Posted by James Wilsdon
at 7:00pm on Friday, 3rd November 2006
The PM today delivered a big speech on science in Oxford, his first substantial contribution on this theme since 2002.
The speech paints a detailed picture of the scientific state we're in, and has some good points to make about international collaboration, which are relevant to our Atlas project.
The latter part of the speech, where he attacks the 'anti-science brigade', is the least convincing. In part, he seems to be arguing for a new approach to opening up decision-making and supporting early public engagement in new technologies. But this is interspersed with a fairly crude portrayal of public objections to GM crops or nuclear power as irrational and manufactured by unscrupulous NGOs, which hardly does justice to the complexity of the issues (as Demos has argued elsewhere).
Still, it's good to see science getting some serious political attention. I've written a short piece for today's FT to coincide with the speech.
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