... a fairly common pattern in television news: right at the end a smile comes onto the face of the newsreader and this is the scientific joke - 'some scientist has proved that such and such is the case.' ... And it's clearly the bit of fun at the end, it's not serious at all. I want science to be taken seriously, because, after all, it's less ephemeral - it has a more eternal aspect than whatever the politics of the day might be, which, of course, gets the lead in the news.

What are all of us but self-reproducing robots? ... We have been put together by our genes and what we do is roam the world looking for a way to sustain oursel…

Very often in science one finds that there are ideas in the air, and lots of people hold them, but they don't even realise they hold them. The person who can c…

My prize would be for a visually appealing world in which the life-forms have a visible, and preferably 3-D, morphology on the computer screen. They must evolv…

Europe has a press that stresses opinions; America a press, radio, and television that emphasize news.

There are a lot of people who think our job is to reassure the public every night that their home, their community and their nation is safe. I don't subscribe …

You gotta see English crime. It's hilarious, you don't know if you're reading the front page or the comic section over there. I swear to God. I read an article…