HS at the Deception and Dissent Fakes Day

Lucas Canino, an artist in residence at the Healthy Scepticism project, has produced a new magazine in time for Fakes Day for the Between Deception and Dissent project run by Emilie Cloatre (PI) at King’s College, London. In collaboration with Professor Patricia Kingori at Oxford Population Health’s Ethox Centre, the University of Oxford, and institutions around the UK and Ghana, this year’s fakes day will spotlight fakes in science and pseudo-science.
April Fakes Day serves as an opportunity to engage with the complexities of fakery and its role in shaping our understanding of reality. We engage with collections, research and the stories we tell to celebrate curiosity, creativity and critical thinking. APRIL FAKES DAY 2026 runs between Sun 29 March and Sat 4 April, and features an online exhibition that includes Canino’s work as well as a blog post from Caitjan Gainty, PI on the HS project, on the problem of discerning “real” diseases from “fake.”

Lucas’s tongue-in-cheek magazine - which you can download here - takes its inspiration from a children’s magazine called Highlights: a mainstay of every American dentist’s and doctor’s waiting room for decades. In that style, he offers us “Concoctions of Science”, which introduces readers of all ages to the thorny problems of “fake science” via spot the difference and connect the dots activities sure to please as much as it describes how scientific evidence and authority can be (mis)interpreted, manipulated & hallucinated. Stay tuned for follow-ons from this exciting magazine in months to come!