About

Our Central Beliefs

1. Science is an essential part of modern society. It should be strongly defended, especially in the face of growing anti-scientific sentiment.
   
2. Students are in a privileged position. Many will go on to be scientists, health professionals, lawyers, teachers and politicians of the future. It is our duty to use this position to further scientific thinking and combat pseudoscience.
   
3. Greater appreciation of science in society requires respectful and open spaces for everyone to learn about the scientific topics that affect them most. Furthermore, to effectively counter pseudoscience, an understanding of the phenomenon is crucial.

Our Ideas & Interests

We organise speaker and panel events, workshops for our members, protests and counter-protests, as well as opportunities for students and academics across different disciplines to discuss a range of relevant issues. Dissemination of educational content through this website and our social media channels is also a large part of what we aim to do – raising awareness, fostering open discussion and promoting critical thinking among students as a means to inoculate themselves and others against misinformation.

We are interested in anything and everything to do with misinformation and misconceptions in science, their causes and effects. Examples include:

• how different people process the gap between observable science and what they understand as truth
• the conditions in which misinformation originate and the strategies through which they spread
• the psychology and politics of pseudoscience, fear and skepticism
• how science can be done justice in its education and its communication
• the discourse surrounding hot issues: vaccine hesitancy, resistance to public health measures, climate change denial, flat earth conspiracies, “racial science” and more
• the consequences of misinformation to one’s health, relationships and the wider society

Being the first student-run initiative of this kind, we are always open to collaborations and new ideas.

We want to make good use of our access to expertise at a high level to facilitate multidisciplinary exchange within the sciences and the arts and help bridge the gaps between researchers, educators, policy-makers and activists.

We want to create events and resources of value for our community.

And it is our hope that together, we can prevent the rise of noxious ideologies from “anti-vax” to “flat Earth” and from hoaxes to conspiracies, and help further the spread of rational, logical and scientific thought as a path to a brighter collective future.

The Team

Our team consists of undergraduate and postgraduate students pursuing degrees across Environmental, Technological and Public Health Policy, Medicine, Engineering, as well as the Biological, Psychological, Chemical and Material Sciences.

The initiative was found and led by the President, with the support of the Vice Presidents and the Treasurer. It owes its current valuable work to the Speakers’ Officer, the Events & Networking Officer, the Publicity & Social Media Officers, the Blog Editor and the Computer Officer. Our dedicated Climate Change and Public Health Awareness Officers advise and assist the committee, bringing expertise and on the ground experience from the Red Cross and the WHO.

If you would like to join our cause, learn more at “How Can I Help?“. Or, simply get in touch with us below.