The myth of the Scientist-Priest

Eliane Glaser trots out the old "science is a gated community" argument, with scientists as priests or gatekeepers with "privileged access" to the minutiae of the natural world ("Prof Brian Cox: physicist or priest?"). This feels particularly mean-spirited considering the target of her epithets is none other than Brian Cox, who spends a considerable portion of his days striving to make science accessible to non-scientists...

Ms Glaser conflates scientific wonder at how far we are from understanding the physical world with the ineffable of religious experience. She makes much of a "power dynamic" that she perceives between the scientist priests and the worshipping populace. But science is no more exclusive than any other human endeavour, and considerably more welcoming than the priesthood (to continue her metaphor). Scientists earn their places in the lab through years of hard and poorly-paid work; crucially, this path is open to anyone crazy enough to want to tread it. A PhD is not inherited, or bestowed by the vagaries of popular culture, although Prof. Cox's fame may be. Perhaps it is the arbitrary non-field of pop science that Ms Glaser objects to?

As a neuroscientist, I too see the brain as "nerve cells in a lump of meat". But how wondrous the font of human mind that springs from such humble flesh! I have to reflect on that wonder to get me through the day-to-day grind of laboratory work. If that wonder also motivates more people to enter science, so much the better for us all.