The wrong sort of equality

This, exactly. Robin Ince nails our lousy UK media and its deliberate tearing down of scientists who have the temerity to know more than the average ignoramus.

We should not trust people just because they are experts, but if we are not prepared to put the time and effort in to understand something, to take a step beyond that column we read in The Guardian or “what my friend Phil told me”, than we are placed in a position where must defer and try and make the best decision we can as to who we should defer to. If you are really interested in an issue, then you must take time to read and investigate it, to learn how to ask the best questions, to interrogate with interest, open-mindedness and rigour. A good society, a healthy democracy, is not based on complacency and whining.

The absence of this clear-headed thinking in our far-from-professional media that puts Andrew Wakefield, notorious autism fraudster who is no longer allowed to practice medicine in this country, on the front page of a national paper during a measles outbreak that was the direct result of his greed and dishonesty. Because he has a fucking 'opinion'. And ooh, look, it's all controversial and stuff. Great.