RI: Covid-19: science communication & public trust

Basingstoke IVC Science Cafe invite you to this free Royal Institution talk titled "Covid-19: science communication & public trust"

ADVANCE BOOKING IS REQUIRED FOR THIS TALK.

Please register for the event via this link: 

https://www.rigb.org/whats-on/events-2021/june/public-covid-19-science-communication

We will have the replay of the video available for 72 hours after the event for those of you that can’t make the date. It will also be uploaded to YouTube in the future.

SUMMARY

The Covid-19 pandemic bought science to the forefront of news and public perception. As the crisis moves into the next phase with new variants of concern spreading and a very uneven  global rollout of vaccines, these issues take on a new urgency.

Join Philip Ball, Christina Pagel, Julia Pearce, Anjana Ahuja and Susan Michie as they explore how public trust in government, healthcare authorities and scientists has fared and how well the science of the pandemic was presented by the media, politicians, and scientists themselves.

In this talk, this panel of experts will discuss the unprecedented and politically charged way in which new information and science has unfolded in front of the public in real time with all its uncertainties, controversies and provisional nature.

SPEAKER:

Christina Pagel is professor of operational research at University College London. She has a background in both mathematics and physics, with an undergraduate degree in maths and a PhD in space physics. After three years as a post-doctoral physicist in Boston, she decided to make the transition into operational research applied to health care and joined the UCL Clinical Operational Research Unit (CORU) in late 2005.

Julia Pearce is Senior Lecturer in Social Psychology and Security Studies in the Department of War Studies. Her research interests include risk perception, risk and crisis communication, social identity, health security and terrorism. Specifically, she is interested in the impact of perceived moral, cultural and health threats on behaviour.

Anjana Ahuja is a freelance science writer and commentator with 22 years’ experience of working for the UK national media. She is a contributing Writer on science for the Financial Times, and also write features and comment for such publications as the Daily Telegraph, Prospect, Radio Times and New Scientist.

Susan Michie is Professor of Health Psychology and Director of the Centre for Behaviour Change at University College London. She is co-Director of NIHR’s Behavioural Science Policy Research Unit, leads UCL’s membership of NIHR’s School of Public Health Research and is an NIHR Senior Investigator.

Philip Ball is a freelance science writer. He worked previously at Nature for over 20 years, first as an editor for physical sciences (for which his brief extended from biochemistry to quantum physics and materials science) and then as a Consultant Editor. His writings on science for the popular press have covered topical issues ranging from cosmology to the future of molecular biology.