It’s been at exciting time at for HYH recently. Following countless planning meetings, emails, and rehearsals we finally ran our first session!

The HYH team went to SciBar at the Albert Club in Didsbury to run a pilot session on science and the media – specifically on what tools we can use to clear the haze between the sensationalist headline and the (much more boring) science behind it.

Now we know what you’re thinking – we’re just preaching to the choir! Whilst that is admittedly true we were hoping to use the folk at SciBar as ‘guinea pigs’ for a test run and get some ideas on what we should change for the future. We sure learnt a lot!

The session went really well! We learnt about how people decide whether to trust a news article sometimes this is down to the source but sometimes it’s just a matter of whether the subject may affect your family. We also learnt about what sources can be classed as ‘reliable’ and heard first-hand how, as a scientist, your research can be misrepresented by the media. Finally we played a game attempting to match the news headline to the scientific paper title – it’s harder than you think!

Importantly, we got the chance to introduce our HYH Toolkit – 4 quick steps to get a better idea if you can trust what you are reading or if you should be a bit wary.  Check it out here.

Overall we had a great time at SciBar and we are looking forward to getting our next session in. If you are interested in hosting a HYH session, please get in touch. Watch this space!!