A Balanced Programme on Balance

Welcome to the Infinite Monkey Cage.

I'm Brian Cox.

And in the interest of balance, I'm Robin Ince.

And today's show is about balance.

So welcome to also the finite, non-Simian, large open space.

This show will indeed be balanced in the finest wreathian traditions of the BBC.

For instance, I'm from North.

And I am totally different because I'm from the South.

I know that evidence shows that the universe began 13.73 plus or minus 0.12 billion years ago.

And I know the Einsteinian hyperbolic geometry of space-time will emerge intact from the recent neutrino results from the Opera Opera experiment at CERN.

And I have a certificate to say I can swim 10 meters.

I know that ghosts violate the second law of thermodynamics.

The position of the planets against the fixed stars have no influence at all on the behavior of human beings.

And water doesn't memorize nettles.

And in the interest of balance, I believe that particle physics is a fiction created by scientists who make financial gain from the borrower's theory that the world is made of really small things and that they are all paid by a big farmer, possibly Michael Evis.

Yes, today we'll be discussing balance in scientific reporting.

Science, unfortunately, doesn't exist in a vacuum insulated from politics, religion and newspaper columnists.

Climate change, vaccination policy and evolution are all areas where critics decry what they see as a lack of balance.

But what is balance?

In a discipline based on the importance of evidence, is holding an impassioned belief based on a dream you had after eating too much off-gorgonzola enough to mean you should have a platform on the television?

I'm not going to mention who that is, by the way.

It's Jim El Khalili.

Well, today we hope to be balanced enough to avoid being hexed by witches.

This is true.

We got hexed by witches at the end of the last series.

Yeah, we did.

This is the lovely thing.

We received, I think, in the end, three different hexes, and all of them on Twitter.

which I think is quite a sweet.

A meeting of the old and the new.

What would the Woodland folk do?

I imagine Twitter, probably.

And for any witches, by the way, who are listening, Twitter is quite ineffective for actually hexing because you've only got 140 characters, which limits the nature of the hex.

If you really want to do a big hex, then you've got to use Facebook.

And if you want to keep it secret, use MySpace.

Shh.

To discuss balance, we have a distinguished panel of scientists and non-scientists.

Our first guest is Sir Paul Nurse.

or Lady Paul Nurse, in the interest of balance.

He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 2001 for the discovery of the protein molecules that control the division of cells and is now the president of the Royal Society.

Katie Brand won Best Female Newcomer at the 2008 British Comedy Awards, danced to Beyoncé's single ladies for Let's Dance for Sports Relief and, like many exuberant purveyors of Beyoncé choreography, studied theology at Oxford University.

Now again in the interest of balance we've ensured our next guest has not publicly danced to or indeed for Beyoncé as far as we know.

Returning to this show, it's author geneticist and snail specialist Professor Steve Jones.

And our final guest is a veteran broadcaster who today alone has already been on Radio 5 with Mark Comode, Radio 2's drive time, and together with this appearance today on Radio 4.

That makes 11.

Thank heavens for the many worlds interpretation, which allows him to do such things.

Fortunately, Simon has not yet read out my confession that I was fiddling with a particle accelerator when some Italians were testing the speed of neutrinos.

I really wasn't expecting that to catch the media the way it did, but never mind.

He also, by the way, introduced Brian Cox on top of the pops when he was dressed in tartan.

Brian, that is.

Paul, if I can start off with you, what, in terms of science, what does balance mean?

A balance debate, a balance argument within the world of science.

Well, when you listen to scientists argue, you know, when they're doing their trade, it wouldn't sound very balanced at all, actually, because they get pretty passionate.

You would have some trouble working out whether they were balanced.

But what makes it balanced is that they carried out their debate by certain rules.

So they respect data.

They don't cherry-pick observations that just support one view or another.

They're logical, they're rational.

If they don't use those rules, then of course their reputation goes.

So there's a restraint to keep like that.

