Friday 16th October
Find us at The Liner Hotel, Liverpool, and if you can’t make it, we’ll be streaming the event live on twitch.tv/sitp from 11am UK time.
10:45 am
Doors Open
11:00 am
Start
Opening remarks from the organisers
11:05 am
Session 1
As Nolan's latest hit "The Odyssey" makes everyone revisit the somewhat unfortunate, but certainly eventful travels of Odysseus, getting to know some of the actual places that are identified as stops along that journey, is a real treat. But for a skeptic, the natural history behind some of those locations brings the fun to a whole new level. Volcanoes, whirlpools, terrible winds and the occasional dwarf elephant may very well have been the real inspiration for Homer's colourful stories.
Although András has been a skeptic for almost 30 years, he became really active on the international skepticism scene when he joined Susan Gerbic's Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia back in 2013, then he became one of the founders of The European Skeptics Podcast, a show that has been running since 2015. A board member of the European Council of Skeptical Organisations and chair of the Hungarian Skeptic Society, his day job involves a lot of travelling, including to places like Sicily.
Every few months, an "apple test" goes viral as people realize visual imagery isn't universal. But social media hasn't just raised awareness of aphantasia. It’s pathologised it. Online, a neutral cognitive variation is framed as a tragic deficit, opening the door for predatory "cures." From biohacking to costly courses promising to unlock your mind's eye, this talk explores the pseudoscience exploiting FOMO, and why we shouldn't fix what isn't broken.
Rebekkah Healey is a writer, AI trainer, and skeptical advocate. She has lived experience with aphantasia and a keen interest in how social media trends and artificial intelligence shape our understanding of mind, science, and the world around us.
Conspiracy theories don't pop up out of thin air. They reuse familiar stories, which conspiracy influencers then adapt to local fears. QAnon is deeply American, yet somehow it found a home in Germany. A German measles-denial story turns up in COVID denial in New York, while HAARP travels from an earthquake in Haiti to mind-control fears in Minnesota.
This talk looks at how conspiracy narratives cross borders and get reshaped to fit local concerns.Serdar Basegmez is a skeptic, former Istanbulite, and current Londoner. He’s been involved with Yalansavar, a Turkish grassroots skeptical movement, since 2010, doing a bit of everything along the way: blogging, podcasting, hosting meet-ups, and giving talks. These days, he also serves in the projector cables department at Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub and occasionally writes for The Skeptic UK.
The Pendulum of Progress explores the idea that progress moves like a pendulum. We begin life driven by curiosity, questioning everything around us, but as we grow older we often replace exploration with certainty, routine, and rigid ways of thinking. The same pattern appears throughout history. By tracing this pendulum from childhood to civilisation, the talk asks what happens when we stop questioning, and whether the next leap forward depends on rediscovering the curiosity we leave behind.
Sagal Sheikh is an educator, writer and creator of CTRL SHIFT Think, an initiative dedicated to helping people think more critically about the world around them. Drawing on her experience teaching critical thinking in higher education, her work explores how beliefs are formed, how assumptions shape perception, and why curiosity is essential to progress. Her writing and talks draw inspiration from psychology, history, philosophy and cognitive science, making complex ideas accessible and relevant
12:10 pm
Session 2
Robin Hood is a legendary outlaw and one of the most famous characters in English literature. His portrayal has changed over the centuries, from yeoman farmer turned bandit, to displaced nobleman, to sexy talking fox.
In this talk Adam will discuss how depictions of Robin have changed through time and the real and fictional people who may have inspired his tales.
Adam is a PhD student from Nottingham, now living in Glasgow. Coming from Nottingham, they consider themselves an expert in Robin Hood by default.
Can you tell the difference between Fair Trade, Fairly Traded and Fair for Life? This fun, evidence-led talk will help us navigate murky supply chains, misleading labels, and feel-good claims. We’ll explore what the evidence actually tells us, bust a few myths, and leave with some practical tools for asking better questions about how the food we eat gets from the farm to our plate.
Thomas is a labor and human rights specialist with over 15 years of experience in social compliance and corporate standards. Holding an Master's in Labor Relations and BA in History from Cornell, Thomas explores the intersection of human rights and evidence-based accountability. Born in New York and now based in France, he comes from a trade union family and is deeply committed to sharing the voices of the working class.
Community colleges (Volkshochschulen) are key providers of adult education in German-speaking countries, committed to “education for all.” But do their courses meet evidence-based standards? Dr. Stephanie Dreyfürst, community college director and co-founder of “Skeptix,” analyzes about 10% of German community college curricula. Using case studies, interviews, and an undercover course visit, she shows why pseudoscientific and esoteric offerings remain part of the curriculum despite criticism.
Dr. Stephanie Dreyfürst, director of the Community College at Wiesbaden, Germany, and co-founder of the Writing Institute which supports students and post-docs in their writing processes. She is also a founding member of the German Skeptix.
Digitalization of documents and new tools has turned genealogy into a hobby that most anyone can do, provided they are curious and stubborn enough to spend the hours needed. By sharing examples about his ancestry, Pontus will show how you can get a deeper understanding of history by looking into your personal past. It's all about crazy widows, bastards, good-for-nothing drunkards, as well as how you hide German officers from Napoleon's Grand Armée.
