scientists' research misused

Just seen an excellent article in the Guardian written by scientists from Cardiff University complaining about how some research they did into impulsivity got mis-reported by the tabloid press as explaining why people got involved in the recent riots (something they never claimed). It's vital that the Press accurately report scientific findings, as otherwise public confidence in research could be fatally undermined if they are pilloried for things that they do not say 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2011/aug/22/riot-control-newspapers-distorting-science

Web cam of seminar

I attended a  seminar this summer organised by The Human Rights and Social Justice Research Institute at London Metropolitan University on 'Policing and protest in an age of austerity', with Sir Hugh Orde (head of ACPO), human rights lawyers, and activists on the panel. It was recently put on YouTube, and a link to it follows below.  I manage to get my tuppence worth in about 1 hr 23.45 into it, if you can't bear to watch the whole thing!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOywWpsaOdQ

Riots not incited by Twitter shock!

Some rather interesting & welcome news from the Guardian today in a study of over 2.5million tweets put out during the recent riots. While there is some anecdotal evidence of people encouraging others to meet up and misbehave via Twitter, Blackberry & Facebook etc, the vast majority of social media traffic seems to have come from people trying to follow events as they were worried about what was going on, or trying to discourage others from rioting. Riots happened before we had mobile phones and so we should be careful not to overstate their significance in simplistic attempts to explain complex social processes!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/24/riots-database-twitter-interaction

guardian comment on recent riots

link below to an article written by Cliff Stott & Steve Reicher in the guardian comment pages on the recent riots- succinct & v good  critique of coverage and how a lot of it is based on flawed science

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/19/riots-psychology-crowds

pseudoscience blog

Link follows below to an article written by Professor Steve Reicher who started off research in the UK into crowd behaviour when he was at Bristol University during the St Pauls' riots (part of a wave of inner city riots that swept the UK in the early 1980s). He argues that the recent riots have resulted in a lot of 'experts' being called up by journalists to talk about the psychology of rioting, but a lot of them don't have a background in the study of crowd behaviour, and instead rely on outdated or flawed concepts that are rejected by current researchers into crowd behaviour. Anyway, he says it all loads better than I could, so I recommend checking it out!

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/08/16/pseudoscience-and-the-london-riots-folk-psychology-run-amok/

Rabble with a Cause: Were the London Riots a Spontaneous Mass Reaction or a Rational Response?

a very good article written by three of the top crowd psychologists I know and highly rate is available at the following link below.

I've also just seen that someone has just got 4 years for inciting a riot in Chester last week that never happened! Now I'm no legal expert, but I thought to be guilty of incitement, there had to be some evidence that you had incited people to do something?!

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rabble-with-a-cause&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_SP_20110815

more coverage...

Some local news website has picked up on my press release. According to one of the comments I've seen, I'm a hand wringing liberal- never been called that before!


http://www.london24.com/news/politics/london_riots_rash_language_and_greater_police_powers_risk_stoking_violence_says_holloway_expert_1_990382