This morning I sat down with my 14 year old son and asked him what area of science caught his interest especially.  He answered “the future of space exploration”. We carried out a search on the Web of Science for “future + space + exploration”, and the fifth article returned was “Comparing future options for human space flight” by Sherwood Brent (Acta Astronautica 69 346-353, 2011).  We downloaded the article and he read it.  When asked, he said the paper was understandable and interesting – he was glad that he’d read it, and wanted to know where he could read more stuff like this.

There’s a myth that only people who have ready access to peer review papers have any real need or desire to read them, and it’s a pernicious myth.

George Monbiot stirred up the debate on access to scientific publications recently in his Guardian piece “Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist“.  In response, Kent Anderson – a long-time publisher and editor of scientific journals – set up this straw scenario, using it to justify limited access to journal publications:

Let’s assume everyone with a beating heart is interested in cardiology topics. Let’s search PubMed for a paper on “cardiac.” Let’s take the first one we find. Let’s read the conclusion from the abstract:

Intrathoracic herniation of the liver (“liver-up”) is associated with predominant left heart hypoplasia in left diaphragmatic hernia but not right fetal diaphragmatic hernia. Our observations indicate that this difference may result from different ductus venosus streaming sites in these conditions.

So my layperson understanding of intrathoracic heart hypoplasia is vital to my ability to function in a democracy and make informed political decisions? I think I sense a herniation just from the stretch that takes to achieve plausibility.

Let’s assume I can read the whole paper. Like 99.9% of the population, I’m not going to know what to make of it. It’s for specialists, or better, subspecialists (cardiologists who specialize in neonates, I suppose). It was published early online, so it’s likely free. Most journals make their content published early online free for a limited time. We have the English abstract, but it’s a German journal. Who paid for that translation, assuming there was one?

Economics have nothing to do with accessibility of this information. Specialty knowledge is a prerequisite, and German language expertise would help.

There is no price in the world that’s going to make that scientific paper, or thousands of others, intelligible, relevant, or meaningful to me in any way that’s going to affect my ability to function in a democracy. And people who do need to see those papers can see those papers, probably know the authors, probably heard the poster session or talk at a meeting, and will know about the published report if it’s at all worth reading.

This is a shockingly disingenuous scenario – especially coming from a publisher – that seriously misrepresents that value of some publications to people who don’t have ready access to them, as well as how scientific publication tends to work these days.  It was what led to my impromptu conversation with my son, highlighting the existence of academic papers that are accessible to a broader audience.  But it also fundamentally misses the point that there are many, many people outside major academic institutions who would benefit from ready access to a broad range of peer review papers, but who are restricted by the high costs of institutional subscriptions and one-off par per view fees.

For a start, consider these groups:

Smaller academic institutions:  Library subscriptions are often limited in smaller institutions, meaning that if you want access to papers in less cited publications, or in areas outside your immediate discipline (yet still relevant to your work), you have a problem.  This is a major hurdle to interdisciplinary research.

Government research labs: The same applies here as for smaller academic institutions – subscription fees severely limit access to the broad scientific literature.

Independent research labs: Even worse.  You may have subscriptions to the big general journals (Nature and Science) and the top specialist journals in your area.  But access across disciplines, to cross-disciplinary publications and to lower impact journals, is limited.

The medical profession:  Unless you are affiliated with a large research institution, access to the peer review literature is likely to be limited to mainstream publications in your field.  Too bad if your interests are more wide ranging.

Industry:  The case is easy to make that industry should pay for access to publications.  But my experience talking with colleagues in industry has always been that there comes a point where the costs of subscriptions and one-off fees are prohibitive, even when the knowledge gleaned could be valuable.

The legal profession:  Even lawyers need access to academic papers sometimes – believe it or not!

Not-for-profit organizations: Think Tanks and NGO’s have major problems paying for access to the scientific literature, despite their work often being highly dependent on this literature.

The media [added 3:02 PM 9/5/11 - how could I have forgotten them first time!]: How are science reporters to report on the science, not just what the press releases say, without access to the original papers.  Sometimes possible, but by no means always without forking out $$

Schools: I’m not aware of many school districts that can afford broad access to the peer review literature, despite clear benefits to this for teachers and students.

The “public”:  OK so many papers are so esoteric that they will only be meaningful to a small minority of experts.  But there are also large numbers of publications that are understandable and relevant to people who’s only qualification is an interest in the world they live in.  And don’t forget that the “public” also includes people who are retired, between jobs or no longer in academic positions, but who nevertheless have the capacity to understand and benefit from highly specialized publications, and who don’t have the means to pay publication access fees.

Publishers aren’t the enemy here – wider access to the results of research is a systemic challenge that is going to require cooperation and innovation from everyone involved in the process.  But if progress is to be made, we cannot afford to kid ourselves that only the academic elite need access to academic papers, or that publications are beyond the ken of the public.

If I wasn’t at the University of Michigan, it would have cost my son $31.50 to read Brent’s paper in Acta Astronautica – he was gobsmacked when I told him!  I somehow can’t see his monthly allowance going on more articles like this – despite his clear interest in reading more.  And this is just one anecdotal example – how many more people do not have access to information that could enrich their lives, impact their community and improve society, simply because the cost of entry is too high?

I’d prefer to live in a world where my son is not prevented from reading papers that interest and enthuse him, or poor decisions are made because people can’t afford to read about research that mattered.  Public access journals, researcher-funded publications and access requirements for government-funded research are beginning to push us in the right direction.  But it seems we still have a way to go before we break down the misconception that access to peer review publications should be limited to a privileged few.

[Update 4:42 9/5/11 - I also meant to mention Martin Robbins' piece on "Open science, Freedom of Information and the Big Journal monopoly" over at The Guardian blog - worth reading in the context of pey-per-view publication]

Here’s an interesting idea – build a free iPad app that kicks off a global conversation about the future of the human species.

The Human Project is the brain child of Erika Ilves & Anna Stillwell.  At its core is a yet-to-be-built iPad app that captures the essence of humanity past and future – who we are, where we are going, and how we are going to get there.  As Erika and Anna explain:

There are so many challenges that confront the species as a whole. The ones that get a lot of press (like climate change, food & water shortages, poverty, war, overpopulation and economic crises). The ones that don’t (like comets and asteroids, extreme experiments in science, technological terror and error). The ones that we humans don’t even imagine we can solve (like mega volcanoes, mega earthquakes, nearby supernova explosions, a dying sun, an aging universe). And there are plenty of visions too (like a space-faring civilization, transhumanism, zero carbon world, general artificial intelligence, the end of poverty, universal human rights, designing life and matter, zero nuclear weapons, the end of aging).

Everything is so fragmented. Every expert claims their issue matters most. Everyone fighting for their share of attention. So few have the big picture. Nobody seems to have their eye on the species as a whole.

So why not capture the big picture in a compellingly sleek package, make it free, and watch it take off?

Sounds like a great idea.  But here’s the kicker – someone has to pay for the up-front development.  To cover this, a crowd-funding initiative has just been launched on Kickstarter – if $25,000 are raised by Sept 28, a matching $25k is put in the pot, and the project goes ahead.

If you are interested in finding out more, check out the video below or visit www.kickstarter.com/projects/thehumanprojectapp/the-human-project-app

Having recently finished Robert Winston’s “Bad Ideas?  An Arresting History of our Inventiveness,” I was rather taken by his concluding “Scientist’s Manifesto” – a fourteen-point guide to help strengthen the relationship between science and society.  As well as reflecting much of my own thinking, it embodies many of the ideas coming out of the science communication and engagement community in recent years – although thankfully it lacks much of the jargon that usually accompanies these ideas.

The manifesto is very much a work in progress – Winston refers to it as a “starting point.”  But even in its current form, it challenges scientists to think about their work in a broader context, and to engage more fully with the society that supports them and ultimately stands to be impacted by them – for good or bad:

A Scientist’s Manifesto – Professor Robert Winston

1.  We should try to communicate our work as effectively as possible, because ultimately it is done on behalf of society and because its adverse consequences may affect members of the society in which we all live.  We need to strive for clarity not only when we make statements or publish work for scientific colleagues, but also in making our work intelligible to the average layperson.  We may also reflect that learning to communicate more effectively may improve the quality of the science we do and make it more relevant to the problems we are attempting to solve.

2.  Communication is  two-way process.  Good engagement with the public is not merely a case of imparting scientific information clearly.  It involves listening to and responding to the ideas, questions, hopes and concerns the public may have.  We should accept that this kind of engagement with the public is a matter of good citizenship.  We should reflect that sometimes proper dialogue with various sections of the public may inform some aspects of our work.  Moreover, it can make any technology that is developed from our work more relevant to the needs of the public and less likely be dangerous.

3.  The media, whether written, broadcast or web-based, play a key role in how the public learn about science.  We need to share our work more effectively by being as clear, honest and intelligible s possible in our dealings with journalists.  We also need to recognize that misusing the media by exaggerating the potential of what we are studying, or belittling the work of other scientists working in the field, can be detrimental to science.

4.  We need to recognize that the science we do is not entirely our property.  Whether the taxpayer helps fund our scientific education or not, most of our training and research is paid for by the public – in grants from the research councils or charities.  The public has a major stake in the ownership of what we do.

5.  Whenever possible, we should always consider the ethical problems that may be raised by the applications of our work.  Some scientists have claimed that science does not have a moral value; but while pure knowledge may be ethically neutral, the way this knowledge is gained and the use to which it is put can involve many difficult ethical issues.

6.  We should reflect that science is not simply ‘the truth’ but merely a version of it.  A scientific experiment may well ‘prove’ something, but a ‘proof’ may change with the passage of time as we gain better understanding.  Mere assertion that something is fact will not persuade many people of the rightness of what we say.  It is worth bearing in mind that sometimes two well-conducted experiments can give conflicting results that are equally valid.  Science is not absolute; it is often about uncertainty.

7.  It is understandable and proper that we scientists are immensely proud of what we discover, but it is easy to forget that this special knowledge can sometimes breed a culture of assumed omnipotence and arrogant assertion.  We need to avoid arrogance because it can lead to misinterpretation of data and to conflict instead of collaboration with colleagues.  Moreover, arrogance is likely to damage the reputation of science by increasing public mistrust.

8.  Scientists are regularly called upon to assess the work of other scientists or review their reports before publication.  While such peer review is usually the best process for assessing the quality of scientific work, it can be abused.  When conducting peer review, we should try to ensure that we are fair and scrupulous and not acting out of a vested interest.

