Alan Irwin comments on Ian Pearson’s vision
And so Ian Pearson is Gordon Brown’s new Science Minister, taking up his post in the re-configured Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS).
After the long tenure of Lord Sainsbury, and the relatively short sojourn of Malcolm Wicks, expectations were bound to be great. Lord Sainsbury certainly earned the respect of many sections of the scientific community for bringing ‘heavyweight’ status to the job. He was also under constant challenge for his links to the biotechnology business and support for a particular model of ‘corporate science’. Since taking his new office, Gordon Brown has made much of citizens’ juries and the democratic argument that (as he put it in September), ‘It is only possible to make the right policy decisions if we involve and engage everybody in the making of these decisions.’
Might 2008 mark a new approach to science policy and science-society relations
– with perhaps less emphasis on spin-offs and more on societal buy-in?
‘Reinvigorated vision’
The perfect opportunity for Ian Pearson to stake out his distinctive approach came in a November speech to the Science Council. As the DIUS press notice trailed it, Ian Pearson would ‘launch a debate on a new vision for science and society in the UK.’ This debate would ‘forge a new consensus around science and society and … establish goals for the future.’ Going further, the Minister was specifically keen to ‘innovate in the way we make policy, opening up the process to the views of the public and our stakeholders.’ Most promisingly, the speech would call for a ‘reinvigorated vision’ concerning science’s interface with society.
So what did the speech itself deliver?
Well, there was a lot of talk of refreshing our science and society strategy – and the ‘vision’ word cropped up again and again. The Minister’s own vision of the future pointed to a ‘society that is excited by science, values its importance to our economic and
social well-being, feels confident in its use, and supports a representative, well-qualified scientific workforce.’ On that basis, the larger debate should begin, a debate which will ‘forge a new consensus around a vision and goals for the future which will lead to greater coordination and the alignment of strategies
of all us working in this important area.’
Themes and lessons
What of the substance beneath this ministerial vision and refreshed strategy? The speech developed three main themes.
The first offered a familiar argument about the competitive nature of the global economy, the centrality of science to both the economy and quality of life, and (especially) the need to
improve what the Minister called the ‘pipeline flow of scientists’. The goal here is to ‘increase the scientific literacy of the population’ and encourage young people to get involved with
science. Perhaps the most novel element in this section of the speech was the specific reference to raising female and ethnic minority participation in science.
The second theme concerned the ‘central importance of the science and society agenda’. Here we find another familiar argument. On the one hand, we ‘need a society that is enthused by science, one where the public understands the value of science… and can feel confident about how scientists are operating.’ On the other, there is a need for public dialogue ‘to engage at an early stage with our publics and… recognise that there will be valid concerns and genuine ethical dilemmas in certain parts of research.’
Some specific examples are given of what the Minister has in mind: a Universal Ethical Code for Scientists, new communication tools ‘like internet phones, blogs and deliberative events’, Beacons for Public Engagement, and National Science and Engineering Week. However, the question left hanging concerns the precise relationship between ‘enthusing’ and ‘engaging’ with the publics.
The Minister did admit a ‘chequered record’ on engagement – with nuclear power and
genetic modification not being ‘handled well’. Stem cell research and nanoscience dialogue
have apparently gone better. It seems that we have ‘all learned lessons’, but what those
lessons might be we are not told. Certainly, it is hard to find any recognition that there might be good reasons for societal scepticism around this vision of scientific and technological progress. In launching new
debate around science and society, it is important that the Minister encourages critical and open reflection about precisely how to bring meaning to public engagement exercises (including an acknowledgement of their inherent limitations).
How to define challenges?
The third theme considered ‘how the scientific and research community can best help the UK and the world respond to the major challenges we face.’ Researchers were encouraged to get out of their narrow ‘silos’ and collaborate in order to ‘push back the frontiers of research’. Six cross-council research programmes were announced: energy, living with environmental change, global security, ageing, nanoscience, and the digital economy. These new programmes will bring together scientists and involve ‘organisations from across government and business’.
Missing here is an explicit recognition that the very way we define these challenges represents an important process in itself. Is ‘ageing’ a biological challenge or a consequence of the way we stigmatise the elderly? From whose perspective is ‘nanoscience’ a key challenge – and why? Engagement, if it is to be taken seriously, needs to tackle basic questions of how the policy agenda is set and which questions are deemed as central.
Taking it forward
It is very important that any critical review keeps a sense of perspective. The occasional weariness I (and I’m sure others) experience over ‘engagement talk’ is also a sign of progress. Living outside the UK, I am especially aware that science and society issues are not universally taken so seriously. At least in the UK right now these questions are indeed on the agenda rather than pushed aside as irrelevance or ideology – and some valuable initiatives are indeed taking place.
My suggestion therefore is that – whilst it is only proper for us to scrutinise such statements carefully – we should also be sure not to ignore the Minister but instead take up his visionary challenge to move these discussions forward in new and innovative directions.
We could start by agreeing that science and technology do indeed offer excitement and change but that the publics are not always convinced that specific innovations will improve their quality of life – or that those advocating change are motivated by anything more than economic interests. We could observe that the principle of public engagement is now widely accepted but that there is very little agreement about the purpose of this or how it should be brought into practice. We could accept that there will not necessarily be consensus around nanoscience or energy policy – but that such disagreements and challenges can be productive and ‘refreshing’ in themselves. We could accept, too, that government has an important role to play here – as does the scientific community. However, this must go beyond communicating the general benefits of science and instead acknowledge the real and substantial challenges of creating an ‘innovatory democracy’. We might also agree that scientific innovation does not simply impose itself on society but emanates very often from our own institutions and cultures (including those in the Minister’s bulging portfolio).
Wish list
Essential to any serious debate are some very fundamental questions concerning how the different elements in the Minister’s speech should fit together. My own wish list would include an explicit discussion of how the global economic pressures towards scientific investment and innovation are to be reconciled with public and critical discussion. It is also important that we clarify the purpose – and status – of public engagement: is it intended to raise ethical and political concerns, to challenge institutional assumptions or to bring wider knowledge and expertise to bear? Unavoidably also, we need to ask questions about who should represent ‘the public’ in such discussions and on what basis. Is the point to include as broad a range of views as possible, to sample those with the strongest opinions or else to see some individuals and groups as ‘representative’ of the whole? My wish in other words is that we stop talking of public engagement as an obviously good thing, and consider instead the purposes, the principles and the meanings we attribute to engagement.
Finally, we might accept that there cannot be a single vision for something as large, divergent and amorphous as ‘science and society’. Even the most clear-sighted Ministerial vision can turn out to be a hallucination. The challenge therefore is to extend rather than contain our socio¬scientific imaginations.
Professor Alan Irwin is Dean of Research at the Copenhagen Business School