It's science, Jim, but not as we know it

Wednesday May 26, 2010

Today, you’ve as much chance of finding a scientist like Michael Faraday as stumbling across Kristin Scott Thomas in a bingo hall, says Simon Hills

Michael Faraday is a scientist as we know scientists. He took it upon himself to study electromagnetism – in effect giving us power stations and industrial electrical power – invented an early form of the Bunsen burner, discovered two new chlorides of carbon and was Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.

While he was at it, he undertook a study of coal dust and its role in explosions in coal mines, investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and how to protect the bottoms of ships from corrosion, and wrote a letter in 1855 to The Times about the disgusting condition of the Thames.

Not bad for a working class boy from what is now the Elephant & Castle who left school at 14 to become an apprentice bookbinder.

You’ve as much chance of finding a scientist like Faraday now as stumbling across Kristin Scott Thomas in a bingo hall.

Today’s scientists come to our attention not by standing in a box of lightning in dramatic public lectures, but by grabbing ever more extravagant headlines, telling us that our little sojourn on planet Earth is about to come to an end. Given melting ice caps, a population explosion, AIDS, additives in food, it’s unlikely we have long for this world. Science is only science if it’s telling us we’re going to die, or at very best become very, very ill.

We are bombarded with reports telling us that grapefruit increases breast cancer risk (and how the hell did scientists track down all these grapefruit-eaters to come up with this little nugget?), Teflon can increase the risk of allergies and colds can kill off our memories.

Real science, from the likes of Newton, Boyle, Faraday, Fleming that has given us modern medicine, freedom to travel the world, central heating and pain relief at the dentist’s has been replaced by touchy-feely studies that chime with the nanny state, with finger-wagging warnings about dangerous pursuits such as watching television and eating chips.

The empiricism demanded by the likes of the Royal Society that has made Britain punch consistently above its scientific weight since the Enlightenment has gone the way of national health spectacles and bow ties. Instead, we have ideological science: as ex New Scientist editor Nigel Calder pointed out, try getting a grant study the squirrel’s feeding habits and you’ve as much chance of getting money to send a Nissan Micra to Mars; add the words how global warming is threatening squirrels’ feeding habits and the cheque’s in the post.

If we believe in a free society, we should be doing all we can to stop science from being driven into corrals of trend. We should remember Stalin’s Soviet Union, where crazy agricultural theories propagated by Lysenko caused the death of millions of peasants. Scientists who had the temerity to study genetics were executed following Lysenko’s admonitions. That’s ideological science.

And now we’re letting it happen again. OK, so the establishment is not going to send David Bellamy to the gallows for daring to criticise the efficacy of wind turbines (although anyone with the slightest understanding of physics would understand that they have as much chance of powering post-industrial Britain as a bunch of frogs on a treadmill), but it will pillory anyone who has the temerity to disagree with its view that society is on the brink of collapse.

So why the hell are we so smug? Why are we going about our daily business as if the most dangerous thing that can happen to us is spilling hot coffee into our pampered laps? Why are we smoking, drinking, eating chips and flying to Florida on our holidays? Could it be that, deep down, we don’t quite believe all these harbingers of doom? And could it be, that we’re right?

Simon Hills is associate editor of The Times Magazine