Pontus Böckman is a Swedish skeptic and podcaster and a frequent speaker at previous QED SkeptiCamp events. He is a former President of the Swedish Skeptics and the current President of ECSO, the European Council of Skeptical Organisations. You can follow him every week on the ESP, the European Skeptics Podcast.
1:10 pm
Lunch
Time to grab a quick bite.
1:55 pm
Session 3
Whether they're made of gold, silver, cupronickel or zinc, coins are much more than small metal discs that fit in your pocket. Each one has the potential to be a miniature time machine. In this talk, Tom will explore what coins can teach us about history, social change and revolution, before asking an important question: why do so many people have an unquenchable thirst for tat featuring the face of Princess Diana?
Since burning out after completing a PhD in 2010, Tom has dedicated his spare time to more frivolous matters. These include hosting a Simpsons and modern history podcast, helping a group of Canadians win an IgNobel prize, learning too much about flags, and scoring 10/10 on his cash builder on The Chase. A member of the Merseyside Skeptics Society for over 15 years, you will find him in Doctor Duncan's on the 1st Thrusday of the month. Oh, and he's also put Mr Blobby in Doom.
An aimless (but careful) ramble around some very large lasers.
Janet has spent over 40 years in the laser business, building and mending some very large lasers in some quite interesting places.
The ‘fine-tuning’ argument for god looks like a powerful case, and is widely favoured by religious apologists. It nonetheless rests on at least 12 fatal mistakes in reasoning, several of which have been identified by skeptical activists, but the most fundamental of which has gone widely unnoticed: it has not been shown that the universal constants can vary. In this talk I will examine a 2008 episode of Closer to Truth to reveal the cognitive glitch that leads to this assumption of optionality.
Dr Andrew Shail is co-organiser of Newcastle Skeptics in the Pub and author of academic books and articles on cultural history, including the early film industry, modernist literature and medical models of menstruation.
In a quiet Portuguese municipality a new kingdom was born. Zimbabwean Briton Martin Junior Kenny, AKA Água Akbal Pinheiro, with funding from Danish footballer Pione Sisto, bought about 5 ha of land and, in 2019, created the Kingdom of Pineal with a group of about 40 people. In 2022, Pinheiro publicly claimed the autonomy, flag, and currency of their "kingdom". This was the trigger for the cult to finally be known and investigations to ensue, including on the death of a baby. [Trigger Warning]
Diana Barbosa was trained as a biologist but transitioned into science communication in 2010, working as the science communication officer of the Institute of Contemporary History since 2016. She is co-founder and the President of COMCEPT, the Portuguese skeptic community. Co-author of the book "Não se Deixe Enganar" ([Don't be fooled], 2017). Ardent QEDer, first time visitor of Liverpool.
3:00 pm
Session 4
A critical look at education in the UK and where we could learn a few lessons by swallowing our pride and admitting that some other countries do things better.
Caradoc, also known as Chad, has worked in education for the entirety of this century. Unlikely to be working in the next, he has dedicated his time to improving a system he sees as ultimately run by the wrong people with the wrong motives. Brother to the former First Minister of Wales, Caradoc satisfies himself with not ever having had to publicly resign (yet!) and not being constrained by party loyalty, meaning he will tell you straight what he thinks the problems are and what needs to change.
A recent BBC report exposed the black-market sale of the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin in the UK. It is being sold to desperate cancer patients as a miracle cure, alongside a dog wormer. Across the Atlantic five US states have deregulated its sale. In 2021 Jack Lawrence helped expose scientific fraud in ivermectin-Covid research. He has spent the past four years studying the drug in the lab as part of his PhD. In this talk he'll explain what the evidence shows, and why no one wants to hear it.
Jack Lawrence is a cancer researcher pursuing a PhD at City St George's, University of London. As a Master's student, he exposed serious flaws in a high-profile ivermectin/COVID-19 study, leading to its retraction. In 2025 he co-authored Finding Hester, a book detailing how musical theatre fans uncovered the real identity of a key figure in the WWII Operation Mincemeat deception. When not in the lab or chasing historical mysteries, he is most comfortable disappearing down research rabbit holes.
Stick vulture brains up your nose, inhale mercury, and sleep under a uranium blanket to cure all your ailments. Or maybe not. We take a look at fascinating historical cures and also briefly consider whether cranberry juice cures urinary tract infections, running ruins your knees, and swallowed chewing gum really takes seven years to digest.
Heidi likes gruesome pictures of weird medical things and can usually be found covered in cats or attending science fiction conventions. She is the chair of Funcon 2: Better than a thousand angry wasps (www.funcon.lol) which mixes science, science fiction, a dash of skepticism, and a lot of fun together all in one weekend. She also plays ukulele very badly.
Ableism is easy to spot when it manifests in hiring discrimination and lack of ramps, but there are more insidious outcomes lying just below the surface. I'm here to introduce you to the concept of benevolent ableism: what it is, where it comes from, and what its impacts are. As skeptics we must constantly think critically not only about the world around us but also our personal understanding of it - our cultural programming runs deep, and we can't fight it if we don't recognise it.
Cass is a sociologist by training, but he now spends his days as an artist and professional sick person. His wheelchair's name is Matilda, and she is objectively better than walking, so long as you ignore the definition of the word "objective".
4:00 pm
End
Closing Remarks