GMW: Who's setting the agenda for science? IMPORTANT NEW REPORT

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GMW: Who's setting the agenda for science? IMPORTANT NEW REPORT

" GM WATCH " <info

Mon, 5 Sep 2005 13:28:49 +0100

 

 

 

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http://www.gmwatch.org

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There's some great stuff here, particularly in the actual report (item

3), which is well worth reading in full (for how to get it, see below).

 

all items excerpts only:

1.Future innovation threatened by a science for sale - DEMOS press

release

2.Excerpts from the preface - Lord Robert Winston

3.Excerpts from the report - 'The Public Value of Science: Or how to

ensure that science really matters'

 

The report is published by Demos on 5th September 2005. Copies can be

downloaded from www.demos.co.uk/catalogue/publicvalueofscience

or ordered from Central Books on +44 (0)20 8986 5488.

 

QUOTES: " we need to ask who's setting the agenda for science. There's a

real danger that commercial pressures will restrict the openness of

academic research, and stifle wider debate about the role of science in

society. " (item 1)

 

" We need to break down some of the false oppositions between scientists

and the public that critics such as Taverne seek to perpetuate. Those

scientists who take part as expert witnesses in public engagement

exercises, such as citizens' juries, are frequently surprised at the

insight

and common sense that ordinary members of the public bring to such

interactions. " (item 3)

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1.Future innovation threatened by a science for sale

Scientists must spark public debate about the value of science

Contact the Demos press office

http://www.demos.co.uk/media/pressreleases/publicvalueofsciencerelease/

 

Closer ties between business and university science threaten to stifle

public debate about science and distort research priorities, according

to a report published by the think-tank Demos. The Public Value of

Science: Or how to ensure that science really matters argues that ethical

considerations and public engagement should become part of everyday

scientific practice.

 

The report will be launched on Monday 5th September at the BA Festival

in Dublin, to coincide with a keynote speech by Professor Robert

Winston, this year's President of the BA. Writing in the foreword to the

report, Lord Winston calls on his fellow scientiststo do more to

engage the

public:

 

" The scientific community once believed it could assuage public

concerns over the misuse of science by better communication. Now the

watchword

is 'engagement' and with it 'dialogue'. The scientific community is

beginning to realise, but often reluctantly accept, that we scientists

need to take greater notice of public concerns, and relate and react to

them. Expressions of despair at public ignorance, impotent polemics about

the advantages of technology, assertions that our economy is threatened

by reactionary attitudes, attempts at manipulation of the press, are

all totally inadequate responses. The time is right for examining the

means and the details of public engagement. "

 

The report's authors, James Wilsdon and Jack Stilgoe of Demos and Brian

Wynne of Lancaster University, recommend that the House of Commons

Science and Technology Committee investigates the influence of

business on

academic research.

 

" Collaboration between universities and businesses is important, " says

James Wilsdon, co-author of the report. " But we need to ask who's

setting the agenda for science. There's a real danger that commercial

pressures will restrict the openness of academic research, and stifle

wider

debate about the role of science in society. "

 

Contact the Demos press office

telephone: 0845 458 5949

email: hello

web: www.demos.co.uk

....

authors: Dr James Wilsdon is Head of Science and Innovation at Demos.

His previous publications include See-through Science: Why public

engagement needs to move upstream (with Rebecca Willis). Brian Wynne is

Professor of Science Studies at Lancaster University. Dr Jack Stilgoe

is a

Researcher at Demos.

 

Demos: Demos is an independent think-tank. The Public Value of Science

is part of Demos' research programme on science and innovation.

 

The Public Value of Science was produced in partnership Biotechnology

and Biological Sciences Research Council, Environment Agency,

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Practical Action

and the

British Association for the Advancement of Science. It was partly

funded by

the government's Sciencewise programme.

---

2.Excerpts from the preface to The Public Value of Science

Lord Robert Winston

 

....People generally are well-informed and discerning and it should not

astonish us that so many view the science we value with suspicion - or

even hostility. It should not surprise us that this suspicion is most

acute amongst people living in the developed world, from whence much of

our advanced technology emanates. Even in long-established democracies,

people do not feel that they have ownership, control or even much

influence over the technologies that are exploited by their

governments and

by commercial enterprises.

