Consumer debt and mental health

[I recently applied for a job for which I had to produce a report on consumer debt and mental health. Even though I did not get the job, I did spent sometime to look over the issue so I am posting the report here.]

Consumer debt and mental health

Evidence has shown a clear association between consumer debt and mental health. Given the current financial crisis, extra measures are needed in order to deal with people affected. This note considers the published evidence on the above relationship, examines the current regulations and suggests what policies should be implemented in order to ensure that sensitive approaches are adopted for the benefit of the consumers, the health and social carers, and creditors.

Overview

·         There are clear links between consumer debt affecting mental health, and vice versa, even if the direction of causality has not been yet verified.

·         Given the current financial crisis, more people will fall in debt, leading to increased demand for mental health services.

·         Currently mental health and debt are treated as separate issues. Any links that exist between financial services and health and social sectors are underdeveloped, partly due to legal and regulatory barriers.

·         People need to be treated as “patients” and “bank customers” at the same time, so a co-ordinated cross-sector national approach is needed in order to mitigate the problems.

Definitions

• Consumer debt: debt incurred by an individual for personal, family or household purposes.
• Unsecured debt: if there is no collateral that is security for the debt. Most consumer debts are unsecured.
• Problematic consumer debt: when the individual is two or more consecutive payment behind
• Mental Health problem: anxiety and stress, depression, self-harm and suicidal thoughts, strain on personal relationships and self-esteem or social exclusion

Background

In 2008, UK households owed over £230 billion in unsecured consumer credit (see definitions box)[1], whereas the proportion of households reporting consumer unsecured debt as a financial burden in 2008 was the highest since 1995[2]. Given that being in debt can have a negative effect on one’s mental health and that those living with a mental health problem are more likely to fall into debt, a large percentage of the national consumer debt mentioned above is owed by people suffering from mental problems.

This percentage is likely to increase even further. Evidence suggests that large economic crises, such as the one we have been experiencing since 2008, have a detrimental effect on the mental health of a population. This is especially true for the vulnerable subgroups (e.g. those with pre-existing mental disorders, the unemployed and those of low socio-economic status)[3]. Many of these subgroups include people with little previous experience of coping with hardship and will thus be at greater risk of mental health problems, as compared to those ‘inured’ to financial insecurity⁵.

Scale of the problem

While there is a number of studies that have looked using different methodologies at the relationship between debt and mental health their majority has either treated all types of debt (mortgage, utilities, consumer, etc) as one, or did not specify what is meant by ‘debt’. For this reason, our evidence comes from 13 studies that have specifically investigated the relationship between consumer debt and mental health, or included consumer debt alongside other debt types[4].

These studies showed that consumer debt has negative effects on people’s mental health: those with consumer debt exhibited lower average levels of psychological well-being, higher levels of stress and depression. It was also found that those with mental health problems are more likely to be in debt. For example, a large UK survey by Mind showed that out of 924 individuals with mental health problems, half had arrears on credit/store cards, one in three on loan repayments and one-in-five on goods bought on hire purchase or mail-order[5].

Awareness

The link between debt and mental health has been recently recognised by a number of governmental departments. The New Horizons report on Mental Health mentioned that intervention to tackle social inequalities such as debt may be of benefit to individual mental health and recommended further research to be carried out around the issue[6]. However, no guidelines or recommendations were mentioned in the report. In addition, the department of Business Innovation and Skills has included specific reference to the issue of mental health in its Consumer White paper^[7] and the Office of Fair Trading has made repeated reference to the difficulties facing people with mental health problems. This recognition has been however for debt in general and not specifically for consumer debt.

A number of non-governmental initiatives have been undertaken in order to increase awareness of the relationship between debt and mental health of health and social care services, money advisors, financial services, government sectors, as well as people suffering from mental health problems. Similarly to the governmental reports above, all these initiatives did not concentrate on consumer debt, but some of them referred to it.