9.  We should try to see our science in a broad context, but also be aware of the limitations of our personal expertise.  We should consider that, when talking outside our own subject, we may be more likely to mistake the facts of a case.  We should be particularly cautious about making predictions about the future of science, not least because creating unrealistic expectations can be damaging.

10.  Governments, whether totalitarian, oligarchic or democratically elected, usually have vested interests.  Such interests are not necessarily conducive to good research or to good use of the fruits of knowledge.  Government control of science can have malign influence.  This is certainly true of totalitarian governments, but misuse of science is very common in virtually all liberal democracies, including our own.  It is difficult for scientists to retain independence from politicians, because politicians ultimately make many key funding decisions.  But we need to keep some distance from politicians, and should not avoid criticizing their decisions where we feel they are wrong or dangerous.

11.  Commercial interests, so often promoted by governments and universities, cannot be disregarded if technology is to be exploited for public good.  But scientists need to be aware of the dangers of conflicts of interest and to retain a sense of balance, because commercial interests can be a bad influence on scientific endeavour.  The history of science shows that the over-eager or narrow-minded pursuit of commercial interests can lead to the loss of public trust.

12.  In the Western world, most of our best basic science is done in universities.  But historically, universities have been élite and mysterious institutions, and even today they are sometimes perceived as rather threatening places where the complex and unintelligible takes place.  Those of us working in universities should try to help foster a new culture of open access to our institutions and, where we can, help strengthen activities which involve community service and outreach.  Where possible we should do our best to support whatever aspect of public engagement is taken by the university.

13.  Schools have the most vital role to play in encouraging young people to see the magnificence of the natural world.  But sadly, at present, many schools actively discourage children from appreciation of the wonders of science.  We should try to support initiatives that may promote more practical and experimental work for children, and show our appreciation of inspirational teachers and their teaching.  If we are in a position to do so, we should promote stronger connections and collaborations between schools, school-children and universities, because this is likely to help produce a healthier, safer society.

14.  Just a generation ago, the mark of a civilized person was an appreciation of Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Thucydides, Rembrandt and Beethoven.  But the pursuit of science has become so intense and demanding that today’s scientists are more likely to neglect our cultural inheritance.  We may wish to reflect that by broadening our own interests; thus we may help non-scientists to see science as part of our culture.  Shakespeare, Thucydides, Goethe or even Milton may not be directly relevant to our scientific research, but the cultural values such authors represent are universal and deeply important.  The words of the roman poet Terence are of particular relevance: Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto – ‘I am a man: nothing human is foreign to me.’

(reproduced with Robert Winston’s permission)

I really like these – having worked at the interface between science and the rest of society (or at least, parts of it) for some years now, they make a lot of sense to me.  But I imagine they are not to everyone’s taste.

So what do you think – are they useful, do they need work, or do you think they on the wrong track?  There’s a big blank comment box below, just waiting for your thoughts!

I was at a meeting a couple of weeks ago where engaging the public (or “publics” to be more accurate) in science came up.  In the course of discussions, I mentioned an initiative by Research Councils UK to involve members of the public in developing a call for research proposals on the use of nanotechnology in healthcare. To which one eminent US scientist responded with words to the effect of “that sounds like a really bad idea!”

The exchange confirmed a suspicion I have had for some time that public engagement on science isn’t taken that seriously in the US.  Sure, there’s lots going on at various levels to communicate science to the US public, and to make sure people put science “in its rightful place” in their lives – which to most scientists is somewhere above God and family.  But strategic and coordinated action on engaging people – entering into a two-way exchange of ideas that potentially influences both sides – that’s much harder to find.

So I was fascinated by a series of documents that landed on my virtual desk this morning from the UK that outline Britain’s approach to public engagement on science – including why anyone would want to do it in he first place!

The documents are from Research Councils UK (RCUK) – a strategic partnership between the seven UK Research Councils that enables them to work together synergistically on key issues.  The documents set out RCUK’s strategy for public engagement with research, provide a guide to researchers and teachers  on engaging young people with cutting edge research, and outline the benefits of public engagement for researchers.

The three documents map out a clear rationale for why public engagement on science is important, and how the UK intends to pursue it.  Take this for instance from the updated Public Engagement with Research strategy [PDF, 80 KB]:

“If we involve and listen to the public (and encourage our research communities to do so) then our decisions and research will be informed by their views, and therefore more likely to have enhanced impact in return for the investment.

Similarly, if we talk with the public (and encourage our research communities to talk to the public) about the outputs of our research and their implications and applications then society will share in the benefits of that knowledge, whether for their health, wealth or culture, and therefore helping to maximise the impact of that research.

And if we encourage researchers to interact with schools to enrich students’ experiences then we can help improve the supply of skilled people to the research base and the UK economy and encourage more to act as informed citizens.”

There follows a detailed strategic plan for recognizing and responding to public views, inspiring young people and supporting researchers.

The second of the three documents takes on interactions between young people and research.  Titled “Engaging Young People with Cutting Edge Research: a guide for researchers and teachers” [PDF, 900 KB], it provides clearly laid out information for researchers and teachers, together with resources for both groups.  The guide doesn’t hedge – headlining the section for researchers [the first section in the guide] is the question

“Working with schools and young people – how can it benefit me as a researcher?”

This is a hundred and eighty degree departure – and a very welcome one – from old-school approaches, which inevitably asked what young people can get out of science.  Here’s a quick summary – from the report – of what researchers might expect to gain from working with young people:

The third report builds on this theme by addressing the broader benefits of public engagement to researchers.  In the rather aptly titled “What’s in it for me? The benefits of public engagement for researchers” [PDF, 1000 KB] RCUK examine four benefits to researchers of engaging with the public through the eyes of researchers themselves.  In a series of case studies, the document coniders career inspiration, raising your profile, developing skills and enhancing your research.

It’s that last point that particularly grabbed my attention when reading through the document, as it gets back to the heart of response I found from that US researcher to the idea of the “public” actually having an influence on research.

This section of the report consists of twelve accounts where researchers have benefited from engaging with people a long way removed from the lab.  They span medical research to environmental research to astronomy.  And the unifying factor – research that is enriched and better-informed by talking with and listening to others.  Take this quote from Dr David Chadwick for instance from North Wyke Research. Talking about engaging people as part of his work studying how the management of livestock and their manures affect water quality, David said

“It vastly changed networking opportunities, bringing different experts together, and has been the most enjoyable project in my career to date”

Or this from Dr Paul Curzon at the University of London on engaging with the public on research into topics related to human error:

“The data obtained from this was used in a publication which won a best paper prize, and has opened up a novel research methodology.”

The accounts are anecdotal.  But nevertheless they attest to the power of opening up research to people who are affected by it, interested in it and have something to offer to it – given half the chance.

The UK has been bitten by the failures to engage people on science effectively in the past, and is learning rapidly from past mistakes.  The result is a strong strategy that changes the dynamic between researchers and the public; gives more people than ever before the opportunity to be active partners in science rather than passive observers; and adds considerable value to research and innovation.  Rather than retreating into the attitude of “that sounds like a really bad idea,” Britain is developing a “technology ratchet” that could give it a valuable edge over the coming years.

As a Brit, that gives me a sense of pride in the country – we seem to have got this one right, or at least seem to be on the right path.  But as a Brit living in the US, I can’t help thinking “what on earth has gone wrong on this side of the Atlantic?”  Why is is that, while the UK is developing strategies to make more people an integral part of the science endeavor, the US is still plagued by an attitude that the public should be seen and not heard.

I suspect it’s because the momentum of the vast US science and technology enterprise has carried it forward despite a growing need to rethink the relationship between science and society.  But that momentum won’t last for ever.  And when it runs out, how will the US go about getting science back on track?

I don’t know the answer to that one.  But at least they will have an excellent role model a mere pond-hop away come the crunch

2020 Science is something of a labor of love – it’s a website where I explore my thoughts and ideas surrounding the interface between science, technology and society beyond the constraints of my “day job” (currently Chief Science Advisor to the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies at the Woodrow Wilson Center).  I like to think I bring a balanced and, on a good day, sophisticated perspective to the stuff I write about.  So I was intrigued and just a little taken aback when Jim Thomas at ETC Group, recently pointed out that, actually, I’m quite obviously flying the flag for the established pro-technology innovation camp.

Jim was right – up to a point.  I do adhere to the “ideology” that if we are to survive the future, we need to get a lot smarter in how we develop and use technology.  But I also hope that I’m aware enough to recognize that there are other very different, but equally legitimate, perspectives on the role of technology innovation in society.  So this got me thinking – maybe I should invite a group of people with a range of different perspectives on tech innovation to write a series of guest blogs on the subject.  I’d find it useful.  But more importantly, I think people reading this blog would find it useful.

After speaking to a few friends within the Civil Society community (including NGOs like ETC Group, NRDC and Friends of the Earth), the idea took shape:  I would dedicate a week’s worth of blog space to ten different thought-leaders, asking each of them to address a single question:

“How should technology innovation contribute to life in the 21^st century?”

With no editorial control from me (bar framing the question), and a few simple guidelines on length and style, my hope was that this would provide something of a unique perspective on the role of technology innovation in society – including its potential downsides – and demonstrate that the future depends on responding to and working with many value systems, not just the apparently prevalent ones.

I should in all honesty point out that the thought of handing over the blog to a bunch of NGOs for the week scared the life out of me.  As it turns out, the process has been overwhelmingly positive.  Not only did these writers from a range of organizations graciously agree to write for the blog – they produced articles that without exception inform, challenge and enlighten.

The series starts next Monday (Dec 14) and ends on Dec 18.  Each day, I will be posting two guest blogs from the series; one in the morning, one in the afternoon.  The complete lineup can be found here.

Do look out for them and read them – they all well worth the time.  I don’t expect everyone will agree with everything that’s written – that’s OK.  But do me a favor – if you don’t agree (or even if you do, or have additional points you would like to make or questions you would like to ask), please do add comments to the blogs – that’s what the “Leave a Comment” box is there for!

With that, all that remains is for me to thank my ten guest bloggers – who without exception the gave of their time and energy with great generosity, and far exceeded my expectations.  Thank you.

