LSE Research channel | Video

Contributor(s): Zack Cooper | Deriding it as “socialism by stealth,” critics of President Obama’s plans for healthcare reform in the US have complained that the President intends to institute an American National Health Service. Meanwhile, in the UK, the NHS itself is becoming increasingly market-led with the roll-out of “NHS Choices” – a system which allows patients to choose their healthcare provider. Some see the “Choice” agenda as steering the NHS troublingly close to privatisation. In this short film, Zachary Cooper, a research officer with LSE Health explains how neither system will or should effect a wholesale replacement of the other. Instead both have much to learn from introducing the correct type of competition, incentives, and regulations. As published in the British Medical Journal, his recent work with Professor Julian LeGrand – formerly a senior Downing Street policy advisor and one of the architects of the Choice and Competition agenda – provides empirical evidence that patient choice has coincided with reduced waiting times and significantly improved equity in England – with discrepancies between the richest and the poorest patients all but invisible by 2007.

Contributor(s): Professor Arne Westad | When the Cold War ended, the threat of an all-out war between the superpowers ended with it. Nuclear war apparently went away. But while the political games changed, the nuclear arsenal that had done so much to keep the Cold War from ever turning hot remained very much in place. In this film, renowned historian of the Cold War Professor Arne Westad explains that not only have hopes for a dismantling of the weapons stockpile failed to be realised, but that the period since the end of the Cold War has seen proliferation occur at such a pace that ours is now referred to as "The Second Nuclear Age." Professor Westad also talks of his prevailing hope for a world free of nuclear weapons.

Contributor(s): Dr Alex Voorhoeve | Can we trust our intuitive judgments of right and wrong? Are moral judgments objective? Why be moral? In this short film, Dr. Alex Voorhoeve, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, explains why he engaged eleven leading philosophers and scientists in conversation in order to elicit answers to these questions. Dr. Voorhoeve argues for the importance of the dialogue form for philosophical enquiry, and describes some of the advantages that written dialogues have over ordinary, monologic texts.

Contributor(s): Professor Janet Hunter | On 1 September 1923, an earthquake measuring 8.3 on the Richter scale struck the main Japanese island of Honshū. What wasn't immediately destroyed in the 4 – 10 minutes during which the ground shook was consumed by fires which swept through the largely wooden buildings of Tokyo and the port city of Yokohama – Japan's central import hub. In this short film Professor Janet Hunter, of the Department of Economic History, looks at how the Japanese economy reacted to this disaster. Despite the massive devastation and loss of life – as many as 140,000 died – one extraordinary feature is how quickly the Japanese economy recovered. Within two to three years, most of the large-scale indicators such as gross domestic product, had reverted to trend. Indeed by 1926 it was, in many respects, as if the earthquake had never occurred. According to Professor Hunter's research, patterns are emerging that permit insights into the psychology of markets. These suggest that even short-term profit-seeking, although seemingly callous and opportunistic, ultimately plays a vital role in assuring swift recovery.

Contributor(s): Dr Roman Frigg | Scientists produce the technologies that characterise modern life and their theories help us to understand how the world works – they are transparently useful. But why do we need philosophers of science? In this short film Dr Roman Frigg, a former theoretical physicist who is now senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, argues that all science is the result of a particular philosophical attitude. One of the tasks of philosophers of science is to analyse science in light of these attitudes. Philosophers can also feed back into science and Dr Frigg points to a project at LSE which looks at climate models as a good example of this. Climate scientists and philosophers are working together to tackle difficult conceptual problems – such as the use of probability and the kind of forecasts you make – to come up with more informed climate models.