But when you get to the media, of course, you don't always have those rules being carried out.

You can get two people discussing something.

One might keep with the rules and sound boring.

You know, well, the data doesn't support this, or we don't quite know what the data might mean, and we're on the left and we're on the right.

Then you'll get somebody really passionate who isn't playing by the rules, and wow, the argument's gone.

So, I think there's a real issue here that if you're going to have balance on the media, you've got to keep to the rules, and I think that's the big problem.

Simon, you've conducted many interviews in your time, political and just about everything you could think of.

How does a broadcast journalist approach this idea of balance in an interview, perhaps with two opposing opinions on a show?

When I went to Five Live in 2001, the MMR debate was very much up and running at the time.

We were right in the middle of one of these kind of false debates.

And

there was, and still is sometimes, that journalistic instinct to say, on the one hand, this,

and then on the other hand, something else, because that is the way you approach every other debate.

So, if it's about, you know, Europe, well, we have someone who likes it and someone who doesn't, well, someone who's in favour of Scottish independence, and someone it's just a natural kind of instinct to do that.

And so when you come to an issue which is perceived as controversial, the natural instincts seem to be, well, let's get someone who says this and then someone else to oppose them.

It then becomes very difficult, though quite manageable, to reflect a situation where everybody was on one side and one person was on the other.

Now, how do you reflect that in a debate?

It sort of shouldn't be a debate, really.

So therefore, it's not like a political discussion and it's not like an economic discussion.

It's a scientific discussion which sort of feels as though it needs to have different rules.

A kind of a very simple definition of balance would be a 50-50 time split between the two opinions.

But then the audience comes away with the fact that the debate is indeed a 50-50 balanced debate.

Yes, particularly if in the course of that they're both claiming that their facts are right.

I mean I know Steve will want to come in on this as he's written the report about it, but it comes back to the fact versus opinion.

You know, you can have equal opinions given, but when it comes to the facts, they should presumably, as the Guardian said, C.P.

Scott said, you know, the facts are sacred.

As Simon said, Steve, you authored the BBC Trust report on balance in science programming on the BBC.

One quote that I picked up from the summary is: you said, Programme makers must make a distinction between well-established fact and opinion in science coverage and ensure the distinction is clear to the audience, which is what Simon alluded to there.

Could you expand on that?

It's easy to say that, and it's actually rather more difficult to carry it out.

But there is a sort of a nervous tick within reporting as a whole.

In some senses, it's right that it should be so, and it's probably stronger in the BBC than anywhere else, which is the two sides of the coin report.

And I sort of parody it in the BBC Trust report by saying, you know, imagine an interview by a top mathematician who has discovered finally after many years of work that two and two is four.

So he gets on to, shall we say, the Today programme.

And the format will inevitably be the top mathematician is interviewed about this groundbreaking work.

And then somebody from the duodecimal liberation front

is up on the other side, and she is interviewed about her belief that 2 and 2 is 5.

And there's a bit of a back and forth.

And in the end, there will be a summary that 2 and 2 is somewhere between 4 and 5, probably nearer 4, but the debate goes on.

And this really

drives many scientists mad because it's a misunderstanding of the way that science works.

Science is full of individual loathing, of anger, of hatred, of jealousy.

That's biology.

And this is all true, but I often think of it as, and so there's plenty of disagreement, often very vicious, within science itself.

But in the end, I often think of it as it being a bit like the tide coming in.

The tide comes in, and as it comes in, there are breakers and foam and seaweed and noise and all kinds of stuff.

But beyond it is blue water, where things are more or less settled.

That's, I think, what the media doesn't understand.

There is controversy within science.

Without controversy, there could be no science.

But the idea that you must always have only controversy, and often between a scientist and a non-scientist, or even an anti-scientist, which is quite common, seems to me utterly wrong.

I should say, by the way, when you were talking about two plus two equals four as being this great moment, that it did actually take Bertrand Russell and A.M.

Whitehead with Principia Mathematica 360 pages and 10 years to go.

