Reply from Henry Gee

Henry Gee — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 10:43:34 -0000

I have not seen the Channel 4 documentary, but if reports are correct, I am not surprised, as this is the way that TV science shows seem to be going (Horizon is an example).

Climate change is a complex and subtle issue for various sound, scientific reasons (let’s leave out the political ones for now).

The problem with digesting it for the media is that journalists often fail to appreciate the subtleties of science and want everything to boil down to yes/no answers (news editors, actually, rather than journalists, are the worst offenders).

Journalists, as well as being steeped in their own self-importance, are also imbued with regrettable ideas such as ‘fairness’ and ‘democracy’, which means that any bozo off the street has the same ‘right’ to express any view, no matter how simian and ill-informed, as any person who actually knows what they are talking about.

When transferred to science, this crazy reality-TV view of the world means that any idea, however cracked or ill-supported, deserves ‘equal time’, and journalists will look sympathetically at those mavericks who ascribe the failure of their ideas to gain credence as some kind of cover-up—which is of course meat and drink to investigative journalists, being the most self-regarding of the lot.

The effect on science is regrettable, as the it will be to stifle all reasoned debate and force all scientists to present a united front, for fear that cretinous journalists will get the wrong end of the stick. Journalists will of course will react to this in smug contentment, as their impression will be that there really is a cover up, ignoring the fact that reasoned debate does not signal a subject in disarray, but one in rude health.

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Reply from Henry Gee