In 2006, the Royal College of Psychiatrists developed ‘Final Demand’ Booklet for health and social care professionals in order to help them respond quickly to the needs of patients who are suffering from mental health and financial problems[8]. They also created a standardised clinical information form, called ‘Debt and Mental Health Evidence Form’ (DMHEF) to be used by health and social care professionals in order to provide their patients with clear information on how to proceed. In 2007, the Money Advice Liaison Group (MALG) provided voluntary guidelines for money advisers and creditors to support the use of DMHEF[9]. More recently, MALG published “Good Practice Awareness Guidelines For Consumers with Mental Health Problems and Debt”[10]. Furthermore, a national campaign was carried out by Mind in 2008 which targeted the financial services as well as various government sectors.

Measures

Despite these efforts, links between financial institutions, money advisers and health and social care services are still severely underdeveloped. This means that the “health” and “debt” components of this issue are mostly addressed separately, making most strategies ineffective[11]. The strategy agreed by all parties is to foster and maintain a coordinated national programme in which all of financial, advice, health and social services would help individuals receive well organised and complementary support, regardless of entry point.

For such a programme to succeed the appropriate legal and organisational infrastructure needs to developed at all entry points, whether these are health and social care services, money advice or financial services. For example, creditors should be legally obliged to train their staff to encourage customer disclosure, especially since people with mental health problems tend to be reluctant to report it. Money advisers should be legally obliged to routinely provide referral services to clients that disclose a mental health problem for which they require support. Finally, all health and social care professionals should receive a basic ‘debt first aid training’, in order to know how to talk with patients about debt and how to refer to and support debt advisers.

In the mean time, new research needs to be commissioned and undertaken on the effects of consumer debt in particular. Not all consumer debt is problematic, research is needed to further understand when it becomes especially problematic, as well as the direction of causality between consumer debt and mental health. In these new studies there needs to be a consistency in the conceptualisation and measurement of debt (e.g. to differentiate consumer debt from other types of debt). Furthermore, a survey of the current practices of all types of financial services concerning costumers suffering from mental health problems, should be carried out.

---

Endnotes

[1] Bank of England (2008) “Lending to Individuals: December 2008” Bank of England statistical Release, London.

[2] Hellenbrandt. T and Young, G (2008) “The financial position of British households: evidence from the NMG research survey” Quarterly Bulletin (Bank of England) Q4: 384-392

[3] Zivin, K, Paczkowski, M and Galea, S (2010) Economic downturns and population mental health: research findings, gaps, challenges and priorities, Psychological Medicine 14:1-6

[4] Royal College of Psychiatrists (2009) “Debt and Mental health: What do we know? What should we do?” London http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/pdf/Debt%20and%20mental%20health%20(lit%20review).pdf

[5] Mind (2008) “In the red: debt and mental health” http://www.mind.org.uk/assets/0000/9121/in_the_red.pdf

[6] HM Government (2009) “New Horizons: A shared vision for mental health” http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_109705

[7] Department of Business Innovation and Skills(2009)  “A better deal for consumers: delivering real help now and change for the future [Consumer white paper]” http://berr.gov.uk/policies/consumer-issues/consumer-white-paper

[8] Royal Society of Psychiatrists (2006) “Final demand” Booklet http://www.cfebuk.org.uk/pdfs/final_demand.pdf

[9] Money Advice Liaison Group (MALG) (2007) “Guidelines for money advisers and creditors to support the use of DMHEF” http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/pdf/DMHEF%20GUIDERCPsych%20webApr%2009.pdf%20(2).pdf

[10] MALG (2009)  “Good Practice Awareness Guidelines For Consumers with Mental Health Problems and Debt” http://www.moneyadvicetrust.org/images/Mental_Health_Guidelines_2009.pdf

[11] Jenkins R, Fitch C, Hurlston M, Walker F (2009) “Recession, debt and mental health”  Family Medicine Mental Health  6:85-90

Science and Society: My analysis of the Eurobarometer (1)

So I finally finished gathering my data and did my plots. Before I get into specifics about what exactly did the Greek sample say, I want to mention four things that I found striking:

1. there was significantly more emphasis in the Greek answers: Even though, in most questions their beliefs appear to be similar to those of other Europeans, their answers were more "emphatic" i.e. their answers were less divided compared to other EU countries. I noticed this by eye, and in an effort to "quantify" it, I ranked all European countries according to their responses using the graph charts presented in the Eurobarometer report. In these graphs, the countries were plotted in descending order, according to the value of the majority and minority percentages in those questions. The country on the far left was thus ranked "1" since it showed the greatest majority percentage. Similarly the country on the far right was ranked "28" (the average of all 27 EU countries was included in the ranking).
   
