Tony at Harmless Sky has penned further thoughts about Steve Jones' BBC report. Tony doesn't sound too amused to me, particularly in relation to this part:
A submission made to this Review by Andrew Montford and Tony Newbery (both active in the anti‐global‐warming movement, and the former the author of The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science) devotes much of its content to criticising not the data on temperatures but the membership of a BBC seminar on the topic in 2006, and to a lengthy discussion as to whether its Environment Analyst was carrying out BBC duties or acting as a freelance during an environment programme at Cambridge University. The factual argument, even for activists, appears to be largely over but parts of the BBC are taking a long time to notice.
Tony's response is this:
...can anyone explain to me why Andrew and I might choose to write about the global temperature record to a geneticist who is conducting a review of journalism for a broadcaster? Apparently Professor Jones thinks that is what we should have done. And he also seems to think that because we didn’t do this, we must think that the debate about the science of climate change is over. That is just plain silly.
And it's hard to disagree. I think this part of Jones' report tells us a great deal about the kind of person he is.
On related matters, one of Tony's readers points to an article in ResearchResearch.com, which contains this
The BBC’s proposals are bad news for the public’s understanding of science but more welcome for all those academics needing to show that their research is getting airtime in the media.
Which seems about right to me. The BBC's objective is to recreate something like last night's Book Festival debate but on a grander scale: lots of "experts" sounding forth in glorious harmony with factoids galore but with nobody to question them.