51³Ô¹ÏÍø

The 4th Annual CDT Festival of Science took place on Thursday 23rd April 2015.

The 4^th annual CDT festival of science took place on Thursday 23^rd of April.  The topic for the day was ‘Criticism & Science’, a theme full of potential polemic, attracting six brilliant speakers who shared either their personal experiences with criticism or talked about issues concerning the public at large.

The day kicked off with an explosive talk on the facts and fiction of nuclear power safety by Prof. Geraldine Thomas. Geraldine elucidated the facts behind radiation induced cancer rates and gave us some food for thought about the harms of overreacting to the perceived threat of contamination from nuclear energy accidents fed by the media. It looked like the next talk was going to put our friends in the media in the spotlight again by exposing their poor grasp of statistics and the quality of their science reporting, however, Prof. David Spiegelhalter instead chose to focus on the responsibility of scientists and journal press officers to responsibly present their research to the media. Of course, the talk was still chockfull of some truly preposterous example of bad statistics, which left the crowd in raucous laughter. After lunch, Dr. Chris Scott shone a bright light on the problems publishing cross-disciplinary research through presenting his efforts to publish a paper about the effects of solar sunspots on the rate of lightning strikes on Earth. A quick romp through some fascinating physics, atmospheric science and meteorology raised the issue of refereeing a paper where there are very few experts that can claim to have mastery of all the required sub-fields of science. This talk linked in very nicely with Prof. Marianne Talbot’s talk about the benefits and drawbacks of peer review. The talk quickly turned into a lively discussion with Marianne drawing on the audience to dissect the peer review system before seeking methods to improve it. The next talk was a little more left field, as Alice Bell described the history of a radical group of scientists from the 70s who published a magazine titled ‘Science for the people’. We learned about their attempts to create a fairer, safer and more equal environment both in science and in society as a whole. The final talk of the evening came from Dr. Simon Singh who defended the right to criticise and expose pseudoscience without the fear of repercussion in the form of threats and libel lawsuits.

The talks were very popular as proven through the barrage of questions from the audience after each presentation. Luckily, there was a panel discussion just before dinner where Geraldine, Chris and Marianne were joined by blogger Joe Tennant to. As the day drew to a close and discussions became fuelled by food and drinks, there was one more surprise in store as the UCell team demonstrated their fuel cell technology, whilst discussing the controversies surrounding the fuel cell economy.

Finally, throughout the day, the festival showcased some amazing scientific photography in the ‘Art of Spectacular Science’ photo contest. As judged by CDT directors, Michelle Tonutti took home first place to earn a prize of £250.

The festival has been an unquestionable success and it went far to highlight the commitment of the 11 CDTs at 51³Ô¹ÏÍø to educating future generations of well-rounded young scientists.