In memoriam: Sir John Maddox

Sir John Maddox, som i två perioder och under sammanlagt 22 år varit chefredaktör för tidskriften Nature, har avlidit 83 år gammal. John Maddox anses vara den som verkligen moderniserat och föryngrat Nature. 1995 blev han adlad för sina insatser för vetenskapen och år 2000 blev han upptagen i The Royal Society.
John Maddox var under hela sitt liv motståndare till alarmismen och menade att en del forskare utnyttjade sin ställning inom vetenskapen för att skapa onödig panik.
Kendrick Frazier skrev så här om John Maddox i Science News år 1972:

”In the past decade, he [Maddox] notes, the peoples of North America and, to a lesser extent, Western Europe have been ”assailed by prophecies of calamity.” Population growth, pollution, overconsumption of resources, genetic engineering, economic growth all, say the doomsayers, spell danger to the human race. They even talk ”of the possibility that the temper of modern science may undermine the structure of modern society.”

Says Maddox: ”Although these prophecies are founded in science, they are at best pseudoscience. Their most common error is to suppose that the worst will always happen. And to the extent that they are based on assumptions as to how people will behave, they ignore the ways in which social institutions and humane aspirations can conspire to solve the most daunting problems.”

The message is not that everything is all right with the world, but that to remedy what is wrong we need cool heads, accurate, undistorted information, and rational unemotional analysis.

När det gäller global warming och IPCC uttryckte sig John Maddox ganska försiktigt. Så här skriver David Adam, i The Guardian, den 25 januari 2005:

John Maddox, a former editor of the journal Nature, who attended yesterday’s meeting, said the sceptics might have a point. He did not dispute that carbon dioxide emissions could drive global warming, but said: ”The IPCC is monolithic and complacent, and it is conceivable that they are exaggerating the speed of change.”

Sir John Maddox tycks ha varit en klok man. Låt oss hoppas att han blir ihågkommen länge.

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