   In the following graph I present the distribution of rankings of the EU27 average:
   
   
   As expected the average of "EU27 average" (as calculated in the report) rankings was 15, i.e. in the middle. The EU27 average rankings ranged from 11 to 19.
   
   I did not calculate the rankings for all countries - that would be too much work I am afraid. I first calculated them for Greece and the UK, given that these are the countries I am comparing here. I also calculated them for Italy (as an example of another Mediterranean country), Germany (a central European country with a strong science base and a long history of science communication, to make sure that there is no "UK vs the continent" bias) and Denmark (as an example of a country widely known for being very technologically advanced and innovative).
   
   I could have chosen other countries for these comparisons. For example, I could have chosen Cyprus as the Mediterranean example, but a lot of the answers of the Cypriot sample were too similar to the Greek sample. I found this also very interesting (is this an example of how culture shapes people's relationship with S&T?).
   
   Here are the equivalent to the above plot for each of the countries mentioned above:
   
   When the graphs above are compared, one sees that the majority of the Greek sample's rankings tended to be a lot higher, whereas the  majority of the UK sample's rankings tended to be lower compared to the other countries. The average ranking for Greece was 9 and for UK was 17, whereas for Italy was 16, for Germany was 14 and Denmark was 14.
   The Italian, German and Danish ranking ranges look very similar - spread out over the whole range.
   
   
2. they replied a lot more than the EU average: the average "Don't Knows" for Greece was 2% whereas for the EU27 averages was 5%. Thus, Greek people seemed more sure about what to reply compared to all other Europeans. I calculated this to look at the "ignorance" factor, which could have lead to the above emphasis. I.e. it could be that the results in point 1 above were so striking because Greek people did not know what to answer. But this does not seem to be the case.
   
   
3. the Greek sample seemed a bit confused on what they feel about S&T: in many questions Greek people were positive about S&T but in even more questions they were negative about it. This is striking given the emphasis with which the answered these questions. More on this point in the following posts and in my concluding post.
   
   
4. the difference in the rankings of Greece and UK were striking: in most questions they were on the opposite ends of the plots!

So these are some general conclusions I drove from the whole analysis. In the following posts, I will look at those questions on which the answers were most interesting.

Skeptic Park: absolutely brilliant!

I haven't posted about things I found amazing for a while. The truth is I can't believe i just found this!

Can you believe there is a South Park for Science, Reason and Critical thinking?!? The blogger who made these amazing strips is Crispian Jago and his blogspot is: http://crispian-jago.blogspot.com/. Skeptic Park is absolutely brilliant as is of course his whole blog!!!!

EPISODE 1:

EPISODE 2:

EPISODE 3:

I can't wait for more!!!! 

THE SCIENCE VOTE (#SCIVOTE) MOVEMENT: ORIGINS

Over the last 3 weeks I have been following very closely what was happening before, during and after the recent UK elections but from a scientist's point of view. I copy-pasted every article I could find into Word documents. In the end, these Word documents were more than 300 pages long. I also read all of them and I have been following the twitter discussions as well.

Finally, I wrote the following article for a major Greek newspaper (for those of you who understand Greek and this will not all "sound Greek to you" the weblink for the Το κίνημα "Ψήφος στην επιστήμη" paper is http://www.vimaideon.gr). This is my attempt to translate it. I am saying attempt because the language centre of my brain does not understand anymore which are Greek expressions and which English.

