Politics

Brian Cox Went Back On ‘Q&A’ And Had Another Cheeky Dig At Malcolm Roberts

"The last time I was on the show I didn’t know Malcolm Roberts was a Brit."

by Tom Clift  14 November 2017
Brian Cox Q&A 2017

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More than a year after he first encountered the (now former) One Nation senator on Q&A, renowned British physicist Brian Cox has gone back on the program to throw some more shade at Malcolm Roberts.

Cox, in case you forgot, was on an episode with Roberts back in August 2016, in which he tried to walk the notorious science sceptic through the basic facts on climate change. It… did not go well.

Roberts has since been booted from parliament after it emerged that he was a dual citizen — a fact which Cox seemed to find very amusing.

“Brian, with your long search through the universe for aliens, you never would have imagined finding so many in the Canberra parliament,” joked host Tony Jones following a question on Monday night’s show about the ongoing citizenship scandal.

“Last time I was on here I didn’t know Malcolm Roberts was a fellow Brit,” replied Cox. “I might have been nicer to him.”

Later in the show, Cox was asked about the best way to deal with people who, like Roberts, aren’t willing to accept scientific consensus on things like climate change.

“You’re not [supposed] to listen to experts like they’re some kind of priest on top of a mountain,” said Cox. “Science has never been that. Science has always been about questioning the orthodoxy.”

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At the same time, Cox said it was important to instil through education “an appropriate amount of trust in expertise”.

“There’s a cartoon in one of the UK papers, of all the passengers saying ‘it’s our democratic right to land this plane, and I don’t care who you are, Mr. Pilot. We think we can do it better than you, so we’ll land it’,” said Cox.

“You end up with a big hole in the runway, if you do that.”