It is not often that British scientists involved in embryo research club together to berate ministers for overzealous regulation that has not been properly thought through.

The Government has won praise for supporting experiments with embryonic stem cells and therapeutic cloning, and its licensing system is widely thought to strike the right balance between permitting cutting-edge research of great medical promise, and limiting excesses that make many people uneasy about the pace of progress.

It is also generally agreed that the main legislation, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, was in need of review. Science has moved on since it was framed in 1990, when many of the ideas that scientists wish to pursue today had yet to be thought of.

Why, then, has the Government provoked the ire of people such as Stephen Minger, who moved from the US to conduct his research and is usually among the community’s biggest cheerleaders for Britain’s regulatory regime?

The answer is that Caroline Flint, the Public Health Minister, and Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, have convinced themselves of the existence of a groundswell of public concern that is no more than a phantom. They have been spooked by the outcome of an unrepresentative public consultation, and by misleading and hysterical reporting of research.

Ms Flint has justified her plan to ban hybrid and chimera embryos on the grounds that the outcome of its consultation was overwhelmingly negative. Yet it is hard to argue that it spoke for a cross-section of informed public opinion.

First, the exercise received a grand total of 535 responses, including those from institutions. Respondents tended to be those who already had strong opinions, particularly religious groups and others opposed to all embryo research. The initiative was also primarily concerned with a very different issue: the regulation of fertility treatment. Few respondents had any detailed knowledge of the rationale or likely shape of these experiments, and they were not much helped by the consultation document, which devoted two paragraphs to the issue.

Once the consultation created a bogus impression that the public was overwhelmingly opposed to this research, this was reinforced in the ministers’ minds by another less than representative group: the red-top press. When Dr Minger and others announced their proposals, the headlines told of monsters in the making — “frankenbunnies”, “half-cow, half-human” hybrids, and “moo-tants”. Ms Flint’s White Paper has pandered to this agenda.

The scientists accept that it is an emotive issue. But when they explain the reasons why they are doing it, and what will happen as a result, most people are supportive.

The Government should have done something similar — as it did with stem-cell research — rather than rushing into a knee-jerk ban. As Ian Wilmut, another of the researchers, said: “Surely the role of government is to consult public opinion and then to make its own informed decision.”

There may yet be a way out. The White Paper proposes a ban on hybrid and chimera embryos, and the scientists argue that technically, and perhaps legally, the embryos they want to create are neither. Ministers need urgently to look at this possible loophole, to get out of a mess of its own making.