Skeptics in the Pub: Rob Lyons March 16, 2006

Rob Lyons is a journalist/website producer, mainly for the spiked website.

However, an increasingly important part of what he does is looking at science and health stories, particularly unwarranted panics. This can be seen in his main spiked entries of "Don't Panic", which looks at these scare stories and aims to bring a sense of much needed perspective. His longer articles can be found on his blog, Precautionary Tales.

Talk: What's the point of skepticism today?
Skepticism is a necessary but not sufficient outlook for progress. Placing rational debate back at the centre of society is crucial if we are to make sense of the world, but it could collapse into pedantry without a sense of purpose. I think that purpose must be to re-establish faith in humanity, against doomsayers who say that humans are feeble to cope with change, and those who go further and believe that humans are actually the biggest problem the world faces.