Focus on experiment and innovation in science and society

credit: Kate Raworth

The BBC should  become a global leader in its investigation, reporting and content with regard to experiment and innovation in both science and technology, and in social and political organisation UK and worldwide.

Better training for journalists and programme makers (including but not limited to elementary statistical techniques and standards of evidence) would be just part of a package of changes. The BBC would reach out and engage to a greater degree than ever before with scientists, engineers, students and citizens who are involved in innovations of many kinds.  The BBC would turn up the energy and the scrutiny on the best and (not necessarily the same thing) boldest new ideas and activities, producing content of outstanding quality across many platforms.

Improved understanding of complex scientific issues such as climate change requires better understanding and analysis of evidence, not a balance of opinion determined by the weight of vested economic interests which ignore and even suppress evidence.

Across Britain and the world, diverse social and political experiments point to possibilities for new ways to organise, innovate and adapt. While many of these experiments are not scientific in any strict sense, they are nevertheless amenable to evidence-based analysis and exciting programming.

The scientific, environmental and social and political challenges facing Britain and the world are enormous. There are few if any easy answers. But never has there been greater need to understand and communicate with rigour and honesty on the cutting edge of science, innovation and social organisation. The BBC has the potential to be the global brand leader on all of these.