20131018_FB

Source: BBC Radio 4: Feedback

URL: N/A

Date: 18/10/2013

Event: Steve Jones about "passionate climate deniers" - "no point in talking to them"

Attribution: BBC Radio 4

Also see: Sep 27, 2013: BBC Radio 4: Bob Carter: the IPCC's 95% probability is "hocus-pocus science"

People:

• Dr. Anjana Ahuja: Science writer and author
• Roger Bolton: Presenter, BBC Radio 4: Feedback
• Professor Bob Carter: Palaeontologist, stratigrapher and marine geologist
• Roger Harrabin: BBC's Environment Analyst
• Professor Steve Jones: Emeritus Professor of Genetics, University College London
• Simon Sharp [?]: Feedback listener
• Peter Verney [?]: Feedback listener

Roger Bolton: Hello. BBC journalists are required to be impartial, as is the presenter of Feedback. But should one be impartial where the facts are clear? The World at One gave airtime to a climate change sceptic, a geologist. Right or wrong decision? Many Feedback listeners think: the latter.

Male listener: This person was not a climate scientist, and he was clearly not qualified to speak on the subject.

Roger Bolton: The author of a BBC Trust report into accuracy and balance in science reporting, Professor Steve Jones, is also critical of the World at One's decision. But should voices which challenge the consensus be silenced? Isn't that censorship?

Steve Jones: The problem with passionate climate change deniers out there is that whatever the evidence, they will not accept that they are wrong. So, under those circumstances, there's no real point in talking to them.

* * *

Roger Bolton: But first, the small matter of the future of the planet.

Female newsreader: United Nations scientists say they're more certain than ever that humans are causing global warming. The findings are...

Roger Bolton: When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report came out, its conclusions were headline news across the globe. A big story, to which all BBC outlets devoted a considerable amount of airtime. Initially at least, the coverage seemed to be underpinned by the assumption that those conclusions were authoritative and convincing. Here's Roger Harrabin, for example, on the Today programme.

Roger Harrabin: I don't think there are many climate change sceptics in the scientific world. I mean, for instance, we've been trying in the UK to find one climate change sceptic who is a working scientist, in this field, and we can't find even one.

Roger Bolton: Later in the day, however, the World at One, striving to be impartial, unearthed an Australian geologist, Bob Carter, from the Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change, the NIPCC, who was more than happy to express an opposing view.

Bob Carter: ... climate has always changed and it always will - there is nothing unusual about the modern magnitudes or rates of change of temperature, of ice volume, of sea level or of extreme weather events.

Roger Bolton: Some Feedback listeners were not amused.

Anjana Ahuja: Hello, I'm Anjana Ahuja. I'm not your typical listener, because I write about and comment on scientific issues for national newspapers, and I'm also a massive BBC fan, and I love the science and environment coverage, I think it's very well informed and fair and balanced. And I think this made the Wato report stick out more, because Bob Carter was allowed to dominate the airwaves and then climate scientists were given the right of reply. And I think this item, this report fell short of the mark.

Peter Verney: My name is Peter Verney. In striving for some false balance of views, BBC News created a disproportionate sense that there is some equivalence in value between the IPCC scientists' serious and measured statements about probability and the dangerous blustering of the denialists.

Simon Sharp: Hello, my name is Simon Sharp and I'm calling from London. It's very poor-quality journalism to present climate change as being a matter of political opinion, over which some kind of debate is taking place. If you do arrange a conversation between qualified climate scientists, then you'll find that they largely agree, and the idea of there being a debate about the fundamentals of this is artificial.

Roger Bolton: Science writer Anjana Ahuja, Peter Verney and Simon Sharp. They weren't alone in thinking that Wato had made a serious error of judgement in giving airtime to Bob Carter. Professor Steve Jones is a geneticist at University College London. He wrote a report for the BBC Trust on the impartiality and accuracy of the BBC's coverage of science. His conclusions were broadly positive. But he also thought that the BBC was often guilty of looking for a false balance in its coverage of science, giving similar weight to opposing viewpoints regardless of their scientific validity. I asked him whether he thought the World at One should have broadcast an interview with any climate change denier.

* * *

Steve Jones: I think it should, if the climate change denier was an expert on the subject, and there is a small minority of climate experts who feel that there are problems with the models involved, that they've been overstated - so you could certainly make an opposing position. What I object to - and I objected to, in my report - was the almost nervous tic that the BBC News at least used to have, that whenever somebody appeared and made a statement that, for example, a top mathematician might be called into the Today programme to say, and he discussed this new discovery that two and two is four, BBC seemed obsessed with the need to call in somebody from the Duodecimal Liberation Front who would make the case that two and two was five.

Roger Bolton: Now you've used the past tense. Are you implying that BBC News has changed?

Steve Jones: I think it has changed and improved. And yes, I think this was rather a lapse, which I slightly regret.

Roger Bolton: Now you've talked about BBC News having occasionally a sense of "false balance".

Steve Jones: Yes.

Roger Bolton: What's that?

