Hazards, Risks and Science Communication feat. Iida Ruishalme

"What man desires is not knowledge but certainty." Winston
Churchill In this episode Iida Ruishalme, the brains behind
"thoughtscapism" discusses science and risk communication. We
explore the inner workings of human thought and the cognitive
biases that make us vulnerable to junk science and its prophets.
We identify some of the red flags that should cue us to move from
intuitive thinking to analytical thinking and we look at the real
harm of fearmongering around vaccines, biotech and nuclear
energy.   


In the developed world we have been liberated from the major
hazards and risks that have plagued humanity and shortened
lifespans through public health measures like vaccination, the
regulation of pollution and abundant energy which has enabled a
high quality of life.   


However notions of purity and anxieties around contamination have
led to dramatically inflating the sense of danger from trivial or
imagined hazards and the concurrent rise of anti-vaccination,
anti-biotech and anti-nuclear activism that threatens some of the
fundamental advances of the 20th century.   


Iida Ruishalme is a biologist specialised in biomedical research,
an environmentalist, a writer and a science communicator. She is
also a mother who takes the future of her children very
seriously. She has become well known and respected for her blog
Thoughtscapism.com