Kellogg College

A talk hosted by Kellogg College and the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University Museum of Natural History, as part of the University's Alumni Weekend. Presented by Carl Heneghan, Jeff Aronson, Deb Cohen, Ben Goldacre, chaired by Sharon Mickan. Is it surprising that individual and institutional self-interests in research, combined with increased global competition, undermine scientific integrity? Regulatory systems that aim to underpin health research are under considerable strain. Keeping track of, and explaining why research goes wrong, is an important priority for delivery of sustained health outcomes, and support of the conduct of high quality research. Deb Cohen’s investigative work has highlighted that revision rates for hip joints are at least double that of other materials. Despite earlier reports from Australia that the implant was causing problems, the metal on metal hip continued to be widely used. Ben Goldacre believes medicine is broken. “And genuinely believes that if patients and the public ever fully understand what has been done to them – what doctors, academics and regulators have permitted – they will be angry.” Jeff Aronson has spent a lifetime researching adverse drug reactions, and perceives there is considerable room for improvement in our understanding. Whilst, Carl Heneghan has shown that the regulatory framework for drugs is so lax, it is not surprising that devices over time have proven to be deadly.

A panel discussion hosted by Kellogg College on Friday 29th November 2013. The panellists discuss the global governance of migration, migrant rights and development. The regulation of international migration and migrant rights are among the most contested public policy issues around the world. In 2013-14 a series of high-level policy meetings (including the High-Level Dialogue on Migration and Development in New York, and the Global Forum on Migration and Development in Stockholm) will debate the global governance of migration, migrant rights and development. Do we need more global governance of international migration? If so, why and what should it aim to achieve? How, if at all, should international migration be integrated in the post-2015 development agenda?

Professor Gad Heuman, University of Warwick delivers the 2013 David Nicholls Memorial Trust Lecture.

This lecture by Dr Karen Lucas conceptualises the social dimensions of the sustainability paradigm and offers a discussion of why it is so important to achieve socially sustainable mobility in our towns and cities.

The presentations focus on the importance of disappearance as much as appearance, presence as well as absence, and growth in the guise of degeneration, arguing from difference perspectives for the importance of malaise or corrosion as a subject of study.

The Cambrian Explosion is one of the most spectacular episodes in Earth history, with the first traces of animals appearing in the fossil record at around 550 million years, and most modern major groups (phyla and classes) present by 510 Ma. The event occurs after a long period, around one billion years, of limited evolutionary innovation, and immediately postdates the Snowball Earth event - a period of major climate perturbation when ice caps extended from the poles to the palaeo-equator. Furthermore, there are very few phyla and classes that evolve after this time interval. The coincidence of timing has proved irresistible for those in search of a causal mechanism for the origin of animals, and the deglaciation and return to equable climates has been hypothesised as a trigger for this major evolutionary innovation. Recent work in northern Greenland has shed light both on the nature of the Snowball Earth event and on the environmental conditions in which the major period of evolutionary diversification occurred. The Sirius Passet fossil locality on the northern tip of Greenland is the oldest of the global Cambrian localities with exceptional fossil preservation and offers new insights to the early evolutionary history of major animal groups, including the deuterostomes, a group that includes acorn worms, starfish and vertebrates.

Dr Anna Beer shares a few short extracts of Milton's poem Lycidas and discusses what they show about Milton's very special qualities as a writer.

Chris Day reflects on how generous philanthropic support from organisations and individuals has inspired the success of the University of Oxford.

Dr Karen Lucas, Research Fellow in Transport, Accessibility and Social Exclusion at the TSU, delivers a keynote talk at the TDSA conference 'Micro transit: What? Where? Why?' conference, 18-19 August 2011, Brisbane, Australia.

David Howard (Lecturer in Sustainable Urban Development, University of Oxford) looks at larger concerns over social and spatial equity, conceptual approaches to sovereignty and the practical interpretation of sustainable forms of justice. Abstract: Recent urban policy initiatives in the Caribbean have shifted from producing material infrastructural change to a greater emphasis on confronting 'civil disorder' via new forms of policing and surveillance. Just as development policy witnessed a 'cultural turn' during the 1990s, so too have sustainable development initiatives at local and international scales recognised and revised attention on forms of social sustainability. Increasing levels of violent crime over the last decade across the Caribbean, one of the most urbanised regions in the world, has placed particular focus on the economic and social vulnerabilities of urban populations. Recent UN and World Bank reports indicate that urban violence is the singular greatest hindrance to economic development in the region. The paper will draw on recent fieldwork in the Dominican Republic, most notably concerning the government's Plan de Seguridad Democrática. A key component is the Barrio Seguro ('Safe Neighbourhood') project, which relies on 'zero tolerance' policing and prolonged militarised intervention in demarcated neighbourhoods to 'secure' the city and its citizens. Such policies raise concerns over social and spatial equity, conceptual approaches to sovereignty and the practical interpretation of sustainable forms of justice.