Doubting Wisely
Slide Guide
01. WHO European Public Health Leadership Course
Summary: The cover slide for the sixth edition of the WHO/Europe Public Health Leadership Course, organised by the Quality of Care Centre, Athens, Greece with the in-person element organised on 10-14th November 2025.
This document outlines the content of the presentation, which may be downloaded in PowerPoint format. This presentation is © Gauden Galea 2025. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (the Creative Commons Attribution Licence).
02. Doubting Wisely
Summary: Values, humility, and effectiveness in public health leadership. Cover slide for this presentation.
03. The "Heroic" Leader
Summary: An AI-generated image caricaturing the idealised vision of the leader; a leader with superpowers, singular vision, and an ideal team that follows.
04. Knowledge or Certainty
Summary: Extract from the BBC documentary by Jacob Bronowski (1973), "The Ascent of Man". In this episode he shows the extreme impact of arrogance and dogma. https://youtu.be/ltjI3BXKBgY?si=k-PzmFHKRR21xcQ7
05. Conflict Index – context for leadership
Summary: Political violence increased; many countries at extreme or high conflict levels.
- ACLED (Armed Conflict Location & Event Data) Conflict Index Report (Dec 2024) Full text link
06. Leadership in Disruptive times
Summary: A table compares and contrasts the concepts of uncertainty and doubt from the point of view of the leader.
07. Exercise: doubt vs uncertainty on air
Summary: Provocative prompts to distinguish doubt from uncertainty in practice -- in a hypothetical interview with a journalist.
08. Commercial determinants of Health
Summary: Introduces the weaponisation of doubt by vested interests in the commercial sector, weaponising doubt through dark money, distortion of evidence, lobbying, and targeting of the vulnerable, among others.
- Michaels D. The Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception. Oxford University Press, 2020. Publisher page
- Maani N, Petticrew M, Galea S (eds.). The Commercial Determinants of Health. Oxford University Press, 2023. Publisher page
- Oreskes N, Conway EM. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. Bloomsbury Press, 2010. Publisher page
09. Commercial Determinants of NCDs in Europe
Summary: A WHO/Europe publication revealing the impact of four industries: tobacco, alcohol, unhealthy foods, and fossil fuels.
- World Health Organization. Regional Office for Europe (2024). Commercial Determinants of Noncommunicable Diseases in the WHO European Region. World Health Organization. Regional Office for Europe. Publisher page.
10. The Rise of Mis/Dis-information and Our Response
Summary: How false claims spread, persist, and endanger health, starting from the original (retracted) paper that suggested a link between autism and vaccination, and what evidence-based science recommends to counter them.
- RETRACTED Wakefield AJ, Murch SH, Anthony A, Linnell J, al e. Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. The Lancet. Full text link
- Broda, E., & Strömbäck, J. (2024). Misinformation, disinformation, and fake news: lessons from an interdisciplinary, systematic literature review. Annals of the International Communication Association, 48(2), 139–166. Full text link
- van der Linden, S., Albarracín, D., Fazio, L., Freelon, D., Roozenbeek, J., Swire-Thompson, B., & Van Bavel, J. (2025). Using psychological science to understand and fight health misinformation: An APA consensus statement.American Psychologist. Advance online publication. Full text link
11. Summary APA Recommendations
Summary: The eight recommendations for responding to mis/dis-information made by the Oct 2025 APA consensus statement.
- van der Linden, S., Albarracín, D., Fazio, L., Freelon, D., Roozenbeek, J., Swire-Thompson, B., & Van Bavel, J. (2025). Using psychological science to understand and fight health misinformation: An APA consensus statement.American Psychologist. Advance online publication. Full text link
12. Know your values
Summary: Clarify values to guide decisions under uncertainty. This is a prompt slide for participants to reflect on what are their own values, what motivates their own leadership in public health.
13. Regulatory frame for data, AI, and devices (EU)
Summary: An example of encoding values in legislation using the EU digital innovation space and how it encodes four key sets of values: privacy, community, innovation, devices, and AI risk management.
