Where are the right-wing scientists? Everyone's on the left like me
Ella Al-Shamahi, presenter of the BBC's science series Human, which starts tomorrow night, said people who lean towards the right, or have strong religious beliefs, feel alienated by mainstream science.
'We do have to be a little bit honest and say that, to many, it seems like left-leaning atheists have a monopoly on science,' she said.
The dominance of a single school of political thought in science is an important context to President Trump's withdrawal of funding from universities in America, she said. 'If you can't demonstrate that scientists and research labs don't belong to just one tribe, then suddenly it doesn't become a priority to fund them.'
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He did national service with the Royal Navy, before studying archaeology and anthropology at Pembroke College, Cambridge (1956–59). He then completed his Cambridge MA and PhD in Africa (1959-65), principally when keeper of prehistory at the Livingstone Museum, Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia), and conducting archaeological fieldwork in that country and Kenya. In 1960 he had a short stint lecturing at the University of Cape Town, South Africa (he returned there as a visiting professor in 1982). He decided early on that his forte lay in teaching and popular writing, not primary research; he left Africa, he said, exhausted by the logistics of excavation and survey, and as 'a sound, but second-rate excavator'. He had thought of joining the family publishing business. When offered a visiting position at the University of Illinois, Urbana, however, he happened to lunch with Mortimer Wheeler, then a powerful archaeologist and media star. 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That year, Ronald Reagan had begun his first term as governor of California, on a mission to stamp out campus protest (UCSB was notorious for its anti-Vietnam war activity, and in 1969 a caretaker was killed by a bomb), cut university spending, and bend curriculums towards conservative thinking. The anthropology department, Brian said, was 'reeling from the impact'. Nevertheless, unperturbed, and gifted with confidence, drive and vision, Brian stayed at UCSB, writing one book after another. He retired in 2003 as professor emeritus of anthropology. The Archaeological Institute of America recognised his books with a lifetime achievement award, and the Society for American Archaeology awarded him three times, for his public writing and media work, and his book Before California (2003). Beside books and teaching (in which he was an early adopter of new technologies, encouraging his students to think freely), Brian busied himself widely as university dean (various posts 1970–76), consultant (for the likes of the National Geographic Society, Time/Life, Microsoft and the BBC), magazine columnist and editorial adviser. He would have liked to have presented TV films, he once told me (though he claimed not to watch any), but that call never came. He was an impressive and charismatic speaker, however, in more recent years teasing his audiences with humour, and with the presence of an ageing Shakespearean actor who was fit enough to bicycle 100 miles a week into his 80s. Occasions ranged from Munro lecturer at the University of Edinburgh (1967), through to guest speaker at Flinders University Museum of Art (2014) – and many more. Other awards included recognition for his teaching, and the Cruising Association's Hanson Cup (he once crossed the Atlantic in his own boat). 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