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The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Daily: SCIENCE strikes back

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Podmasters

News, Government, Politics, Society & Culture

4.61K Ratings

🗓️ 6 October 2020

⏱️ 26 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How did evidence-based science end up playing second fiddle to demagoguery and populism? And what can we do about it? Prof Luke O’Neill, professor of biochemistry and COVID immunologist at Trinity College Dublin, has written a book with the admirably direct title Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Science. He tells Justin Quirk why we need to fight a rearguard action for science’s primacy in politics, the dirty history of antiscience agitation, and why COVID could be the best thing in decades for the march of reason. “Science should never be an opinion. It should be a conclusion.” “Once the data becomes a roar, you can’t ignore it.” Presented by Justin Quirk. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producer Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

My name is Stan. I'm at. Nice to meet you. So you took up photography where? I've always loved

0:05.5

photography but I turn it into earning a living at 60. I enrolled on a day course.

0:11.8

Well college. I loved going to college. It's good you can retry. I'm enrolled on the day course. But college?

0:13.0

I loved going to college.

0:14.0

It's good you can retrain and do something.

0:16.0

Yeah, yeah.

0:17.0

Let's talk about working, learning, saving and making the most of living longer.

0:22.0

Phoenix Group is the UK's largest long-term savings and retirement business.

0:28.0

Search Phoenix Group living longer.

0:30.0

Pets brings so much joy.

0:32.0

From those happy greetings at the door to the warm cuddles on the sofa

0:36.7

so give a little love back with dental life from Purina a range of delicious chues made for dogs and tasty snacks for cats that help clean and support your pets, teeth and gums, essential for their overall well-being and a happy, healthy life. They give you plenty of smiles so

0:55.3

look after theirs with dental life. Pick up dental life in the pet food aisle. Hello, welcome to the bunker daily. I'm Justin Quirk. If way back on New Year's Eve 1999 you told someone that within 20 years

1:16.4

hundreds of thousands of supposedly educated people would reflexively distrust science

1:21.0

reject expertise and ignore material evidence,

1:24.2

and refuse even to wear a small paper mask

1:26.9

to ward off a pandemic straight out of a science fiction movie,

1:29.8

then they'd probably have thought you were crazy. But in 2020 we are where we are and it is what it is.

1:36.8

We're looking at a situation now where fewer than half of the Conservative Party members believe that humans are causing climate change.

1:42.0

There is an actual existing flat-Earth

1:44.1

community and according to a recent UCL survey, one in five people say they are unlikely to get a

1:50.0

coronavirus vaccine even if it passes medical approval. How did we get here and how can we get back to a

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