Definitely one plus one equals two.

So that's, even though, in fact, yeah, Bertrand Russell, one of the men who teachers would say, please don't show all you're working out.

We don't have time for this.

But then Godel came along, of course, and showed that the whole programme was without foundation.

Oh, let's not get into maths again.

Much as that is a humdinger for getting the listeners in.

What, Gödel's incompleteness theorem?

Oh, window

every time.

What is the song?

You don't know the Godel.

It's the easy way of remembering the incompleteness theorem.

You must know it.

No.

Oh, never mind.

Does anyone know the Godel incompleteness song?

Okay, if you don't know that, does anyone know how easy it is to make a scientist believe an absolute load of rubbish that you've just made up?

There we are.

We're trusting you with our facts and evidence?

Katie, this thing about balance, I'm interested.

You're predominantly a comedian, though you've studied theology, which is not always the direct route to doing comedy, but there is.

Can I just say that there are probably several theology professors at Oxford and many, many of state school secondary science teachers howling with laughter, derision, and a sort of sense of horror that I am on this program?

I'm on a science programme being built as an Oxford theology graduate.

I was the worst student ever.

I mean, I did loads of good stuff at Oxford, but it didn't always include my degree.

No, that's my.

No, no, I didn't mean it like that.

This is beginning now to get towards the Simon Mayo's confessions area, I think.

I'm just saying, I'm just putting the disclaimer out there.

You know, I'm full of opinions, but no facts, I'm afraid.

That's why we invited you once.

Yes, I know.

That's what balance is.

That's a theology, yeah, I know.

With comedy, you get this strange sense of balance where, for instance, when Jerry Springer the Opera was written, when that was put on, a normal number of lessons going, oh, there's no balance here.

I notice you've made fun here of the Christian church and ideas within the Christian church.

I notice you haven't done something about Muslims instead.

Even in the world of comedy, it seems there's this extra pressure to go: every joke must be balanced.

Is that something you experience work on TV?

Yes, to a certain extent.

Although I wanted to do a lot more sort of balanced stuff than I was allowed to, really.

I'm not necessarily of the opinion that there needs to be balance in comedy.

Comedians should be as chaotic and unbalanced as they feel like being.

I would do sketches about Jesus's girlfriend, who was a character that I made up on my sketch show, where Jesus was a kind of first-century Russell Brand figure who was a kind of a bit of a handful and had quite a big ego and was a bit difficult and a bit flighty.

And he had this hard-working girlfriend who basically sorted everything out for him and made sure history remembered him properly.

And I mean, that was quite tough to get through the ITV lawyers.

But the thing that I wasn't allowed to do that I wanted to do was a load of sketches called the Imam of Dibli.

And

yeah, I know, right?

We were right, weren't we?

It's funny.

But the ITB lawyers wouldn't even let us start writing them.

It's an interesting point, though, about the idea that you can cause offence.

So let's say, for example, you're making a programme about evolution.

Now, evolution is probably, by natural selection, is probably the closest thing you have to a fact in biology, I suppose.

It's not exactly physics, but it's a relatively high bar.

I have to make it relative.

Is there any sense in which if you're making a radio television programme or communicating Darwin's theory, you should take any account at all of the fact that there are people, and it could, it isn't at the moment, but it could be a majority who believe the world began 6,000 years ago and everything appeared as is.

How do you deal with that?

Well, in the United States, actually, it is a majority.

It's about 55% disbelieve to some degree with the theory of evolution.

As I I said to my American publisher, I don't mind if those 150 million creationists burn my books as long as they buy them first.

But they don't show much sign of doing that.

There should be a Sunday Times bestseller list, a special one on books burning.

It's a strange business.

If somebody is determined to disbelieve, you cannot come to a balance.

You can, you know, I would say at University of College London where I work, among the first-year biology students, my guess is that between 10 and 20% are creationists.

And that's biology students.

So we have a problem.

