A recent post in Life's Lessons' blog [edit: now defunct] brought up a topic I had thought about twice this past week. For some reason, it is often acceptable (in the media and generally) to be a scientific ignoramus, in a way that is not true for other subjects.
As I graduated with a science degree, I naturally find that a bit annoying!
Last week, there was a short article about Linnaean classification (I can't remember where, but probably Radio 4), and the female presenter was stumbling hopelessly over the Latin names of several commonly known species (at least to me having done Biology A level many years ago) - like Homo sapiens and Drosophila melanogaster. She didn't seem in the least embarrassed, as might have been the case if it was some obscure foreign diplomat's name for example.
And today, I listened to the Food Programme also on R4, which is all about rapeseed oil. Sheila Dillon visited Duncan Farrington - a rapeseed farmer, and during their discussion, mentioned that the seedpods were shaped like chillies. Duncan replied that since rape belonged to the same family (Solanaceae) as chillies, this wasn't surprising. Well Duncan, rape is, and always has been AFAIK, in a different family (Brassicaceae). You might think that even if he didn't know, there might be some fact-checker to do a little bit of work behind the scenes? Or not.
05/02/07 @ 19:36