 

The scientific community once believed it could assuage public concerns

over the misuse of science by better communication of the benefits of

scientific knowledge. There has been gradual, sometimes grudging,

recognition that mere communication - whilst important - cannot alleviate

justifiable anxieties... Expressions of despair at public ignorance,

impotent polemics about the advantages of technology, assertions that our

economy is threatened by reactionary attitudes, attempts at manipulation

of the press, are all totally inadequate responses. Neither will mere

lip-service about the value of public engagement be helpful.

 

.... The time is right for examining the means and the details of public

engagement. One step forward might be for the scientific community to

accept that it does not own the science that it pursues. Another step

may be for government to place more value on proper public dialogue, and

to facilitate it better.

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3.Excerpts from 'The Public Value of Science: Or how to ensure that

science really matters'

 

[The first blind alley is] determinism.The political insistence that we

must be pro-science and pro-innovation squeezes out any discussion of

what sort of science and innovation we want or need... Policy and

regulatory debates tend to assume that a discussion about ends has

already

occurred - that the economic and social benefits of innovation are

obvious and agreed. But this is rarely the case.

 

A moment's reflection tells us that no one can be pro-innovation in

every sense (do we really want better biological weapons? or human

reproductive cloning?), but we lack a framework for dealing with the

nuanced

and complex set of scientific and technological choices that confront

us. Particular trajectories are promoted as if there were no

alternatives. All too easily, we fall back into a set of polarised

debates in which

participants are cast as either 'pro-innovation' or 'anti-science'.

There is an assumption that choices which are inherently social and

political can be determined by 'sound science'. Yet as Andy Stirling

reminds

us,

 

" In reality, science seldom yields such unambiguous answers. Technology

in any given field rarely unfolds in only one direction. From the

energy sector, through chemicals to food and agriculture, it has been

shown

time and again that science actually delivers radically divergent

answers under different reasonable priorities, questions or assumptions. "

 

The second blind alley is reductionism.Even if it is accepted that

science cannot be the sole, unproblematic source of authority in these

debates, economics is then called on to perform an identical task.

Questions about ends and purposes are again airbrushed out, this time

to be

replaced with the simple calculus of economic growth. We see this

tendency

in the government's ten-year framework, which constructs the case for

more science spending on the twin planks of 'improving the country's

future wealth creation prospects' and translating knowledge 'more

effectively into business and public service innovation'.

 

Measuring the contribution of science and technology in primarily

economic terms does not rule out the need for forms of public dialogue.

Indeed, this can be beneficial as a way of ensuring that 'society's

understanding and acceptance of scientific advances moves forward, and

does

not become a brake on social and economic development'.

 

But, even where dialogue is permitted, another form of reductionism

kicks in, as public concerns are invariably framed in terms of risk. The

only question we are allowed to ask is 'Is it safe?', with the

implication that the likelihood of certain outcomes is susceptible to

rational

calculation.

 

Confronted with scientific and technological choices, we need the

freedom and opportunity to ask a broader set of questions than

economics or

risk assessment will allow. And this is where the notion of public

value can prove useful: 'if we assume that science's benefits and costs

affect citizens in very different ways ...then public value questions

emerge as at least as important as economic ones.'

 

What is public value?

 

In 1995, Mark Moore, a Harvard political scientist, published a

relatively obscure book on public administration. It put forward the

concept

of 'public value' as a way of measuring the total benefits – both

economic and non-economic – that flow from public policy and investment.

 

Moore and his colleagues were unhappy with the way that traditional

theories of public administration treated public managers as robots, who

neutrally lent their expertise to whatever purposes were handed to them

by politicians or the courts. Instead, he argues that civil servants

should 'start to challenge the ends of politics, not just the means', and

become 'explorers' who are commissioned by society to use their

initiative and imagination in the search for better ways of doing things.