Paul, what do you think it is that marks out because some science no one even seems to really bother about outside the scientific world and certain bits of for instance physics you don't have a great debate with people demanding that steady state is still taught as the theory of the universe versus big bang and yet then you get on to subjects like for instance of the obvious ones being climate change vaccination was mentioned there by Simon and and obviously evolution as well now very different ideas but all of them seem to be what is it you think that marks out something in science where people become very passionate It's when it touches strongly held human beliefs or things that really have an effect on society.

I mean, that's when it really matters.

So, if you've been taught in church that the world was made 4,000 years ago, then we come along and say, no, it's 14 billion years old, you have a real problem.

I mean, that's where I'd put it, I have to say.

But then, what about something like, you know, climate change is an enormous, I mean, not just debate, it gets you know quite nasty.

It does indeed.

And And why, I had to try so hard not to say the word heated, but it's too late now.

And

something like climate change, again, very, you know, when you see the passion there, what, because that's not about a strongly held belief.

You know, most people weren't born into the world going, this is the way climate is.

Do you know it is

due to strongly held beliefs?

It's all to do, actually, with politics.

If really the temperature is rising and it's due to the effect of humankind, the only way we can deal with that is concerted political effort across the globe.

That is a certain way of doing politics, which is anathema to a whole set of people.

Those people are driven more by politics rather than by the science, and that's where the problem goes, in fact, because if you're driven by politics, then you can't do the science.

So, I think it is actually very heated.

Well, no, I was just going to say, it's interesting you say that, because I was thinking when you were talking earlier about how there are certain rules in scientific debate, and it's very frustrating when you have somebody on one side of the debate sticking to the rules and somebody on the other side not sticking to the rules and it just sounds as a sort of observer almost of the sort of finer intricacies of science in this conversation is that it sounds like there's a frustration amongst scientists that when you start entering into the media or going into the political arena or going into any arena that is not science or not purely science you come up against a whole new set of rules that that industry has

and it's the two industries bumping up up against each other.

So, media has its own rules.

And if, as a scientist, you want to enter the media arena in order to get your message out there, promote a book, whatever it is you want to do, then it may be that you have to play by the media rules.

And part of media rules is that people would like an entertainment aspect to an argument, or they would like to see somebody have a big row on Newsnight, or whatever it is, because part of the rules of media is we need people to watch this programme.

And similarly with politics, if you find yourself needing political funding or a political platform to get your scientific ideas out there, is it not a bit self-flagellating to then worry yourselves about

the rules of a political arena somehow not playing fair?

If you don't find that fair, then perhaps you need to stick within your own scientific world.

I don't mean that as aggressively as it sounds, but I just mean that could you make it more aggressive?

You want to have a flip this take on you.

We think it's very much the entertainment part of the show.

So you can become very vulnerable.

Do you know what I mean?

But I think what I would say in response is that science is the means by which we, as a civilization, as a society, come to the best possible view, given the available data and the understanding of a particular issue or question.

So for example, the best possible science is a very important thing.

Well, no, no, no, no, it's the best possible view, I would say.

No, no, no.

And the reason I didn't actually mean to get a laugh then, Paul,

actually, don't I?

In the sense that if you ask a question such as, does putting CO2 into the atmosphere of the planet raise the temperature, right?

Then the best possible view you can come to is based on taking data from satellites and from weather stations, modelling them in a particular way.

There's uncertainty in those models.

But the answer that you get from that process, the scientific process, is the best you can do.

And in that case, it's absolutely essential, isn't it?

That the

people may

put the best view of the experts.

Yeah, but that is purely, you know, science has no conscience.

Science has no sociological remit.

But what is interesting, what I think sometimes science misses, is people find ways of pragmatically getting through their day.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

And science doesn't have to be involved in that.

For example, I have a friend of mine who studied at Yale, and his philosophy professor read her horoscope religiously every day.

And he said to her in the end, You're a very eminent philosophy professor.

