Tom Wakeford spies tender shoots

‘I’ve still no idea what you are all talking about’, proclaimed a commissioning editor in a Whitehall meeting the other day. She was trying to inject a broadcaster’s perspective in the dialogue, but after listening to two hours of discussion between the assorted experts she felt none the wiser.

Yet the subject was not nuclear physics, molecular biology or atmospheric chemistry, but rather the simple matter of how scientists and non-scientists could talk to those making policies about technological research – the so-called ‘engagement’ agenda.

Upstream from PUS

During the 1990s, science policy-makers became increasingly aware that non-scientists had grown wary of boffins, and responded with the ‘public understanding of science’ (PUS) movement. It failed miserably, with a journal of the same name being its last remaining artefact. However, around the same time that policy-makers have begun to worry about nanotechnology, a new phrase has emerged – ‘upstream public engagement’.

The trouble with such engagement is that, once in the mouths of most policy-makers, it seems to mean nothing more than having a chat, whilst leaving the assumptions of the PUS movement untouched.  Rather than making decisions about science more accountable, it seems to be about nothing more than finding better means of explaining already-made decisions to the voters in an attempt to avoid the public opposition that we saw during the GM debate.

Conservative thinking

While an important milestone in some ways, the UK’s first government-sanctioned attempt at upstream engagement, the 1994 UK Consensus Conference, heralded the thinking that remains at the heart of Whitehall. The Science Museum designers then proclaimed the Conference’s mission as ‘promoting the public’s understanding of the contemporary practice of science’. Ignoring recommendations that were critical of aspects the new technology, the organisers suggested that the lay panel had ‘given the field of plant biotechnology its qualified support’.

Whitehall and the Research Councils lapped up the apparent conclusion that an information-deprived public, when given the full facts by the relevant experts, would overcome most of their concerns about new technologies. Even now they assume that GM foods were only rejected because of the ‘irrational’ fears of non-scientists that followed the BSE crisis. The Guardian and Nature’s recent coverage of the NanoJury UK process made the same assumption, a reminder of the essentially conservative nature of mainstream media.

Democracy stirring

For our team of facilitators, the most exciting development in the NanoJury was the acknowledgement by those individuals in science, NGOs and research councils who funded the process, that people deserved a say not only on the issue that mattered to the funders, but on an issue that mattered to them. Having developed a political space in which they could discuss an issue of urgent local concern – young people becoming excluded from schools and involved in crime – they were more interested in the otherwise obscure topic of nano-scale futures.

Science Minister Lord Sainsbury admires what he assumes to be the supreme rationality of science, but on the issue of upstream engagement he maintains an irrational belief that all scientific knowledge must be a good thing, and he will be able to sell it better if he’s funded a few chats with the public.

His smarter advisers have supported pilot projects under the Sciencewise programme that could see the beginning of a new democratically accountable model of innovation. However, lacking the political clout of small circle with the ear of Downing Street or even the DTI Minister, Sciencewise is unlikely to be able to act as an effective counter-weight to the inner clique’s starry-eyed enthusiasm for any laboratory artifact that can make a quick buck for UK plc.

Nuclear next

Faith in nuclear power is for Blair as strong as his faith in the Lord. This leaves us in the Yes Minister scenario of Downing Street holding private focus groups about how to sell atomic energy at the same time as officially backing Sciencewise, some elements of which are about to begin to open up a grassroots-based political space on that very same hot topic.

Will the Prime Minister heed his own spin doctors, or instead trust processes that aim to allow people to explore all sides of the argument before leaving them to make their own decision? Answers on an e-postcard and I’ll send them to the poor television executive who is still waiting to hear what ‘upstream engagement’ really means.

Dr Tom Wakeford is Director of Co-Inquiry at the PEALS Research Centre, University of Newcastle. He is currently writing a joint report into NanoJury UK with Dr Jasber Singh, Peter Bryant and Dr Bano Murtuja, with whom he facilitated the process.