Paul Nurse is profiled in the Independent. I think I've seen most of this before in other interviews, but this bit at the end was new:
"Long before he started his tenure at the Royal Society, Sir Paul had been an enthusiastic communicator of science and is particularly concerned with how the public copes with seemingly contradictory statements on complicated scientific issues, such as climate change.
We should try to keep the science separate from the politics. What you get with the polemicists and commentators is that they just mix it all up together,"he says.
Scientists must never cherry pick the data, but this is something that comes naturally to politicians, especially those who have had a legal training where presenting the evidence in the best possible light is all that counts, Sir Paul says.
"They don't have a problem with cherry picking the data because a lawyer will try to win a case in court with cherry-picked data. They try to make an argument like a politician. A scientist would lose their career if they do it."
The statement that the science should be kept separate from politics is probably right, but it does seem to contradict Nurse's earlier suggestion that the Royal Society should involve itself more in political issues.