I would really appreciate it if any of the people that were actually part of this movement could tell me which points I've understood wrongly: a third-party always sees things differently and a lot of times not correctly. I can think of many points that might be wrong or annoy people.

THE SCIENCE VOTE MOVEMENT: ORIGINS

The Lisbon Treaty and then European Strategy for 2020 stressed, ambitiously perhaps, the importance of long term investment in knowledge - produced through science and technology - as the only way of exiting from the financial crisis. Politicians in every corner of Europe (and beyond) indicate that the goal of modern society should be a knowledge-based economy.

Nevertheless - whereas the U.S.A., China and India increased their funding for science - Great Britain and other European countries in their general panic to reduce public deficit and debt, announced cuts in public investment in science and technology. In other words, although governments recognize the importance of these investments, they do not apply them. In this way they are risking the future of their country, since a reduction in funding today will lead to future lack of scientific expertise needed to boost economic growth. [businesses seem to agree already on this]

Many British people noticed this paradox during the recent election campaign and their disagreement resulted in the "Science Vote" movement or «#scivote» if one is to use twitter terminology. But what is this movement? What were its aims? Did it succeed in British elections? What is its significance for Greece?

WHEN VOTES MET SCIENCE

Two months before the British elections of May 6th, most people would have bet on a victory of the Conservatives, a party that had made it clear in their manifesto and before the elections that they would promote the greatest and more immediate reductions in the budget for Science and Technology. Faced with this frightening scenario, natural and social scientists, science journalists, skeptics and bloggers united to bring for the first time in the center of discussions fundamental issues concerning science, such as funding, free speech, the importance of evidence-based policy, etc. This had never happened in any country.

The first members of the «#scivote» movement, also could be called "science activists", decided to turn any votes to "science votes" i.e. to inform the British public on the scientific policies of each party, in order to enable them to judge and vote for the party with the best science policy.

The first to react was the non-profit organization "Campaign for Science and Technology" (CaSE), who on the 8th of March 2010, with the support of many major British scientists sent a letter in the Times to the political parties asking them to submit a detailed "scientific" manifesto.

One day later, on March the 9th, the Royal Society of Chemistry organized the first "scientific debate" and first public debate in the House of Commons streamed live over the Internet. In this debate took part representatives from the three major parties. The Liberal Democratic Party was represented by Dr Evan Harris, a leading supporter of and perhaps on the most active politicians in science and technology issues for over a decade. For example, he was a supporter of the reform of libel law in the UK, which made a lot of scientists afraid of speaking in public about their research and their views, in case they were sued by large organisations whose interests were affected [as it happened with Simon Singh]. Of course, not everyone reacted positively to Dr. Evan Harris's actions: extremists named him "Dr. Death", because of his views on abortion, euthanasia, stem cells and animal experiments.

These two events provided an initial impetus to the «#scivote» movement and, thanks to Twitter among other reasons, the movement quickly grew larger. Of particular help was that the Minister for Science, Lord Drayson, like many members of the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology, had a strong and constant presence on twitter. Therefore, through the use of new web tools, there has been over the past few months continuous and direct dialogue on issues of science policy because the views of the movement reached directly the ears of politicians.

The voice of science activists was so strong that it even reached the media. Despite the heat of the election season, there was an increased focus on science in the press: in the last weeks before the election, Mark Henderson in the Times Eureka blog and Martin Robbins in the Guardian, wrote almost daily on scientific policy. The latter - together with five of the most famous British scientists - asked all political parties the same ten questions, so that British people are able to easily compare the science policies of the parties.

After an election season with so many "firsts", those who had bet on a clear victory of the conservatives were regretting it. Nick Clegg, the LibDem leader, had unexpected success in the television debates and in the polls the percentage of his party was increasing. This positive atmosphere gave hope to many members of the «#scivote» movement, since the LibDems were the party that understood the contribution of science and technology in the recovery from the crisis the best. Hence, the slogan «geek the vote, vote LibDems» was created.

