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Sense About Science

About Us

(Industry Front Group)

We are a charitable trust that equips people to make sense of scientific and medical claims in public discussion.

With a database of over 5,000 scientists, from Nobel prize winners to postdocs and PhD students, we work in partnership with scientific bodies, research publishers, policy makers, the public and the media, to change public discussions about science and evidence. Through award-winning public campaigns, we share the tools of scientific thinking and scrutiny. Our growing international Voice of Young Science network engages hundreds of early career researchers in public debates about research and evidence. Our activities and publications are used and shaped by community groups, civic bodies, patient organisations, information services, writers, publishers, educators, health services and many others. People look to us to:

  • Make sense of science and evidence
  • Provide quick help and advice
  • Make a fuss about things that are wrong
  • Represent the public interest in sound science
  • Activate networks of scientists and others in defence of evidence

Our ethos:

  • We help people make sense of current discussions rather than taking them back to school
  • We stand up for scientific inquiry, free from stigma, intimidation, hysteria or censorship
  • We want everyone, whatever their experience, to stand up for evidence in public life 1)

Sense About Science USA 2)

SAS GM WATCH profile

The UK lobby group Sense About Science says it is 'A Trust to encourage a rational, evidence-based approach to scientific and technological developments'.

Its exact launch date is unknown but the domain name was registered in March 2002.

Within months it had begun to promote its point of view on GM crops to parliamentarians and the media, and had raised funding from 'corporations and learned societies'.

An item on the Sense About Science website also refers to a 'Sense About Science network of scientists and NGOs'. Clues to the network's constituent members would seem to be provided by the organisation's officers, staff, trustees, advisors, funders and project particpants.

Both Brown and Raphael worked for the London-based PR company Regester Larkin till shortly prior to joining Sense About Science. Both are also part of the extreme libertarian network behind LM, Spiked, and the Institute of Ideas, to all of which Brown and Raphael have contributed. The domain name for the Sense About Science website - senseaboutscience.org.uk - was registered by Rob Lyons, who is also web master for Spiked.

Brown and Raphael are also key players in another of the network's front groups, Global Futures. The phone number for Global Futures is the same as that for Sense About Science.

ADVISORS/TRUSTEES

Most of the members of Sense About Science's advisory council and board of trustees are well known GM proponents. In the list below we have added relevant institutional and/or NGO connections in brackets:

Vivian Moses (CropGen, Scientific Alliance), Michael Wilson (Scientific Alliance, HRI), Michael Fitzpatrick (LM, Spiked, Institute of Ideas), Brian Heap (Royal Society), Peter Marsh (SIRC), Phil Dale (John Innes Centre), Peter Lachmann (Royal Society, Academy of Medical Sciences), Julian Ma (Academy of Medical Sciences ),Matt Ridley (links to IEA, Julian Morris etc.), Chris Leaver, Derek Burke, Alan Malcolm, Roger Turner, and Janet Bainbridge.

FUNDING

Funding is said to derive from 'corporations and learned societies'. Funders include the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) , the 'life science' company Amersham Biosciences plc, BBSRC, BP plc, GlaxoSmithKline, ISAAA, John Innes Centre, The John Innes Trust, Mr M. Livermore (a biotech PR consultant who formerly worked for DuPont and has links to Scientific Alliance and IPN), the biopharmaceutical company Oxford GlycoSciences plc, Dr M. Ridley (links to IEA, Julian Morris etc.), and the Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC).

PROJECT PARTICIPANTS

Notable among the participants in the half dozen or so Sense About Science projects launched to date are the Royal Society (peer review project) and the John Innes Centre ('public good' plant breeding project). The Royal Society, in particular, appears to have gone to great lengths to support Sense About Science's first project, on peer review. Its former Vice President and its former Biological Secretary are among a number of leading Fellows on its advisory council and board of trustees.

CAMPAIGNS/PROJECTS

Influencing the debate

Sense about Science was created just in time for the UK's official GM Public Debate.

