Ben Pile has a must-read guest post at the Making Science Public blog, covering l'affaire @afneil and the attempts to keep sceptical arguments off the airwaves. Here are a couple of quotes by way of a taster.
The emphasis on expertise is intended to permit only the expression of authorised opinion: not even the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change is allowed to speak. Because when he does, the public debate is revealed to be merely a battle of received wisdoms. Can we imagine this in any other discussion about public life? Should Andrew Neil be allowed to challenge ministers on unemployment figures or other economic metrics? After all, he’s just a journalist.
In spite of all the criticism levelled against him, then, Andrew Neil, in just one show, has done more to promote an active understanding of climate science and its controversies than has been done by the Carbon Brief blog, academics at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and elsewhere, Bad Science warriors, and a legion of Tweeters who claim to speak for science have done in their entire existences.