I have become morbidly addicted to a show on the television called Question Time.
For those of you not familiar, five guests sit before an audience which questions them. Three or four are poiticians and there is a spare wheel to bring a little humanity and levity to the proceedings. The politicians could be replaced by mannequins, since they rarely answer the question which they are asked.
Like many, I am concerned at the lamentable reporting of science in the media, of scientists’ often very poor career conditions, of their stereotying in fiction and drama and the low public understanding of science.
So, with 2008 already half expired, I wondered if any of our noble profession had appeared as a guest on BBC Question Time. I conned the list of panellists – I sailed around the world, seasick for five years, why do you make me suffer so? – from the first six months of 2008. There have been:
Eleven columnists or journalists
One lady who was related to a man called Boris
One retired member of a once popular beat combo
One comedian
One economist
One artist (a gentleman who dresses in ladies clothes)
One bishop (ditto)
Two business people
Two television presenters
One pressure group chief executive
One history broadcaster
A cultural commentator and playwright
Two novelists
A chief executive of an opera house
Scientists?
None.
None in the last six months. The ability to form an opinion based on opinion alone appears to be intensely valued by the editors of Question Time. Science appears to be irrelevant and the intellectual discipline it brings unnecessary in public, and publicly funded topical debate.
But not on radio: as I speak an embryologist called Robert Winston is a panellist on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions. He is accompanied by a Lord Tebbit (a mustelid, I am given to understand) and two of the ubiquitous ‘journalists and broadcasters’. Sigh.
To think if the BBC had invited one of your more modern, most literal exponents, to appear on the Today show instead of on the Dr Who programme.
Although there are some at Nature Network who would not have been pleased at this turn of events, many friends of science would have preferred Professor “D” to have appeared than some of those experts whom you have listed here.
Quickly now:
Hopefully that spared Henry from a heart attack
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Indignant snorts. We can do better than He Who Must Not Be Named. One of the problems with media scientists is that it’s always the same group of
luvviesscientists that you see. To ape Mr Darwin’s list, it’sBaroness Greenfield, a former neuroscientist;
He Who Must Not Be Named;
Lord Sir Bob Winston;
His Mightiness Lord Robert May of Strayla;
Stephen Hawkwind;
er … that’s it.
Then there is a kind of second division of former scientists turned broadcasters: the cadre is slighltly larger, but not much.
The question we should be asking ourselves is why more scientists don’t put themselves more in the way of being invited? Many scientists I know (science editors too, come to that) flinch at the very thought.
PS I once sat on the same sofa as He Who Must Not Be Named. We were discussing yetis with Richard and Judy.
[Stepping discreetly over that thread-stopping mess on the pavement…]
Henry, you forgot Kathy Sykes.
Ex astronomer and pop sci writer John Gribbin was once on Any Questions – but he wasn’t very good. I don’t know why, given the format is effectively the same, but I find Any Questions (the radio version) much better than Question Time. Perhaps it’s because QT spends longer on the audience, who sadly rarely say anything interesting.
I forgot Carol Vordeman, too, but given that that’s what I’d rather do in any case, that seems no bad thing.
I think they should invite me on QT. They wouldn’t know what had hit ‘em. Especially if I was on with that dreadful Hazel Bleeuurgh woman—you know, the NuLab apparat-chick who looks like a Belgian barge dog on heat.
Hazel Bleeuurgh on Question Time, last week
A Belgian Barge Dog, yesterday
I did appear as a pundit with Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight, talking about a fossil hominid. As I wasn’t a politician El Paxo was niceness itself… on screen at least. Beforehand, in the dressing room, I had a taste of the usual Paxman “The Axeman” banter.
Paxman: ”so, You’re the palaeontology editor of Nature, are you?”
Self: “Yes.”
Paxman (fixing me with steely stare). “Is that a full-time job?”
Some powerful science has clearly been involved in the production of Ms Blears’s extraordinary hair. It is a most fetching colour. I may do my beard a similar shade.
And ‘Barge Dog’ shall be my insult of choice for the week.
My God.
I shall have to seek counselling. You’ll be hearing from my solicitor in due course.
For media scientists I’d happily add the likes of Colin Pillinger, Brian Cox and Iain Stewart as teleregulars, and Jim Al-Khalili, Mark Lythgoe, Marcus du Sautoy, Karen Bultitude and Laura Grant as tele/radio occassionals.
And if you include psychologists (I know some bench scientists are sniffy about those that are clinicians) there’s the likes of Tanya Byron,
Anjula Mutanda and Raj Persaud, who (before I stopped watching TV a year ago) was the last “scientist” I saw on Question Time – and was very good.
Dr Persaud is inclined to repeat the previous panelist’s answer, I understand.
And with a little research I have discovered that no news bulletin or programme on childhood on embrology is complete without Professor Robert Winston’s contribution. Somthing known in media circles as Bobwin’s Law.
That’s covered most of the scientists who regularly appear on TV in the UK, but who are the usual suspects in the US and elsewhere?
Oh, I quite ‘like’ Hazel Blears (despite the QT politician eel-ness); lovely red hair; much more preferable to a blue rinse.
It’s the mad staring eyes, really. And the teeth.
Mad staring teeth? Yikes.
but is there a strong urge to fly?
Looks like a floydian slip.
So no US scientist-pundits, then?
Unless Mr Jerry Springer is a scientist-pundit, as well as being a talk show host of the more regrettable kind and subject of an Opera which failed to hold a candle to the Marriage of Figaro, no.
Mad staring teeth. Actually, that is what I meant.
Dr Gee, did you point out to Mr Paxman that his working ‘day’ at 45 minutes is hardly onerous?