THE DAY OF CRISIS

May 6th, 2010. Conservatives get 36.1% of the vote, Labour 29% and the LibDems 23%. As many feared there was a hung parliament, a result of "European style" as some people put it, which shocked Britain. Shocked was the «#scivote» movement as well. "Did we lose?" they whispered. "Were the polls so wrong? Did nobody read the articles we wrote in the press and online?". Anyone would be thinking the same since at first glance the results actually looked like a "disaster":

1. The number of MPs who were in some way related to science and technology declined from 86 to 71 and only one of the old "science activists" would be present in the parliament. Of the remaining, some retired and others did not get elected. In the second category is Dr Evan Harris, one of the "leaders" of the movement, who lost for 176 votes.
2. Secondly, the Liberal Democrats, the party that expresses best the beliefs of the «#scivote» movement, not only did not win seats as was expected from the very positive election exit polls, but lost five seats (out of the 62 that they had, they got only 57 seats in the recent elections).

Looking closer however, it revealed that the results are not as disastrous as they seem. It might be true that some of the previous MPs positive towards science did not get elected, but many of the newcomers also have a background related to science. The absence of Dr Evan Harris, remains really tragic however. Nor the LibDem performance was that disappointing: the share of votes did not fall as would be expected given the decrease in the number of seats, but increased from 22.1% in 2005 to 23% in 2010. The problem was the "First-Past-The-Post" electoral system, which is considered by many (among them the LibDems) as a system that does not represent what the public wants.

THE PUBLIC SPOKE BUT WHAT DID IT SAY?

For nearly five days after the election, Nick Clegg has negotiated with the two major parties so that they can agree on a coalition. Finally, on Tuesday, May the 11th it was announced that there would be a coalition between the LibDems and the Conservatives.

The fact that the LibDems would be part of the government and therefore had some influence in the administration of the country, did not relieve science activists. Clegg would be able to negotiate only a few points in the coalition agreement between two parties. It would therefore be unlikely that one of them was science. Furthermore, the scientific policy of the Conservatives differ considerably from that of the LibDems, so it was even more unlikely to find a compromise so quickly. For example, the Conservatives support the creation of nuclear power plants, while the Liberals are completely opposed to it.

All would be judged by the agreement between two parties, announced in the afternoon of Wednesday, May 12th, followed by the first public speech of the two leaders of the coalition. This agreement did not clarify at all the situation since it did not contain even once the word science. Instead, it resulted in new questions. "Why did they not mention science? Did they not discuss the issue or did they disagree on many points?" wondered members of the "#scivote" movement.

Their hopes were not lost though. Key would be who would be chosen for the positions of Secretary of State for Enterprise, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and Science and Universities Minister.

After almost a week of suspense for the «#scivote» movement, finally came some good news. First it was announced that Secretary of State for Enterprise, Innovation and Skills would be a LibDem, Dr Vince Cable, who has a degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University and a Ph.D. in Economics. Shortly afterwards it was announced that the Conservative David Willetts was appointed Minister of Science and Universities, also known as "two brains" because of his residing hairline, but also because of his cleverness. Willetts studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford University. This option was particularly welcome because Willetts had argued in 2007 that science had important role in all sectors of society and that it was essential for all members of the cabinet to appreciate the importance of science and technology in making policy decisions.

AND NOW WHAT?

The team Cable-Willetts was that best that science activists could hope given the current allocation of seats in the British Parliament. It is a great advantage that both ministers are members of the cabinet, and thus they will be able to express their views on science and other issues. An even greater advantage, however, is that the LibDem Dr Vince Cable will oversee Willetts, a smart Conservative, who is pro-science, who also had the respect of Chancellor George Osborne, the one who will approve all ministerial decisions in the new government. Therefore, the future of British science will be influenced by a team with good awareness of the state of science policy before they even begin, and who has the tools and the conditions to bring good science policy about.

Of course not everything is perfect. Many would prefer an practicing scientist in the position of Minister of Science. Also, the movement did not agree with everything Cable and Willetts have said in the past. An important role will also play who will be the members of the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology. There are many battles to be fought in the parliament and outside in order to even keep the British science at its current high level.