__________________________

The ten guest bloggers are:

Marcy Darnovsky, Center for Genetics & Society

Gregor Wolbring, University of Calgary

Georgia Miller, Friends of the Earth

Geoff Tansey, Food Ethics Council

Jen Sass, Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC)

Richard Owen, University of Westminster

Richard Worthington, Loka

George Kimbrell, International Center for Technology Assessment (ICTA)

Tim Jackson, University of Surrey

Jim Thomas, ETC Group

See the full series details at “Technology innovation, life, and the 21st century – ten alternative perspectives“

Update, 12/15/09 – Richard Owen was added as a late substitution for Debra Harry

I sat down this morning to write a light-hearted blog about the UK government’s “Science: So what? So everything” campaign.  The angle was going to be:

Why write about this when people want to read about this?

But the more I dug around, the more apparent it became that this is an initiative that seems to have lost its way – and in need of more than a cheap quip about substance (ab)use…

The “Science: So what? So everything” campaign was launched with a flourish by the British government Department for Business Innovation and Skills last January.  It was aimed at engaging people in science, and shaking off the perception of science as being elitist.  A string of celebrities – including Terry Pratchett, Bill Bryson and David Attenborough – put their weight behind the campaign as Prime Minister Gordon Brown kicked it off.

According to the British Science Association,

A key aim of the campaign is to reach and spark interest in science among a wider audience, dispelling the myth that science is too difficult or out of bounds for all but scientists. The involvement of well-known figures from the media and popular culture will help to convey this message. As well the help of celebrities, the campaign has enlisted the support of UK research councils, learned societies and other government departments and hopes to extend its reach with the involvement of business and other organisations outside the world of science.

So what has happened since then?

I ask because British Science Minister Lord Drayson as just embarked on a review of the campaign.  As he announced on Twitter earlier this week:

I’m afraid as a scientist I don’t fit into Lord Drayson’s target audience here.  But his tweet – and some of the responses to it – did drive me back to the Science: So What? campaign to see what was going on.

And I must confess, what I found was a little disappointing.

The “campaign” (more about those inverted commas in a second) revolves around the Science: So what? So everything website.  This is a slick website – it’s attractive, it’s neatly laid out, it draws you in to a series of articles that are related to science.

But it’s a website, not a campaign!

In fact, the more I browsed, the clearer it was that the Science: So what? website is little more than a mediocre popular science portal, with a hint of government science evangelism about it.  I’m not even sure I would have known that this was the hub of a campaign if it hadn’t been for Lord Drayson’s tweet, and archived news coverage of the launch (the original BIS press release isn’t available by the way as far as I can tell – links like the one here lead to dead ends).

If this is a campaign, where’s the action plan?  Where are the deliverables and the indicators of success?  More to the point, where are all those celebrities who were brought in to launch it – and the accompanying publicity machine?

So let’s forget about the “campaign” for a moment, and just look at the website.

The website is certainly visually attractive and functionally smooth.  But does it succeed in reaching out to an audience and engaging people – does it, in the words of mjrobbins, “add value?”

I’m not sure it does.  There are a ton of great science websites and blogs out there – most of them offering far more in the way of reader-oriented content.  If you want information on the latest science news, to be titillated and entertained by science and technology, or to to be enlightened by the view from the lab bench, you are spoilt for choice.  So why would anyone visit – and re-visit – Science: So what?

I’m struggling with this.  It’s not that the content is bad.  It’s just that there’s equally good or better stuff elsewhere.  The articles are limited compared to what you get at New Scientist, the BBC or Discover Magazine (for instance).  There is no community here – a key driver of site visits and loyalty (where are the links, the guest articles, the commentaries, the controversial discussions?).  The “events” page seems rather limited in scope. There’s a DIY Science page with three (three!) articles on it, two of them discussing that old chestnut of putting Menots mints in coke.  And the “get involved” page – judging by the number of comments received – hasn’t inspired many to actually get involved.

I don’t really want to diss Science: So what? – it’s a laudable effort to address a very real issue, and the website is trying to make a dent within a tough web space.  And at the end of the day it is an experiment in using new media to reach out on science.  Tim Jones, who publishes the science and technology blog Zoonomian, wrote “I can also see this is something of a sandbox for experiment, so deserves to be cut some slack” on the Science: So what? metablog.

But he also points out the need for review and decision-making on the website, and highlights a number of areas requiring attention.

Looking at where Science: So what? doesn’t hit the mark for me, and where it might do better, two issues scream out.

The first deals with engaging people.  Despite trying to move away from an old-school science communication framework, it still seems to set out to inform rather than engage.  It smacks of messages that someone thinks people should be reading, rather than content that people want to read.  In other words, despite efforts to move away from this rather outdated stance, it’s “preachy.”

Take the opening paragraph on the “about” page:

In the UK, many of us don’t value science as much as we should, but it lives beneath the surface of everything we touch and taste. It’s the key to our prosperity, one of the driving forces of our economy, and it creates thousands of jobs that keep Britain at the leading edge.

This is about telling readers what’s good for them, not asking them what they think.  Okay so it’s a message that I and many scientists have a lot of sympathy for.  But as a first step to pulling people in? I’m not sure I would be so brave as to use it!  The art of selling is knowing what your customers want, not telling them what they should want – something that seems to be missing here.

Of course, I may be wrong and Science: So what? may be thronging with visitors.

I haven’t seen any web stats for the site so it’s hard to speak with any authority here.  About the only indicator of engagement I do have is a post that links directly back to 2020 Science.  As far as I can tell, I have only had one referral from Science: So what? since that post was published (Tim Jones had a similar experience with the link to his blog).  Contrast this to a link to 2020 Science posted in the comments on P.Z Myer’s blog Pharyngula on November 15 – from which I had 148 referrals in ten days.

This is a dubious comparison in many ways, but it does beg the question why an associate professor at the University of Minnesota seems to be engaging people on science far more effectively that the UK government.

Then, there is the problem of this being a government website.

Think about it.  Where’s the first place you would turn to for broad, unbiased, eclectic, entertaining and educating information on science.  The government?  Not me!  If there’s one thing you can guarantee with a government site is that there will be a constraining agenda behind it – and why would I elect to have my science input filtered by an organization I know is trying to feed me specific information for a predetermined purpose?

This brings me back to where I started – my “Why write about this when people want to read about this?” question.  Engagement is partly about building communities that can have the conversations they want – which is why there’s been considerable chatter on the web today about LilWizz’s piece, but nothing as far as I’m aware on the Science: So what? article.

It’s hard to imagine Science: So what? posting pieces about feeding new-borns opium draughts.  Yet without this freedom to truly engage, it’s even harder to imagine Science: So what? reaching out to the audience it so desperately wants to.

So what’s the answer?  I’m not sure I  have any great answers, but here are four things that BIS might think about:

• Develop a strategic, multi-faceted and transparent campaign to establish science as an integral part of British society, with the web site being just one component of this.
• Make key celebrities, scientists, communicators and organizations central pillars of the campaign.
• Support bloggers, producers, broadcasters and other communicators in developing networks and communities around science and technology – without heavy-handed government interference.
• Further develop efforts to engage people in science and technology – enabling them to be an active part of the process, rather than passive bystanders.

Much more is needed than this if science and technology are to be developed and used effectively within society.  But it’s a start.

When the Science: So what? So everything campaign was launched, Pallab Ghosh wrote on the BBC website

Without a sustained long-term plan, however, there’s a risk that any momentum this latest campaign generates will be lost and go the way of previous attempts to turn the public’s obvious admiration of science into something that’s a part of their daily lives.

Sadly, his crystal ball seemed to be working pretty well that day.  Nevertheless, integrating science into society remains an important issue.  The UK government started well with the Science: So What? campaign.  Maybe it’s now time to get out of the sandpit, and start to build something more concrete.

But don’t take my word for it – check out Science: So what? So everything for yourself.  Talk about it on the Science: So What? metablog.  And don’t forget to get back to the ever-accessible Lord Drayson on Twitter with your thoughts and ideas.

Reviewing Unscientific America: How scientific illiteracy threatens our future, by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum

My name is Andrew, and I am scientifically illiterate.

Just thought I’d get that off my chest!

And before you protest too much, I do have some pretty convincing evidence.  Math makes my head ache.   I cannot recite the Earth’s geological timeline from memory.  And there’s a one in ten chance that I’ll stumble over pronouncing terms like artemisinin and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy.

The problem lies of course with what is understood by “scientific illiteracy” rather than my abilities—at least I hope that’s the case.

The idea that modern society only works if it is based on a common understanding, appreciation and use of science has been around for a while.  It seems to make sense – in a society that is increasingly dependent on science, widespread scientific ignorance is likely to lead to non-democratic leadership by a scientific elite, or ill-informed (but democratic) decisions that are ultimately destructive.

The solution would seem to be to replace scientific ignorance with scientific literacy.  Get everyone thinking and acting like scientists, and the world will surely be a better place.

Unfortunately, this perspective turns out to be rather naïve.  Dividing the world into scientific illiterates and literates devalues the many other skill sets and perspectives that contribute to healthy decision-making within society.  It also encourages an over-simplistic approach to the challenges of critical thinking and evidence-based decision making—namely that educating people more about science will result in them making the “right” decisions.  And it has a tendency to lead to scientific literacy being measured in ways that have little bearing on a person’s ability to make informed decisions…

Over the past decade or so, scholars and policy makers have come to realize that more sophisticated approaches are needed if science-informed, yet democratic, decisions are to be made by people.  As a result, rather than talk about scientific literacy, discussions now tend to revolve around the ideas of dialogue and engagement – empowering people in a complex society to make personal and group decisions that are ultimately constructive.

So it was with some trepidation that I sat down to review Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum’s new book “Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future.”

Fortunately, it didn’t take much reading to convince me that their perspective is rather more sophisticated than the book’s title suggests. Unscientific America is a laudable attempt to tackle science’s place in American society in an easily accessible way.  Highly readable, largely enjoyable, occasionally infuriating, the book takes on the challenge of how to empower members of society to make the best use of science.

There was a lot that I liked about the book – and a lot that resonated with my own views.  But there were also points where I felt the book fell short of what it could be.

Despite the book’s rather sensationalist subtitle, Mooney and Kirshenbaum do a good job of placing scientific illiteracy in a modern context.  Chapter 2 on “rethinking the problem of scientific illiteracy” provides an accessible overview of current thinking – and does it reasonably well.  The notion of a “public” that will make the “right” decisions if only they are sufficiently well educated – the so-called deficit model – is introduced, examined, then carefully put aside.  The problem, Mooney and Kirshenbaum point out, is that the deficit model can all too easily be used to exempt scientists from the responsibility of ensuring their work is an integral part of the society they belong to:

“It’s an educational problem, they say, or a problem with the media (which doesn’t cover science accurately or pay it enough attention), and then they go back to their labs.”