Steve Jones: Well, that's really what we've been talking about, the notion that simply because somebody says "A", somebody else must be given equal time to say "Z". Now that may well be true in many, many endeavours of the BBC News, which covers its field extremely well. It is much less true in science. I mean, that's what I found, really, when I was doing this science report. I think it's worth - in the unlikely event that anybody wants to read it, it's on the web - it's worth reading the first few pages, which basically says - and I believe it with some passion - that BBC science is the best in the world. And I include, in that, BBC News coverage of science. But what I found really quite striking was the contrast between BBC science on the news, particularly perhaps the radio news, and that in the features - Horizon and that kind of stuff. Because in the science features, the longer programmes, there's an understanding of what I think of as the culture of science, the way that science actually works. In news there isn't - didn't seem to be, anyway. And what you tend to forget that in science, most scientists agree about most things, okay. But at the edge of knowledge, as our knowledge moves on, there are tremendous disagreements. There's mutual hatred and loathing, there's cheating, dishonesty, all this kind of stuff. But that's at the edge. Most of it is a consensus. And I think what the BBC finds hardest to deal with is a consensus.

Roger Bolton: The trouble is that if there is a consensus, it means that voices which are outside that consensus have a particular difficulty in being heard, and that's a legitimate criticism, I think, often of BBC journalism in the past, that the outside voice, the voice that has challenged the consensus, has found it very difficult to be heard. Some people would say what you're proposing would lead to be the further domination of the consensus.

Steve Jones: No, I honestly don't think so, because, you know, a consensus is a consensus. But it can always fall apart. And belief can never fall apart. So if you're arguing -

Roger Bolton: But it could change, it can modify...

Steve Jones: Well, you're arguing facts against opinions. Okay, I mean, the fact that the amount of carbon dioxide in the air has rocketed up since the Industrial Revolution, and continues to rocket up, is a fact. Now, it's so much a fact that even the climate change deniers look away from it and don't deny it.

Roger Bolton: Do you believe, therefore, that the debate on climate change is, if you like, decided, and that the BBC should now proceed on the basis: there is no case to be made by deniers that stands up scientifically?

Steve Jones: I don't believe that at all, actually, because once you say that a science is fixed, you are immediately leaving the arena of science. Famously, in 1904 the then President of the Royal Society, addressing his physicists - Britain's physicists - said "Stop doing physics, it's all done, there's no point in doing any more, do something more interesting." 1905, came relativity and the entire science of physics collapsed. So we've always got to be ready to accept, as scientists, that we are wrong - that's perhaps rather different from what politicians might say. The problem with the enormous number of passionate climate change deniers out there, is that whatever the evidence, they will not accept that they are wrong. So, under those circumstances, there's no real point in talking to them.

Roger Bolton: Could we look now, then, at the way the BBC's reacted to your report? If indeed it understood certain parts of it correctly. Because David Jordan, who's Head of Editorial Policy, said you made one recommendation - and I quote him in his evidence to Parliament - that we did not - we, the BBC - did not take on board. He said: "We should regard climate science as settled, in effect. And therefore, it should mean we should not hear from dissenting voices on the science of climate change. We did not agree with that, because we think the BBC's role is to reflect all views and opinions as society and its output, and we've continued to do so." So did you say that we should not hear from dissenting voices, on the science of climate change?

Steve Jones: I have to say I certainly did not say that. I think the crucial point is dissenting voices on the science of climate change - underline the word "science". And in the science of climate change - as in every science - there are dissenting voices. Of course there are.

But the difficulty I face, in this particular case, is that the dissenting voice is not the voice of science - it's the voice of opinion. And that's really very, very different. And one could dig into where those opinions come from, and how many of them in the hundreds of emails I get, that climate change is a lie, how many of them are generated by the oil industry, in various people with a parti pris to pouring out pollution - I think quite a lot. But the science is as full of dispute as any other science, and I think the BBC should certainly continue to cover that. But they shouldn't uniquely balance science against opinion.

Roger Bolton: So, looking more generally at your view of BBC coverage, do you think it was wrong to put this geologist on the World at One, but elsewhere, do you think BBC science coverage is, in your view, improving?

Steve Jones: I think BBC science was good, and I don't want to suggest that my report had much to do with it. But I think that since it was written, in some ways it's got better. So the BBC has every right to be extremely proud of its science coverage. In spite of the occasional lapse.

* * *

Roger Bolton: Our thanks to Professor Steve Jones. Now the BBC has told us that they can't comment directly on that World at One interview, because they're currently handling an official complaint about it and don't want to prejudge its conclusion. But in terms of the overall coverage, they told us this.

Male voice: The BBC covers climate change, and most recently the IPCC report, fully on all its outlets, with analysis from its specialist journalists. The bulk of interviews on the subject are with climate scientists, many of whom have contributed to the IPCC report. We reject the suggestion that global warming sceptics are given too much time in our overall coverage. As part of the BBC's commitment to impartiality, a small number of global warming sceptics may be interviewed across our coverage. This is consistent with our response to the Jones report, in which we said we would take care to reflect all viewpoints in the debate about the science and policy.

Roger Bolton: And next week the Head of Editorial Policy, David Jordan, is coming on to Feedback, to talk more generally about how the BBC attempts to achieve balance and impartiality across its coverage. I'll also ask him what the concept of "due impartiality" is. So. let us know what you think, be it science, history, politics or sport, and we'll put your questions and comments to Mr Jordan. Details of how to get in touch, coming up later.