At a packed lecture room on 22 July at the Royal Society of Arts lunchtime event, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett gave a spirited defence of their recent book The Spirit Level.
The event was a panel discussion in which Christopher Snowden and Peter Saunders offered statistical criticism of the book.

The hall was completely packed, reflecting the impact that The Spirit Level has had on political thinkers and actors from all political sides. Kate Pickett fairly poured scorn on statistical academic Peter Saunders’ scathing attacks on their use of statistics.

The 2007 book, written for a lay audience not for professional statisticians, was more than a mere statistical account of the relationship between inequality and the level of social ills, but endeavoured with reference to many related studies to show how statistics helped demonstrate how a group of social ills such as homelessness, teenage pregnancies, homicide rates, mental ill health and so on were more prevalent where the gulf between high and low income were more prevalent where the gulf between high and low income strata was greater, as in the UK,argung strongly in support of their use of statistics saying that she also teaches statistics at post graduate level.