Name: Truth or Trickery?
Start: 2025-05-20T19:30:00
End: 2025-05-20T21:00:00
Location: Panton Arms

Discerning the scientific 'truth' from tall tales, is often tricky at best or near impossible at worst. Join us for an evening of discussion of all things pseudoscience, alternative facts, and downright fiction!

Let’s not follow “the” science

Professor Stephen John (Hatton Lecturer in the Philosophy of Public Health)

Following the science sounds like a good idea. However, scientists often disagree. When that happens, what counts as “the” science? Reflecting on some controversial cases from the Covid-19 pandemic, I suggest there’s no such thing. The best that scientists can give us is a tentative educated guess about part of the picture, rather than the whole truth. Does that mean that we shouldn’t follow some science? No. It just means that we should be a lot clearer that science is, at best, a part of the political mix, rather than a magic solution to all of our problems.

Let's talk about facts; an AI perspective

Professor Andreas Vlachos (Professor of Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning)

In this talk, I would like to introduce you to research on fact-checking and on the spread of information, good and bad, and how AI can be used to encourage facts-based discourse among humans and allow us to make the best out of our disagreements.

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