Popular Science Review - The March of Unreason

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Review - The March of Unreason - Dick Taverne

It's easy to overlook this book. Anyone who can remember back to the sixties, when he was a UK government minister, will have Dick Taverne pigeonholed as a politician, so will mentally label this book a political tract, yawn and move on. They really should have got the world science in the title (and more prominently than in the subtitle Science, Democracy and the New Fundamentalism, where it gets rather lost among the rhetoric).

In fact, Taverne is making an important point in this book. The counter-rebellion against science is now so strong that myths and obscure beliefs are getting in the way of truth and safety. He starts by looking at the medical arena. Medical evidence was horribly tarnished in the UK by the BSE affair, and Taverne puts that alongside the rise in alternative medicine, the rejection of the MMR vaccine (hopefully now squashed), the children's body parts scandal and the shameful rejection of the medical treatment of AIDS in South Africa. As he points out, much of our fall back, in alternative medicine is based simply on something being traditional, having been around along time, while ignoring the fact it was traditional to have short unpleasant lives.

He then moves on to organic farming. This is an easy target, given the bizarre origins of the organic movement (the originator thought that cows' horns attracted beneficial energy to improve the animal) and the inability of anyone to distinguish good, fresh non-organic food from its organic counterpart. He points out the way many of the benefits we associate with organic are not particularly connected. Free range animals, an indubitable improvement in animal welfare and probably taste as well, have nothing to do with organics (though it reduces the need for antibiotics anyway). The environmental benefits of organic farming have nothing to do with the organic principles. And what is and isn't allowed is riddled with inconsistency.

The biggest target of the book is the GM debate. Taverne presents both sides of the argument but shows how the hysteria and media manipulation that have dogged the subject totally clouded the real issues. He also shows how the anti-globalization debate magnificently misses the point and does more harm than good - this is a real eye opener if you've read something like No Logo.

Two problems, though. The lesser one is it's a real preaching-to-the-converted book. I can't see anyone who isn't already of a like mind with Taverne reading it. What we really need is this sort of material in a more tabloid form. Having said that, there are many scientifically minded people who have been unnecessarily wary of GM or enthusiastic about organic - I certainly felt a small shift in my own attitude - so the effect, though subtle, may still be worthwhile.

The bigger problem is that he isn't balanced enough - it comes across too much as a polemic. Now that's natural enough because the environmental lobbies and other anti-science movements are equally one sided, but it would have been better if Taverne had pulled back a little. It's not that he's telling it wrong, but he misses out some positives. For example, he says that homeopathy is probably on a par with a placebo, without emphasising that placebos can do a lot of good (provided they aren't used to the exclusion of real medicine). Once you accept that, there is a real dilemma. For a placebo to work, you have to believe in it. If you discredit homeopathy, it won't work! So if the principle is harmless (as opposed to some of the less scientific alternative treatments), perhaps we can be a little less derisory.

Similarly, he's absolutely right in pointing out the flaws in the organic argument, but it wouldn't do any harm to emphasize more that some of the alternatives, such as the widespread use of hormonal treatments to increase growth rate, and of antibiotics is something that should be avoided. Taverne is trying so hard to point out the real problems with the anti-science regime that he forgets that profit-driven industrialists have repeatedly proved capable of putting out harmful products if they can get away with them. We still need a protective balance.

However, with all that said, it's a good book, putting forward the very important message to counter the anti-science brigade with their unsubstantiated "information" and scare mongering.

Only in hardback.

Reviewed by Brian Clegg

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