Michael Marshall (skeptic)

Early life

Michael Marshall was born on 13 August 1983 in Bishop Auckland, North East England. He obtained a BA in English in Liverpool, and has worked there in marketing and web design since.

Foundation

In February 2009, Marshall, Mike Hall and Colin Harris founded the Merseyside Skeptics Society. He commented that skepticism is "not about just saying 'no' to things, it's about thinking about them. And we use the American spelling – skeptic – because, in the States, the word isn't as strongly linked to cynicism. It's not seen as being as negative as it is over here." In July that year, they launched the podcast Skeptics with a K, which Marshall described as "a fairly-shambolic, overly-enthusiastic and snarky mix of science, skepticism and sarcasm." The idea for SwaK came from the conversations Mike and Marsh were having in the pub about news and ideas, such as a homeopathy overdose, that they wanted to share with a wider audience.

10:23 Campaign

In January 2010, Marshall coordinated the 10:23 Campaign to stage a mass overdose of homeopathy outside branches of Boots UK in several major cities throughout the country, to publicly demonstrate the inefficacy of homeopathic products and protest against their sale. In February 2011, he also coordinated the global 10:23 Campaign, during which protesters on all continents in 70 cities (at least 30 participants per city) overdosed on homeopathy. He himself led the overdose on 5 February 2011 at 10:23 during QED 2011, the first annual skeptical conference in Manchester co-organised by the Merseyside Skeptics Society and the Greater Manchester Skeptics Society.

Challenging psychics

In October 2011, the Merseyside Skeptics Society (represented by Hall and Marshall), Chris French and Simon Singh set up a "Halloween Challenge" to Sally Morgan to have her alleged psychic abilities tested, to demonstrate that her claims regarding talking to the dead are true, otherwise she might, knowingly or unknowingly, be taking advantage of people's grief. Morgan did not turn up at the press conference, but threatened to sue the skeptics for defamation through her lawyers instead. Nevertheless, the MSS decided to make the Halloween Challenge an annual event and invited any psychic in the UK to take part. When two psychics failed an experiment in October 2012, Marshall remarked: "While the result of our experiment doesn't disprove psychic ability, the fact that our mediums couldn't pass what they felt was a very fair and simple test does seem to suggest claims that these abilities exist aren't based in reality." At the Australian Skeptics National Convention 2014 in Sydney, Marsh lectured about pseudoscience and the channeling of spirits.

Bad PR

Marshall extended his speciality for spotting bad PR in the news that he developed over the years on SwaK to holding public lectures about the subject at Skeptics in the Pub meetings throughout the UK (including Liverpool, Glasgow) and skeptical conferences such as the 2013 European Skeptics Congress in Stockholm and Skeptics on the Fringe 2014. His main contention is that in recent decades, journalists have become increasingly under pressure to write more articles in less time, limiting their time for investigate research and instead tempting or forcing them to pick up press releases from pr companies and, often with little editing, passing them off as real news stories to meet their quota (churnalism). Such press releases are more often than not simply veiled advertisements, disguised as scientific studies or representative social surveys which, if based on any sort of inquiry at all, are usually poorly set up or conducted and prone to bias. Moreover, the headlines under which these "results" get published can be sensationalised and thus even more misleading, and if readers believe such "news" stories to be true, it may have serious negative effects on people's views and actions. When education secretary Michael Gove was criticised by many mainstream newspapers for mistaking a pr stunt by OnePoll for hotel chain Premier Inn for genuine research on schoolchildren's allegedly lamentable knowledge of British history, Marshall called this "ironic" and rebuked the newspapers by showing how they themselves are largely relying on the same kind of agencies' press releases with 'dodgy surveys' for their news stories.

He has also done an interview on BBC Radio 4's More or Less programme, where he discusses various newspaper articles and big headlines that are based on bad PR.

Good Thinking Society

Since March 2014, Marshall has been project director at the Good Thinking Society (GTS). His major focus has been ending the funding of homeopathy by the National Health Service (NHS), which the GTS considers a costly waste of public money on demonstrably ineffective products; he lectured about this at QED 2015 in Manchester. In June 2015, the Daily Mirror reported that Marshall had investigated the curious case of Freeman's, a NHS-supplying pharmacy that, amongst other products, sold "homeopathic owl", apparently meant for people with sleeping problems or who "pick up the characteristics of [an owl]". Marshall commented that "Around £3-5 million is spent each year [on homeopathic products by the NHS] and it's completely worthless. People are being told that it works when there's no evidence that it does." Also in June, he and GTS founder Simon Singh called on all remaining homeopathy-funding CCGs in the UK to follow the example of Liverpool to reconsider their funding policies.

In May 2014, Marshall accused writers at The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail of 'poor journalism' for uncritically picking up press releases from the British Chiropractic Association and the United Chiropractic Association, based on 'flimsy studies' and assertions that were 'certainly not supported by any reliable evidence'. Recalling the British Chiropractic Association v Singh case, he concluded: "If chiropractors want to be taken seriously, perhaps they should focus on improving the regulation of their industry and conducting rigorous research rather than relying on PR stunts to drum up business."

In May 2015, GTS obtained video footage from the Spirit of Health Congress, where, according to Marshall, claims were made about health that 'appeared illegal and could cause serious harm': "The dangerous misinformation at the Spirit of Health event is shocking, particularly with regard to serious conditions such as cancer."

In September 2015, Marshall showed how American televangelist and self-proclaimed prophet and faith healer Peter Popoff –previously exposed by James Randi– was trying to persuade people to send him money on promises of "fabulous extreme fortune" and "miracles". Moreover, at a recent London gathering, GTS filmed how Popoff supposedly 'healed' a woman 'who said her body was wracked with pain', but who Marshall and his colleague believed could have been planted in the audience as part of Popoff's team: they saw she was handing out pens and a questionnaire at the start of the event, and quietly left the room soon after the alleged miracle.

Podcasting