But rather than discard the term “scientific illiteracy,” Mooney and Kirshenbaum prefer to redefine it, in their words “getting past issues of finger-pointing and buck-passing and the misconception that our problems can be reduced to what non-scientists say in response to survey questions.”

Their solution: emphasize an aspect of scientific literacy that stresses citizens’ awareness of the importance of science to politics, policy, and a collective future.

This makes a lot of sense, and is in many ways the lynchpin of the book.  But I do have my reservations over their adherence to the idea of scientific literacy.

When scholars began to realize that the deficit model wasn’t particularly helpful to integrating science and society (for a multitude of reasons), they began to move away from talking about “science literacy” and towards talking about developing dialogues and engaging people in making science-informed decisions.  These approaches complement broader discussions on the roles of critical thinking and evidence-based decision-making; integrating science into a more holistic perspective of modern society.

Having established the central focus of the book, Mooney and Kirshenbaum present their ideas in a series of connected essays.  From a distance, the structure makes sense.  Chapters 1 and 2 set out the challenge as seen by the authors.  Chapters 3 and 4 continue on to fill in the historical background – how American culture’s apparently strained relationship with science got to where it is now.  Chapters 5 – 8 then deal with specific issues that highlight the current state of play—science in the media, science and popular entertainment, science and religion, and science and politics.  Finally, chapters 9 and 10 begin to explore possible solutions to the “problem” of scientific illiteracy – culminating in a short conclusion that attempts to pull everything together.

Some of these chapters are a good and informative read.  I was enjoying myself immensely up to chapter 8.  But then I felt that the book began to run out of steam.  Repeatedly, I found myself intrigued by questions set up by Chris and Sheril, then disappointed by a lack of resolution.  In an attempt to try and keep things simple I suspect they ended glossing over a lot of things (see my comments below on the book’s endnotes). But in the latter chapters I was increasingly aware of a lack of depth behind the points being made.

A good example is “Bruising their religion”—the chapter on science, religion and the “new atheists.”  This particular chapter has ruffled plenty of feathers throughout the blogosphere already, and I don’t intend to ruffle more by adding my two cents worth to Mooney and Kirshenbaum’s perspective.  But I do want to highlight the intellectual letdown that I felt when reading the chapter – something that I experienced with increasing frequency as I progressed toward the end of the book.

In this chapter, Mooney and Kirshenbaum roundly criticize vocal and intellectually aggressive proponents of atheism—a crowd that will stop at little it seems to denigrate religious beliefs and humiliate those who adhere to them.  They argue that the crude combative and even ignorant tactics employed by people like PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins do more to undermine scientific literacy than they do to support it.

This makes sense—intellectual bullying doesn’t often have pride of place in communications manuals!

Mooney and Kirshenbaum then state that the divide between science and religion is a false one, and the two are not mutually exclusive.  But they give no concrete evidence for this, beyond citing a handful of scientists who held (or hold) religious views.

The result is a reader who is left high and dry.  I wanted to know how science and religion may be reconciled, and why the preaching of the new atheists is intellectually as well as socially suspect.  But what I got was little more than opinion and unsubstantiated statements.

The following chapters in the book suffer from a similar glossing over of arguments—although perhaps not to the same extent as this chapter.  And as a result, I was left feeling frustrated at the lack of substance in what I was reading.

Unscientific America culminates in a six-page conclusion titled “A new mission for American Science.”  Reaching this point, I was full of expectations—this was where the meat would be (I thought), where I would finally learn how science illiteracy threatens our future, and what the answers are.

In the event, I found it a bit of a let down.  While I had enjoyed the book – which is only 132 pages long if you discount the extensive endnotes – I felt that I hadn’t been convinced that scientific illiteracy does indeed threaten America’s future.  And as for the solution to this apparently looming problem, everything seemed to lead up to Mooney and Kirshenbaum proposing that the responsibility for integrating science into society lies with scientists. After all the buildup, this seemed a little too easy.

To be fair, it’s an important conclusion.  If science is to be integrated into society, scientists as a group need to be a part of that society rather than apart from it.  It’s something that we are still a long way from achieving, but I would argue it is essential if future decisions are to help rather than hinder social development.

And to be honest, Mooney and Kirshenbaum do a good job of bringing this need to a broad audience.

But I can’t help feeling that Unscientific America falls short of what it could have been.  Mooney and Kirshenbaum clearly have a political and ideological bias that ends up being woven through the book, and at the end of the day this weakens its authority for me.  The Bush administration’s “war on science” for instance is cited repeatedly as hindering science literacy over the past 8 years, and Mooney and Kirshenbaum stress the need to move on from “an administration widely denounced for a disdain of science unprecedented in modern American history.”  Indeed, Chris Mooney has written about this in his previous book—The Republican War On Science.

Yet framing a book on science in such a strong political light is likely to alienate some readers, and will lead to diminished authority over time.

On top of this, I feel that Mooney and Kirshenbaum never quite succeeded in making a watertight case for why scientific illiteracy threatens our future—leading to the central premise of the book coming across as ideological rather than a persuasively argued and clearly defined challenge.

And that brings me back to the issue of scientific illiteracy.  From where I sit, it seems to be a phrase fraught with problems—it reinforces an “us” and “them” mentality, it has the potential to create arbitrary and often meaningless divisions.  And, to be frank, it gets some people’s backs up.  Joking aside, I could well be labeled “scientifically illiterate” under some measures of literacy.  Yet I think I have been somewhat successful in my career as a scientist, policy advisor and communicator.   So I struggle with a book so overtly focused on scientific illiteracy.  Mooney and Kirshenbaum have done a good job of framing scientific illiteracy in a sophisticated and accessible way.  But in the long run, I wonder whether the book would have had greater authority and a longer shelf life if it had made the break from dated concepts, and fully embraced the need for dialogue and engagement when integrating science into society.

So to wrap up – should you read this book?  Absolutely.  But read it forewarned.  Understand where the authors are coming from.  Accept that in 132 pages of writing for a general audience you won’t be taken on a deep and intellectually challenging journey.  And don’t hesitate to chapter-hop – I particularly liked chapter 2!

And above all, enjoy it – whether you agree with Mooney and Kirshenbaum or not, they are entertaining and talented writers, and Unscientific America is an enjoyable—and not too taxing—read.

Endnotes

About the endnotes in Unscientific America

Although Unscientific America only stretches to 132 pages it is complemented by 66 pages of endnotes, comprising citations and additional comments.  I’m not a great fan of this format—especially as the endnotes aren’t cited on the pages they relate to.  But it is an extensive resource for those who are interested in delving further into the points Chris and Sheril make.

I do have a problem though where there is extensive commentary included in the endnotes.  While reading the book, you have no idea whether a particular idea or comment is fleshed out later on, unless you keep one finger in the endnotes. This is not a comfortable way to read a book!  I understand why the book is published this way – it keeps things simple for readers (I almost wrote “scientifically illiterate readers” – slapped wrists for that!).  But it isn’t half a pain for anyone seriously interested in what the authors are trying to say.

It’s far better, in my opinion, to ensure that the relevant stuff is incorporated into the main text, not sequestered away where no-one will read it.

More on science and society

Many people have studied the complex interplay between science and society, and reams of work—from the scholarly to the popular—has been written on the subject.  To get a good feel for current thinking, I would recommend “What can we learn from 25 years of PUS survey research? Liberating and expanding the agenda” by Martin Bauer, Nick Allum and Steve Miller [PDF, 116 KB].  Also check out Matthew Nisbet’s blog, Framing Science, and the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School.

And a final comment…

Since it was released several weeks ago, Unscientific America has been the subject of a number of reviews.  Although I’ve caught some of the chatter surrounding these, I have made a conscious effort not to read them before writing my own rather belated piece.  So hopefully these thoughts are mine, and not simply a regurgitation of other people’s ideas.

Now to see whether what I’ve written is completely out of step with the rest of the blogging world…

It’s been a few weeks now since the men’s style magazine GQ launched the “Rock Stars of Science” campaign.  I’m a staunch advocate of raising science’s profile, but the whole campaign has had me on edge, and I haven’t quite been able to put my finger on why.  Was it the exclusive use of white middle-aged male scientists?  Was it the implied message that the science-guys were rock-star wannabes?  Or was it the assumption that medical science is the only science worth promoting?

Sheryl Crow, Anthony S. Fauci M.D. and Harold Varmus, M. D. (I'll leave you to work out which is which.) From the Rock Stars of Science Campaign

Then it struck me – what really got under my skin was the cultural cargo cult mentality being flaunted.

Cultural cargo cult?  It’s not a new metaphor, but not a commonly used one either.  If it had a Wikipedia entry, it might read something like this:

A cultural cargo cult is a practice that may appear in societies in the wake of interactions with separate, socially advanced cultures. The cults are focused on obtaining the popularity of the advanced culture through association and behavior-emulation, believing that the fame and fortune achieved by others should be theirs, because they are more worthy.

Following contact with people from more socially advanced societies through random encounters, the media and, more recently, Twitter, cultural cargo cults have been observed around the world.  They are particularly prevalent in the developed economies of the West.

Members, leaders, and advocates of cultural cargo cults maintain that the social kudos (“cargo”) of the advanced culture has been created by trivial means, such as through celebrity promotion.  They believe this kudos is rightfully theirs but that, unfairly, the celebs of the other culture have gained control of this social status through attracting  “cool” to themselves by malice or mistake.

Cultural cargo cults thus focus on efforts to overcome what they perceive as the undue influence of celebrities in attracting cool, by conducting rituals imitating behavior they have observed among the holders of the desired kudos and presuming that their fellow citizens will, at last, recognize their worth and send the “cargo” to them instead.

A characteristic feature of cultural cargo cults is the belief that punters will, at some future time, give much valuable kudos and desirable “cool” to the cult members, rather than worthless celebrities who should never, in their eyes, have got it in the first place!

(My apologies to the authors of the Wikipedia entry on cargo cults, which this has more than a passing resemblance to.)

