Something is seriously amiss when the former prime minister, John Howard, asserts that parents should be concerned about "one-sided science" being taught in our schools.Read more here
Leave aside that Howard was endorsing a new children's book on climate change by Professor Ian Plimer, a geologist whose sceptical representations of climate science for adults seem driven more by a conservative ideology.
Of more concern is the misguided notion that science is somehow like politics or the law, with a left and right, or prosecution and defence. Scientific debate can be a bit like that at times when people differ on the interpretation of data but, as the saying goes, everyone is entitled to their own opinions but no one is entitled to their own facts...
Professor Merlin Crossley is Dean of Science at the University of New South Wales.
