Friday 3 July

11am-12noon (BST)

Denis will examine the potentially vexed relationships between expertise, information and the burden of proof. One outcome of these inter-relationships is the emergence of conspiracy theories and their contribution to the wider sense of crisis. The main goals of the presentation are:

• To highlight the importance of information, and the extraction of meaning from that information, and the impacts that those interpretations can have on the ways in which crises can evolve.
• To consider the emergence of disinformation (fake news, alternative facts), conspiracy theories, and the role of evidence and expertise in the decision-making and policy-making processes.
• To highlight the nature of scientific contributions (evidence-based and with test-retest validity) to decision-making.

The presentation will also briefly consider the potential role played by policy elites and the schism that seems to have occurred between those elites and the general population. The webinar will conclude by looking at some of the possible interventions around calling expertise into account and exploring the nature of the evidence base.

Facilitated by

Martin Smith MBE (info), Chairman & Founder, The SASIG

Presented by

Professor Denis Fischbacher-Smith (info), Research Chair in Risk and Resilience, University of Glasgow