Matt Ridley - Angus Millar lecture at the RSA in Edinburgh

My argument is that like religion, science as an institution is and always has been plagued by the temptations of confirmation bias. With alarming ease it morphs into pseudoscience even – perhaps especially – in the hands of elite experts and especially when predicting the future and when there’s lavish funding at stake. It needs heretics.

http://www.bishop-hill.net/storage/ScientificHeresy.pdf