'Public alienation undermines scientific efforts to improve human lives'

Deepening gulf between public and scientific views is the greatest problem facing scientists, says Alan Leshner, chief executive of American Association for the Advancement of Science

Public tensions over the progress of modern science are at their most intense for decades and threaten to undermine efforts to better human lives, warns one of the most senior scientists in the US.

A raft of issues have left much of the public alienated from the latest scientific thinking and fuelled the rise of groups that misrepresent science to push their own agendas, said Alan Leshner, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world's largest general scientific society.