Lord May: Scientific values are threatened

May completed his five-year term as president of the Royal Society, Britain's national academy of science, Wednesday. And in his final address he warned core scientific values are "under serious threat from resurgent fundamentalism, West and East," the BBC reported.

May said the term fundamentalism applies not only to organized religions, but to lobby groups on both sides of the climate change debate.

He told reporters in London the climate change "denial lobby" and non-governmental organizations opposed to nuclear power are not exempt from a denial or misrepresentation of scientific facts.

The BBC said May also criticized U.S. religious fundamentalist groups of endangering the enlightenment of science by campaigning for creationism to be taught in science classes.

"By their own writings, this group has a much wider agenda, which is to replace scientific materialism by something more based on faith," he said.

He said scientists, worldwide, must speak out against so-called "intelligent design" and what he described as other threats to modern scientific values.

Copyright 2005 by United Press International