What I wish everyone understood about science is that scientific ideas are like philosophical, political or religious ideas, in the sense that they are the products of people's minds and imaginations. But at the same time, scientific ideas are profoundly different from philosophical, political and religious ideas, because they can - and must - be tested and verified in the real world, in order for people to believe in them.

This means that scientific ideas are constantly changing, self-correcting and useful, as evidenced by the way they have allowed humans to grow food, build buildings and cities, travel, cure diseases, communicate and understand the universe. But I wish people understood that science as a way of living provides us with a viable social organising principle, that does not demand the kinds of rigid loyalty that is at the heart of much of the cultural and religious strife in the world. Science may therefore be the only way that human cultures can get beyond the social, cultural, economic and religious differences that underlie wars.

Nina Fedoroff is coauthor of Mendel in the Kitchen: A Scientist's View of Genetically Modified Foods (buy this book from Amazon (UK) or Amazon (USA)), and coeditor of The Dynamic Genome: Barbara McClintock's Ideas in the Century of Genetics (buy this book from Amazon (UK) or Amazon (USA)). See her website.