Martin Poulter

Distinguished skeptic, and speaker on cults and critical thinking

A Senior Web Developer and Researcher at the University of Bristol, Dr Martin Poulter's PhD, completed at Bristol University Philosophy Department, examines ways in which an individual’s values can affect the beliefs that they sign up to. You can read it here.

The educational resources he has created include a tutorial on the Prisoner's Dilemma, which discusses how opposed interests can learn to co-operate. He is one of the Directors of Wikimedia UK, the national non-profit organisation promoting and supporting Wikipedia and its sister projects. As well a strategic role, this has involved delivering workshops, media interviews and extensive networking. He has given a one-day workshop on "Writing for the Web", and co-ordinated and delivered training in contributing to Wikipedia, as well as one-to-one training to academics on how to share teaching materials through wikis.

He is on the on the committee of of Bristol Skeptics and gives talks around the country on cults and critical thinking, including ones on "How to start your own cult: The Scientology way", "Cognitive Bias, Introspection and Religious Belief", and "How to be certain about anything, even when you’ve got no evidence". He writes about psychology and philosophy on the Bias and Belief blog, and has been informing the public about the Scientology cult since 1995.

He also supports Sense About Science, the Open Rights Group (ORG), Liberty, and the National Secular Society (NSS).

See also
Martin Poulter's reflections and references on bias, critical thinking and irrationality at http://biasandbelief.wordpress.com/
His website at http://infobomb.org/