Ockham Awards 2022
Following nominations from the public and deliberations from our editorial team, The Skeptic is proud to announce the winners of the 2022 Ockham Awards:
Ockham Award for Skeptical Activism: The BBC Disinformation Unit
Across shows such as BBC Trending, Monitoring and Reality Check, 2022 has been a prolific year for the BBC’s Disinformation Unit.
The work of the Disinformation Unit has been a shining example of diligent, tenacious, and deeply skeptical reporting – getting to the bottom of viral health claims, misused statistics, misleading imagery, manipulated videos and dangerous conspiracy theories.
They’ve documented how the anti-vaccine movement has become more extreme, and how Russian propaganda regarding the invasion of Ukraine has spread through conspiracist channels, but they’ve also spoken directly to believers of these kinds of ideas, to show first-hand how people can be swayed by rhetoric and fear, and the human cost of misinformation, embodying the ethos of The Skeptic, to reason with compassion.
With that in mind, we’re proud to award the 2022 Ockham Award for skeptical activism to the BBC’s Disinformation Unit.
Rusty Razor Award: Global Warming Policy Foundation / Net Zero Watch
This year, the UK has seen record temperatures, a severe heatwave, a drought, and even wildfires, while other countries have seen devastating floods and extreme hurricanes. These are a direct consequence of climate change, which is why it is so troubling that there are groups that continue to undermine efforts to tackle the climate crisis.
For years, the Global Warming Policy Foundation has sought to downplay, doubt, and outright deny the threat posed by climate change. Now that the public overwhelmingly recognises that the threat is real, the group have shifted their focus, and seek to attack efforts to reduce the UK’s carbon emissions to zero.
The GWPF was set up in 2009 by long-term climate change denier Lord Nigel Lawson, with the goal of challenging the “extremely damaging and harmful policies” proposed by governments to mitigate global warming. Since then, it has published a number of reports which underplay the threat of climate change, including a 2021 paper which misleadingly concluded that “extreme weather phenomena have not become more extreme, more deadly, or more destructive” – a conclusion which has been comprehensively debunked by climate science experts.
Most troublingly of all is the influence the group has on the very corridors of power. A dozen of their current or former trustees sit in the House of Lords, and the Minister of State for Northern Ireland, Steve Baker MP, is a close associate and former trustee of the group, as is Graham Stringer MP, who sits on the Science and Technology Committee.
In October 2021, the GWPF rebranded as “Net Zero Watch”, around the same time that former trustee Steve Baker MP formed the Net Zero Scrutiny Group of MPs, which routinely cites research material from the GWPF as part of their call to water down or roll back policies that would tackle climate change by reducing carbon emissions.
In 2022, the GWPF faced accusations of receiving fossil fuel industry funding to push its climate denial agenda, leading to campaigners urging the Charity Commission to strip the organisation of its charitable status.
Given the group’s prolific attempts to weaken and undermine public and political will to tackle climate change, the open door it appears to have to the heart of government, and the unclear nature of its funding – even as it enjoys the tax incentives and conferred legitimacy of a registered charity – the Global Warming Policy Foundation is a deserving winner of the 2022 Rusty Razor award.