Evan Harris spies contradictions

I cheered inwardly when the Prime Minister praised the scientific method and evidence-based analysis.

I had just helped the Science Select Committee produce a report on this very subject. But in the very next sentence came the same old spin and statistical trickery that is the opposite of what he had just called for. He claimed that the number of science undergraduates had increased by a quarter since 1997. But everyone in science knows that when Information and Communications Technology and new courses, like Forensic Science – which are short on ‘hard’ science – are excluded, the situation in the key core subjects like physics and chemistry is far worse.

The PM talked about the urgent need to take on the forces of anti-science (and by implication pseudo-science), and the government did a good job on MMR, for example. But in an interview the same day for New Scientist, he said that he was intending to tackle creationists in our schools, or those who seek to claim a scientific evidential basis for homeopathy.

The PM was rightly clapped when he boasted about the UK’s record on stem cell science, since we are both permissive and properly-regulated – a unique combination. But within a few weeks, the government White Paper on embryology proposed a new ban on hybrid embryo research with no good reason and all the appearance of conceding to a largely religious lobby.

We all agree with Mr Blair that it is vital for young people to choose science careers, but in education the Prime Minister’s own policies undermine his good intentions. He has presided over the imposition of massive debt on science graduates, a failure to provide specialist science teachers in our schools, and allowing the closure of university science departments by imposing a free market on higher education, which values media studies ahead of physics and chemistry.

Low attainment in schools, high graduate debt, poor post-doctoral career progression – our brightest and best are not going into scientific research and you can’t blame them. It’s not rocket science but the government barely sees the problem and has not yet begun to solve it.

Dr Evan Harris MP is the Liberal Democrat science spokesperson