Science Under Attack

Tue 09 Aug 2011, 8:30pm

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Climate science has become a battleground sinceleaked emails from the University of East Anglia’sClimate Research Unit reverberated across theworld. Activists vandalise genetically modified foodcrops. Parents refuse to vaccinate their children frompotentially fatal diseases because of one discreditedpiece of research.

Science is in trouble. From global warming to GM foods and children’s vaccinations, it seems the scientist’s word is not always trusted.

scienceunderattack

Sir Paul Nurse, Nobel laureate cell biologist and thePresident of the Royal Society, wants to find out whyscience is suddenly under attack and how scientistshave responded.

As part of this quest he meets some of the keyprotagonists; from the Professor at the heart ofClimategate, to an HIV sufferer who denies that HIVcauses AIDS and refuses to take any medication.

He spends a day as a science journalist on a nationalnewspaper – and he visits the most secure and highlyprotected potato field in the UK.

He examines the science of climate change to askwhy it is that public support for the concept of humaninduced climate change is falling. As he travels acrossthe US and the UK he learns that the core problem isuncertainty – new discoveries often seem to complicaterather than simplify the science. And where there isuncertainty, in the public’s mind, there is room for doubt.

In the 21st century there is no automatic acceptanceof a scientist’s word. They have to earn that trust. Paulwants to find out what scientists need to do to earn, andkeep, the public’s trust.