I hate to be too critical of the Rock Stars of Science campaign.  The medical research it aims to support is laudable.  And truth be told, I’d have been there like a shot if the call came in to do a photo shoot with Sheryl Crow!  But in the context of science communication and awareness-building, this is a classic example of cultural cargo cult-ism.  In their haste to be seen with the cool gang, the scientists have forgotten to ask what makes its members cool in the first place!

This probably would have been fine if the only message emerging was that naïve scientists simply like to have fun.  Unfortunately, I don’t think this was the case.

As @mjrobbins writes on The Lay Scientist,

“Let’s just look at the statistics here. GQ assembled 11 scientists, and 5 rock stars. Of the rock stars, two are black, one is a woman. Of the scientists, 11 are middle-aged white males. For a campaign that wants to attract new young people into science in a country where around half of young people are women and probably nearly half are from ethnic minorities, that’s just moronic.

But, okay, you’ve got your middle-aged white guys in suits into the studio and you’re ready to take some photos that promote science. It doesn’t take a marketing genius to tell you that the scientists should be in the centre, and the rock stars should be fawning over them.”

Given the reach of GQ and the rock stars that participated in the photo shoot, the messaging here will have an impact.  And sadly, that message seems to be that successful scientists are white middle-aged males (with a dubious dress sense) who, when all’s said and done, wish they’d become celebrity musicians instead.

@drisis concludes her blog on the Rock Stars of Science campaign with:

“This campaign sends the message that scientists aspire towards other things.  Not that other people aspire to be scientists.  It seems to me that if you want to have an effective campaign then what you do is put Sheryl Crow in a lab coat and take pictures of those guys teaching her to pipet or culture some cells or use a microscope.  Don’t take pictures of talented, gifted scientists — scientists whose talents make them as unique and talented as the rockstars they are pictured with — trying to be musicians.  Take a picture of a musician aspiring to be a scientist.”

Getting people turned on to science is incredibly important.  And nurturing science-savvy cultural icons will certainly help achieve this.  Indeed, there are already plenty of icons-in-the-making around, if only they could be given a bit of a leg up.

But let’s not fall into the trap of thinking that dressing like and fraternizing with celebrities will lead to some of the stardust rubbing off.

Postscript

In the Twitter chatter around the Rock Stars of Science campaign earlier today, a number of people pointed out that Queen guitarist Brian May is quite literally a Rock Star of Science – having reveived his Ph.D. from Imperial College in London in 2007.  And his thesis?  “Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud.”  Clearly a rock star of science who genuinely knows his stardust

Update 6/28/09 – Also check out Chris Mooney’s thoughts on the Rock S.O.S campaign, which provide a good contrast to mine.  And if you want a closer gander at the pictures from the photoshoot that launched the campaign, here’s the 4-page portfolio from GQ Magazine [PDF, 580 KB]

50 years on, have we missed the point of C.P. Snow’s “Two-cultures?”

50 years ago, long before Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme,” the British scientist, public figure and novelist Charles Percy Snow planted an idea into the collective consciousness that has since grown to have a profound influence on science and the arts in Western society. Sadly, it wasn’t the idea he necessarily wanted to plant. So while the relevance of Snow’s “two cultures”—representing the divide between the scientific and literary elite of the day—has been debated and deconstructed ad infinitum over the intervening decades, Snow’s real passion—tackling material poverty through science and technology—has largely been ignored…

In 1963, Snow wrote a follow-on piece to the 1959 lecture.  In “Two cultures: A second look” C.P. Snow addressed the concerns of his many critics.  But he also took the opportunity to clarify and expand on what he was trying to convey four years earlier.  Freed from the constraints of crafting a short and somewhat simple public lecture, he wrote compellingly on science’s place in society, and the absolute necessity of using it for the social good—something he only saw the cultural divides around him obstructing.

In the opening sections of the 1963 essay Snow addresses his critics directly, which he does with humility and wit.  But by section five he begins to get to the heart of his true passion for science and technology:

“We cannot know as much as we should about the social conditions all over the world.  But we can know, we do know, two most important things.  First we can meet the harsh facts of the flesh, on the level where all of us are, or should be, one.  We know that the vast majority, perhaps two-thirds, of our fellow men are living in the immediate presence of illness and premature death; their expectation of life is half of ours, most are under-nourished, many are near to starving, many starve.  Each of these lives is afflicted by suffering, different from that which is intrinsic in the individual condition.  But this suffering is unnecessary and can be lifted.  This is the second important thing which we know—or, if we don’t know it, there is no excuse or absolution for us.”

Snow acknowledged that there is more to the human condition than mere material needs.  But he argued that this does not release us from the obligation to address those needs—his “hard facts of the flesh”—nor the fact that science and technology provide the means to do this.  He pushes this point home:

“We cannot avoid the realization that applied science has made it possible to remove unnecessary suffering from a billion individual human lives—to remove suffering of a kind, which, in our own privileged society, we have largely forgotten, suffering so elementary that it is not genteel to mention it.”

This gets to the very heart of the essay, and the intended thrust of the 1959 lecture.  So much so that he admits “Before I wrote the [1959] lecture I thought of calling it “The Rich and the Poor”, and I rather wish that I hadn’t changed my mind.”

From here, Snow begins to tackle the myth of the “ennobling” nature of suffering—the idea that suffering strengthens a person, and to interfere in the “natural order” of “master and man” is to do those who suffer a disservice.  Snow is ruthless in his attack on those supporting this position—many of them, in his eyes, amongst the comfortably off cultural elite “who have climbed one step up and are hanging on by their fingernails.”

Just as ruthlessly, he exposes the romantic myth of life being better before science and technology shook things up. Quoting J.H. Plumb he writes:

“No one in his sense would choose to have been born in a previous age unless he could be certain that he would have been born into a prosperous family, that he would have enjoyed extremely good health, and that he could have accepted stoically the death of the majority of his children.”

Rather, he writes

“It seems to me better that people should live rather than die: that they shouldn’t be hungry: that they shouldn’t have to watch their children die.”

From Snow’s perspective, attempts to justify the status quo and look back at “better times” were misguided and divisive, often reflecting the attitudes of the wealthy who could afford to romanticize suffering.  Rather, the solution he saw to satisfying society’s material needs was—and had to be in his eyes—science.  Without the scientific revolution, the only alternative was a divided society where a suffering majority supported an affluent minority—a concept Snow clearly found abhorrent.

And as a consequence, anything which impeded the successful development and implementation of science in society needed to be addressed head-on.

In 1959, Snow saw the chasm between the scientific and intellectual elite as one such impediment.  It was a problem unique (from his perspective) to the British establishment, and arose from an education system that inhibited understanding between these worlds and, as a consequence, weakened the ability of science to be used for the social good. This was the thinking behind the public lecture he delivered on May 7 1959 in Cambridge England.

Fifty years on, a lot has changed.  Approaches to education are different.  There is extensive and productive cross-talk between the science and the arts.  And national and global cultures have evolved.  Yet the central problem Snow faced remains: we live in a world divided into the rich and the poor; where the majority of people don’t have access to necessary material needs—food, water, shelter, medical treatment; where science and technology are increasingly able to bridge this divide, if only they were used effectively.  The unfortunate irony is that, by using the two cultures as a light to illuminate the problems facing society, Snow ended up creating a smokescreen that has, if anything, helped to obscure them.

The reality is that Snow’s 1959 lecture and 1963 essay are even more relevant now than they were 50 years ago—not because of the culture issues they address, but because in a society that is increasingly dependent on science and technology, we still haven’t got a good grasp on how to use them to make life better for the poor as well as the rich.

Sadly, the two cultures meme is a powerful one—witness the editorials, publications and events surrounding this 50th anniversary of the 1959 lecture.  But perhaps now’s time to put it aside and start talking about what’s really important, not just what we think is important.  Because if you look forward through the next 50 years, we have some pretty large global challenges rolling our way that aren’t going to be solved by talking about cultural differences alone.

Last week I asked a rather trivial (did someone say trite?) question (the 2-second Two-Cultures poll) about perpetual motion machines – as a gentle lead-up to this week’s 50th anniversary of CP Snow’s Two Cultures lecture.  So what were the results and what can be learned, if  anything, from them?

First, here are the data in all their glory:

Next, the lessons learned:

1.  Don’t trust a physicist to carry out a meaningful poll! OK so I have to admit it, from a scientific perspective the poll was meaningless – the people who took it didn’t represent a cross-section of society (I assume), the questions and their framing revealed more about my biases than other people’s opinions, and the ability to see other people’s votes before casting your own threw any validity the poll might have had right out of the window!

2.  If you genuinely want to know someone’s opinion, don’t intimidate them! This was completely unintentional, but I got the distinct impression that many people saw this as a test rather than a poll and were fearful of getting the answer wrong.   Another humiliating blow to my already-battered credentials as a social scientist.  Scientifically there was a correct answer, but I was more interested in what people thought than what they knew.  With this in mind, there are probably 101 ways in which the poll could have been framed better.

3.  Don’t try and be clever with a one-question poll. As any self-respecting pollster will tell you, asking a single question tells you more about the person setting the poll that the people answering it.  To make any sense of these data, information would be needed on all sorts of other stuff.  Its abscence is another nail in the coffin of this as a serious exploration of people’s perspectives.  But…  if you want to have a bit of no-too-meaningful fun, one-question-polls are great!

Having got some of the negatives out of the way, there are some interesting things to come out of this exercise – flawed as it is:

4.  The 360 people who took the poll were a pretty knowledgeable crowd. The “scientifically correct” answer (and I just know I will get flak for that phrase) was that perpetual motion machines defy the laws of physics – or the second law of thermodynamics to be precise.  They are an impossibility.  And most people taking the poll realized this.  Of course, this probably means that folks reading 2020 science have an above average grasp of physics (give yourselves a pat on the back).  But I was impressed, nevertheless!

5.  There were a fair number of people who took the poll who could be classed as science-engaged. These were the folks who didn’t hit the scientifically correct answer, but were nevertheless interested enough in the question to have a stab at an answer.  This is a crowd that really interests me – people who don’t necessarily have all the answers (and probably realize it), but are are willing to engage. Probably because on 99.99% of all subjects, this is where I sit.  Folks – you are my true peer group!

6.  A small number of people weren’t interested in the science, but interestingly were engaged enough indicate their lack of interest. This is where the poll really fell apart – if you weren’t interested in science in general or perpetual motion machines in particular, why on earth would you bother taking the poll in the first place!  The really interesting question here is whether the people who just “don’t care” really were a minority, or whether they simply weren’t engaged in this poll.  I suspect the latter, but I would love to test this in a better thought-out study.

