An excellent and well informed investigation by Sir Paul Nurse,
President of the Royal Society, of the reasons why science is often
under attack and why public confidence in theories is being
undermined. Well worth a watch if you missed it. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/
iplayer/episode/b00y4yql/Horizon_20102011_Science_Under_Attack/)

Andy.

In message
,
Andy Page writes
An excellent and well informed investigation by Sir Paul Nurse,
President of the Royal Society, of the reasons why science is often
under attack and why public confidence in theories is being
undermined. Well worth a watch if you missed it. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/
iplayer/episode/b00y4yql/Horizon_20102011_Science_Under_Attack/)

Andy.


As you say an excellent programme, something the BBC do far better than
any other TV company.

I especially enjoyed the way James Deningpole of the Telegraph made a
total prat of himself.

--

Jim

Jim Kewley wrote in message
...
In message
,
Andy Page writes
An excellent and well informed investigation by Sir Paul Nurse,
President of the Royal Society, of the reasons why science is often
under attack and why public confidence in theories is being
undermined. Well worth a watch if you missed it. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/
iplayer/episode/b00y4yql/Horizon_20102011_Science_Under_Attack/)

Andy.


As you say an excellent programme, something the BBC do far better than
any other TV company.

I especially enjoyed the way James Deningpole of the Telegraph made a
total prat of himself.

--

Jim



What was his line, he is not a scientist but interprets the interpretation
of scientists.

--
Monthly science talks, Southampton , Hampshire
http://www.divdev.fsnet.co.uk/scicaf.htm
next one Monday, 07 February 2011
Subject: Fusion research and energy
Dr Chris Warrick from the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy , Oxfordshire.
Time: 19:00 for talk 19:30 to 21:00, free entry, open to all. Plenty of time
for questions and answers.
http://en-gb.facebook.com/pages/Culh...y/163104564319
Cross link from Culham Facebook page

On 25/01/2011 00:07, Dave Cornwell wrote:
Lawrence Jenkins wrote:
"Andy Page" wrote in message
...
An excellent and well informed investigation by Sir Paul Nurse,
President of the Royal Society, of the reasons why science is often
under attack and why public confidence in theories is being
undermined. Well worth a watch if you missed it. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/
iplayer/episode/b00y4yql/Horizon_20102011_Science_Under_Attack/)

Andy.

I found this particularly interesting.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/ja...limate-change/


------------------
What - that he's always right. He very adequately proved the point of
the program. Largely that know nothings have more of a say in the modern
society than proven experts. Except that Sir Paul Nurse is much more
rational and fairer than that - but then he's not a politician like
Delingpole.
Dave

I think the BBC should have pointed out that Delingpole was not
speaking at a reputable conference in the clip that they showed but at
a lunatic fringe meeting of extreme right wing libertarian Americans
sponsored by the Heartland Institute (look at the lectern).

The BBC should also have pointed out that nearly 50% of Americans also
think the world is a mere 6000 years old and the previous President
Dubya appointed people to censor NASA output by adding teh word
"theory" to sensitive scientific topics like The Big Bang and
Evolution.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/21811/Ame...n-Origins.aspx

Science is under serious attack and we should hit back and hard.
Delingpole did not come out of his encounter with Nurse at all well.
He really does come over as a demented right wing blogger arguing from
ignorance. Full marks to the BBC - nice to see the Royal Society
trying to give a lead on the public understanding of science.

Delingpole doesn't even *claim* to understand the science he just
parrots very loudly what he finds on other right wing nutters' blogs.
No surprise then that he is the darling of other right wing
antiscience nutters.

He is pretty much in line with the abysmally low quality of science
writing in the Telegraph. They used to employ another right winger
called Adrian Berry who managed to get lots of stuff obviously wrong.

A nice example of the latters many glaring factual scientific errors
can be demonstrated from his piece "Chesser" which is inaccurately
plagiarised from Roger Penroses "Shadows of the Mind".

http://www.adrianberry.net/chesser.htm

How many mistakes can you spot in this short piece? It was written
about the time of the last Hubble service mission.

Regards,
Martin Brown

On Jan 24, 10:32*pm, Andy Page wrote:
An excellent and well informed investigation by Sir Paul Nurse,
President of the Royal Society, of the reasons why science is often
under attack and why public confidence in theories is being
undermined. Well worth a watch if you missed it. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/
iplayer/episode/b00y4yql/Horizon_20102011_Science_Under_Attack/)

Yes! Absolutely superb!

