Interview: Professor Lord Robert Winston
Robert Winston has revolutionised the way science is portrayed on television. No longer is science restricted to Channel 4 Learning or late night BBC2: his recent collaboration with Casualty attracted 7.3 million viewers at prime time on BBC1.
Just one of the many highly complimentary comments on the show’s website said: “I was expecting this to be a quite tedious episode, but the fluidity of his performance and interactivity was quite impressive to say the least.”
Professor Winston has produced numerous highly successful TV series, including The Human Body, The Secret Life of Twins, Superhuman and Child of Our Time. His cheerful demeanour and trademark moustache are now well recognised across Britain. But he says his success is due to luck, at least in part: “I feel very privileged. The biggest thing I’ve had in my career is luck; I’ve been in the right places at the right times and I’ve had the right people to help.” His ‘big break’ occurred through a bit of a ‘Judy Finnigan at the BAFTAs’ episode: “My trousers fell down while I was doing a televised cesarean section; I’ve been hooked with TV ever since.”
Winston is one of a select number of scientists that have succeeded in conveying complex scientific ideas to the public in an engaging manner. But he does not agree with the “grumbling within the scientific community” over the lack of quality coverage of science issues in the media. In fact, he used his recent presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science to “argue that we actually have a pretty good, fairly scientifically-literate press.” He continues “we have some of the best science journalists in the world”.
He agrees with the view that the media does to some extent heighten public mistrust of technology. But he also believes that “we should be more aware that there is actually a very good reason that people should mistrust technology: it is quite threatening. What we haven’t recognised as scientists is that mistrust is a natural aspect of our society.”
Surprisingly, given that most scientists yearn for more and more science on TV, Winston believes that in fact “we don’t do too badly, we probably do proportionately better than other countries. And the quality isn’t bad either.”
He has found it “more difficult to work with the Discovery Channel recently, as they are looking more and more to dumbdown the science we want to produce. We want to be much more challenging with the science. They don’t want to challenge their audience.”
He complains that audiences in America, where he “might get one or two million” viewers, are much smaller proportionately compared to the UK where he “generally gets more than 5m viewers”.
Radical Scientists
When I asked him his view of radical scientists, such as Gunther Von Hagens the plastination professor, he shot back “do you regard him as a scientist?” Winston himself has his reservations: he regards him more as a “travelling showman – quite a good travelling showman”. Prof Winston questions whether people really “watch him because they want to learn about anatomy” and wonders “if they learn anything about how their bodies work”.
Lord Winston regards it as “hugely voyeuristic”, but wonders “what makes him tick: his facial expressions are bizarre and he wears a hat while he’s doing dissections.”
While other scientists regard Von Hagens’ work as morally reprehensible, Winston is not quite so damning. However, although he “wouldn’t want to do it, I expect I would do a better job if I did”. He believes there is a place for anatomy on TV and cites Jonathan Miller’s A Body in Question dissection as “powerful, non-voyeuristic, highly engaging TV”.
“Women can’t have it all” – British Medical Journal
A recent report in the BMJ stated that women should not wait until their late thirties to have children. It said that the availability of IVF may encourage women to postpone pregnancy.
Winston thought that the “authors were trying to have it both ways. I thought the authors were a bit poorly focussed. They were trying to say they weren’t preaching, but they were telling people to have babies earlier. I don’t think that is an acceptable approach: we need to be much more subtle.
I don’t think you can tell women when they’re in their late thirties that they need to have a baby now as they might regret it later. It’s wrong. It’s not actually how life works. I feel our colleagues at another university south of the river are peddling rather simplistic arguments.
Teaching at Imperial
Winston bemoans the fact that he rarely has the opportunity to teach undergraduate students: “they [Imperial College] don’t wheel me out to teach undergraduates, and I’d like to, really. I give the odd talk, but don’t do a lot of undergraduate teaching.”
He does regularly tour schools and universities, and finds it “funny that when I go to other universities around the country I talk to absolutely full lecture theatres. I get bigger audiences in places like Exeter, Warwick or Aberdeen than I do at Imperial in London. I suppose when you’re at home peoplereckon they can see you all the time.”
He is very keen to take up a new chair in science and society at Imperial. “In my view one of the problems with this modern science university is that it doesn’t teach communication enough. I don’t think it teaches a whole lot of things I think we should be teaching – the nature of science, ethics, and risk.”
“I would like to see the university doing much more in [terms of] having ethics inbuilt into undergrad teaching...communication is an essential role for the scientist today.”
“The irony of Imperial is that it’s got some really good courses in science and the media, but they’re mostly postgraduate not undergraduate. I think there’s a need for more undergraduate involvement. Course organisers will always say that it means extending the course or that they can’t teach the curriculum. I would argue that communication is too vital a part of being a scientist today for it to be ignored. The implications for society and the risks and advantages of commercial development – it’s all very important.”
“It’s a hard thing to introduce, but it gives you more wisdom about the science. It gives you the notion of the university being responsible for thinking about the role of science in society. The science we do doesn’t belong to us; it’s all funded through the public, so the public own the science. People are reluctant to accept that but it’s true.”
Winston has “missed not having more contact with the undergraduate body. Undergrads are in many ways much more interesting.” So it appears that if Prof. Winston has his way Imperial undergrads may be lucky enough to have him as a lecturer.
While talking about the rumours that Imperial may stop teaching undergraduates he said: “it would be a terribly negative step...I think it would be a very impoverished university without them. You could argue that it would no longer be a university, more a research institute.” But he does not believe the rumours are true.
What next for Lord Winston?
Although Prof. Winston has just officially announced his retirement he is currently conducting research into transgenic pigs. The goal of the work, which involves modifying pig genes using novel methods, is to eventually produce organs that might be used in human transplantation.
He has a new book and television series coming out soon called The Story of God. He believes that God and science can coexist, as explained in his book.
“There’s a place for a story of creation. Evolution is as close to being proved as we can have it. But that doesn’t necessarily nullify the biblical account of things.”
The Story of God is published on 17th October. The TV series begins in December on the BBC.