7.  Public understanding of science probably exceeds public knowledge of science. This actually isn’t supported by the data here, but the poll does suggest it is a reasonable hypothesis for further testing (it probably has been already.  What do I know – I’m just a physicist!).  Let me explain:  The original idea behind the poll was C.P. Snow’s question about the second law of thermodynamics, and whether people could describe it.  My guess is that most people – including a fair chunk of the scientific community – couldn’t provide a good description of the law if asked out of the blue.  That’s because the questions tests knowledge rather than understanding.  Part of the thinking behind this poll was to see how people responded to a question that revealed how much they understood about a physical phenomenon, rather than how much they could recite.  Of course it fails because of all the problems highlighted above.  Nevertheless, it does suggest – however tentatively – that people might understand more about how the world works than questions probing their level of knowledge might suggest.

This is extremely important when it comes to science communication, education and engagement.  Scientists love to despair at how little “the public” knows.  But I suspect that this knowledge-based perspective suggests cultural divides that are less apparent from an understanding perspective.  And if divides – cultural or otherwise – are to be bridged, it helps to first understand where the real divides are before developing appropriate approaches to crossing them.

8.  The “Two Cultures” is a myth – at least within the readers of 2020 science. Actually, this would be a nonsensical thing to conclude, were it not for the 2020 science readers qualifier!  The data from this poll show a single science-aware culture with a long-tail extending into “don’t care” attitudes.  There is no indication of a strong counter-culture – which is a pity because I would really enjoy having a more diverse readership.  But the poll did not test a representative cross section of the community, and so has no relevance to the universe outside this website.

At the end of the day, this was – as I noted earlier -  just a teaser to get people engaged leading up to the 50th anniversary of C.P. Snow’s Two Cultures lecture.  It doesn’t tell you a lot about whether science-related cultural divides continue to hinder social progress.  But at the least it hopefully gets people thinking, and eager to participate in more robust discussions on science and cultural divides.

Finally, as a bonus I thought I would slip in the results of a counter-poll posted by Ruth Seeley:

Concerned that my poll was unduly biased towards science-types, she [rather tongue in cheek] posted a set of questions crafted to test the literary accumen of readers.  And I’m pleased to note that, just as most people taking the 2-second Two-Cultures poll were science-savvy, most people taking Ruth’s counter-poll had a pretty good idea what a semicolon is for.

What a smart bunch we are!

(And a final-final word: Dave Ferguson also posted a counter-poll that perhaps better expressed Snow’s contrast between science and the humanities.  I haven’t shown the data here as they are more complex to represent than those from mine and Ruth’s.  But if you want to see how readers coped with a question on Shakespeare’s works, check out the results here.  Im ashamed to say, I showed myself up as NOT being eligible for the humanities counter-culture!)

I’ve been intending writing about Ray Kurzweil and the technological singularity for some time now.  This isn’t that blog—it is a Friday evening after all, at the end of a long week.  But it is connected with some of the ideas behind the singularity.

Instead, I’m going to write about the “Fry Event Horizon”—a phenomenon of equal if not greater importance than the singularity, and due to hit us a good few years earlier—March 8 2010 to be precise (see the image below).  This is the story of British comedian and raconteur Stephen Fry, and how he is destined to change the world in three hundred and sixty seven days.

Click for larger image

The tale starts though with Twitter—a growing web-based vehicle for global social networking. For the uninitiated, Twitter provides an open framework for people across the world to communicate in short messages of 140 characters or less.  As a user, you can sign up to follow other “tweeps,” and they in turn can decide to follow your “tweets”—these are your “followers.”  Each time you post a 140 character pearl of wisdom, it is propagated around the world through this network…

If you want an insight into how people are beginning to use such a deceptively simple (simplistic even) framework, you could do far worse than check out Howard Lovy’s recent blog (although Tim Harper’s account is more entertaining!)

Stephen Fry was an early adopter of Twitter.  Following a meteoric rise in popularity, he currently has the fifth highest following of any user, beaten only by the likes of CNN News and Britney Spears.  According to www.twittercounter.com, Stephen Fry (or @stephenfry, to give him his correct Twitter ID), has more followers than Al Gore or the New York Times.  As of March 6th the figure stood at 267,336.

Think about this for a moment.  Every time @stephenfry sends out a 140 character (or less) message, 267,336 people receive it, absorb it, and are influenced in a small way by it. Then they pass it on to their followers, who in turn pass it down the chain.  The result is a web of influence that is as vast in its reach as it is simple in its conception.

But this isn’t what this story is about.

Playing around with the @stephenfry follower figures for a far more serious lecture I’m giving next week, I began to wonder what would happen if this exponential rise in followers continued.

So I plotted it out.

And, quite naturally, this led to me wondering when the number of people following @stephenfry on Twitter would coincide with the total number of people alive on Earth.

So I plotted that out as well.

It turns out that, following this simple analysis, the date that everyone in the world becomes a @stephenfry follower is not that far away: March 182010 to be precise.  Yes, March 8 2010 is is when the “Fry Event Horizon” will occur, and nothing will be the same again.

What will happen when we hit the “Fry Event Horizon?”  No-one knows – but I think we can expect society as we know it to cease, and be replaced by something even more bizarre.

Of course, there is just a small chance that my thinking is flawed—that I’ve blindly extrapolated an exponential trend without asking what the data actually mean…

The point here (as if you didn’t spot it) is that predicting future events from current data is a tricky business when the underlying causes for those data aren’t understood.  And when apparently exponential trends are used, the errors in the projections get mighty big mighty fast.

(As an aside here, any scientist worth their salt will tell you that the fastest way to make poor data look good is to plot them on logarithmic axes—just as the @stephenfry data are.  It’s the perfect way to hide awkward blips and deviations).

The dangers of exponential extrapolation may be obvious, but they always strike me afresh when examining the exponential trends and predictions associated with the technological singularity.  And even more so when people talk about “Moore’s Law” being predictive—it’s not!

Don’t get me wrong here—many things are changing faster than they have ever changed before, and this change will in turn impact society in significant and unpredictable ways.  And much of what proponents of the technological singularity highlight bears careful consideration.  But when looking at any prediction—especially when it’s based on an exponential trend—it’s worth asking what is driving the trend, what will alter it, and what the trend means in practice?

In the case of @stephenfry, much as I would love the “Fry Event Horizon” to be my ticket to a Nobel, it’s no more than a good example of bad data interpretation.  It’s fun, but it’s wrong.  @stephenfry won’t single-handedly lead society into an unpredictable future.  Because the reasons for people following him on Twitter—or not—are complex, and are influenced by many factors.  Not least, the fact that not everyone wants to follow him!

I’m sure there are many other examples of foolish data extrapolation.  I would have a search around the web and link to some, but it’s Friday evening, and I ought to at least pretend I have a life.  But please do post links in the comments below if you have anything juicy to share.

In the meantime, it was nice to think, even for a fraction of a second, that one man and his Twitter account could change the world.  And of course the irony is that rapidly evolving communication frameworks like Twitter probably will change the world in the long run—just not in the way we might predict!

It’s barely a month since Obama promised to “restore science to its rightful place” and already there has been widespread discussion over what this rightful place might be—spurred on in no small part by science and technology provisions in the recently passed stimulus bill.  Not surprisingly, the role science should play in 21st century society has been an important part of this discussion.  And one of the more insightful pieces has come from Harvard professor Sheila Jasanoff, writing for Seed Magazine…

I last wrote about Jasanoff’s work in December last year, anticipating a sharp change in science policy direction with the incoming administration.  “A “manifesto” for socially-relevant science and technology” revisits her 2003 paper “Technologies of Humility: Citizen participation in governing Science,” published in the journal Minerva (and downloadable here).  In this seminal paper, Jasanoff explored new approaches to decision-making that “seek to integrate the ‘can-do’ orientation of science and engineering with the ‘should-do’ questions of ethical and political analysis.”  Her work led to the concept of technologies of humility—“social technologies” developed around a framework that poses “the questions we should ask of almost every human enterprise that intends to alter society: what is the purpose; who will be hurt; who benefits; and how can we know?”

While Jasanoff’s work on technologies of humility was highly influential amongst social scientists—more so in Europe than the US it must be said—it gained very limited traction in US policy making.  This was undoubtedly due in part to political ideologies in vogue at the time.  But it probably wasn’t helped by the scholarly tone of the work, which would have appealed to academics more than policy makers.

However, six years on, and things have changed—sound science and technology policy are back in fashion, Jasanoff’s ideas have had time to mature, and this time round she’s writing for a broader audience in a more accessible format.

“The Essential Parallel Between Science and Democracy,” published February 17 on the Seed Magazine website, presents a clear vision of the interplay between science and society, and the need to understand and manage the relationship between the two if real progress is to be made.  It’s a challenging piece, and will no doubt rub more than a few readers up the wrong way.  Indeed, Jasanoff acknowledges that the questions she raises “will raise hackles and temperatures because they are both hard and pervasive.”  But she makes it clear that, now more than ever, tough and even uncomfortable questions will need to be grappled with if an appropriate ad productive relationship between science and society is to be reached.

Jasanoff starts by recognizing the pervasive and essential presence of science and technology in society, and applauds Obama’s commitment to science.  But she cautions,

“many have interpreted [the new administration’s] moves as welcome signs of Washington’s renewed respect for science, and they are right to do so.  But if understanding stops there, then we’re in trouble.  For the restorative steps Obama has taken vis-à-vis science are praiseworthy not so much because they respect science as because they respect the grand institutions of democracy.”

A problem here, Jasanoff suggests, is that the tendencies of modern science do not always converge with the aims of democracy.  And as a result,

“simply throwing more money at science, or even listening to the best-qualified scientists for policy advice, may not ensure that research and development are conducted for the public good.”

This is strong stuff, but important nevertheless.  Interestingly, Jasanoff is particularly concerned with how closely science has become linked to special economic and political interests.  This is somewhat complex ground, as high-level science policies in the US have favored investigator-drive “basic research” for some time, on the (outmoded) assumption that knowledge generation will naturally trickle down to innovation.  Yet the reality is that scientific progress is directed by various drivers and motivators—economic return being amongst them—and in the absence of a clear research and development strategy, these can seriously undermine both the generation of knowledge for its own sake, and the generation and use of strategically relevant knowledge.  And in this context, the conclusion Jasanoff draws is spot on—that we need a carefully balanced portfolio of public science, which combines curiosity-driven research with mission-driven studies.

