Hunt the heretic

Eureka, the science magazine from The Times, is in many ways a brilliant accomplishment. Advertising is following readers in an online migration – but James Harding, the editor, personally persuaded advertisers that a new magazine, in a newspaper, devoted to science would work. And here it is: giving the New Scientist a run for its money every month.

That’s why it’s such a shame that today’s magazine opens on an anti-scientific piece denouncing those who disagree with the climate consensus. My former colleague Ben Webster, now the paper’s environment correspondent, is an energetic and original journalist – so it’s depressing to see his skills deployed in a game of hunt-the-heretic.

The magazine’s list of 100 greatest scientists is preceded by a heretic list of five ‘sceptics’ who are denounced on the flimsiest of grounds. Bjorn Lomborg is no.1. “He appears to concede that man-made global warming is a serious problem,” says Webster.