Brian J. Ford


Brian J. Ford FLS HonFRMS is an independent research biologist, author, and lecturer, who publishes on scientific issues for the general public. He has also been a television personality for more than 40 years.

Education

Ford attended the King's School, Peterborough, and then Cardiff University to study botany and zoology between 1959 and 1961, leaving before graduating to set up his own multi-disciplinary laboratory.

Work

Ford has campaigned on the mis-use of forensic data in courts. Ford's recent research interests included e-learning, for which he was based at the University of Leicester.
Ford's other publications range from microbial research and elucidating newly threatening infections to examining scientists' dissatisfaction with their lot. Other areas of his interests are the invention of a space microscope commissioned by Brunel University, to be used by European Space Agency, safety of the water supply and the rising incidence of head lice and , his discovery of new phenomena in blood coagulation, the excretory mechanisms of plants and investigations of the 'ingenuity' of living cells that alter our understanding of the living cell. Ford's proposal for biohazard legislation led to supportive articles in Nature and The Times and has led to the introduction of worldwide biohazard controls.
He has written papers on the development of science, such as an essay on scientific illustration and an 18,000-word essay on scientific publishing in the 18th century. One of his best known discoveries is the original specimens of Antony van Leeuwenhoek. They were sent to the Royal Society of London in the 17th century and remained there until 1981 when Ford found the Leeuwenhoek specimens hidden in the letters and he then submitted them to extensive microscopical examination using both old and new microscopes.
Ford has been active in diplomacy and politics, travels extensively and acts as a conference speaker and lecturer. He has also written for The Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Evening Standard, also writing for journals including the British Medical Journal, Nature, and Scientific American. As a student he had a weekly science column on the South Wales Echo and has since contributed columns for the Mensa Magazine, Boz magazine, The Listener and The Guardian.
Ford has been a guest on the BBC's Round Britain Quiz where he partnered Lady Antonia Fraser, and Any Questions?, presented the radio shows Science Now, Where Are You Taking Us? and Kaleidoscope, and was a founder-member of Start the Week on BBC Radio 4 with Esther Rantzen and Richard Baker.
Many of his programmes involve proffering unrehearsed answers to the public on scientific topics, as on the Cliff Michelmore series Whatever you think and Science Hour with Clive Bull. On television he hosted a game show Computer Challenge and the documentary series Food for Thought in Britain and Jenseits des Kanals in Germany. His recent TV appearances include presenting The Man Behind the da Vinci Code and featuring in Weird Weapons of World War II, based on his two books about the Second World War.
In addition to scientific research and academic lectures, Ford lectures extensively to general audiences, in the form of one-man shows on current scientific issues. A long-time science newspaper and magazine columnist, Ford's books have been published in more than 100 editions in many countries.

Honours

Universities

He was the first British President of the European Union of Science Journalists' Associations, founding Chairman of the Science and Technology Authors Committee at the Society of Authors, and the president of the Cambridge Society for the Application of Research of Cambridge University. Ford has been a member of Mensa and was a director of British Mensa from 1993–1997, resigning a few months after being elected for a second term. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society in 1962.

Entertainer

Ford's first television appearances included playing boogie piano on "Donald Peers Presents", from Cardiff, Wales. Also in the show was the first appearance of Thomas Woodward, later known as Tom Jones.
Ford is a popular celebrity speaker on cruise ships including the Cunard Line ship RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 and for Seabourn Cruise Line has spoken aboard the Seabourn Spirit and Seabourn Encore. He is a guest of P&O Cruises on vessels such as MV Aurora, the MV Britannia and the Arcadia; for Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines on the Black Watch and Braemar; aboard the Regatta on Oceania Cruises, and for Celebrity Cruises among many others. His presentations are dynamic and largely extemporised.
One characteristic manifestation of Ford's iconoclastic streak is displayed in the title of one of his books, which he intentionally gave the longest and most complex title in English-language publishing history: Nonscience and the Pseudotransmogrificationalific Egocentrified Reorientational Proclivities Inherently Intracorporated In Expertistical Cerebrointellectualised Redeploymentation with Special Reference to Quasi-Notional Fashionistic Normativity, The Indoctrinationalistic Methodological Modalities and Scalar Socio-Economic Promulgationary Improvementalisationalism Predelineated Positotaxically Toward Individualistified Mass-Acceptance Gratificationalistic Securipermanentalisationary Professionism, or How To Rule The World, London: Wolfe Publishing. The point of the title was to poke fun at those who conceal their lack of real expertise by using long and complicated words, whilst making the serious point that more people are fooled by these so-called experts than really should be. The book is commonly referred to simply as Nonscience, which is itself a play on nonsense.

2012 aquatic dinosaur hypothesis

The April issue of 2012 of Laboratory News contained an article that has caused paleontologists and other geoscientists to question the scientific integrity of the publication. The article written by Brian J. Ford puts forward the idea that all large dinosaurs were aquatic. Ford—a microbiologist—lacked any training in paleontology, and more importantly had not presented any quantitative evidence in support of his idea.
The idea was reported uncritically in the popular press, including BBC Four, Daily Mail, Sky News Australia, Times of India, the Daily Telegraph, Top News, Cambridge News, Metro and IB Times. These publications have framed Mr. Ford's hypothesis as if it were a new idea and a subject of debate among paleontologists, when the idea of aquatic dinosaurs was considered nearly a century ago, and rejected after careful research forty years ago. When challenged by paleontologists, Ford presented a summary of recent findings, concluding that Spinosaurus was clearly aquatic, a finding later confirmed by paleontologists at the University of Chicago. Ford claimed that only an aquatic lifestyle could account for the fact that the tails left no marks in trackways, and thus were buoyant, that many of their bones contained air-sacs, that the controversy over endothermy was solved through the buffering of a watery environment, and that so many skeletons were found in alluvial deposits. He also argued that the shallow footprints, the positioning of the nares and the loss of functioning forelimbs in theropods can be explained only through aquatic evolution. Critics showed that the idea had been rejected in previous decades. In 2018, he furthered this theory by suggesting that the hypothetically aquatic non-avian dinosaurs would have reproduced in lakes, and went extinct not because of an asteroid impact, but due to the disappearance of their "sex lakes", publishing his findings in his book, Too Big to Walk: The New Science of Dinosaurs. As with his previous findings, his book, as well as the new findings described in it, were uncritically acclaimed by the popular press.