David Whitehouse plumps for freedom

After Channel 4 broadcast The Great Global Warming Swindle, many eminent scientists, along with campaigners, wrote a letter to the media calling for it not to be made commercially available by the programme makers – a private, independent production company called Wag TV. They wanted changes because they believed it would not be in the public interest for the factual errors in the programme to be distributed widely.

How curious it is then that those same people did not write to Paramount Home Entertainment to object to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth because of its factual errors, and object to it being distributed to schools without qualifications. It took Mr Justice Burton, a judge not a scientist or a campaigner, to point out the gross inaccuracies in that film.

I would have been more impressed with the scientists’ moral position if they had been fairer-minded and regarded it as being not in the public interest for them to be subjected to any factual errors, no matter where they came from. Likewise, I would have been more impressed by the scholarship of media environment analysts if they had been able to come to Mr Justice Burton’s opinion by themselves beforehand.

Stupid complaint
All this goes to show that some scientists still have a lot to learn about how to deal with the media. The complaint was, in my view, a monumentally stupid thing to do in terms of media management. But people, however eminent, are allowed to be stupid, especially when they stray outside their areas of expertise.

What annoyed me was the arrogance of the complaint, and its dismissal of fundamental human rights. One can understand the scientists’ motivation but, basically, this is a clear wish to deny free speech and the legal rights of Wag TV. That company is not breaking the law and must be delighted by this publicity, which will certainly boost the sales of their DVD.

Freedom not accuracy
‘Free speech does not extend to misleading the public by making factually inaccurate statements,’ said Bob Ward, the former spokesman for the Royal Society.
Actually, Bob, it does. Being able to speak freely without censorship is fundamental to modern liberal democracies and is guaranteed under national and international law. Qualifications are made with regard to libel, slander and defamation and, in some countries, holocaust denial. The important point, and it took millennia and many lives to attain it, is that the freedom of speech principle does not mean that you have to be factually accurate. It is freedom, not accuracy or responsibility that is mandated.

People handing out leaflets on the street denying evolution or saying that the earth was made in seven days have a perfect right to hold those views and promulgate them. Their motivation does not matter. An inconvenient truth it may be but people are free to be wrong, dead wrong.

BBC Trust
There were errors in The Great Global Warming Swindle and they overshadowed some of the good scientific questions it made and that need to be made, not least because opposition and dissent is fundamental to science.
Some scientists and institutions seem to have forgotten this. Strangely, it was the BBC Trust who recognised it recently in an attempt to place the BBC’s partial and evangelical climate reporting into a more balanced perspective.

The BBC Trust was right to criticise the corporation’s climate coverage in its news programmes, which have been championing the consensus which is only a part of the science of climate change. The widespread explanation is not always the correct one, as the Trust pointed out. The point they were making is that journalism is about the gathering, writing and production of news, not scientific consensus.

It is not journalism if you reflect only one side of an argument, no matter how strong that side may be. We would not expect coverage of politics to be like that, so why want science coverage to be? The Trust saw that the BBC had veered away from healthy journalism into campaigning.

More precious than science
This is not a question of scientists, aided by a sprinkling of campaigners, standing in the firing line faced by individuals who are motivated by ideology or commercial interests to undermine the scientific community. Call for the programme (The Great Global Warming Swindle and An Inconvenient Truth) to be modified, criticise its contents, highlight the errors, make a counterbalancing programme – but don’t prevent its free and lawful distribution. Because if you do, we risk losing something more precious than science.

Dr David Whitehouse is a journalist and author