Archive by category | ESOF08

Europe ‘needs independent science advice’

Sir David King knows a thing or two about science policy. For seven years he was chief scientific advisor to the UK government, telling it what it needed to know (and a few things it would probably rather not have known) about everything from climate change to animal diseases.  Read more

Science for and against terrorism

Science for and against terrorism

Science can be a great help for those fighting terrorism but there’s an unpleasant flipside to this, Sir Richard Mottram told ESOF this morning.

“There’s the awkward fact that lots of terrorists are scientists, engineers or doctors,” says Mottram, a former secretary of intelligence in the UK. “… You can’t have an open society and open science in the traditional way without running some very significant risks.”