Interviewed on the Today programme @BBCRadio4 #r4today this morning, Harvard University professor Steven Pinker (@sapinker), who is giving the #OrwellLecture this evening in London, was asked about freedom of speech in the context of the possible corruption of science. The interaction was as interesting as much in that this question was asked by host Justin Webb – albeit cautiously couched – as for Pinker’s measured response: Host: ‘There is also a suggestion among some that science has become corrupted in an Orwellian way. The obvious example that they would give is when people aren’t able to say there there are two sexes and a difference between sexes, and you can’t change sex, and aren’t able to say that really in universities – and perhaps in some journalistic settings – and that wouldn’t have been the case some years ago, and that is a real change, and a change in a backward direction.’ Steven Pinker: ‘I think it is, but it isn’t exactly the Ministry of Truth. … things have gotten worse in the last ten years, but they can get worse without being the Ministry of Truth.’