 

Moore opens his book with the story of a librarian, whose library is

being overrun with latchkey children at the end of the school day. The

librarian considers introducing new rules limiting children's access, but

instead opts for a more entrepreneurial solution. By reorganising the

library's layout, and the way she and her colleagues work, she is able

to offer a range of improved services, including a children's room,

after-school clubs and concerts. As a result, the library is used more

often, the children read more books, and the entire community benefits

from

better facilities. The librarian has succeeded in building public

value...

 

Scientism resurgent

 

Despite the progress of the science and society agenda, there are still

those who maintain that the public are too ignorant to contribute

anything useful to scientific decision-making.

 

One of the most vocal is the Liberal Democrat peer, Dick Taverne. In a

letter attacking Nature's editorial on upstream engagement [involving

society in discussing scientific and technological developments at an

early stage], Taverne rejects 'the fashionable demand by a group of

sociologists for more democratic science'. He goes on: 'The fact is that

science, like art, is not a democratic activity. You do not decide by

referendum whether the earth goes round the sun.'

 

But Taverne is setting up a straw man. As we emphasised in See-through

Science, upstream engagement is not about members of the public

standing over the shoulder of scientists in the laboratory, taking

votes or

holding referendums on what they should or should not be doing. That

Taverne can conceive of accountability only in these terms reflects

nothing

more than the poverty of his own democratic imagination. This agenda is

not about imposing cumbersome bureaucratic structures on science, or

forcing lay people

onto every research funding committee. Questions about structures do

need to be considered, but are a sideshow compared with the far more

important - and exciting - challenge of building more reflective capacity

into the practice of science. As well as bringing the public into new

conversations with science, we need to bring out the public within the

scientist - by enabling scientists to reflect on the social and ethical

dimensions of their work.

 

We need to break down some of the false oppositions between scientists

and the public that critics such as Taverne seek to perpetuate. Those

scientists who take part as expert witnesses in public engagement

exercises, such as citizens' juries, are frequently surprised at the

insight

and common sense that ordinary members of the public bring to such

interactions. At its most effective, upstream engagement can help to

challenge the stereotypes that scientists and policy-makers have of the

public. But it is important to start by wiping the slate clean of

assumptions about who the public are and what they think.

 

Public–private research

 

A final point concerns the growing influence of the private sector on

university research. In a penetrating new study of the US higher

education system, the journalist Jennifer Washburn charts the effects

of there

being ever closer ties between the public and private research sectors.

Echoing the sentiments of Steven Rose, whom we quoted earlier, Washburn

concludes:

 

" Market forces are dictating what is happening in the world of higher

education as never before. . . . Universities now routinely operate

complex patenting and licensing operations to market their faculty's

inventions....The question of who owns academic research has grown

increasingly contentious, as the openness and shaping that once

characterised

university life has given way to a new proprietary culture. "

 

The US is almost certainly a few years ahead of the UK in terms of

these trends, but the thrust of the government's ten-year framework

and the

Lambert Review is to accelerate and multiply public–private

collaborations wherever possible.

 

We would emphasise that we are not opposed to this in principle.

Collaboration between universities and businesses can be very

positive, and

there are strong economic arguments why the UK needs a lot more of it.

Also, there never was a halcyon day when public science took place

completely unsullied by private sector influences. Even an iconic

scientific

figure such as Galileo routinely integrated monetary and utilitarian

interests with his 'natural philosophy', as historians of science have

shown.

 

The question is not if we strengthen such links but how. Can we do it

in a way that maintains the openness and integrity of academic research

cultures? In what ways will an increasing role for business in

university life support or impede efforts to move research cultures in

a more

socially reflective and publicly engaged direction? Under what

conditions can private sector investment generate public value, and

when might

it undermine it?

 

Reviewing Washburn's book in the Financial Times, Alan Ryan, the warden

of New College, Oxford, was compelled to wonder 'what a British version

of Washburn might uncover. British universities have lately been

encouraged to engage in aggressive patenting and licensing and it is

hard to

believe that they do not run the dangers she describes.'

