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Old 29-11-2012, 10:23 AM
kay kay is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Apr 2010
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Martin Brown View Post
Jocelyn Bell-Burnell gave a Royal Society talk bemoaning the increase in
nutty doomsday cults - she was being asked this question a lot! and
assessing the relative risks of the various real EOTWAWKI scenarios.

Mainly it is making the point about the difficulty in communicating real
science to the public without getting shock horror scare stories.
Seems to be a decreasing understanding generally of what science is -witness, for example, the frequent reference to Darwin's book as "the Bible" of evolutionists, the portrayal in the media of scientific theorems as belief systems, and the apparently perceived need by the media to counter any scientific theory with a piece by an opposing nutter, as if scientific theories were political points of view.

I suspect it's an inevitable consequence of the popular portrayal over the last 30 years of scientists as nerds with no social life. Why would anybody want to develop any understanding of science?
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