Break the Science Barrier: Why Science Matters
Break the Science Barrier is a TV documentary that I presented on Channel 4 in 1996. It argues for the importance, for society, of scientific ways of thinking. In it, I interviewed David Attenborough, Alec Jeffreys, who discovered DNA fingerprinting, and Douglas Adams, who gave a wonderful impromptu eulogy for science. I also interviewed a man who was wrongly convicted of murder because none of the lawyers, on either side, knew anything about science. The program ends on a more positive note – what I later came to call Science in the Soul.
Fascinating show. It’s wonderful to see science being championed given that we now seem to be mired in a kind of new Dark Age. Modern beliefs such as the overvaluing of “lived experience” and other privileging of subjectivity e.g. if someone is offended, that is positive proof that the other party IS offensive, no need for a presumption of innocence etc., and insane ideas such as the notion that wanting to be a woman and saying you are one magically starts a process of transubstantiation whereby a man can become a woman.
How did we get here? The rot started to set in with Foucault. And the modern Left has been only to happy to embrace pure nonsense.
The simplicity in the talk to the children is helpful for recent generations who have been indoctrinated with religious dogma.