Thoughts on Dr. David Kelly

This sad case illustrates two things; the lengths to which politicians will go to make us believe what they want and the general distrust there is for scientists.

Type 'David Kelly Murder' into Google and you will find that many people believe that Dr. Kelly was murdered by person or persons, known or unknown.

I do not believe this for one good reason. If say he had been murdered by a secretive Government Agency, then as with all such 'conspiracies', someone would be pricked by conscience or money to tell the truth. What would the Daily Mail pay for a story to bring the Government down?

The E-Mails and other messages that went round Government about Dr. Kelly show how they wanted to discredit him and also how they wanted to create a bullet-proof case for war with Iraq.

I think the fact that we have not found any Weapons of Mass Distruction in Iraq shows how flimsy the evidence was. After all if we can't find it now, how could we have found it with no access to the country.

I believe that it was this discrediting of scientific evidence in general and the way he was treated by politicians and his bosses, that drove Dr. Kelly to take his own life.

I am an engineer/scientist and I know how badly I take it, when my good carefully worked out advice is trashed by those who have no scientific training at all and want me to prove their crackpot theories.

If you employ an expert then listen to what he or she says!

But this treatment of Dr. Kelly is very typical of the way we treat a lot of our good science.

Put forward a crackpot theory that babies conceived in a hammock have better 3-D awareness and it will be published all over the newspapers. Suggest to a smoker that cigarettes are not good for anybody and ask them to put it out and you will get a very abrasive response.

Perhaps we get a society we deserve. Until we treat knowledge and the people who create and nurture it properly, we will always have a society that will be run by the biggest bully or the man with the largest megaphone.