Welcome to Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub!
⚠️ Important Update ⚠️
We now meet at The Plume of Feathers on the second Monday of each month!
Greenwich SitP is currently the only branch of SitP in South East London. The idea is simple: Once a month, we all meet up in a pub to hear a guest speaker and enjoy a drink or three.
Our regular meet-up spot has changed as of October 2025. We’ll now be gathering at The Plume of Feathers (19 Park Vista, SE10 9LZ) on the second Monday of each month, unless otherwise noted. Talks will begin at 7:30pm. Although the talks are free and open to all, we would appreciate a small contribution towards covering speakers’ expenses (suggested donation: £4).
Stay updated on our latest events right here on our website, or connect with us on:
- Meetup: Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub
- Twitter: @greenwichsitp
- Bluesky: @greenwichskeptics.org
- Mastodon: @GreenwichSITP@mastodon.world
- Facebook: Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub
We look forward to seeing you at one of our informal gatherings soon!
Our Next Talk
How They Hide the Truth from You
Meirion Jones
Investigative journalist
13 October 2025 Monday 19:30
The Plume of Feathers
19 Park Vista, Greenwich, SE10 9LZ
Twenty years ago the Freedom of Information Act was just coming into effect. It was going to be a new dawn of open government. Hoorah! For a brief window Whitehall’s deepest secrets were on view – some of them revealed by Meirion – and then Tony Blair realised that the last thing he needed was the cat out of the bag.
Find out how the Cabinet Office has managed to run a Clearing House – AKA Blocking House – concealing national and local government corruption and wrongdoing ever since. It is at its worst under Rishi Sunak but could we persuade a new government to let the sunlight in?
Meirion is best known for investigations into Bogus Bomb Detectors, Jimmy Savile, Vulture Funds and the Fake Sheikh. His stories have led to changes in the law and bad people going to jail.
Jeremy Paxman accused Meirion of exhibiting that “obsessional, slightly nutty commitment that marks out all successful investigative reporters”.
N.B. This talk was earlier listed for a different day
October 2025 (Bonus Talk)
Superfood or Supertoxic – How Debunking Food Myths Can Teach People About Scientific Skepticism
Dr Christopher Labos
Cardiologist
20 October 2025 Monday 19:30
The Plume of Feathers
19 Park Vista, Greenwich, SE10 9LZ
In his talk based on Does Coffee Cause Cancer?, Dr. Christopher Labos tackles popular food myths with science and humor. Using a fictional narrative to frame real evidence, he explores how common beliefs—like coffee causing cancer—often stem from flawed studies or media hype.
The coffee myth, for example, originated from a 1981 study with selection bias. Later research disproved the link, yet the fear lingered, even leading to a temporary cancer warning label in California. Labos uses this case to teach key concepts like bias, p-hacking, and misleading statistics.
He also addresses other myths, including claims about vitamin C, red wine, breakfast, and chocolate. Rather than fear food, Labos encourages audiences to question health headlines and understand how science evolves.
With clarity and wit, he empowers people to separate fact from fiction—and make smarter choices without falling for nutrition myths or wellness trends.
Dr. Christopher Labos is a cardiologist, a course lecturer in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health at McGill University and an affiliate member of the Department of Global and Public Health. He is a columnist with the Montreal Gazette and Medscape, featured on the Sunday Morning House Call on CJAD radio, and has a regular TV segment with CTV Montreal and CBC Morning Live. He blogs and produces a video series called “On Second Thought” for Medscape. He is an associate with the McGill Office of Science and Society and hosts the award-winning podcast “The Body of Evidence.” He is the author of “Does Coffee Cause Cancer?” a story about food epidemiology and why food headlines are usually wrong. He realizes that half of his research findings will be disproved in five years: he just doesn’t know which half. Occasionally, he finds time to practice as a cardiologist so he can buy groceries. To date no one has offered him his own primetime TV show.
N.B. Bonus October Talk is on a different day from our regular schedule.
November 2025
The quacks and charlatans of medicine
Dr Jenny Lange
Neuroscientist
10 November 2025 Monday 19:30
The Plume of Feathers
19 Park Vista, Greenwich, SE10 9LZ
Scientific research in medicine has led to many groundbreaking discoveries, from the development of vaccines to the treatment of many previously fatal diseases. Today our chances of surviving serious illness are better than ever, thanks to significant advances in medical knowledge. Yet history is littered with sham doctors, charlatans and quacks peddling bogus medicines and preying on those people desperate for a cure. In the age of social media and in the wake of COVID-19, the distrust in scientific experts has resulted in a new wave of fake medicines and false information that is spread at a rapid pace.
In this talk, Dr Jenny Lange delves into the history of grifters who capitalised on a lack of medical knowledge, selling fraudulent medicines that at best had no effect and at worst resulted in the death of their victims. From John R. Brinkley, the bizarre ‘goat-gland doctor’, to those who used radium therapy as a cure for everything from diabetes to impotence, to more recent fake medicines such as those promoted by the ‘Church of Bleach’, this talk will examine how easy it is to fall prey to medical quacks even today.
Dr Jenny Lange is a neuroscientist who specialises in uncovering the mechanisms of rare neurological disorders. Initially en route to becoming a psychologist, Jenny became intrigued by the field of psychopharmacology and completed a PhD in Neuroscience at King’s College London. She’s currently working as a postdoctoral research fellow at the UK Dementia Research Institute, University College London, as well as writing for PET Bionews.
N.B. This talk was earlier listed for a different day
December 2025
The Rendlesham Forest UFO Case – Deconstructing a myth
Ian Ridpath
Writer
8 December 2025 Monday 19:30
The Plume of Feathers
19 Park Vista, Greenwich, SE10 9LZ
The Rendlesham Forest UFO incident of Christmas 1980 ranks as one of the top ten UFO cases in the world as voted by UFO believers and is often described as the ‘British Roswell’. Evidence for a series of sightings spread over two nights includes eye-witness statements from security guards at the US Air Force base near Woodbridge in Suffolk, a memo from a high-ranking USAF officer to the UK’s Ministry of Defence, and a real-time tape recording of events as they unfolded. This talk looks at the main points of the case and explains how the witnesses were fooled by a series of natural and man-made objects. The Rendlesham case is an instructive demonstration that UFO sightings can never be taken at facevalue no matter how reliable the witnesses may seem.
Ian Ridpath is an internationally renowned writer on astronomy and space and a well-known UFO skeptic. He was the first skeptic to investigate and explain the Rendlesham Forest UFO case after it hit the headlines in 1983. His investigations have grown into a major website which can be accessed here
http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/rendlesham.html
This talk will summarize his investigations of the case.
N.B. This talk was earlier listed for a different day