"We live in a world where point of view - not peer review - holds
sway" was the line I took away from it.

I'm glad someone of his level was able to explain to us nicely,
without condescension, the idea of confirmation bias: people running
blogs and websites looking for evidence that supports their view on
the world.

It was also very interesting to see Mr Delingpole squirm - the
questioner questioned.

Richard

On Jan 25, 3:07*am, Jim Kewley wrote:
In message
,
Andy Page writes

An excellent and well informed investigation by Sir Paul Nurse,
President of the Royal Society, of the reasons why science is often
under attack and why public confidence in theories is being
undermined. Well worth a watch if you missed it. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/
iplayer/episode/b00y4yql/Horizon_20102011_Science_Under_Attack/)

Andy.

As you say an excellent programme, something the BBC do far better than
any other TV company.

I especially enjoyed the way James Deningpole of the Telegraph made a
total prat of himself.

--

Jim

Surely AGW science is still largly speculative whereas medical
knowledge is not.

On Jan 25, 10:40*am, Lawrence13 wrote:

Surely AGW science is still largly speculative whereas medical
knowledge is not.

As an interesting side-topic, have a read of "Good Calories Bad
Calories" on the science of nutrition and you'll see how some areas of
scientific dogma are grounded in quite sketchy research (and in the
case of low-fat, high carb diets, funded by the cereal industry) going
back to the 1950s.

Richard

On 25/01/2011 14:07, Richard Dixon wrote:
On Jan 25, 10:40 am, wrote:

Surely AGW science is still largly speculative whereas medical
knowledge is not.

As an interesting side-topic, have a read of "Good Calories Bad
Calories" on the science of nutrition and you'll see how some areas of
scientific dogma are grounded in quite sketchy research (and in the
case of low-fat, high carb diets, funded by the cereal industry) going
back to the 1950s.

Though slightly better for you than the high fat low carb Atkins diet
which although slimming stresses the body and possibly even helped kill
the inventor. He certainly suffered from heart problems in his later
years which put many people off his diet plan (rightly or wrongly).

Too much of anything and faddish exclusion diets are probably bad for
omnivores and a roughly balanced diet appears to be much closer to the
Japanese/Chinese diet if life expectancy is anything to go by.

Regards,
Martin Brown

On Jan 25, 10:40*am, Lawrence13 wrote:
On Jan 25, 3:07*am, Jim Kewley wrote:





In message
,
Andy Page writes

An excellent and well informed investigation by Sir Paul Nurse,
President of the Royal Society, of the reasons why science is often
under attack and why public confidence in theories is being
undermined. Well worth a watch if you missed it. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/
iplayer/episode/b00y4yql/Horizon_20102011_Science_Under_Attack/)

Andy.

As you say an excellent programme, something the BBC do far better than
any other TV company.

I especially enjoyed the way James Deningpole of the Telegraph made a
total prat of himself.

--

Jim

Surely AGW science is still largly speculative whereas medical
knowledge is not.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I think the "global cooling" science is the speculative bit. Like,
there isn't any reallly, whereas there has been an avalanche of
science and data that supports the likelihood that GW (unequivocal and
undeniable) is probably AGW (not proven, but accepted by most).

In message
,
Lawrence13 writes
On Jan 25, 3:07*am, Jim Kewley wrote:
In message
,
Andy Page writes

An excellent and well informed investigation by Sir Paul Nurse,
President of the Royal Society, of the reasons why science is often
under attack and why public confidence in theories is being
undermined. Well worth a watch if you missed it. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/
iplayer/episode/b00y4yql/Horizon_20102011_Science_Under_Attack/)

Andy.

As you say an excellent programme, something the BBC do far better than
any other TV company.

I especially enjoyed the way James Deningpole of the Telegraph made a
total prat of himself.

--

Jim

Surely AGW science is still largly speculative whereas medical
knowledge is not.


I'm not qualified to comment on either, I'm just a layman trying to make
sense of it all. However I do try to take into account all sides of the
discussion and debate, whilst trying not let my own prejudices encroach.

Two things I can say with certainty though is that Deningplole knows
precious little more than me and he is also a prat of the highest order.
--

Jim