Britain's most senior scientist has launched a fierce attack on influential figures who distort scientific evidence to support their own political, religious or ideological agendas.

The president of the Royal Society, Sir Paul Nurse, said scientists must challenge serial offenders from all spheres of life who continually misused science to support their preconceived beliefs.

Speaking ahead of an inaugural speech he will give next week as the incoming president of the British Science Association (BSA), Nurse said it was not enough for scientists to sit on the sidelines and sneer when public figures expounded unscientific nonsense.

He urged researchers to forge relationships with politicians, lobbyists, religious figures and leaders of organisations in the hope that they might feel ashamed to misuse scientific evidence.

But if that approach failed, Nurse urged researchers to call offenders out in the media and challenge them in the strongest way possible. "When they are serial offenders they should be crushed and buried," Nurse said.

The Nobel prize winner will use his presidential address to argue that science has been the most revolutionary act in human history. He will trace the origins of scientific thinking from ancient times through the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions to modern times and warn that threats to science have always existed.

Nurse said: "Today we have those who like to mix science up with ideology and politics, where opinion, rhetoric and tradition hold more sway than adherence to evidence and adherence to logical argument." Offenders, he said, ranged from politicians and religious figures to industrial leaders, NGOs and charities.

"We have to be aware of, and beware, organisations that masquerade as lobbying groups, which we see a lot in climate change. We have to be aware of politicians that cherry pick scientific views, even ministers who listen to scientists when it's about GM crops and then ignore them when it's about climate change," he added.

This week the identities of two secret funders of the UK's most prominent climate sceptic organisation, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), were revealed. Both are linked to a free-market thinktank, the Institute of Economic Affairs, which has taken money from fossil fuel companies and argued against climate change mitigation.

The GWPF's annual lecture this year will be given by Owen Paterson, the former environment secretary who is widely described as a climate sceptic, but has urged Europe to embrace the potential of GM crops.

Nurse's call to arms goes against the stance of some scientists who refuse to debate people who have certain world views. Richard Dawkins has turned down debates with creationists, while other scientists are reluctant to become embroiled in debates over climate change because they are so exhausting and time consuming.

Nurse said: "It can be terribly time consuming. There is a constant regression to little points that constantly require rebuttal, so it can be very stressful. But once the debate is in the media or on the airwaves or TV we have to be engaged."

The BSA's British Science Festival in Birmingham runs from 6-11 September.