Abstract

Whether we want to improve education or cut crime, to enhance public health or to generate clean energy, science is critical. Yet politics and public life too often occupy a science-free zone.

It isn’t only that scientific understanding is passed over as decisions are made; the experimental methods of science aren’t applied to evaluating policy either. Ministers have ignored, and even sacked, scientific advisers who offer inconvenient evidence; whilst groundless media scares, taken up by politicians, poison public debate on issues from vaccines to nuclear power.

In this talk, Mark Henderson will build a case for science to become more central to government and the wider national conversation, but suggests that things will only change when people who care about science get politically active. In his words, “It is time to mobilise the geeks.”

For more information and to register, please click here