I still keep in touch with my old dept. at UCL who specialise in history & philosophy of science, science communication and public understanding, and sociology of scientific knowledge. They might be interested in getting involved in something like this, at the very least I think they’d like the idea of putting on a guest lecture or two. I can do some asking around if you like.

As well as people who are doing (e.g.) hist & phil of sci full time, like I was, they get all sorts of people from other departments doing their courses as optional modules so it’d be a good way to get talking to people from diverse backgrounds. They do quite a lot of stuff on pseudoscience, fringe science and science’s “border policing” mechanisms, and there’s a really interesting course called Outsiders in Science (warning: .doc) which is just as revealing about the occasional hypocrisies of the scientific establishment as it is about the excesses of the lunatic fringe…

Getting off topic here but that might give you some ideas or whatever.

Andrew.

For anyone interested, material on getting NOCN accrediation is here: www.nocn.org.uk/members/prog-accred.html
It looks like you need to contact the local college with a reasonable outline of your planned material, and discuss it with them from that point.

I don’t know whether I could actually be of any *help* getting it organised, though, but I’ll come along to any discussion that’s held.

If you actually study the scientific investigation into hypnosis it’s a really interesting phenomenon. In short people can put themselves into a mental state where what is suggested to them overides what there own senses are telling them. The classic example being suggesting to a hypnotised person that an onion is an apple and they will not only readily eat it but actually experience the taste of apple while doing so.

I have no problem with people mixing this phenomenon with some basic illusions to produce a form of entertainment but am concerned when these people start using their reputation gained in the field of entertainment to sell self help courses. Basically some people misrepresent what hypnosis is then appear to make money on the back of that misrepresentation.

Having never bought any of these courses I don’t know what information they carry or what claims they make for hypnosis. However I imagine that they don’t carry some of the factual based evidence about hypnosis such as it only truly affecting 10% of the population or the effects of hypnosis not lasting beyond the hypnotic period or indeed that there is no real clinical evidence that hypnosis helps with things such as smoking cessation.

Has anyone ever highlighted this?

Anyway food for thought perhaps

Module 1: Repeatable double-blind studies are your friends
Module 2: Why homeopathy “works”, and why it doesn’t work
Module 3: Vitro versus Vivo

…you get the idea. You could get some decent body to certify it and offer it via distance learning with the OCN scheme. I mean, my local college offers everything from advanced cake decorating to yoga via CELTA and maths, I don’t see why they couldn’t offer Introductory Bad Science.

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1905177070?ie=UTF8&tag=bs0b-21

mmmmmmmmmm yummmy, knowledge….. fact….. insight…….

You might want to remove the part of your post asking people to commit click fraud.. I know it seams harmless enough but Amazon takes a dim view of that kind of thing…

I was going to say hello,well done,but every time I saw you you looked deep in conversation.

Many thanks.

By the way,did you see the Southern Water display of water dousing?

Thanks for the excellent talk in Brighton. It was a sellout and many appreciated that you were also under the weather (clearly not enough midnight primrose oil). To talk for an hour go in front of 250 strangers with no notes or slides displays either foolishness bravery or a messianic self-confidence. Interesting that in that hotbed of Alt medicine, crystal massage and general credulity there was such a warm response. My mum (78 and preposterously healthy) also found you ‘quite dishy’.

I have been following the debates, mainly concerning the integrity and necessity of he scientific method in medicine and it is disturbing that the rigour, imagination and sheer effort of evidence-based research is being misrepresented, along with the very language of science by some truly callous forces. The practical idea of using the ASA and legislation is a good one, that we should all heed.

Respect