Moving through the need to revise current intellectual property laws and practices and open up the public debate on science and society, Jasanoff goes on to challenge the role of science as “speaking truth to power” in society.  Instead, she suggests that

“rather than claiming the rarely attainable high ground of truth, scientific advice should own up to uncertainty and ignorance, exercise ethical as well as epistemic judgment, and ensure as far as possible that society’s needs drive advances in knowledge instead of presuming to lead society.”

This is classic Jasanoff, and reflects much of her thinking on science, society and humility.  It’s a bold statement of how we should be thinking about the relationship between science and society.  But it is also a challenging one.  Jasanoff continues,

“Such humility requires experts to sometimes bow to others who are less technically informed, but subordinating expert preference to democratic priorities may be a tough act.  The roots of resistance run deep.  They are grounded partly in the innocent, wishful, antiquated notion that science would be apolitical if only it could be left alone.”

But of course the irony here is that, as Jasanoff points out, science neither wants to or can be left out of the political process.  If you want proof of this, just check out the science lobby in Washington DC!  And as she goes on to argue, simplistic dichotomies between science and technology, and how they are used, have little place in the 21st century.  Instead, a rather more clear understanding of what it means to scientific and technological development to democratic ends is needed.

The way forward, argues Jasanoff, is through a “Second Enlightenment”

“Finding the rightful place for science … demands a Second Enlightenment.  This time, we do not need to overthrow the false gods of superstition or the self-serving autocracies that thrive by creating their own reality.  This time, like the fox of Greek philosophy, we already know a great many things about how to examine life, harness energy, measure society, create incentives, and use statistical evidence to support rational public decisions. Nor should we hesitate to learn more.  But do we, like the hedgehog, also know the big things?  What makes for human happiness?  Which manipulations of nature are we too ignorant of to safely undertake?  When might attempts to enhance human capabilities bump against deeply held beliefs about the value of being human?”

The Second Enlightenment must be, according to Jasanoff, the enlightenment of modesty; based on the skeptical, questioning virtues of an experimental turn of mind, and accepting that truth is provisional, that questioning of experts should be encouraged, and that steps forward may need corrective steps back.

Here, she re-articulates the ideas behind the notion of technologies of humility, but in a manner that is much more accessible and compelling than in the 2003 paper.

Jasanoff’s Seed essay is an important contribution to the debate on how the relationship between science and society needs to be rethought and developed.  It is challenging.  It is controversial.  And I’m sure many readers will disagree with parts of it at least.  But it is insightful, and raises ideas that many will find attractive.

More importantly, it puts us on a route to integrating science into society in a way that will benefit all in the long turn.  Whether we end up with a Second Enlightenment or not, Jasanoff’s ideas should be listened to carefully and taken seriously.

(And just in case you are wondering what all this has to do with foxes and hedgehogs, you can reach intermediate enlightenment here ☺)

I’ve been sitting here for over half an hour, trying to work out how to start this blog in an engaging and witty way, but have failed miserably—it’s been a long day!  Instead, let me come straight to the point, because it’s quite a simple one—please read Sir Robert Winston’s article “Why turning out brilliant scientists isn’t enough” in this week’s New Scientist.  It’s one of the clearest and most compelling commentaries on the need for scientists to listen to and engage with members of the public that I have read for some time.

OK, I guess I should say a little more—that is after all a rather terse opening paragraph!

As anyone living in the UK will tell you, Sir Robert is a highly regarded popularizer of science. .. Professor of science and society and emeritus professor of fertility studies at Imperial College London, he has a rare ability to convey complex ideas with clarity and enthusiasm.  But he also understands that scientists need to learn to listen to people—to enter a two-way dialogue with members of society who are impacted by their work.

Sir Robert notes early on in the New Scientist article that prior to an influential House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology enquiry in 1999, “many believed that for people to trust more in the value of science, it would be enough for scientists simply to educate the public.”  This is the so-called deficit model—the idea that the more you educate people, the more likely they are to make reasonable decisions—defined rather loosely as the same decisions you would make!

This is now generally recognized as being a bad model—people make decisions based on a range of values, and knowledge plays only a part in the process.  Which is why Sir Robert points out that “These days it is widely understood that fostering public engagement – rather than just mere public understanding – is of key importance.”

Sadly, I’m not convinced that this message has reached everyone that needs to hear it, which is why this article is a must-read for anyone working in science or science policy.

Sir Robert writes,

“Most scientific research in the UK is paid for by the taxpayer, and when technologies have a negative impact the consequences can be profound for everyone. The scientific knowledge we pursue is public property. We scientists have a duty not merely to tell people what we are doing (a skill not taught as well as it should be in most universities), but also to listen to people’s fears and hopes and respond to them, even when we feel their antagonism to be ill-founded. Being open in this way has been shown to have real advantages.”

In particular, he cites the ScienceWise project, set up by Kathy Sykes at the University of Bristol in the UK.

The article continues,

“A two-way dialogue – communication in the fullest sense – seems more likely than a one-way lecture to lead to a maturing of views and resolution of conflict. It can help scientists to accept that some public concerns may be justified, and that recognising them can improve their science; and it makes the public aware of the good intentions of scientists. If we show that we care about the ethical implications of our work, people are likely to be more sympathetic.”

Richard Jones’ recent article on nanotechnology, science and public engagement in the UK supports Sir Robert’s assertion that dialogue is a much more constructive and valuable process than well-based consultations and opinion-polls (and, I might add, public lectures).

Unfortunately, there are still pockets of intellectual elitism within science, and approaches to “public engagement” that smack of hubris rather than humility.  I’m constantly astounded by how many well-meaning scientists still believe that public engagement is just about communicating their knowledge to people, without that essential step of listening and reponding.  I’ve heard fellow scientists say that their work is too complex for people to understand.  This is probably true in many cases. Yet most people are quite capable of understanding the implications of science and technology in their lives, even if they struggle with understanding the science and technology itself.  And lets be honest, an expert is only an expert in their own narrow field—outside of it, they tend to be as dumb as the rest of us!

Practicing science is a privilege.  As scientists we are accountable to the society that supports us.  And we have an obligation to listen to and work with the people whom our work affects, as well as translating the science in ways that is accessible, informative and enriching.

But to achieve this more integrated relationship between science and society will take some work.  As Sir Robert’s points out, “turning out brilliant scientists isn’t enough.” We also need to turn out brilliant scientists who can engage effectively with others.

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Update, Feb 6 2009. Having re-read the original post, I’ve added in a few very minor editorial corrections.  I also thought it worth linking to the following recent posts that address the role of science in society:

A “manifesto” for socially-relevant science and technology (Dec 24 2008)
Nanotechnology, science and public engagement—lessons from the UK (Jan 13 2009)
Revisiting the Civic Scientist (Feb 1 2009)

]]> http://2020science.org/2009/02/05/thank-goodness-for-sir-robert/feed/ 4 http://2020science.org/2009/02/01/revisiting-the-civic-scientist/ http://2020science.org/2009/02/01/revisiting-the-civic-scientist/#comments Sun, 01 Feb 2009 15:27:43 +0000 Andrew Maynard http://2020science.org/?p=826

Reading through the various science and technology offerings on the web this morning, I was struck by a conversation between Houston Chronicle reporter Eric Berger and Neal Lane, former National Science Foundation director and science advisor to President Clinton.  Not surprisingly, towards the top of the conversation is President Obama’s commitment to “restore science to its rightful place” and what this might mean.  But before this, Neal raises something that he has championed for many years now, and one that I suspect is more than ready for a new lease of life as science and policy come together under the new administration to tackle a tough portfolio of challenges—the concept of the civic scientist.

Civic scientists—according to Lane—are those scientists and engineers who “step beyond their campuses, laboratories, and institutes and into the center of their communities to engage in active dialogue with their fellow citizens.”  This is more than science communication; it’s a two-way dialogue between people who generate knowledge, and people are impacted by that knowledge—whether in the decisions they make, or the decisions other make.

Although it’s fashionable to talk about science communication these days—witness the just-launched “Science: So what? So everything” campaign in the UK—the idea of the civic scientist as originally conceived has languished somewhat in recent years… Maybe bad memories of “civics” at school are the problem.  Maybe the political climate of the past eight years hasn’t favored a more integrated perspective of science in society.  Or maybe scientists just need a little more encouragement to place their work in a social context.  Whatever the reason, the idea of scientists engaging on broader social issues isn’t as widely lauded as is perhaps should be.

As the new Obama administration works out what science’s rightful place is, and governments around the world grapple with increasingly complex global challenges—climate change, energy, water, food, poverty, equity between developed and developing nations, and a whole host of other issues—it is critical that science, technology and engineering are an integral part of the solutions.  But the old model of a one-way flow of information from science to society will not—cannot—work.  Instead, we need something far closer to Lane’s ideas on science and social responsibility.

In 1999, Neal Lane published “The Civic Scientist and Science Policy” in the AAAS Science and Technology Policy Yearbook.  In it, he clearly articulates why a new generation of “civic scientists” is necessary—not just in policy circles, but throughout society.  This, to my mind, should be required reading for anyone involved in scientific research.

Speaking to research scientists and engineers, Lane notes that

“Although scientist and nonscientist alike can marvel at the power of our knowledge in science and technology, it is the intersection of this knowledge with the goals and needs of society that is our larger responsibility. Understanding this crossroads of knowledge and needs and then acting on behalf of society will present our most challenging task.”

It is the civic scientist, Lane contents, who will be most effective at this intersection.  And to clarify this role, he asks

“Do I mean that we go out and teach science to shopkeepers, lawyers, consultants, and construction workers? Not entirely. To engage in dialogue is to listen as well as to speak. While there is great need for the public to have a better understanding of science, and we should promote this in every way possible, there is as great a need for scientists to have a better understanding of the public.”

Let me just repeat that last bit because I think it’s important, reminding you that this is a distinguished scientist writing: “there is as great a need for scientists to have a better understanding of the public.”

How many times do scientists feel that their role is to lecture, not to listen?  Yet clearly there is a need for a two-way dialogue if science is to be a part of addressing social challenges.

Developing these ideas, Lane writes:

“We are all aware that the advancement of civilization has, in many respects, been driven by the scientific and technological research of each succeeding generation. We so frequently hear and use the phrase “science and society” that perhaps it has become a cliché. I think we would agree that this phrase has meant that science has “a relationship with” or “a role in” society. Within this context, the world scientific community has unraveled many of the secrets of nature, and of its many life forms.

