Background articles: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2009/03/bad-science-by-ben-goldacre_25.html
And: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/09/skeptic-in-pub-15908.html
On Tuesday night I went to my first Oxford Skeptics in the Pub (http://oxford.skepticsinthepub.org/). Itr's run by a bloke called Andy. The speaker was the "Skeptical activist" Simon Perry, see: http://adventuresinnonsense.blogspot.com/ . He spends his time reporting psychics and alternative medicine practitioners to Trading Standards.
I went undercover this time (The only time I'll be able to do this because Droike, a long-term HPANWO Forum member, is about to shop me to them ), and luckily nobody was there from the London ones who'd recognize me. I asked a question at the Q&A session. I firstly "congratulated" Simon for infiltrating psychic surgeries and Spiritualist Churches, but said: "Have you ever thought about infiltrating the Arthur Findlay College or Canol Hafarn y Coed, where these psychics train?" He replied: "I might well do, and I'll sue them if I'm not psychic by the end of the course." Sadly he missed the sarcasm and irony of my question. He was supposed to say "Why?" then I'd have said: "Because I want to know when they pull students to one side and say: 'Look, this is all a load of crap really, but this is what you have to do.'; and then lead them to the secret passageway from the meditation room to the secret classroom where they teach you cold reading!"
And: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/09/skeptic-in-pub-15908.html
On Tuesday night I went to my first Oxford Skeptics in the Pub (http://oxford.skepticsinthepub.org/). Itr's run by a bloke called Andy. The speaker was the "Skeptical activist" Simon Perry, see: http://adventuresinnonsense.blogspot.com/ . He spends his time reporting psychics and alternative medicine practitioners to Trading Standards.
I went undercover this time (The only time I'll be able to do this because Droike, a long-term HPANWO Forum member, is about to shop me to them ), and luckily nobody was there from the London ones who'd recognize me. I asked a question at the Q&A session. I firstly "congratulated" Simon for infiltrating psychic surgeries and Spiritualist Churches, but said: "Have you ever thought about infiltrating the Arthur Findlay College or Canol Hafarn y Coed, where these psychics train?" He replied: "I might well do, and I'll sue them if I'm not psychic by the end of the course." Sadly he missed the sarcasm and irony of my question. He was supposed to say "Why?" then I'd have said: "Because I want to know when they pull students to one side and say: 'Look, this is all a load of crap really, but this is what you have to do.'; and then lead them to the secret passageway from the meditation room to the secret classroom where they teach you cold reading!"
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