- GDPR (2016) Link
- European Health Data Space (EUHDS, 2025) Link
- A Briefing on the EU AI Act (2024) Link
- EU Medical Devices Regulation (2017) Link
14 and 15. “On Bullshit” — An essay by Harry Frankfurt
Summary: Contrasting "bullshit" with doubt and uncertainty; extracting from the classic paper by Harry Frankfurt the definition, means of recognition, and means of avoidance of bullshit, in oneself as much as in others.
- Frankfurt H. On Bullshit. Raritan Quarterly Review. Volume 6, Number 2, Fall 1986) Full text link
16. Know your tools
Summary: Introduces a section where the pros and cons of two tools are discussed, one a mechanical, data science tool, and the other a higher level, conceptual tool defining a mindset in public health leadership.
17. Excel pitfalls for data science
Summary: A participatory exercise in which the audience participates in identifying the shortcomings of a spreadsheet in data analysis.
18. Famous Excel errors
Summary: Three real-world spreadsheet failures that shaped public health, finance, and governance.
- Hern A. Covid: how Excel may have caused loss of 16,000 test results in England. The Guardian. 6 October 2020. Full text link
- Croll GJ. The Reification of an Incorrect and Inappropriate Spreadsheet Model. Proceedings of the EuSpRIG 2017 Conference “Spreadsheet Risk Management.” Full text link
- Reinhart CM, Rogoff KS. Growth in a Time of Debt. NBER Working Paper No. 15639, January 2010. Full text link
- Herndon T, Ash M, Pollin R. Does high public debt consistently stifle economic growth? A critique of Reinhart and Rogoff. Cambridge Journal of Economics 2014; 38: 257–79. Full text link
19. Literate programming / reproducible analysis
Summary: Notebook‑driven, executable documents for auditable results -- an antidote to avoid or mitigate typicalspreadsheet errors.
- Marimo https://marimo.io/
- Jupyter https://jupyter.org/
- Shiny https://shiny.posit.co/
20. Precautionary Principle — definition
Summary: Act to prevent serious harm despite scientific uncertainty when cost‑effective measures exist.
- Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (1992) Full text link
21. Precautionary Principle — operationalisation
Summary: Trigger, proportional actions, integration with risk assessment/management/communication.
22. Precautionary Principle — examples
Summary: From moratoria to global treaties as pre‑emptive safeguards.
- Call for Heritable Gene Editing Moratorium (May 2025)
- Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (1987)
- Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (2004)
23. Know your biases
Summary: Slide to introduce the section on biases.
24. Sir Ronald Fisher's Crusade
Summary: The great statistician, Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher, had his own biases, and insisted that the link between cancer and smoking was a case of "correlation, not causation".
- Fisher, R. Cancer and Smoking. Nature 182, 596 (1958).
- Fisher, R. and Yates, F. Statistical tables for biological, agricultural and medical research, (6th Edition).
25. Thinking Fast and Slow
Summary: How cognitive shortcuts shape judgment and how overconfidence in ‘System 1’ thinking led to flawed research on priming and bias; the theory on fast and slow thinking is still very relevant but still needs us to evaluate the research behind it.
- Kahneman D., Thinking, Fast and Slow. 2011.
- Schimmack U. Reconstruction of a Train Wreck: How Priming Research Went off the Rails. Replicability‑Index Blog , 2 February 2017.
26. Cognitive Bias Definition
Summary: Slide opens the discussion on cognitive biases. See the introduction on Wikipedia
27-28. Bias quiz: questions and answers
Summary: Introduces a light-hearted exercise in which the audience have to distinguish cognitive biases supported by empirical evidence and others that are mere inventions, generated by AI.
- Galea, G. Cognitive Biases Quiz. (2025) https://biases.streamlit.app
29. Be ready to change
Summary: Introductory slide to the last section: as public health leader you need to update positions as evidence changes; show your workings.
30. Illustrative example: The BMA changes its mind
Summary: Institutional learning; policy shifts with new evidence or context; how the BMA shifted over decades.
31. Behavioural / Structural
Summary: Contrast individual‑level vs structural levers for public health impact. No specific references; this is a space for discussion.
32. Two Traditions
Summary: Summary of action-oriented lessons from this lecture, based in management and philosophical literature.
33. Thank you / Contact
- URL: https://gaudengalea.com/blog/doubting-wisely-lecture
- Email: contact@gaudengalea.com
- This presentation is © Gauden Galea 2025. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (the Creative Commons Attribution Licence).