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In fighting for science, we subscribe to a comforting illusion: that people can be swayed by the facts. The attack on climate scientists is now widening to an all-out war on science. Telegraph columnist Gerald Warner dismissed scientists as "white-coated prima donnas and narcissists, pointy-heads in lab coats [who] have reassumed the role of mad cranks. The public is no longer in awe of scientists. Like squabbling evangelical churches in the 19th century, they can form as many schismatic sects as they like, nobody is listening to them any more."

Views like this can be explained partly as the revenge of the humanities students. There is scarcely an editor or executive in any major media company -- and precious few journalists -- with a science degree, yet everyone knows that the anoraks are taking over the world. But the problem is compounded by complexity. Arthur C Clarke remarked that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." He might have added that any sufficiently advanced expertise is indistinguishable from gobbledegook.

Scientific specialisation is now so extreme that even people studying neighbouring subjects within the same discipline can no longer understand each other. The detail of modern science is incomprehensible to almost everyone; we have to take what scientists say on trust. Yet science tells us to trust nothing; to believe only what can be demonstrated. This contradiction is fatal to public confidence. The problem is not only that most scientists can speak no recognisable human language, but also the expectation that people are amenable to persuasion.

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/03/08/the-unpersuadables/