Science Policy UK: Beddington interview on science advice and public engagement

An interview with John Beddington on science advice, public engagement, risk and science policy. Final emphasis on climate change. Not sure that I agree with his view of media caution and chemical regulation in the environment: although it is true to say that there is a heavy emphasis on hazard derived from laboratory information, the problem with using risk effectively is that data to allow good calculation of environmental risk are difficult to obtain (although much better in the past couple of decades), particularly when thinking of the combined effects of different chemicals in the environment. The emphasis on hazard has come about not solely as a result of public attitudes - negative impacts of regulation by risk based on lab data in the past has been problematic.