Science Under Attack
Paul Nurse, the Nobel Prize-winning geneticist who runs the Royal Society, sets out to ask why so many people distrust settled science, and turns the camera on two flashpoints: climate change and the MMR vaccine. He travels to the University of East Anglia to question Phil Jones, the climatologist whose leaked emails became the "Climategate" scandal, and presses him on what the messages actually show about the underlying data. He also traces how a single discredited study linking the MMR jab to autism spread through British media and public opinion long after scientists had rejected it. Nurse interviews campaigners, scientists, and journalists on both sides, including skeptics who accuse the scientific establishment of arrogance and secrecy. Rather than simply defending consensus, he examines how science communicates its uncertainty, how it corrects itself, and where it has failed to explain its own process to a public asked to trust conclusions it cannot independently verify. The film treats the erosion of trust as a communication problem as much as a factual one.