The elections were only the beginning. The first battle in which no one can say with certainty whether the "science vote" movement lost or won. On the one hand, the elections reminded members of the movement that they remain a minority. That said, we they should be proud because, as the former Minister of Science Lord Drayson said "#scivote now has a real voice & influence in politics so keep it up! And support the next science minister whoever she/he is".

Now the "#scivote" movement should begin the important and urgent task of educating new MPs on scientific matters. Of convincing party members that science is more than one source of information and knowledge. That it is an important driver of the economy that will play a crucial attention to major issues such as energy independence, and that there should be strong support, even in times of economic cutbacks.

Also, the movement should push for a system that will not be based solely on public funding, but also a "charity-capitalist" organizations, such as The Wellcome Trust, which by their nature are long-term strategy and ambitious and risky objectives which governments by their very nature could never be set.

Furthermore, activists of science should not just preach to the believers. They should turn to those who have not had an interest so far for scientific policy, because only in this way there will changes in the way politics is practiced. Finally, they must convince the new Minister of Science and Universities to use twitter, in order to continue the constructive dialogue they had with the previous minister.

If the "science vote" movement does not act in continuity and consistency, it is certain that science will be one of the areas most affected by the crisis, and thus there will be uncertainty for the future.

But the important thing is that thanks to the science activists, for the first time in history science and technology became an election campaign issue. We must therefore ask ourselves what were the circumstances and why did this movement leave today the area of consensus and entered politics.

Could such a phenomenon have been created in other countries, such as Greece?

NOTE: some of the ideas/thoughts of this article were taken by the various articles I read. I will be linking to these articles in the next few days.

UK Election and #SciVote (1)

Just because I am a geek, I decided to do a little exercise of my own even before the we even know what the government in the UK will be.

First of all for "after-election" articles related to science vote from people that actually know about this topic please click here , here and here.

What I did is that I took the list of MPs published in the Eureka Zone Times paper by Mark Henderson last week.

Given this list, I added next to each constituency the candidate that won. For those where there was information on science background in THAT list I kept this information.
You can find both the original list and the "after election" list here.

So there are 2 massive problems with this dataset:
1) not all 650 constituents are on there and
2) when we say that an MP has a science background as Mark Henderson mentioned

1. "we don't mean to suggest that you need to have a background in science to become an effective Commons advocate for it" and
2. a background in science does not necessarily mean that an MP will be actively engaged in it, or promote it in Parliament.

So you could say "what is the point of all the graphs you made?". As a scientist I do feel very awkward about the plots that I will show you, but because I have already spent too much time on this, and because I do not really have the time to go look in detail all the backgrounds of all 650 MPs, I decided to post them anyway. In addition, I am pretty sure that the people who are dealing with these issues (like the authors of the papers I mentioned above) will be doing this work anyway, so it will be a bit redundant if I did something like this. Especially since I do not have knowledge of the "political history" of each MP (e.g. what bills s/he voted and so on.

What I am saying is, I am aware that the following plots are not very well evidence-based and that they could lead to misinterpretation. If you are ok with this please read on, otherwise please leave this post (hopefully not the whole blog :P).

OK so here we go....

Out of 155 constituancies (I found a double in the list from the Times article), 70 had a "science background" and the last one for which right now we do not have the results is likely to be the 71st that is mentioned in the new article by Mark Henderson.

Out of the 70 MPs with "science background" 36 have degrees in the "hard sciences" i.e. physics, maths, chemistry, biology etc, 19 had degrees in engineering, 9 are medical doctors or dentists and for the rest it is not specified even though they are stated as having a "science background". Most of these belong to the Science and Technology Committees or held science related roles in the past (correct me if I am wrong since once again I did not have the time to check this: Graham Stringer, Malcolm Wicks, Adam Afriyie, Roberta Blackman-Woods, Rob Flello).

So then I wanted to see what is the distribution of MPs in the different parties once they have been sorted according to background:

And then I looked at each party separately:

The results are not unexpected given all those articles I have been reading the last two weeks on which I will report soon (hopefully). LIBDEMs is the party who has more MPs with science background" than with "non-science or unknown background". Labour has more or less equal proportions whereas the Conservatives (and other parties) have a higher proportion of MPs with non-science or unknown backgrounds.

