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NOT MANY journalists appear on the Queen’s Birthday Honours list. Bernard
Levin did this time – and so did Michael Kenward, until recently editor
of New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ. ‘I was completely surprised when I heard,’ said Kenward
this week. ‘I’ve spent the past 11 years slagging off the government.’ He
will receive an OBE.

Ten recipients of honours had their scientific work cited in last week’s
list. Sir George Porter, president of the Royal Society, is to enter the
House of Lords while there are knighthoods for Bill Mitchell, chairman of
the Science and Engineering Research Council, Robert Honeycombe, professor
of metallurgy at Cambridge University and Edward Williams, president of
the Royal College of Pathologists. Porter and Mitchell have both been outspoken
in criticising elements of government policy towards science.

Lord Porter, as he will be known, will sit on the cross-benches when
he joins the handful of scientists in the Lords. A long-standing critic
of underfunding of science research, Porter has set his sights on broadening
the sixth-form curriculum to include five A-levels. ‘I’m very unhappy with
the education system. It is so highly specialised that the majority of people
in power know no science,’ said Porter this week. ‘It is the thing I would
like to see changed most of all.’

How does the honour compare with Porter’s 1967 Nobel Prize for Chemistry?
‘Well, I’m not really terribly keen on making speeches. This is more of
a working job.’ He retires as president of the Royal Society in November
but intends to continue to uphold the right of scientists to experiment
on animals and fetuses when necessary in the Lords.

Kenward’s OBE follows his work as a member of the Committee on the Public
Understanding of Science and innumerable notes sent to fellow editors badgering
them to take science seriously. ‘I’ve tried to get the media interested
in science. Someone has to campaign for science to be treated as part of
life,’ he explained.

With fewer than a dozen honours awarded for scientific work out of the
hundreds announced last week, Kenward may still have some way to go.