From Claire O’Connell:

The other night while ploughing through an Everest of ironing I watched the BBC programme It’s Only a Theory.

The format is simple: an expert comes in with a theory (e.g. someone has already been born who will live to age 1000) and discusses it with a panel made up of comedian Andy Hamilton along with Reginald D Hunter and Clare Balding.

Comedy is an important ingredient in the discussion, but the underlying science is serious and the panel tackles issues like the impact of the developments on society etc.

It’s not the first time I had seen the programme, but seeing it again struck me that comedy is probably an underused tool in science communication.

Then last night I went to see Ricky Gervais at the O2 in Dublin. The title of his tour is ‘Science’ so I thought perhaps this might add meat to the bones of this idea. Unfortunately there wasn’t much science in the show (apart from a ‘castle lab’ setting, a bit about the atomic bomb and a funny rational dissection of Noah’s Ark) so perhaps there’s an opportunity lost there.

Meanwhile the Simon Singh libel case in Britain has recently opened up more discussion about scientific evidence and medical treatments and some comedians have been wading in.

That debate comes across as highly polarised in that context, but perhaps on a wider level there’s room for more scientific comedy to build up a cultural understanding of science, its capabilities, impact and limitations.

Has anyone got more examples of science and comedy as bedfellows?

This post first appeared on Claire O’Connell’s blog

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