December 11, 2009
Colin Macilwain
NATURE
The Macmillan Building
4 Crinan Street
London N1 9XW
UNITED KINGDOM
(Open letter mildly edited for clarity for anybody else.)
Dear Colin Macilwain:
“Experts and Democracy” is a new perspective well thought out and expressed. I, for one, had net put together the implied contradiction between a democracy in which people decide what they want and a system in which professional politicians put disproportionate weight on the fallible opinions of government-paid experts, and I look forward to more articles of the same quality. Thank you for taking the position you do. Might I suggest this? A century or two ago science was dominated by the clergy, an educated elite with wide interests who had the resources and controlled the conversation; we now have an educated elite with narrow interests who have the resources and control the conversation.
Not that it is going to help me any. Clearly those with the power of addressing the public have ears only for the elite within or the numbers of people without. Ideas on their own mean very little. There is an idea on the enclosed DVD. It has to do with fertility. I represent no large group of people nor any power center, and the power centers do not take an interest even though, as “Mother Shipton” is said to have prophesied “nations wane as babes decrease.”
It will only take ten minutes to run it. You can eat a sandwich while you do.
Sincerely,
M. Linton Herbert MD
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