Michael Brooks fights science's corner

Earlier this year, Michael Brooks, science writer and regular contributor to the New Scientist and New Statesman, set up the Science Party – a party that ‘stands for sensible thinking about the things that matter’. He fought for the seat of Bosworth in the general election against David Tredinnick – a supporter of alternative medicine and criticiser of science – receiving 197 votes. We caught up with Michael to find out a bit more about the newly established party and his plans for the future.

You’re a founding member of The Science Party – tell us a bit about them:

At the moment, the Science Party has just two members: me and a New Scientist colleague. I could have run in the election as an independent candidate, but it seemed like forming a party gave us the chance to make it a bigger thing if we wanted to. It also gives you the chance to use a logo and a slogan in your election campaign, and we decided that would help in getting our message across. Now that we're established, and have fought our first election, who knows what we can do with this. We have to make decisions now about membership – what's the best way to grow this fledgling movement? Next time around we might field candidates all over the country: we've certainly had plenty of people approach us who were willing to stand as Science Party candidates!

What was your inspiration behind setting up The Science Party?

The idea was to create a political group who could represent the interests of science, scientists and those who appreciate what science opens up to us. Because relatively few MPs are clued up about science, it is easy for the main parties to make some passing reference to science, but not feel the need to take it any further: they can talk about its value in vague terms, but when it comes to putting their money where their mouth is, the picture changes. The Science Party, on the other hand, is hoping to keep science on the agenda by focussing on what it has achieved, what it can achieve, its importance to the economy, the way science has changed the world for the better and - most importantly – what is needed to keep science giving us all these benefits.

What do you hope to achieve?

More of the same, really: it was never about raising votes as much as it was about raising awareness. We have helped, along with many other groups, to put science in the political spotlight, and focussed attention on whether our political representatives value science and are "scientifically literate" – whether they are well-versed enough in science to make good decisions. We aim to keep that going, working with other organisations (and through New Scientist) to hold MPs to account in their roles as decision-makers. It seems to us that many issues facing MPs involve science directly, indirectly and in terms of having a good way to assess the relevant evidence before coming to a decision. Then there's the issue of trying to protect science funding: difficult, but necessary. Scientists have a tendency to be passive and fatalistic – they almost expect their funding to be cut, and don't make enough of a fuss when it happens.

[caption id="attachment_23436" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Michael Brooks"][/caption]

Working in science is in many ways its own reward, which is dangerous: you end up doing it for less money, and with less job security. Eventually, that has to stop. The Science Party is about standing up against that tide and getting politicians to attribute value to science.

What's your day job?

I'm a writer. I'm currently working on my next book – it's about how science works, which is much more interesting than you might imagine! I'm also writing features for New Scientist, a fortnightly column in the New Statesman, and various things for other magazines and newspapers.