European elections: The anti-science sentiment infecting politics

The Guardian Science blog were kind enough to allow Martin of LayScience.net and myself to write up an article on science and the European elections:

On Thursday, millions of us will go to the polls to decide how Britain is represented in the European Parliament, but few will have the faintest idea where the candidates stand on issues that affect the food we eat, the air we breathe, the energy in our homes and the chemicals in our environment.

Science is at the heart of our modern world, and it deserves to be at the heart of political discussion too.

Link

More like this

The European Elections are taking place this week, when millions of people will go to the polls to decide how they are represented in Europe. The European Parliament is a stage on which countless battles are played out, influencing aspects of our economy, law, judiciary, technology, environment,…
The REACHforLIFE campaign has appealed for incoming MEPs to ensure science takes centre stage during their five year term. The organisation, comprising of chemical companies Albemarle, Chemtura and ICL-IP, has a stated aim to tackle mistrust of science and move toward a balanced approach in…
I'll admit that I haven't paid a terribly large amount of attention to the upcoming European Parliament elections (taking place in the UK Thursday--i.e. tomorrow) since I can't actually vote in them. However, maybe I should have been paying attention, based on a write-up by Frank Swain (…
You know, I really, really hate the way quacks abuse molecular biology. I know, I know. I've said it before, but certain quacks have a way of willfully misunderstanding the latest advances in genomics, molecular biology, and biology in general. Of course, this isn't limited to just medicine,…

A cracking Guardian article and a really useful series of posts from yourself and Martin - my own humble take is here, keep this up because the lack of scientific literacy infects all levels of government and must be addressed!

But surely the fact that an increasing number of politicians have the independence of mind and good sense not to be intimidated by the hysterical fantasies that the Guardian promotes is a matter for rejoicing, not regret.

By Westerner (not verified) on 02 Jun 2009 #permalink

Hi,

I read your article at the guardian and read the leaflet put out by UKIP and as far as I can make out they weren't saying anything but the truth.

When one actually takes the time to look at the evidence we find that man-made global warming is in fact a myth/pseudo-science/junk-science.

Regards
EddieH

By Eddie Hallahan (not verified) on 02 Jun 2009 #permalink

There's some bizarre stuff in that UKIP document. Including a rather disparaging reference to "Darwinism", which is apparently gospel in the USA, something which will please many of the Sciencebloggers West of the Atlantic. But what it's got to do with climate change I have no idea.

Really, it's not too surprising that UKIP don't have a science policy worthy of the name since they're essentially a single-issue party. I'd have fractionally more respect from them if they were a bit more up-front about that. They could massively reduce their manifesto to a nive, simple, single sentence.