Time to Experiment?

The announcement yesterday that Google and NASA are joining forces to create a new university that will research and develop artificial intelligence, biotechnology and nanotechnology received far fewer column centimetres than the fact that it's been snowing a bit.

I suspect that there have been more centimetres of newsprint than there have been of actual snow particularly on the tiresome discourse of Britain being the worst place in the world to be when the correct weather conditions converge and frozen water drops out of the sky.

The evidence would seem to support the perception that science stories can easily be knocked off the news agenda by b-list celebrities and faintly irregular weather events.

This is despite the fact that the world around us, and the experience of our everyday lives, has been shaped by the scientific endeavour of men and women over the last 200 years or so.

With a few honourable exceptions, science coverage is too often reduced to health-related scare stories which are built on the opinions of academics of dubious or downright fraudulent standards.

These have been expertly dissected elsewhere but the communications challenge to science is clear: make it exciting and make it engaging. Some of the biggest moments in human history and the best stories have come directly from the science lab and will continue to do so.

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