Can a panel discussion save the planet? With scientific issues hogging the headlines and research findings increasingly hijacked by politicians, there’s never been a better time for scientists to air their opinions.

Jennifer Rohn

If you’re feeling combative about key scientific issues of the day, you might want to head down to the third annual Battle of Ideas festival on 27–28 October at the Royal College of Art.

The BoI is a forum for people to debate issues in a free, balanced format. The discussion is warmed up by a chaired panel of experts, but if last year’s festival is anything to go by, expect the audience participation to be brisk and vociferous.

The Institute of Ideas, which organises the event, cites freedom of speech and civil libertarianism as two of its key tenants, so BoI debates are often launched with controversial stances that go against the grain of received liberal opinion. The IOI’s Tony Gilland, the organizer of the Battle for Science stream, called the festival a public space for robust debate of all manner of pressing intellectual and political questions. “The festival avoids being anodyne in the name of consensus and rather encourages speakers and participants to question, criticize and interrogate one another in the name of taking ideas seriously,” he says, adding that this year, the organizers have chosen scientific topics that have been particularly invoked by politicians.

Most of the science action this year happens on the Sunday, kicking off with Debating Darwin. Don’t expect a simple ID-bashing session— the teaser asks whether science is ‘just as fundamentalist as religion’. Batting on the side of the scientists will be Simon Conway Morris, a professor of evolutionary paleobiology at Cambridge. He suggests that Intelligent Design is not only bad science but ‘bad theology’, yet concedes that not every last aspect of our current view of evolution may be understood or agreed on by experts. Nevertheless, we shouldn’t underestimate the ability of students to handle these grey areas of scientific debate.

Doubting whether human action is leading to climate change is suddenly passé—just ask Al Gore. But there’s still plenty of controversy out there. The science and politics of climate change will ask whether the sudden near-consensus on the rising CO2 levels is stifling discussion on the best solution. Professor Mike Hulme of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, one of the panellists, says that climate change has become an ‘infinitely malleable idea’, with various camps making blatant grabs for the idealistic high ground and exploiting the problem to further their own ends. While still defending the scientific basis of man-made climate change, he wants people to challenge the notion that such worries warrant extreme reactions, like mass engineering the planet, that the current alarmist atmosphere has fostered.

In the session Is particle physics sexy?, participants will be asked to discuss whether switching on the Large Hadron Collider in 2008 will rejuvenate the image of this arcane science. To panellist Dr Brian Cox, a particle physicist who divides his time between CERN and the University of Manchester, climate change may be the least of our worries. “Knowledge about the universe is not a luxury,” he admonishes. Instead, understanding what’s out there, from rogue asteroids to black holes, is a “necessity for our survival”.

The world, Cox also believes, needs more inspiration. If we aren’t quite ready to back manned space flight, then the LHC might just do the trick. “The LHC is the first Apollo-like project of the 21st Century,” he says. “As a child, I was inspired to go into research by Apollo.” Making physics sexy is a challenge for the field, he adds. People don’t necessarily associate physics with the wow-factor of space, and they ought to.

Further sessions deal with the neuroscience of human behaviour, barriers to practicing science in the 21st century, obesity, recycling and alternative medicine.

So what good does all this talking do? Monica Grady, a professor of planetary and space science at the Open University and one of the panellists, confesses: “These sorts of activities tend to attract self-selecting audiences, and it’s never the great public debate you want it to be.” Still she is looking forward to an interesting discussion and hopes that the event will make a difference.

_ Purchase tickets for the event._