Two changes to the final QED line-up

With QED a week away, it’s with regret that we have to announce that, for unavoidable reasons, Fern Riddell and Mark Maslin will be unable to appear at this year’s event.

However, we have added two new speakers to the mainstage line-up who we’re sure you’ll be excited to see:

• Dr Adam Rutherford is a geneticist, writer and broadcaster. He is a Lecturer in Biology and Society and UCL, and on BBC Radio 4 presents Start the Week, and the Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry. He's written books about genes, evolution, racism, and eugenics. At QED, he’ll be talking about attempts made throughout history to improve society by reducing suffering, eliminating disease or enhancing desirable qualities in their children, and how this wish goes hand-in-hand with the desire to impose control over who can marry, who can procreate and who is permitted to live. In his talk, Adam will tell the story of attempts by the powerful throughout history to dictate reproduction and regulate the interface of breeding and society.
• Mike Hall is producer and host of the long-running podcast Skeptics with a K, part of the organising committee for QED, and former president of the Merseyside Skeptics Society. In 13 years of podcasting, Mike has examined many of the most eye-catching claims made about the placebo effect, poring through the literature behind the headlines to understand what the placebo effect can really do… and what it can’t. In his talk, Mike will question why the best evidence tells us that placebos perform no better than doing nothing, and how the placebo myth came to be so deeply ingrained and unquestioned in modern medicine.

The last few tickets to QED 2022 are still available, priced £120 for the weekend (£80 concession).