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The Ockham Awards 2022 at QED: recognising the best in skepticism, and the worst in pseudoscience

Posted by QED on 26 August 2022, 09:23
Examples of three Ockham awards, including a Skeptical Activism award (a mounted piece of glass with the image of a razor blade and the words Ockham etched onto it, alongside the words Skeptical Activism) and a Rusty Razot award (a rusting straight razor mounted in a perspex stand with the words rusty razor etched on it)

Since QED 2012, as part of our Saturday night’s entertainment, The Skeptic magazine has given out the Ockham Awards - the annual awards celebrating the best of UK skepticism, and highlighting the most troublesome or prominent pseudoscientists.

Since 2020, there have been two annual prizes awarded as part of the Ockhams:

  • The Ockham Award for Skeptical Activism: given to the individual or organisation who has done outstanding work to promote critical thinking within the last twelve months. Past winners have included Dr Elizabeth Bik, for her work in detecting and exposing fraudulent research in the scientific literature, and Dr Natalia Pasternak, for standing up to COVID-19 pseudoscience in her native Brazil.
  • The Rusty Razor Award: given to the individual or organisation who has been the most prominent promoter of unscientific ideas in the last twelve months. Past winners have included Dr Mike Yeadon, whose misleading claims about COVID-19 continue to spread around anti-vaccine communities, and Prof Didier Raoult, who doubled-down on his dubious and flawed papers pushing Hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment.

Both awards are given to worthy winners chosen from public nominations - so now is the time to be thinking about who you think deserves to win an award this year. The nomination form is open now, over at The Skeptic’s website, and will close on October 15th.

The award winners will be announced as part of the Saturday evening entertainment at QED - entry to which comes as standard with all QED tickets.

Pick up your ticket today, and join The Skeptic to find out who has excelled in skepticism over the past year, and who is the rightful recipient of this year’s Rusty Razor!