By ROBIN MCKIE - THE OBSERVER
Added: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 22:24:49 UTC

Thanks to Derek Morr for the link.

Researchers attending one of the world's major academic conferences 'are scared to death of the anti-science lobby'

The vast majority of scientists on both sides of the Atlantic say rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere threaten to increase temperatures to dangerous levels. Photograph: Paul Souders/Corbis

Most scientists, on achieving high office, keep their public remarks to the bland and reassuring. Last week Nina Fedoroff, the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), broke ranks in a spectacular manner.

She confessed that she was now "scared to death" by the anti-science movement that was spreading, uncontrolled, across the US and the rest of the western world.

"We are sliding back into a dark era," she said. "And there seems little we can do about it. I am profoundly depressed at just how difficult it has become merely to get a realistic conversation started on issues such as climate change or genetically modified organisms."

The remarks of Fedoroff, one of the world's most distinguished agricultural scientists, are all the more remarkable given their setting.

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TAGGED: IRRATIONALITY, SCIENCE