Experience Anu

Elizabeth Finkel was in conversation with Joan Leach on Elizabeth's new book Prove It: A Scientific Guide for the Post-Truth Era, a compelling journey through science's big breakthroughs, by an award-winning Australian science writer. Humans developed the scientific method over centuries. Its departure from what came before was that theories should be fuelled by data, not opinion. Today, the institutions that underpin democracy – the law, academia, government, journalism – all rely on its central idea: seeking facts and interrogating them through robust discussion and real-world testing. Yet in the post-truth era, public conversations can feel far from scientific. In Prove It, Elizabeth Finkel describes how the scientific method plays out in a series of controversies, from proving the existence of Einstein's gravitational waves to identifying the origins of Covid-19, from understanding human origins to defining consciousness. Through these tales of dispute and discovery, she breaks down the key elements of