I can't believe you read your horoscope every day.

Do you actually believe this?

And she said, No, I don't believe it.

I don't believe any of it.

But what I find is if I read my horoscope in the morning, I have a better day

because it gives me some sense of control.

It gives me things to pinpoint throughout the day.

I enjoy seeing if anything happened that was mentioned in my horoscope.

And at the end of the day, I feel happier having read it.

And that is all that she required of it.

So there are some questions in life that science neither is required to answer or feels it has to answer.

It's not a scientist's responsibility to answer every single question that a human might want to ask.

Well, I think it probably, to a degree, it is actually.

Really?

I mean, think, I mean, astrology, okay, we all agree astrology is silly.

But it is a hype.

It may not.

But I don't know if I agree that it's silly.

I agree that it's probably not based in fact or true.

I'm going to drop the probably here.

However, a fact that is great,

which is based in fact, like I don't know the astrological signs, so I can't remember them, so I can't get it right, but children who are born in July and August, and the the figures are really quite striking, are worse at athletics, are do less well in school, and have a higher rate of suicide than children born at other times of the year.

And the statistical evidence for that is very strong.

So as a scientist, you think to yourself, what's going on?

You might say, oh, it's this star that's having this malign effect.

No, it's not.

They're younger because they start school just after their birthdays.

They're younger at the age of four, five, and six, and so on.

When those differences are very important, they're younger than the people in their class.

So they're smaller, they get bullied, they don't, you know, they don't catch up as well, and that persists throughout their lives.

So there we have a scientific explanation for something which first sight you might say it's all due to something in the stars.

Yes, but what I'm trying to say is that is the scientific explanation as to why that might happen to somebody born at that time.

It doesn't help that individual person cope with the fact of their birth.

But for some people, it doesn't.

And they need other things.

They don't need to be called stupid or fantasists just because they need a different solution to their emotional problem.

That's all I'm saying.

The problems, though, I address this to Paul, is that

it's fine.

A belief in astrology is completely harmless in many ways,

most ways, I suppose.

However, if you also are predisposed to believe in absolutely in the primacy of alternative medicine, let's say, so you don't go and get the correct medical treatment for a condition, or you're prepared to distrust the findings of science in terms of climate change or childhood vaccinations, then you have a problem.

So, there's a difference,

a key difference, isn't there, between something that's essentially harmless, a belief that's harmless, but there are many beliefs that are anything but harmless.

Yeah, let me have a go with astrology, because it's exactly as Brian just said.

Astrology is just just fun and nobody takes it seriously, or rather, most people don't take it seriously, because in some societies they, of course, do, including our own society we used to 500 years ago.

But there are some things out here which are really, really important, and yet the astrologers of vaccine and the astrologers of climate change and the astrologers of genetic modification of food and so on and so on hold the sway.

And that's where we get that's where we have to deal with it.

What about when science may well perhaps be ahead of popular opinion?

We were talking about this before we came on here which was David Nutt who used to be the drugs advisor for the government and he basically brought out a published editorial in which he stated that in fact it appeared that a certain class A drug was at the very least less dangerous than horse riding.

Now this created an enormous amount of press coverage and anger even though he was basically just dealing with statistics and evidence.

Yes, okay well a lot of of this boils down to what you do with people whose arguments are evidentially wrong.

And again, we're just sticking within this area because if it's about evidence and about balance, if someone, if let's talk about capital punishment, the majority of people still believe in it for some crimes.

One of the reasons for that is that they think it would be a deterrent.

Now, you could prove, I think, evidentially that that is an incorrect view.

It is not a deterrent.

Does that mean that that view therefore should not be represented on the broadcast media?

See, I suspect it probably should be because so many people, and it appears to be a rational and coherent argument.

The fact that you can prove that it is statistically wrong, does that mean that you shouldn't hear?

I mean, this is just something that you would struggle with if you're trying to put a programme together.

