Cloned meat, Bullshit and Science

So, an embryo from a cloned cow was bought from America and two offspring have got into the food chain. Well, I'm underwhelmed. But this story is consistently being pushed by the BBC, on one level it's merely a classic 'silly season' story, on another it's a danger to our particularly vulnerable beef farmers. Whilst I'm not a particular fan of our little kings of agriculture, beef farming is only just recovering from the BSE crisis and could be hit badly by this irresponsible journalism.

Yet the public have a responsibility too, one we're failing at terribly, in that we should be intelligent enough not to respond like idiots to stories of this nature. The problem is science - the word itself seems to send normal people into dithering, witless dimwits. This disgraceful lack of knowledge seems to make people very defensive indeed, even aggressively displaying their ignorance as some supposed mark of cleverness. If this is you, please stop, you look like a fucking moron.

Julian Huppert, Lib Dem MP for Cambridge, is one of only two MPs (out of 650ish) to hold a science doctorate, and the only MP to have worked in the scientific field. He's described the problem of scientific illiteracy in parliament as being so bad that all MPs should have a mandatory course in the subject. I'd go farther, perhaps the entire nation needs an enforced lesson in science just to stop them acting like complete arseholes.