Introduction

Abstract

In 1945 Robert Oppenheimer, physicist and scientific leader of the Allies’ atomic bomb project, argued that ‘it is not possible to be a scientist unless you believe that knowledge of the world, and the power which this gives, is a thing which is of intrinsic value to humanity’ (Pais and Crease, 2006, p. 51). In that same year, Vannevar Bush, head of the US Office of Scientific Research and Development, published a report entitled ‘Science, the Endless Frontier’. In it he envisaged endless benefits to American society from scientific advance. Science would bring jobs, rising living standards, and improvements in culture.

The idea of making this speech has been in my mind for some time. The final prompt for it came, curiously enough, when I was in Bangalore in January. I met a group of academics, who were also in business in the biotech field. They said to me bluntly: Europe has gone soft on science; we are going to leapfrog you and you will miss out. They regarded the debate on GM here and elsewhere in Europe as utterly astonishing. They saw us as completely overrun by protesters and pressure groups who used emotion to drive out reason. And they didn’t think we had the political will to stand up for proper science. I believe that if we don’t get a better understanding of science and its role, they may be proved right. Let us start with the hardest thing of all to achieve in politics: a sense of balance. Already some of the pre-speech criticism suggests that by supporting science, we want the world run by Dr Strangelove, with all morality eclipsed by a cold, heartless test-tube ideology with scientists as its leaders.

Tony Blair, 2002