My argument would be you should probably hear the arguments of people who are wrong and in that programme put the reasons why they might be wrong, but you still need to hear that view in the first place.

Connie just introduced him and going, there we go, that was Professor Steve Jones, and now someone who's wrong.

And for those of you who'd like to know how wrong he is, please go to this website where you will see the statistics laid out and their source material.

Something like that.

But Paul,

to what extent should scientists then be advocates?

Because this is where a lot of scientists, particularly in climate science, get into trouble.

When the evidence is clear, there's the scientific consensus.

And then you move into the political arena and start to advocate political action.

This is a really interesting issue because when you're talking as a scientist,

you have to stick to your data, you have to stick to objective argument, and often we're a little reluctant to express a view of where we go from there and what conclusions you would make from that, simply for this very good reason.

But we can do so, but I think what we have to do is sort of change our hats.

I mean, in other words, we present our argument based on data, objective facts, and the like, and then we say, and because of this, I passionately believe X.

And I think we can just switch, but we probably have to change our hat halfway through.

But you're much more in the world of opinion at that point.

Yes, aren't you?

It's an interesting opinion, though, isn't it?

The computer models and the data in terms of climate science say that if you put this amount of CO2 into the atmosphere, there's a possibility we'll have a four-degree, five-degree temperature rise, civilization will be decimated.

There's the data.

Now, putting my opinion hat on, therefore, I think we should stop.

Get that hat off.

You're on the big line.

So, unfortunately, we have actually pretty much run out of time, which means Steve, we were going to ask you about the nature of the gut instinct and how now we live in a fact-based world.

In fact, though we can use evidence, the gut instinct remains and what evolutionary advantage that might have been in the past, but we don't have time.

So,

here we go, here, have a look at some of these.

These are the audience questions.

We'd like to know from the audience: what is the most unfounded opinion you hold that you'll be prepared to air on radio?

Well, this one I think is Meredith again, and the Robin Inks is more attractive than Brian Cox.

Thank you very much.

Yes, that's

Calories don't count on special occasions.

That's from Lucy.

And I say that's absolutely true.

Also, calories don't count in secret at weddings and if you're with someone who's bigger than you are and also eating.

So, have you got any more interests?

You're not meant to read them out to yourself.

You're meant to do an hour now to them.

Oh, it's radio, isn't it?

Yeah,

Brian Cox's thought.

Can't get away with staring wistfully at the sky.

In the interest of balance, I'd like to know what the opinions are that you discarded, Brian, as not worthy for blocking.

Because you discarded most of them, because clearly they weren't quite maddening.

Fergus Oakley said that people should pay great attention to me.

The mythical Pandora's box is full of infinitely tiny vibrating strings that may or may not be tangled up with Schrodinger's cat.

And there's one from Simon Le Bon here.

No matter what anyone says, Hungry Like the Wolf by Duran Duran is the best song ever.

Good to have Simon back in the audience.

Yes, he is.

So, basically, we're going to get more complaints than anything else.

We've done a show about balancing.

It wasn't very balanced, was it?

Anyway, right, so there we go.

I tried my best.

But we did know that.

So, to save people, write into our email address, which, as many of you Unix fans, know, is slash dev slash null at bbc.co.uk.

Some last-minute balance.

Evolution is just a theory and in fact the universe is made from the milk of a giant sky cow.

There's no such thing as climate change, it's all propaganda created by a cabal of Hessian-clad cloud surgeons.

The moon is a spaceship, Buckingham Palace is a smaller spaceship which communicates with the moon using superluminal neutrinos.

The Large Hadron Collider is a secret black hole machine, not so secret, everyone knows about it now.

And the cabinet are lizards predominantly.

That's it.

So no complaints, please.

Next week we address the much simpler task of exploring the question: how did life begin?

And again, for the sake of balance, whether life actually exists at all.

So, thanks to our guests, Paul Nurse, Steve Jones, Katie Brown, and Simon Mayo.

Goodbye.

And for the sake of balance, hello.