 

There is a pressing need to examine some of these tensions and discuss

them honestly, rather than pretend that no such problems will ever

arise. This area would benefit from more detailed analysis and

scrutiny by

the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee. Such an inquiry

could also incorporate some of the questions about military influences

on university science and technology that were raised in a recent

report by Scientists for Global Responsibility.

 

Progressive globalisation

 

Few ministerial speeches about science and innovation are now complete

without an obligatory reference to China and India. These two vast,

heterogeneous nations – home to a third of the world's population – are

perpetually conjoined in a form of political shorthand designed to convey

the onward march of globalisation.

 

We also need to be alert to the way these new 'science powers' are used

to argue for a more relaxed stance on social, ethical or environmental

issues here in the UK. Tony Blair's speech to the Royal Society in 2002

is a notable example:

 

" The idea of making this speech has been in my mind for some time. The

final prompt for it came, curiously enough, when I was in Bangalore in

January. I met a group of academics, who were also in business in the

biotech field. They said to me bluntly: 'Europe has gone soft on

science; we are going to leapfrog you and you will miss out.' They

regarded

the debate on GM here and elsewhere in Europe as utterly astonishing.

They saw us as completely overrun by protestors and pressure groups who

used emotion to drive out reason. And they didn't think we had the

political will to stand up for proper science. "

 

Those of us who advocate more socially responsive and accountable forms

of science and innovation need to take this 'Wild East' argument

seriously. But we believe it is possible to mount a robust response. Our

first defence has to be that this is a counsel of despair, the logical

end

point of which is a set of lowest-common- denominator standards not

just for science, but also for labour rights, civil liberties and

environmental standards. Just as on these other issues, there is a clear

progressive case for public value science. It is also misleading, not to

mention deeply patronising, to pretend that people in India and China

don't

share many of these same concerns – albeit expressed in a variety of

ways.

 

In his latest book, The Argumentative Indian, Amartya Sen offers a

colourful account of the role that public reasoning, dialogue and debate

have played through India's history. He effectively dispels some of the

myths and stereotypes of India as a land of exoticism and mysticism, or

the new high-tech, back office of the global economy. And he reminds us

that although it has not always taken a Western representative form,

there is this deep seam of democracy, or `government by discussion'

running through Indian culture. He tells the story of how, just before

the

Indian general elections in the spring of 2004, he visited a Bengali

village not far from his home, and was told by an elderly man who was

barely literate and certainly very poor: 'It is not very hard to silence

us, but this is not because we cannot speak.'

 

So, although it is often claimed that democracy is a quintessentially

Western idea and practice – with a direct lineage running from ancient

Athens to the White House – such a view neglects the many varieties of

public discussion and public reasoning that have always existed in

India, and exist today in most cultures. Even in China, where there is

less

freedom to debate such issues in formal terms, the environmental and

social consequences of rapid technological development are now becoming

the focus of intense political debate, and at times public protest.

 

The way our politics describes the relationships between science,

globalisation and competitiveness must start to reflect these subtleties.

Instead of seeing the UK's progress towards more democratic models of

science as a barrier to our success in the global knowledge economy, can

it not become a different form of advantage? Might it not lead us down

new – and potentially preferable – paths of innovation? The evidence we

have from the environmental sphere suggests that countries can gain

competitive advantage from the adoption of higher standards.

 

We nee d to explore whether similar patterns can emerge here. There may

also be insights from scientific governance, ethics and public

deliberation that we can exchange and export. We need to develop

networks that

allow policy-makers and scientists in Europe to forge common purpose

and alliances on these issues with their counterparts in Asia.

 

These are difficult issues and we do not pretend they can be easily

resolved. But they bring us back to where we started: the fundamental

questions of why we do science, where it is taking us, and who it is for.

Tony Blair's speech to the Royal Society, in which he warned of emotion

driving out reason, was titled 'Science matters'. Our argument has been

that, yes, science does matter. But it matters for more than narrow,

economic reasons. We need to talk, and occasionally to argue, about why

this is so. And we need to infuse the cultures and practices of science

with this richer and more open set of social possibilities. This is

how, together, we can build public value.

 

 

 

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