In October 2002 its director, Tracey Brown , attended a meeting about the design of the Public Debate. She was invited as part of a group of eight 'social scientists familiar with the GM debate and public engagement processes'. In fact, although Brown has a masters degree in the social sciences, her area of specialism was the sociology of law.

Interestingly, Brown is not the only LM contributor whose advice was sought during this period. Bill Durodie describes himself as an 'advisor' to the Prime Minister's Cabinet Office Strategy Unit study 'The Costs and Benefits of Genetically Modified (GM) Crops', which formed a parallel strand to the Public Debate in the government's assessment of the issue of GM crop commercialisation.

The GM Public Debate was originally expected to begin in Janaury 2003 although it was, in fact, delayed. Coincidentally, a series of reports which were favourable to GM appeared in the media in January.

These reports seem to have emanated from either the Royal Society, Sense About Science or people closely associated with the two organisations. All were marked by inaccuracy and what appears to have been an attempt to deliberately misinform. (see Strange Bedfellows, The Ecologist, April 2003)

For instance, reports by the BBC's science correspondent Pallab Ghosh at the end of January stated that the British Medical Association (BMA) would be undertaking a new report on GM. The BMA's previous report had been highly critical of the rapid introduction of GM crops and food and had called for a moratorium. Pallab Ghosh implied it was Sense About Science that had now persuaded the BMA to undertake a review of its policy. Sir Peter Lachmann , who is on the advisory panel of Sense About Science was quoted as saying that the research that the BMA's 1999 report had been based on had been 'discredited'. 3)

Sourcewatch Overview

Board of Trustees *

  • Lord Dick Taverne QC (Chair
  • Professor Dame Bridget Ogilvie FMedSci FRS (Vice-Chair)
  • Professor Janet Bainbridge OBE
  • Dr Shereen El Feki
  • Dr Michael Fitzpatrick
  • Ms Diana Garnham
  • Professor Sir Brian Heap CBE FRS
  • Professor Chris Leaver CBE FRS
  • Sir John Maddox FRS
  • Dr Peter Marsh
  • Dr Mark Matfield
  • Baroness Onora O'Neill of Bengarve
  • Dr Christie Peacock
  • Lord Henry Plumb of Coleshill DL

Advisory council

  • Professor John Adams (UCL), University College London
  • Mr Richard Ayre, Journalist
  • Mr Peter Bell, Former controller of policy, BBC News
  • Professor Sir Colin Berry FMedSci
  • Professor Colin Blakemore FMedSci FRS, Medical Research Council
  • Professor Sir Robert Boyd FMedSci
  • Professor Derek Burke CBE
  • Professor Peter Campbell
  • Professor Sir David Carter FMedSci, The Board of Trustees British Medical Association
  • Professor John Coggins, Biochemical Society
  • Professor Phil Dale, John Innes Research Centre
  • Professor Adrian Dixon FMedSci, Royal College of Radiologists
  • Dr Simon Festing, Association of Medical Research Charities
  • Dr Ron Fraser, Society for General Microbiology
  • Dr Nicola Gray, Royal Pharmaceutical Society
  • Lord Julian Hunt of Chesterton FRS
  • Lord Charles Jenkin of Roding
  • Professor Trevor Jones CBE, The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry
  • Professor Sir Peter Lachmann FRS FMedSci, Cambridge Centre for Veterinary Science
  • Dr Stephen Ladyman MP
  • Ms Prue Leith OBE
  • Dr Robin Lovell-Badge FRS, National Institute for Medical Research
  • Professor Julian Ma, St George's Hospital Medical School
  • Professor Alan Malcolm, Institute of Biology
  • Professor Vivian Moses, King's College London
  • Professor Sir Keith Peters FRS PMedSci, The Academy of Medical Sciences
  • Dr Matt Ridley FMedSci
  • Professor Anthony Trewavas FRS, University of Edinburgh
  • Lord Leslie Turnberg of Cheadle FMedSci
  • Dr Roger Turner
  • Professor Michael Wilson, Horticultural Research International

