Talks

Whether you're a seasoned skeptic or just curious, our talks are not to be missed.

Each month we host an expert in their field who we think has a topic or story worth hearing about.

If you have any suggestions for future speakers, or particular topics that might be of interest, please email us (contact@merseysideskeptics.org.uk) or speak to one of our organisers at one of our talks or social events.

All our events are free to attend, however we do ask for donations after the talk. There is no obligation to donate, but we are a non-profit organisation, run exclusively by volunteers - donations are how we can continue to fund these talks and all our other events.

Whether you're a seasoned skeptic or just curious, our talks are not to be missed.

Each month we host an expert in their field who we think has a topic or story worth hearing about.

If you have any suggestions for future speakers, or particular topics that might be of interest, please email us (contact@merseysideskeptics.org.uk) or speak to one of our organisers at one of our talks or social events.

All our events are free to attend, however we do ask for donations after the talk. There is no obligation to donate, but we are a non-profit organisation, run exclusively by volunteers - donations are how we can continue to fund these talks and all our other events.

Misinformation is one of the biggest challenges we face today, it shapes what we believe, how we vote, and even how we see the world. So, helping young people learn to spot it is more important than ever.

But most educational programmes about misinformation are designed for young people, not with them. That’s where Project Real comes in. We work with young people to co-create engaging, research-based activities that build their skills in spotting misinformation through lesson plans, comics, and even games.

In this talk, Yvonne Skipper will share some of the key interventions we’ve developed together with Education Scotland, Police Scotland, and social media influencers. She will also talk about what we can learn from working side-by-side with young people – and how involving them directly can make a real difference in helping them (and us!) stay smart, safe, and resilient in an increasingly complex online world.

From best-selling books to viral TikToks and food documentaries, ultra-processed foods (UPFs) have become public enemy number one in the world of nutritional ‘wellness’. But is the panic justified – or are we being fed a different kind of harmful message? In this talk, registered dietitian Maeve Hanan will break down what UPFs actually are, the roots of UPF panic and what the evidence really says about them. We will also explore how the cultural obsession with purity and perfection in eating can do more harm than good, all too often spiralling into food anxiety and disordered eating. This talk challenges black-and-white thinking around food, encourages a more balanced perspective, and asks: what if our fear of food is more dangerous than the food itself?

In 2011, Professor Daryl Bem of Cornell University published a controversial paper in a prestigious mainstream psychology journal claiming to show that precognition (the alleged ability to sense future events psychically) was real. His results, based upon nine experiments involving over 1,000 participants, were reported far and wide by the science media. Many parapsychologists viewed this paper as long-awaited confirmation of the reality of psi but predictably sceptics criticized the studies on both methodological and statistical grounds.

To his credit, Bem stated that he wanted others to replicate his findings and even offered to make copies of the software he had used to run the experiments freely available to anyone who wanted to try. Richard Wiseman, Stuart Ritchie, and Chris French took him up on his kind offer and we each carried out an attempted replication of Bem’s Experiment 9, the one with the largest effect size. Unsurprisingly, none of the three studies replicated Bem’s results.

When we submitted our report to the same journal that had published Bem’s paper, it was rejected without even being sent out for peer review. Two other high impact science journals did the same thing, revealing a worrying bias in science publishing at that time. Eventually the paper was published in the open access journal PLOSOne (and has since been viewed well over 50,000 times). The controversy generated by Bem’s results and attempted replications fed into the so-called replication crisis in psychology which ultimately led to improvements within the discipline and beyond.

Whether you're a seasoned skeptic or just curious, our talks are not to be missed.

Each month we host an expert in their field who we think has a topic or story worth hearing about.

If you have any suggestions for future speakers, or particular topics that might be of interest, please email us (contact@merseysideskeptics.org.uk) or speak to one of our organisers at one of our talks or social events.

All our events are free to attend, however we do ask for donations after the talk. There is no obligation to donate, but we are a non-profit organisation, run exclusively by volunteers - donations are how we can continue to fund these talks and all our other events.

Whether you're a seasoned skeptic or just curious, our talks are not to be missed.

Each month we host an expert in their field who we think has a topic or story worth hearing about.

If you have any suggestions for future speakers, or particular topics that might be of interest, please email us (contact@merseysideskeptics.org.uk) or speak to one of our organisers at one of our talks or social events.

All our events are free to attend, however we do ask for donations after the talk. There is no obligation to donate, but we are a non-profit organisation, run exclusively by volunteers - donations are how we can continue to fund these talks and all our other events.

In this talk, Dr. Ondrak will discuss how horror fiction traditions are useful in understanding contemporary conspiracy culture - from false documents and found footage, to creepypasta and QAnon. By looking at the history of horror fiction, we can demonstrate how social media platforms shape meaning, blur the boundaries of fact and fiction, and create a shared environment ripe for conspiracy belief.

The wellness industry is worth an estimated $4.5 trillion dollars, stretching out into the worlds of fitness, health, beauty, sleep, stress and nutrition. Promises of self-improvement permeate every element of our lives, with all manner of tips, tricks and products targeted at optimising our homes, work lives, health, and diet often with the promise of empowerment and fulfilment. But what does wellness actually mean? In this talk Dr Alice Howarth will talk about the complex intersection between women’s empowerment and the wellness industry. She will also shine a spotlight on the pervasive influence of medical bias, a deep-seated issue that disproportionately affects women's health and wellness choices. Discover how stereotypes and systemic imbalances and medical biases shape the wellness landscape, often driving women towards harmful trends and practices

Housing has become a crunch point in politics: a key issue on the doorsteps and at ballot boxes, a key reason for communities being ripped apart and a key site of tension in ever polarising debates. Whilst the housing crisis is often framed as inherently complex, there are very simple - some cost-free - solutions which the government could adopt that would change the face of the housing crisis overnight, improving millions of people's lives and achieving their main goal of boosting the economy. Yet, these common-sense policies are continually lambasted as 'radical' and/or framed as folk-devils to be buried out of sight and mind. In this talk Abi will explore why very mainstream solutions to the housing crisis are continually dismissed and explore a very possible alternative future in which houses are homes, not vehicles for profit.

Jack the Ripper is one of the most well-known serial killers in history, with stories of his gruesome exploits permeating popular culture to an unprecedented degree. Despite almost 150 years having passed since the appalling Whitechapel murders, we are still none the wiser about who he was, what drove his terrible crimes, or why they suddenly stopped. But could that be about to change? At the start of 2025, several news outlets reported that the identity of Jack the Ripper had been finally confirmed, using astonishing DNA evidence. But is it all really as it appears? Should we just learn to let Jack the Ripper go?

The focus of this talk will be around some of the main tools and techniques used by BBC Verify to establish the veracity of an event. Using a few examples from warzones and political campaigns, the talk will demonstrate some of the main ways that content has been challenged or confirmed, and touch upon some of the challenges posed by - and approaches to dealing with - generative AI.