The left love to pick and choose which scientific research they trust

There has been predictable frothing at the suggestion by Professor Averil Macdonald, Chairwoman of UK Onshore Oil and Gas, that more women than men oppose fracking because women are more prone to follow their gut instinct than the science behind fracking. I am going to keep out of that debate, not because I fear for my chances of landing an honorary fellowship – if Tim Hunt’s experience is anything to go by, the world of academia will fall in on Professor Macdonald — but because I am more interested in what fracking tells us of the attitude of the left towards science.

Over the past few years the left has tried to establish itself as the defender of scientific reason. Naomi Klein wrote an entire book attempting to make the case that there is a war between enlightened science on the one hand and nasty, greedy capitalism on the other. She and others have attempted to present climate change sceptics as people who deliberately blind themselves to empirical evidence because it suits their financial or emotional interests to do so.