So this is my little research. Of course any comments are MORE THAN WELCOME!!!

I repeat that the information I had was only for 155 constituencies out of 650 and that having a "science background" does not make you necessarily more likely to "defend science". I am not claiming that this is a complete research.

But the results are interesting nevertheless! :)

Science Communication: one really needs those presentation skills!

Today I visited the Athens Concert Hall (Megaron Moussikis) to attend a talk by Marcus de Sautoy (website1, website2). I found out about it the last moment through twitter (twitter gets more and more useful everyday!!!).

According to wikipedia:

Marcus Peter Francis du Sautoy OBE (born in London, 26 August 1965) is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. Formerly a Fellow of All Souls College, and Wadham College, he is now a Fellow of New College. He is currently an EPSRC Senior Media Fellow and was previously a Royal Society University Research Fellow. His academic work concerns mainly group theory and number theory. In October 2008, he was appointed to the Simonyi Professorship for the Public Understanding of Science.

It is this last sentence that really obliged me to go to see him. Maths is especially difficult to communicate, since people have all sorts of prejudices against it. Biology is sort of easier I think, which does NOT mean that it is easy. Just easier.

I would have gone anyway, even if he was not the Professor for the Public Understanding of Science. Why? Because it makes a huge difference to attend a talk where the speaker knows how to engage the public. Having watched his TED talk (see below) I knew he was one these speakers, the speakers that drew you in so much that you did not want him to stop. That makes forget even that he is talking about maths.

Maybe this post, once again, has a Greek as well as a biology twist. But I do not think that Greece is the exception. I think that Greece is the rule. It requires a lot of work, a lot of training and a lot of talent to be able to stand up in front of large audiences and seem like you are talking to your mates down the pub. The key word here is the "training".

To be one of these charismatic science communicators you need to present your facts in an interesting, easy and fun way. Which is bloody difficult. This is why this training I am talking about should NOT start at the PhD level like it usually is in most countries. It should start a lot earlier. From school. The development of Presentation and Communication skills is something that is not included in the curricula of a lot of educational systems. Yes, in the US and the UK such skills are appreciated and promoted from school (I mentioned the US and the UK because these are the countries I know something about, that is all) but in countries like Greece, this is not and has never been the case.

So how does one find out

1) what is the situation concerning presentation, communication and debate skills in one's country?

and

2) where should a country begin in order to improve the situation above?

I know that these are simple/stupid questions but for me they are not... For me they are just two of the first questions I will pose in this blog.

For the time being though, enjoy Marcus de Sautoy:

UPDATE: you can find another mention to the same evening at http://knightofmathematics.wordpress.com/2010/03/23/finding-moonshine-in-athens/

Science and Politics: A start

Two days ago (Tuesday 9th March 2010) a debate on Science was organised in the UK, using as an incentive the General Election of 2010. Since this debate was broadcast live - for the first time in the history of the House of Commons - the whole world (including me) had the chance to follow the debate.

The debate was organised by the Royal Society of Chemistry on behalf of the science and engineering community (Royal Society, Royal Academy of Engineering, Institute of Physics, Society of Biology, Geological Society, Royal Astronomical Society, the Science Council and the Campaign for Science & Engineering, etc).

Three politicians took part in the debate:

1. Adam Afriyie MP Conservative Party - Shadow Minister for Innovation and Science
2. Lord Drayson Labour Party - Minister of State for Science and Innovation
3. Dr Evan Harris MP Liberal Democratic Party - Spokesperson for Science & Technology

The link to watch this debate is at:

http://www.rsc.org/ScienceAndTechnology/Parliament/Events/2010Election.asp

I know that it would give more meaning to this post if I gave my views, but I am not ready yet. Anyway I need to read first the documents produced recently on the future of science in the UK. And that is one of the things I will do next. Hopefully one day I will be able to come back to this.