In this episode of the Science Focus Podcast, we speak to Elliot Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat. If you haven’t heard that name before, then you might be surprised to know that Bellingcat is behind some of the biggest news revelations of the decade.
They use social media and information freely available online to carry out what they call open source investigation.
Their work has uncovered the use of chemical weapons in Syria, identified suspects in the Skripal poisoning in Salisbury and identified the people responsible for downing flight MH17 over Ukraine.
Eliot speaks to editor Dan Bennett about his new book, We Are Bellingcat (£20, Bloomsbury), which tells the story of how a group of amateur hobbyists ended up taking on Russian spies.
Read an edited excerpt of this interview
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Dr Julia Shaw: Why do we do bad things?
Marcel Danesi: Why do we want to believe lies?
Project Discovery: Could computer games help find a cure for COVID-19?
Chris Lintott: Can members of the public do real science?
Lara Martin: Meet the computer scientist teaching an AI to play Dungeons and Dragons
Rana el Kaliouby: What if computers could read our emotions?
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