-line. In this turmoil the science editorial of DN are shining like beacon of facts in the dark.”
The award for Obscurantist of the Year 2016 goes to former head of Karolinska Institutet (KI), Anders Hamsten, together with others in the management of KI who helped to cover up the fraudulent research performed by surgeon Paolo Macchiarini.
Says Peter Olausson, acting president of VoF: “It is particularly severe that the management totally disregarded the investigation that pointed out what had happened. It is a mockery of the patients concerned and of all serious science researchers who cannot, and will not, compromise ethics and good science.”
Sense about Science is maintaining reliable information about detoxication claims including a short leaflet and a longer Detox Dossier. Now BBC reports about a new case report from British Medical Journal Case Reports about a woman suffering of serious health problems after performing various detox procedures. (more…)
Pepijn van Erp at the 2014 Skepsis Congres. (Vera de Kok CC-BY-SA 4.0)
In recent years, mathematician Pepijn van Erp has risen to prominence within the skeptical movement in the Netherlands. He started blogging about flawed application of statistics in both scientific and pseudoscientific articles, and got involved with Stichting Skepsis as a board member in 2012.
Nowadays he regularly writes articles on various dubious claims in an investigative journalistic style on skeptical blog KloptDatWel.nl (mostly in Dutch) and his own website (mostly in English). Van Erp is occasionally invited to give his expert opinion on radio shows about conspiracy theories, fake news and other topics that skeptics are concerned about. To him, skepticism is ‘interesting and funny’, but also a ‘civic duty’ to protect people from harm.
This was the first talk in a series of the same name that will have monthly editions till June 2017. Experts from the fields of Philosophy, physics, anthropology, medicine, chemistry, biology and sociology will all contribute to these reflections on secularism and freedom of conscience.
If you are going to be visiting Granada in the upcoming months why not check out a session, all of which will take place at 19in the University’s scientific documentation centre.
Author Franca Treur (atheist) and presenter Tijs van den Brink (Protestant) discuss religion in TV series “Adieu God?” (2013)
For the first time in Dutch history, the official number of religious and irreligious people is equal, Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reports. The percentage of religiously affiliated citizens above age 18 dropped from 55% in 2010 to 50% last year, a turning point in the ongoing process of secularisation. The current figures are:
Roman Catholicism: 24%
Protestantism (various denominations): 15%
Islam: 5%
Other (incl. Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism): 5%
Unaffiliated: 50%
There are large geographical differences, with the more urbanised West (North and South Holland) being the most secular, the southern provinces of North Brabant and Limburg being the most (nominally) Catholic.
Church service in Doornspijk, the Bible Belt. (Rubenf CC-BY-SA 3.0)
Only 1 in 6 people still regularly attend religious services though. In the conservative Protestant Bible Belt, running across the country from the southwest to the northeast, this figure is higher, sometimes over half, and in the case of Urk 94%.
The actual percentage of believers is much lower than 50%, however. A lot of people still registered as members of a church are actually not religious (anymore), but for various reasons have not officially renounced their membership (yet) – a phenomenon known as ‘belonging without believing’. An earlier 2016 survey by Bernts & Berghuijs showed that people’s actual religious convictions were as follows:
Roman Catholicism: 11.7%
Protestant Church in the Netherlands: 8.6%
Other Christian denominations: 4.2%
Islam: 5.8%
Hinduism and Buddhism: 2.0%
Unaffiliated: 67.8%
This shows a big disconnect between membership and actual adherence. Especially the Catholic Church often claims that a quarter of the Dutch population is Catholic, pointing to the official stats, but when questioned, fewer than half that number associate themselves with the Roman faith.
2009 Dutch atheist billboard: ‘There’s probably no god. Dare to think for yourself and enjoy this life!’
According to Bernts & Berghuijs, their attitudes regarding the existence of (a) god(s) were:
Atheism: 24% (I don’t believe in gods)
Agnosticism: 34% (I don’t know if there are gods or not)
Ietsism: 28% (I don’t believe in gods, but there must be something higher/supernatural/more than we can observe)
Theism: 14% (I believe there is a God / are gods)
A December 2014 survey showed a similar reversal in public opinion, when for the first time in the Netherlands’ history, more than half of people (63%) thought that religion does more harm than good.
A National Health Service board in Glasgow has decided to remove seven inpatient beds at the Centre for Integrative Care at Gartnavel Hospital. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde voted to end funding the beds at a meeting on 20.12.16 in order to save money; services will continue to be provided on an outpatient basis. The NHS Centre for Integrative Care is the only such service in Scotland and offers a range of alternative therapies for people with long-term conditions such as chronic pain, low energy, low mood and anxiety. It previously operated as the Homeopathic Hospital.
Zavech Research had recently conducted a poll on behalf of major Hungarian portal Index on what people believe about the efficacy and role of “official” and alternative medical practices and institutions. The results are disappointing as it can be seen from the graphs attached.
Swiss skeptics published their final discussion paper for 2016. It’s about consumer behavior and cognitive biases. The abstract says:
As consumers, we are rational in principle, but all too often irrational in practice: A number of so-called cognitive biases impact our rational decision-making. Our tendency for irrational decision-making is compounded by marketing, which is little more than the art of exploiting cognitive biases. Cognitive biases affect consumer behavior on two dimensions, preference genesis and preference order.
Prevalent though they are, cognitive biases in consumer behavior are not inevitable. There are two general strategies for reducing the impact of cognitive biases: Debiasing and self-nudging.
Sense About Science has now prepared a short video (see link) of extracts from their meeting ‘Evidence Matters’ on Nov 1st 2016 held at the UK Parliament. Over 100 people from all walks of life attended to make parliamentarians, ministers and officials more aware that evidence matters to the public. Sense About Science had put out a call for stories illustrating the importance of evidence, and presented them in booklet (http://tinyurl.com/jtrmyx5) that was handed out at the event. Some of the vignettes included in the booklet were presented by their authors – fifteen members of the public who included a teacher, a cycling campaigner, a housing officer, a football supporter, and the mother of a child with a rare heart condition. It would be wonderful if similar meetings could be held in parliaments across Europe.
News headlines from Europe about skeptical activism, mythbusting, science related policy decisions, consumer protection, frauds, health scams, alternative medicine, bad scientific practices, pseudoscience. and more!
