I have just driven in to work and was listening to the normally excellent Today Programme put out by the BBC on Radio 4 when the scientific vocabulary of the journalist jarred. The programme was investigating the provision of broadband access in the UK and commenting on the fact that line speeds were much faster in London than elsewhere. To illustrate their point by the normal journalistic practice of finding an extreme, a journalist had been sent to a remote part of Scotland where there was no ADSL service. Unfortunately, we were told, in this part of Scotland broadband access was subject to the laws of physics and so was not available.

The “laws of physics” or the particular law were never explained, hence leaving the listener the feeling that the laws are difficult to understand or possibly secret. Did the journalist really understand the issues, which are much more likely to be governed by the rules of economics and business rather than by scientific principles.

I think we are seeing the usual antipathy towartds science/engineering by mainstream journalists and the fear of trying to explain anything to an audience that the journalist/editor perceives as difficult or technical. I know this is a trivial example in a story that is not about science but it is symptomatic of the attitude that science is best presented as a kind of magic and never explained but left as a mysterious force.