THE COMPASS (World Service, Wednesday of last week) asked why we, the public, fail to understand science. It might look to itself for at least part of the answer, as demonstrated here by the public-health expert who explained that we are influenced by other people to do what we do because it is “cognitively less taxing”. Or the social psychologist who diagnosed our natural dislike of missing out as being “regret averse”. This is more than vapid jargon: it exemplifies our increasing reliance on quasi-scientific rationalism as a means of validating common sense.

The least attractive aspect of this worthy but flawed documentary was the sense that it exuded not of authority, but of authoritarianism. We were told that “people” like to read news sources that agree with their point of view; “people” are not under-informed, but misinformed; “people” need to be exposed to positive-reinforcement messages.

And yet the case studies quoted were short on evidence: there are plenty of hypotheses, we were told, for preventing the spread of Chagas disease by influencing the behaviour of South American communities — except none of them has made much difference. Real life has, it seems, too many moving parts.

One of those moving parts is, itself, the trust that communities have in political and scientific authorities. The programme’s most valuable insights came from Umaru Fofana, reporting from Sierra Leone on the Ebola crisis. There, the work of the BBC Media Action Group appears to have made progress in winning minds by recruiting local musicians to a campaign, Kick Ebola Live. Yet, for all that, the practice of “nudge psychology” is a dark art, and, when recognised as such, has the potential to turn the co-operative into conspiracy theorists.

It is not often that a presenter might have occasion to curse a producer for fixing an interviewee who is too interesting, but Emma Barnett might be forgiven for doing so. A short Woman’s Hour slot (Radio 4, Thursday of last week) devoted to female hermits was elegantly hijacked by Julia Bolton-Holloway, whose fascinating story cannot be confined to the last corner of the show.

Professor Holloway, a scholar in medieval studies, was responsible for restoring — and now looks after — the English Cemetery, in Florence. Her account of this was considerably more intriguing than the lifestyle questions that Barnett had lined up. I hope that somebody in Radio 4’s commissioning department was listening.

Similarly, it seems remiss that Dame Sarah Connolly has only now been invited to choose her Desert Island Discs (Radio 4, Sunday of last week). Not just one of the country’s greatest singers, Dame Sarah is also an eloquent spokesperson for the classical-music industry, although, in this interview, she was careful not to use the “B” word when describing the current woes of professional touring musicians. If she had, some poor BBC producer would have the impossible task of sourcing a professional artist to offer the opposite opinion.