Listen to article
Narrated by James Marriott
Any news report reciting “scientists say” loses credibility from the get-go. Scientists don’t speak with one voice. To make that plural “scientists” technically accurate, only two scientists need agree. Good journalists don’t cite vague collectives as sources, but named, credentialled professionals who can back their claims with data.
Yet on the BBC’s American lookalike PBS, this week’s NewsHour package on Maui’s historically horrific wildfires informed us that “scientists say” the conflagration was driven by “climate change” – a now-conventional shorthand for “anthropogenic climate change resulting from the burning of fossil fuels”. “Scientists say” echoes the same lazy attributions during Covid, remember? “The science” justified everything from lockdowns to vaccine mandates.
Were I a scientist, I’d resent my entire field of endeavour – which by definition