Science Media Centre Podcast

Welcome to the Science Media Centre Podcast. In our 20th year we are looking back at some of the biggest stories the charity has been involved with.In this episode, we discuss the events surrounding the 2009 sacking of Professor David Nutt from his position as Chair of the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). Our Chief Executive, Fiona Fox, is joined by:Prof David Nutt, Edmond J Safra Chair in Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, and Chair of the ACMD from January 2008 to October 2009Mark Henderson, Director of Corporate Affairs at Wellcome, and Science Editor at The Times from 2006 – 2011Dr Evan Harris, Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon from May 1997 to May 2010 and member of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee between 2003 and 2010The sacking of David Nutt as the government’s ‘drugs tsar’ (aka Chair of the ACMD) was a huge cause célèbre in science. It came at the time when Nutt and other scientific advisers were gathering evidence for government about the harms of different illicit drugs, including cannabis and ecstasy, to help inform policy decisions about how to classify these drugs. However, much of the research being published by Nutt and his fellow scientists at that time, including the late Professor Sir Colin Blakemore, revealed that LSD, ecstasy and cannabis were actually less harmful than legal products like alcohol and tobacco. That this evidence was proving unpopular with ministers became clear in February 2009 when Jacqui Smith, Home Secretary, took to the airwaves to lambast her own adviser for stating in a journal paper that ecstasy was statistically no more dangerous than horse-riding. Smith publicly demanded that Nutt apologise to the parents of children who had died after taking ecstasy, and made the apology a condition of him keeping his job.Nutt clung on to this job on that occasion, but he was an active and prolific researcher as well as a government adviser, and it wasn’t long before new research produced similar findings. In October 2009 in a lecture given to the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College London, Nutt presented new findings about relative harms of drugs and repeated his view that illicit drugs should be classified according to the actual evidence of the harm they cause. The lecture was picked up in the media and this time there were no warnings. Nutt was dismissed from his ACMD position by the then Home Secretary Alan Johnson, and a media storm erupted.This podcast brings back together four people who were deeply involved in these events. David Nutt himself, who decided as soon as he got over the shock of the news to tour every TV and radio studio telling his side of the story. Mark Henderson, then science editor of The Times, who covered every twist and turn over the following weeks. Evan Harris, then a Lib-Dem MP, who took up David Nutt’s case in parliament and led a campaign alongside Sense about Science and CaSE (the Campaign for Science and Evidence) for new guidelines to protect independent scientific advisers from dismissal in future. And Fiona Fox, Head of the Science Media Centre, who was the first person David Nutt phoned when he heard about his sacking and organised a packed press briefing for him shortly afterwards. Here, they are reunited to reminisce on this extraordinary time and reflect on what the episode told us about the need to keep a clear separation between scientific advice and policy making.Producer – Andy HawkesEditor – Fiona LethbridgeAudio Production – Lewis Sellars

Welcome to the Science Media Centre Podcast. In our 20th year we are looking back at some of the biggest stories the charity has been involved with.In this episode, we discuss the events surrounding the 2008 legalisation of research using human-animal hybrid embryos in the UK. Our Chief Executive, Fiona Fox, is joined by:Prof Robin Lovell-Badge, Group Leader at The Francis Crick InstituteProf Chris Shaw, Professor of Neurology and Neurogenetics at King's College LondonFiona MacRae, freelance science and health writer, and Science Correspondent for the Daily Mail from 2005 to 2016When the SMC opened in 2002, one of the biggest controversies in science was the issue of embryo research. Dolly, the sheep cloned by Ian Wilmut in Edinburgh, heralded a new era of stem cell research offering the promise of new ways of understanding and treating common but incurable diseases like Parkinson's and motor neurone disease. The research world was excited about the new opportunities, but the cutting-edge new approach had fierce critics. The Catholic Church globally opposed any research using human embryos, and others feared that cloning for therapeutic reasons would become a slippery slope to human cloning and ‘designer babies’. The news media lapped up the row with lurid headlines about scientists playing God.Into this febrile atmosphere arrived maverick scientists like Panos Zavos and Severino Antinori, booking hotel conference rooms in London and Washington to announce their attempts at creating the first human clone to an excitable press. The SMC came into this row determined to pioneer a new proactive and bold approach that would ensure that the public were hearing about this research from the mainstream stem cell researchers and clinicians doing it for public good and in a strict regulatory environment.This podcast brings together two of the scientists at the heart of this cutting-edge research with the Daily Mail’s science reporter to reflect on the atmosphere at the time. In particular, it focuses in on the media’s coverage of a controversial move by the Labour government in 2006 to ban research on human admixed embryos. The podcast shows how the research community finally found their voice, won over the public and policy makers, and ultimately overturned an attempt to shut down this promising area of research.Producer and Editor – Andy HawkesAudio Production – Lewis Sellars

Welcome to the Science Media Centre Podcast. In our 20th year we are looking back at some of the biggest stories the charity has been involved with.This episode we discuss the controversy known as Climategate, the events during and after the hack of thousands of emails belonging to climate scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in 2009. Our Chief Executive, Fiona Fox, is joined by:Prof Phil Jones, Emeritus Professor at the School of Environmental Sciences at UEA, and Director of the Climatic Research Unit at UEA from 1998-2016Simon Dunford, Head of News, Media and Research Engagement at UEA, and Press Officer at UEA from 2004-2011Emily Beament, Environment and Heritage Correspondent for PAProducer & Editor – Andy HawkesAudio Production – Lewis Sellars