2021 Conference: It's a Wrap

This weekend was our joint Australian and New Zealand conference, Skepticon 2021. Thank you so much to those of you who joined us, it was an amazing weekend with fascinating talks and I hope you enjoyed it all as much as I did.

Craig will give you his thoughts on our conference next weekend, but for me personally it was great to be able to work closely with the Australian Skeptics and bring together such a diverse group of professionals to speak on topics they were passionate about.

Day one started with Dr Mahmood Hikmet talking about self-driving cars and ethics. In relation to the trolley problem, and many similar quandaries that a self-driving vehicle might find itself in, Mahmood pointed out that often the safest option available is simply to apply the brakes! However, when it comes to more real-world options, things get more complicated.

Later in the morning Dr Siouxsie Wiles talked about how her name became attached to a COVID conspiracy about Bill Gates and a company she started to make science communication videos called Lucy Ferrin. It reminded me of another conspiracy about her I heard this year, on the Counterspin conspiracy show. Damien De Ment claimed that Siouxsie's work in bioluminescence was going to be used in the COVID vaccine so that we would not need a vaccine passport - instead, the authorities would just be able to shine a special light on us, and if we glowed they would know we had been vaccinated.

At the end of the first day, Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz gave a great talk about Ivermectin - detailing why people believed it was useful for treating COVID, how the evidence quickly came to show that it was not efficacious, and how some anonymously run websites like IVM Meta continued to support Ivermectin use even after it became obvious it was a dud.

On day two Dr Marc Wilson walked us through some of the research on what leads certain types of people to reject scientific evidence. I particularly liked an image he shared which illustrates the correlations between different beliefs.

Sherrie D'Souza told us about some of the dangers of cults, and detailed her journey leaving the Jehovah's Witnesses. She played a particularly odious video from the JWs which tells kids why they won't be allowed to celebrate their birthday.

Our conference came to a close with a fantastic talk from Judy Melinek and her husband TJ Mitchell about forensic pathology in the US and New Zealand. Their talk was informative and entertaining, and it was obvious from their talk that Judy is a consummate professional with real passion for her career, and that her husband has a keen interest in her work. They've even collaborated to write a biography, along with two fictional crime novels that don't mangle the science.