Contributor(s): Dr Sujit Sivasundarum | In this short film Dr Sujit Sivasundarum, from the Department of International History, challenges the idea that European colonists brought Modernity in the form of systematic knowledge to countries such as Sri Lanka. He argues that it is not just territory that is occupied by a colonising force, local knowledge, too, is also absorbed and utilised by the colonisers. Dr Sivasundarum's research looks at the Kingdom of Kandy, a state set deep in the forested highlands of central Sri Lanka. Kandy was one of the last outposts of native rule to fall to colonists, successfully repelling the British in 1803, before finally succumbing in 1815. One reason for the Kandyan's success was superior information: technical knowledge useful to the military resistance could be passed between Kandyans in the form of "palm-leaf manuscripts." By examining surviving palm-leaf manuscripts, Dr Sivasundaram is able to reconstruct indigenous knowledge from the 1800s, and show that what we think of "enlightenment knowledge" is sometimes actually founded on indigenous knowledge - although the link has long since been obscured.

Contributor(s): Dr Edgar Whitely | The Government's much vilified identity card scheme overreaches its aim of protecting us from identity fraud and could leave us more - not less - vulnerable, according to Dr Edgar Whitley from LSE's Information Systems and Innovation Group.In this short film Dr Whitley warns that in their proposed form, ID cards fail to distinguish the separate tasks of authentication and identification - forcing us to disclose more personal information than necessary in situations where we may need, for example, simply to establish that we are over 18. This would not be necessary, he argues, if the government had taken the opportunity to utilise new technologies, such as our own mobile phones.Could some of the controversy around the scheme have been avoided if it was more citizen-centric? As the date approaches when the proposed scheme will be rolled out nationwide, Dr Whitley discusses how ID cards threaten to change the relationship between the individual and the state in the UK.

Contributor(s): Dr Filippa Lentzos | Anthrax, smallpox, plague - biological weapons provoke a special fear in us. Whatever the reasons for this, it is not because they have proven to be especially lethal in comparison to conventional weapons, according to Dr Filippa Lentzos. In this film Dr Lentzos, a senior researcher with BIOS - LSE's centre for the study of bioscience - explains why the US Government, along with the security and pharmaceutical industries, have an interest in nurturing a culture of fear concerning a biological weapons attack. She also argues that the US government's response to the risk of an attack may have, ironically, actually increased the threat of such an attack. Dr Lentzos works on strengthening the UN Biological Weapons Convention. She is currently working with governments on increasing transparency and building confidence between states that no offensive weapons programmes are being developed.

Contributor(s): Lord Nicholas Stern | Being green is often seen as a form of modern Puritanism: environmental degradation is the price we have paid for our luxurious lives, and frugality and discomfort is the debt we must pay for planetary survival. But LSE's Lord Nicholas Stern is more optimistic. He explains how we can both manage climate change and also usher in a new era of global prosperity in this short film. Lord Stern's blueprint for managing climate change. Proper management of climate change could create a new era of global economic prosperity rather than herald an inevitable age of frugality according to Lord Nicholas Stern, Chair of LSE's Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. This is because our future economic success is inextricably entwined with the continued health of the planet. Lord Stern argues that not only is our reckless attitude environmentally unsustainable, but economically unstable to boot. But this economics driven approach is not without its critics. For example James Lovelock, the well-known scientist and environmentalist, fears current measures to tackle climate change are too little too late, and sees schemes like "carbon trading" as corporate pacifiers. In this film, Lord Stern addresses five challenges that lie ahead: 1. How can we solve the overpopulation problem? 2. Doesn't an economic motive relegate environmental concerns to a mere stepping-stone on the way to wealth? 3. How much can we invest our hopes in technology? 4. What can we do, and what is required to actually make this work? 5. Will the need to focus attention on the environment divert resources away from improving living conditions for people in the developing world?

Contributor(s): Dr Christopher Badcock | In his new book, 'The Imprinted Brain', Dr Christopher Badcock (LSE, Sociology) presents a radical revision to the current classification of mental disorders. His proposal is that we might understand disorders with reference to their position on a "mentalistic spectrum," which arrays mental disorders according to the degree to which sufferers have beliefs about the thoughts and intentions of other minds. In this film, Dr Badcock discusses one of the curious implications of his theory: the notion that along with the more familiar autistic savants, there may be "psychotic savants" - individuals who possess severe mechanistic deficiencies, but such an excess of "people skills" that they go through life undetected, and "deeply embedded in critical social institutions".