Posts Tagged Michael Marshall
Lifting The Lid: Ongoing adventures in the world of pseudoscience
Posted by Marsh in Skepticism on February 20, 2014
Since joining the Good Thinking Society, I’ve been extensively touring my Skeptics in the Pub talk on the topic of hands-on skepticism, and the fun that can be had from exploring the pseudoscience around you.
I’d like to do as many talks as possible, so if you’d like me to talk for your Skeptics in the Pub, university group, humanist group or other, let me know and I’ll do my best to accommodate you. To book my talk, visit the Good Thinking Society’s website.
Lifting The Lid: Ongoing adventures in the world of pseudoscience
by Michael Marshall
It’s easy to think of pseudoscience existing in a glass case at a museum – something to be examined and critiqued from a safe distance, but not something to touch and to play with. Using examples taken from his own personal experiences in skepticism, Michael Marshall will show what happens when you begin to crack the surface of the pseudosciences that surround us – revealing the surprising, sometimes-shocking and often-comic adventures that lie beneath.
Michael Marshall is the Vice President of the Merseyside Skeptics Society and Project Director of the Good Thinking Society. He regularly speaks with proponents of pseudoscience for the Be Reasonable podcast. His work with the MSS has seen him organising international homeopathy protests and co-founding the popular QED conference. He has written for the Guardian, The Times and New Statesman.
(Alternative photos – Image 1, Image 2, Image 3)
Requirements: projector, screen, audio playback (this talk involves some short video clips with sound).
Skeptics in the Pub: Michael Marshall
Posted by Marsh in Skeptics in the Pub on September 9, 2011
Bad News: How PR Came to Rule Modern Journalism
by Michael Marshall
When: Thursday, December 15th, 2011 8.00 – 11.00 PM
Where: The Head of Steam, 7 Lime Street, Liverpool
“You can’t believe everything you read in the papers.”
Everyone knows this, but few people realise this truism extends far beyond the celebrity pages and gossip columns, and spills into ‘real’ news. Here, the near-invisible influence of PR companies is often pivotal in deciding what news gets told, and how it gets reported. By taking a brief look at the history of modern journalism, and using real examples taken from recent headlines, Michael Marshall will show why you really, really can’t believe everything you read in the papers.
Michael Marshall is the co-founder and vice-president of the Merseyside Skeptics Society and appears on the “Skeptics with a K” and ‘Be Reasonable’ podcasts. Besides organising the national and international 10:23 Campaign against homeopathy, he writes about the often-unsuspected role of PR in modern media. Michael has written for The Times, The Guardian and The New Statesman, and has lectured as part of the Sheffield Hallam University Journalism degree.
Ben Goldacre once called him ‘a mighty nerd from Liverpool’, and the self-proclaimed psychic Joe Power once called him something very rude and unprintable.
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