A wonderfully entertaining and thought-provoking lecture by Simon Singh at the British Science Festival on "Why journalists love stupid equations and other problems in the media". The issue of how to promote maths is not straightforward and Simon brought out the complexities through a range of examples ranging from the blatant commercial creation of an equation designed solely to gather press coverage for a PR company's client. to serious research which appealed to the press: Simon showed that it's not always easy to distinguish these. In my opinion (for what it's worth) we have to live with the media we have and it's not worth getting worried about the appeal of stupid equations. Much more serious is the second issue Simon raised: that of the way the libel laws are constraining scientific debate and suppressing the expression of serious scientific comment. For more about this see the Sense about Science campaign.
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