Nobel Prize winner Sir Paul Nurse examines why science appears to be under attack, and why public trust in key scientific theories has been eroded.
In my view this was a worthy programme that diplomatically tried to illustrate the problems communicating scientific topics to others. Nurse’s conclusion that the scientific community is not very good at communicating, is actually well known in the scientific community.
There’s little to be gained from blaming the media for this situation; they will always have some form of agenda as was beautifully illustrated by Nurse’s discussion with the Daily Telegraph’s James Delingpole. I highly recommend you watch the programme to see this particular section. Apparently Mr Delingpole felt “intellectually raped” by Nurse; see:
And a certain viewer certainly didn’t end up with the same assessment of Nurse’s conclusions, that I did, see:
It’s great that we’re able to voice such opinions as included in the link immediately above. The irony is that Nurses’ point is brilliantly illustrated by said opinion.
Aside from the science community’s poor communication with the outside world; this issue also has a serious impact on government policies. It’s been commented on, by several other senior scientific people, at the low level of scientific experience in the UK
So, the probability is that the UK Government does not have sufficient independently-derived, accurate scientific knowledge, to be able to design policies that directly address the principal issues. More often than not, the Government creates policies that address lower order issues, rather than the actual causation; perhaps because they don’t have the complete, un-biased, scientific foundation and therefore understanding?
I experienced a version of this at the Daily Telegraph / Shell Age of Energy Debate in September 2010. See my separate comment on this.
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