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Trust me, I'm a scientist

Scientists need to open up their ivory towers and make science part of everyday life if they want the public to trust the science behind issues such as GM food and climate change, argues Baroness Susan Greenfield.

In the 18th century, science and the arts were intertwined. No one distinguished between the science from the arts, you were just a learned person interested in natural philosophy and natural history. For example, poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge had a great interest in science and vice versa.

But in the 20th century when science became so technical and technological that it required a certain level of background knowledge in order to get to first base, the arts and science diverged as separate disciplines.

In his book, The Two Cultures, CP Snow observed that while scientists were expected to know who Shakespeare was, artists were quite proud to say they knew nothing about science.

Science was completely overlooked in everyday life until the late seventies when Richard Dawkins wrote The Selfish Gene, one of the first popular science books that raised an interesting question. Then there was this happy period when people started to discover science again, rather like the Victorian times when people second-hand discovered travel, where it was good enough to read a travel book even though you couldn't do it yourself.

But now science is mainstream and central to our society. As a result, attitudes have changed from the casual curiosity of the recreational reader to the basic concern of the 21st century citizen.

The public has become wary of scientists: they are now cynical about things like GM food and Frankenstein sciences and they're frustrated because scientists don't really give them clear answers to questions such as: does MMR cause autism? Or do mobile phones cause cancer?

There is an uneasy standoff between the press, scientists and the general public.

Scientists, in general, are not all committed to talking to the general public. Many still think it's dumbing down, they think it's talking to people who are not good at research, they think it's not going to get them anywhere there's no point in doing it. But they have to come out of the ivory tower.

They have to realise they're living in an age that's not like the 1970s when you could be locked away in your university and you could talk to each other about the grants you've got and evaluate each others papers and people would let you get on with it. That's changed. Now there's much less money around, the taxpayer is paying and you actually owe it to them to explain what you are doing with their money.

The public deserve informed information that they can think about and go away and view.

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Science can't prove a negative

Journalists don't necessarily, and scientists don't help them, convey what science can and can't deliver, what it can and can't do.

For example. science can't prove a negative. If you say to me: "Do mobile phones give me brain tumours?" The fact that there's no evidence means that all I can say is that there is no evidence it does. I can't say categorically say "No" because all science is provisional, it depends on the latest review, the latest report. So all I can say is: "As far as we know" or "Up until now", or "This study shows that". But of course the general public finds that very frustrating, as do journalists, because scientists are very leery about just saying "Yes" or "No about something. Therefore they come across as being rather hesitant and uncertain and sometimes, some might say not particularly bright, because they seem not to know the answer.

The public feel dismayed and worried that people who lead the technology seem to be uncertain. But we can get around that by trying to explain how science is done and what scientists can do and what they can't do.

We need to be much more on the front foot before a major story like MMR, GM foods or mobile phones breaks. If people are aware of the agenda of scientists and how they do their jobs then when a story does break you can put it into context.

I'd like to see scientists on chat shows, where instead of seeing celebrities you have scientists come on and not only tell us about their latest finding but also about the struggle they had, how they came across this idea, whether they had enough funding, and what happened on the day the equipment broke down. Or the day they were proved wrong — everyone has that happen to them in life generally not just scientists. It would also give the chance to show the public that you can't prove that something isn't the case, you can only prove something is the case.

The more the public see scientists in chat shows or soap operas, the more they share and identify with science either second-hand, or through fiction or the media, the more they'll realise that scientists are normal people.

We can't afford to separate science from the rest of our lives in a world dominated by climate change and GM foods and a whole host of pervasive and invasive technologies such as artificial life.

We need at least some of the next generation who are trained in law and medicine, politics and the media and in the private sector to be scientifically literate as well. We need people with a strong science background in all sectors and walks of life.

As Carl Sagen said: "It's suicide to live in a world that depends upon science and technology that virtually no one knows anything about."

Baroness Susan Greenfield is a professor of pharmacology and physiology at Oxford University. A leading expert in neurochemistry, she has written seven books and is passionate about communicating science. She was recently in Australia for the Australian Society of Medical Research's medical research week.

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