* The event will be live streamed to Youtube - accessible here

* This event will also be recorded - please keep an eye on our Twitter, post-event, for the video link

For the 4th David Finney Lecture, Prof. David Spiegelhalter will talk about the challenges of communicating during the epidemic. Can we communicate deeper uncertainty about facts, numbers, or scientific hypotheses without losing trust and credibility?

It is claimed we live in a ‘post-truth’ society in which emotional responses dominate balanced consideration of evidence. This presents a strong challenge to those who value quantitative and scientific evidence: How can we communicate statistics, risks and unavoidable scientific uncertainty in a transparent and trustworthy way?

Prof. David Spiegelhalter is a statistician, communicator, and Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication (University of Cambridge). He works to improve the way in which risk and statistical evidence are taught and discussed in society: he has given many presentations to schools and others, advises organisations on risk communication, and is a regular commentator on risk issues. He presented the BBC4 documentaries Tails you Win: the Science of Chance and the award-winning Climate Change by Numbers. He was elected FRS in 2005, awarded an OBE in 2006, and was knighted in 2014 for services to medical statistics. In 2011 he came 7th in an episode of Winter Wipeout. Prof Spiegelhalter was awarded a Gold Royal Statistical Society Guy Medal in 2020.

Running Order (all times BST):

3pm: Introductions and Housekeeping

3.15pm : Lecture

4.00pm: Q&A

4.35pm: Event ends

This online event will be hosted on Zoom. Ticket holders will receive an email on the day of the event, with instructions on how to join the lecture and subsequent Q&A.

This event is a rescheduling of our 4th David Finney Lecture, and will now take place online - if you registered for the previous event, please re-register.

(above) Prof. David Speigelhalter - image from MN2S

The David Finney Lecture is held annually by the Centre for Statistics (University of Edinburgh) to commemorate Prof. David Finney (1917-2018).

Prof. David Finney was a statistician, based at the University of Edinburgh from 1966 until his retirement in 1984. He pioneered the development of systems for monitoring drug safety, with his reports and papers on the subject greatly infuencing the monitoring systems in place today. His two most widely known books, Probit Analysis (1947) and Statistical Method in Biological Assay (1952), both redefined those subjects. David was President of the Royal Statistical Society(1973-4), President of the Biometric Society (1964-5), a fellow of the Royal Society (from 1955), a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and was awarded a CBE in 1978. He served on Advisory Committees for the FAO and WHO and chaired the Flowers Committee 1970-74, which helped determine the way in which computing should develop in UK universities and research councils.

The Centre for Statistics (CfS) is very grateful to the International Biometric Society, who are sponsoring this year's lecture and to the ICMS, who are hosting.

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