The status of Science

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 598 Ratings

🗓️ 10 October 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Science is one of the major sources of authority in society today. Scientists develop technologies to make our lives easier and more comfortable. They fight diseases, they have identified and are helping to combat climate change. Yet developments like AI, and some areas of genetic science, seem to raise ethical dilemmas that scientists on their own can't address. And at a time when the authority of 'experts' has been challenged, where does that leave the authority of scientists? Shahidha Bari discusses science in society with theologian Dr Dafydd Mills Daniel, who's been working on Samuel Clarke, known as Newton's Bulldog, as a case study in the status of science in 17th century England, and Dr Sandra Knapp, researcher at the Natural History Museum and chair of the judges of this year's Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize. Also Hannah Devlin, science correspondent for The Guardian, Nick Spencer, Senior Fellow at Theos, and geneticist, author and broadcaster Adam Rutherford.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Transcript

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0:20.2	It's right foot goes for goal.
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0:27.7	The stat that is astonishing is they ended with the lowest amount of possession.
0:31.2	And she's had to live with that.
0:32.8	So if you love sport, a passion, it's almost like a religion.
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0:45.0	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
1:11.4	You're listening to the Arts and Ideas podcast with me, Shahid Abari. Hello, do you know how to harvest water from desert air capture carbon dioxide and store toxic gases? I don't. Fortunately, the winners of this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded earlier this week do. The molecular architecture they've created promises to solve some of the challenges human beings face.
1:16.2	But this scientific triumph comes in the wake of scientific trouble too.
1:20.8	The recent news story that pregnant women in the US have been urged to avoid acetamina monosin or parasitamal for its alleged links to autism
1:23.5	and in a wider culture of increasing vaccine skepticism and climate change denial.
1:29.5	So what does this tell us about the status of science when it is seemingly both the answer to
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