Professor Stephen Salter

[Tommy Hobbes]

Just listened to Any Answers and was astonished that Mr. Jonathan Dimbleby clearly didn’t have a clue who Professor Stephen Salter was when he called the programme. It was also clear that Mr. Dimbleby isn’t familiar with his current research concerning techniques for increasing atmospheric cooling. This work has been covered widely in the regular broadsheets over recent months. See for example: Albedo.

The message the casual listener deduces from this is that R4 presenters aren’t remotely interested in issues appertaining to global warning or limited fossil fuel reserves. Very disturbing.

[Crusoe]

Well, I suppose he can’t have an in-depth knowledge of all of the personalities involved in all of the issues which are debated on “Any Questions”/ “Any Answers” and, rightly or wrongly, it tends to concentrate on “political” issues. Having said that, I suppose that anything that could affect the citizens of the country might be considered a political issue and Mr Dimbleby’s ignorance may reflect that of politicians, which would be worrying, since these people are responsible for taking decisions which may affect the climate of the country.

I suppose what is a bit more disappointing is the fact that this is probably not a “one off” and seems to reflect a general marginalisation of “scientific”/ “environmental” issues in BBC news/ current affairs coverage.

[Tommy Hobbes]

webb said:

Well, I suppose he can’t have an in-depth knowledge of all of the personalities involved in all of the issues which are debated on “Any Questions”/ “Any Answers” and, rightly or wrongly, it tends to concentrate on “political” issues.

Not true, AQ/AA discusses many issues apart from politics and current affairs.

The point I’m making here is that if you’re a regular listener to Any Answers, then you’ll be aware that if any authoritative individual associated with the world of politics, business, arts, law, social services or medicine calls the programme, then Mr Dimbleby will preface the call with: ‘are you the Professor Bloggs from…….’ and the caller will confirm or deny this.

A researcher speaks to the callers prior to going on air and the producer will also, no doubt, be in possession of a list of all the callers’ names, so he should have also picked up on this. Professor Salter is a world authority in respect of wave power and certainly any reasonably intelligent person over the age of 35 will be familiar with ‘The Salter Duck’. Consequently, if the topic for discussion concerns an energy-related issue (which it did) and the name ‘Stephen Salter’ appears, then either the researcher, producer or presenter should have recognized this connection. I can guarantee that someone such as Prof. Wendy Savage would have been recognized if she’d called in – because medicine holds a greater social status than engineering within Radio 4.

I assume BBC researchers are all graduates, so he/she should have been aware of Professor Salter – as should Mr Griffiths (the producer) and Mr. Dimbleby. Professor Salter’s contribution was diluted significantly, simply because he had to waste time explaining to Mr. Dimbleby who he was. This is the first time in many years of listening to AA that an incident such as this has occurred which is why I believe it merited a posting.