The book we’ve voted to read for this event is Ian Deary’s “Intelligence: A Very Short Introduction”. You can buy the book on Amazon.

We’ve created a separate Facebook group for the book club. Once the club is up and running, we’ll create events using that instead. So, if you’d like to keep up to date with goings-on, join the group !

People value their powers of thinking and most of us are interested in why some people seem to drive a highly tuned Rolls Royce brain while others potter along with a merely serviceable Ford Fiesta. This Very Short Introduction describes what psychologists have discovered about how and why people differ in their thinking powers. The book takes readers from no knowledge about the science of human intelligence to a stage where they are able to make judgements for themselves about some of the key questions about human mental ability differences. Each chapter deals with a central issue that is both scientifically lively and of considerable general interest, and is structured around a diagram which is explained in the course of the chapter. The issues discussed include whether there are several different types of intelligence, whether intelligence differences are caused by genes or the environment, the biological basis of intelligence differences, and whether intelligence declines or increases as we grow older.

In the world of sexed-up medicine pharmaceutical companies gloss over research they don’t like and charities often use dubious science and dodgy PR to ‘raise awareness’ of their disease, leaving a legacy of misinformation in their wake. Our obsession with screening swallows up the time of NHS staff and the money of healthy people who pay thousands to private companies for tests they don’t need. Meanwhile, the truly sick are left to wrestle with disjointed services and confusing options.

Explaining the truth behind the screening statistics and investigating the evidence behind the hype, Margaret McCartney, an award-winning writer and doctor, argues that this patient paradox too much testing of well people and not enough care for the sick worsens health inequalities and drains professionalism, harming both those who need treatment and those who don’t.

Margaret McCartney is a GP in Glasgow, and has three children. She started writing for the press after being infuriated by an article in a newspaper which claimed that CT body screening was the way to stay well. Since then she has written for most UK newspapers, as well as the British Medical Journal, other magazines such as Vogue and Prospect, and has had columns in the Guardian and the FT Weekend. She has won prizes from the Medical Journalists’ Association, the Healthwatch award, and from the European School of Oncology.

She has a strong interest in evidence, professionalism, screening and risk. She blogs and tweets. The Patient Paradox is her first book.

The Patient Paradox, Margaret McCartney’s first book, will go on sale on 28 February in paperback, Kindle, and iBook editions.

Andrew McMichael qualified in Medicine in 1968 and obtained a PhD in Immunology at the National Institute for Medical Research. Since 1987 he has studied the T cell response to HIV, with a particular interest in virus escape from T cell recognition. For the last five years he has focussed on HIV vaccines; his group have designed and tested two candidate HIV vaccines in phase I clinical trials.

He is Director of the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine in Oxford University and is Honorary Director of the Medical Research Council Human Immunology Unit. He was knighted in 2008 for services to medical sciences.

So can we now ask some better questions? For whom might prisons work, and to what ends? How different would they need to be from the prisons we have now in order to ‘work’ as we might want?

Richard Sparks is Professor of Criminology at the University of Edinburgh and a Co-Director of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research.
His published works include “Prisons and the Problem of Order” (with W, Hay and A. E. Bottoms, 1996) and “Public Criminology?” (with I. Loader, 2010). In 2010, he was involved in a research team evaluating the role of the arts in Scottish prisons.

The report was published in September 2011 and the changes to blood donation criteria were implemented in November in Scotland, England and Wales. The talk summarises the rationale for the donor deferral, the reasons for reviewing the criteria, the epidemiology of relevant infections, and the evidence for the recommendations.

Dr Kohli was a member of the Blood Donor Selection Steering Group whose recommendations the Scottish, English and Welsh governments recently implemented. However, this talk was given in an entirely personal capacity.

Chemistry Tricks that fool the nation. Whether it’s in adverts on the TV or on the back of boxes of detergent, chemists are telling “Alkynes” of little white lies. Craig Rossborough gives a quick rundown of his favorite tricks and gives everyone tips on what to keep an “ion”, while looking at all things chemistry.

But what does the best scientific evidence say?

Stuart Ritchie, an almost completely blind and hairy-palmed PhD Psychology student at The University of Edinburgh, takes a skeptical look at the arguments for and against porn.