Funding

Sense about Science publishes a donor llist online [8]. Financial contributions, for both core and project-related costs, have been received from:

Help with equipment and facilities has been received from:

  • AXA Investment Management
  • Horticultural Research International
  • The Natural History Museum
  • Lord Stevenson of Coddenham
  • WPP plc

Has funded pro–GM research such as a survey on the cost of vandalism to sugar beet trials at Broom's Barn GM research centre. 4)

Sense About Science Critics

GMWatch

Sense About Science - The Full Monty

Details Published: 11 December 2003 Last Updated: 22 October 2012

Oxford University's Prof Chris Leaver says the recent letter to Tony Blair from '114 eminent scientists' has stopped the anti-GM bandwagon in its tracks. It has certainly led Blair to publicly reaffirm his support for GM.

Here is a profile of the lobby group behind the Blair letter and behind the campaign to paint critics of GM as “violent” and as fixers of the Public Debate. It also has projects aimed at attacking Pusztai yet again and sucking in yet more public money into GM research to fill the void left by the retreating corporations. Its principal collaborators include the Royal Society and the John Innes Centre.5)

Sense About Science leaps to chief scientific advisor's defence

GMWatch 09 August 2014

Did Sense About Science mislead signatories of its letter?

The pro-GMO lobby group Sense About Science has leapt to the defence of the position of European chief scientific advisor, which NGOs including Corporate Europe Observatory and GMWatch have asked to be abolished.

The first incumbent was and is Anne Glover, who has abused her position to lobby for GMO crops and to deny the body of scientific evidence showing they pose risks.

What is less understandable is SAS's statement, “we would further defend the record of Professor Anne Glover in having delivered impartial and rigorous advice” to the Commission. Furthermore, it seems that SAS duped the eminent scientists and scientific societies that signed onto SAS's letter that includes this statement. This is because Glover has consistently refused to reveal what advice she has given the Commission, saying it's confidential.

So unless SAS has breached that confidential relationship, it cannot possibly know whether Glover's advice has been “impartial and rigorous” or a large pile of prejudice and moonshine.

Judging by Glover's public pronouncements on GM, it's more likely to be the latter.

Glover has since told the press that the CSA's advice should remain “not transparent” and immune from public scrutiny. 6) She gives the excuse that her opinions should remain “independent from politics” – but we can't judge if they are independent from either politics or corporate lobbying, because they are secret.

It's clear why SAS, a group which is non-transparent about its pro-corporate agenda on issues like GMOs, would want to defend an unaccountable post cloaked in the respectable garb of “science”.

Corporate Europe Observatory has responded to SAS's intervention, below.7)

Guardian OpEd

So much for 'Sense' About Science Zac Goldsmith - The Guardian, 5 January 2010

Perfectly sensible celebrity observations about science are being mocked by a group that's no innocent fact-checking service

Every few months, an organisation called Sense About Science (SAS) issues a pamphlet that makes fun of celebrities getting their science wrong. It is full of what it regards to be false assertions by celebrities about the benefits of homeopathy and so on, and ends with an offer by the organisation to act as a fact-checking service.

Newspapers always lap it up. The problem is that they have fallen into a trap again. While they quote Sense About Science with the kind of deference usually reserved for the Royal Society, the organisation is at best suspect.

Sense About Science is much more than an innocent fact-checking service. It is a spin-off of a bizarre political network that began life as the ultra-left Revolutionary Communist Party and switched over to extreme corporate libertarianism when it launched Living Marxism magazine in the late eighties. LM, as it was latterly known, campaigned against, among other things, banning child pornography.

During the 90s, Living Marxism campaigned aggressively in favour of GM food. In 2000, it was sued for falsely claiming that ITN journalists had falsified evidence of Serb atrocities against Bosnian Muslims, and was forced to close. It soon reinvented itself as the Institute of ideas, and the online magazine Spiked. 8)

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