“We would agree that science is a force absolutely fundamental to our well-being and, in fact, survival. Science and society are interdependent. We are only slowly coming to recognize that science and engineering must be seriously concerned with the many and great unsolved problems of humankind.

“I have frequently pointed out that we are able to do increasingly outstanding research at the same time that many societal disparities and problems are also increasing. Although the long-held professional goals of teaching and research are noble and significant, perhaps they are not enough. Nor is it sufficient for those of us who have chosen public service on behalf of science and engineering to simply keep the research enterprise healthy and balanced, as vitally important as that is. A further goal for all of us must be to understand the physical, moral, and social problems that hold our civilization in the grip of numerous contradictions.”

There follows an exploration of the role science has within society.  In particular, Lane highlights three challenges that loomed large ten years ago:

“We know that energy, environment, and economics form the triumviral challenge of the coming century; they are inextricably wedded. If we are able to develop such new technical capabilities, they will, by their very nature, create cultural changes in energy use, economic development, and environmental protection. Developing such technical capabilities with their economic potential will require that our researchers continue to push back the frontiers of virtually every field of science and technology.”

Ten years on, and these same challenges are looming ever larger.

Lane concludes

“As we think about creating a complex global problem-solving agenda, we must first acknowledge that it is surely the greatest challenge the world scientific and engineering community could be asked to undertake. It will engage all fields from physics to psychology, from economics to biology, from electrical engineering to sociology. And in the long run it will require more than science and engineering. Policymakers will be crucial to any and all solutions.

“Science and technology and public policy empower each other’s goals. In contemporary society, neither could be appropriately effective without being a partner-participant with the other.

“Scientists and engineers cannot be expected to solve the vast societal problems from within their own professional community. On the other hand, few, if any, of these problems could be solved without the science community’s knowledge and skill base as a foundation. Intelligent public policy helps lead us toward the cultural and institutional change required to meet these needs. Only with a combination of the two can we hope to succeed.

“We could, with some legitimacy, declare the task too great, too complex, and thus too impossible. Many of us might be inclined to view these real-world dynamic systems as chaotic to a large power, without any “attractors” (strange or otherwise). There were many who said the same about the concept of the United Nations. But there were some who said this will not be easy, but we cannot risk not trying.

“The 21st century presents daunting challenges and extraordinary opportunities. If we accept those challenges and recognize those opportunities we will not only advance the frontiers of science but also address the great unsolved problems of humanity.

In the final analysis, this larger engagement does not mean a focused or fixed research agenda. It does mean openness to new research challenges and unprecedented partnerships among diverse fields and interests. It does mean a commitment to effective communication of knowledge, and connections between discovery and the use of new knowledge in service to society. And it especially means placing a high priority on education and learning for all youngsters wherever they begin their lives.”

The only things of substance that have changed between when Neal Lane wrote this in 1999 and now are the scale and magnitude of the challenges we face nationally and globally.  In this context, perhaps it’s time to revisit his idea of the civic scientist, and put renewed effort into developing a generation of scientists, engineers and technologists who understand how to use their skills in the service of society.

As Barack Obama takes the oath and is inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States, many are anticipating a new era of socially relevant science and technology.  Having run one of the most technologically savvy campaigns in recent times—possibly ever—Obama’s transition teams continued to break new ground in using technology up open up the process of government.  And throughout the campaign and transition, there has been an emphasis on scientific integrity, and using science and technology in the service of society.

The trick is going to be to maintain this momentum in the new administration.  Obama has surrounded himself with a top-notch group of science and technology advisors, and this, combined with a desire to get science and technology back on track, bodes well for the new Presidency.  As BBC News reported this morning, scientists are optimistic that Obama has what it takes to reposition science and technology within government and society.  And yesterday’s USA Today noted that “Scientists are hopeful that Obama, who has called for increased research spending, will bring a new dawn [to science].”

Of course, realizing the promise of a new scientific dawn will not be easy… Where will the money come from?  What should the top priorities be?  Will robust long-term science strategies be established?  How will citizens be effectively engaged in the science and technology enterprise?

The USA Today piece explores some of these concerns (and does it well), and in the weeks and months to come, these and other issues will be aired more fully as the euphoria of Obama’s election dies down and reality sets.

But today, it’s time to celebrate the inauguration of a new president who has repeatedly emphasized the importance of science and technology for everyone.

On that note, rather than continuing to pompously pontificate on science and technology in the new administration, I’m going to sit back and enjoy the historic events of the day.

And in the spirit of a social media-savvy [soon not to be] president-elect, I will be eschewing the crowds of DC, and following the inauguration on the web.  You can follow 2020science and others on Twitter as the day proceeds—just use the tag #inaug09.

Have a great inauguration day!

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A note on the image.

I’ve been looking for an excuse to use the Nanobama image since it hit the headlines some weeks back.  The image, made by John Hart, Sameh Tawfick, Michael De Volder, and Will Walker, was constructed from an etched “forest” of carbon nanotubes.  Given the science and technology focus of the new administration, this seemed a great reminder of the potential of emerging technologies, and the challenges of translating that potential into safe and successful solutions to real issues.

Public engagement was a key feature in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, and has been front and foremost in the transition between the old administration and the new.  You only have to check out change.gov to see how ideas are evolving on soliciting and evaluating opinions from a broad swath of the population.  The latest is the “Citizens Briefing Book”—top-rated ideas from everyday people, to be delivered to Obama after he is sworn in.

This emphasis on open government, citizen engagement, and the use of enabling web-based technology, is expected to spill over to the new administration big-time.  And as it does, the public discourse will inevitably encompass science and technology—it already has on the incoming administration’s website.  But this raises serious questions:  How do you pull people from all walks of life into conversations about science and technology—which are often complex—and how do you empower them to participate in making effective and influential decisions?

These are questions that have been grappled with in the US for some time—not least in the area of nanotechnology.  The 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act of 2003 for instance had specific provisions

“for public input and outreach to be integrated into the [National Nanotechnology] Program by the convening of regular and ongoing public discussions, through mechanisms such as citizens’ panels, consensus conferences, and educational events, as appropriate.”

This resulted in two academic Centers for Nanotechnology and Society being established—one at Arizona State University and another at the University of California Santa Barbara.  But apart from the research conducted by these centers, there has been little in the way of true public engagement on nanotechnology in the US, in terms of enabling citizens to enter a two-way dialogue with decision-makers.

Which is why I was particularly interested to read Richard Jones’ account of the UK experience, just posted on his blog Soft Machines.

Richard’s blog is a must-read for anyone even remotely interested in public engagement on science, and to make sure you do read it, I’m not going to give away much here. Needless to say, Richard clearly outlines the UK response to the 2004 Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering’s recommendation that

“a constructive and proactive debate about the future of nanotechnologies should be undertaken now – at a stage when it can inform key decisions about their development and before deeply entrenched or polarised positions appear.”

But it is his assessment of a specific exercise in connecting public engagement to science policy, and the broader implications of this experience, that really grabs the attention.

Richard writes:

“The big question to be asked about any public engagement exercise is “what difference has it made” – has there been any impact on policy? For this to take place there needs to be careful choice of the subject for the public engagement, as well as commitment and capacity on behalf of the sponsoring body or agency to use the results in a constructive way. A recent example from the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council offers an illuminating case study. Here, a public dialogue on the potential applications of nanotechnology to medicine and healthcare was explicitly coupled to a decision about where to target a research funding initiative, providing valuable insights that had a significant impact on the decision.”

Please read the account of this exercise in full on Soft Machines—it is worth the few minutes it takes.  The bottom line is that engaging with citizens, together with input from experts, led to a more informed (and reading between the lines, socially relevant) call for research proposals in this instance.

From this point, Richard goes on to discuss the pros and cons of public engagement on science policy in a broader framework.  Writing in the context of British science, he notes

“The current interest in public engagement takes place at a time when the science policy landscape is undergoing larger changes, both in the UK and elsewhere in the world. We are seeing considerable pressure from governments for publicly funded science to deliver clearer economic and societal benefits. There is a growing emphasis on goal-oriented, intrinsically interdisciplinary science, with an agenda set by a societal and economic context rather than by an academic discipline.”

This sounds remarkably close to the message emerging from the incoming Obama administration, where science and technology in the service of society are strong themes.

Richard also emphasizes that the linear model of science—so beloved by US policy makers following in the footsteps of Vannevar Bush—“is widely recognised to be simplistic at best, neglecting the many feedbacks and hybridisations at every stage of this process.”  Instead, he notes the growing emphasis on “mode II knowledge production” … “goal-oriented, intrinsically interdisciplinary science, with an agenda set by a societal and economic context rather than by an academic discipline.”

However, this new approach to science agenda-setting requires input from the people who will be affected by decisions that are made—citizens, as well as experts.  The challenge is to develop and enact ways of achieving this that are socially responsive and tap into the “wisdom of the crowd”—rather than the “madness of the mob.”

Richard suggests that the UK experiences with nanotechnology have generally been positive, and lay the beginnings of a foundation for fruitful public engagement on science.  He concludes

“Many of the scientists who have been involved with public engagement, however, have reported that the experience is very positive. In addition to being reminded of the generally high standing of scientists and the scientific enterprise in our society, they are prompted to re-examine unspoken assumptions and clarify their aims and objectives. There are strong arguments that public deliberation and interaction can lead to more robust science policy, particularly in areas that are intrinsically interdisciplinary and explicitly coupled to meeting societal goals. What will be interesting to consider as more experience is gained is whether embedding public engagement more closely in the scientific process actually helps to produce better science.”

From my own experiences, I couldn’t agree more.  But so far, there has been little evidence of such innovative approaches being employed to develop the science and technology agenda in the US.  However with a new administration, powerful new networking tools, and a renewed impetus for socially relevant science and technology, there is every hope that public engagement might begin to take the place it deserves in the science and technology decision-making process.

After all, why should the UK have all the best ideas?

Here’s a bit of trivia to brighten your day:  Between 2000 and 2007, Chinese scientists published roughly one nanotoxicology paper for every ten million people in the country.  In contrast, US scientists published twenty-five nanotoxicology papers for every ten million citizens.

I know this because I have just read a fascinating assessment of nanotoxicology publications by Barbara Harthorn and colleagues at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

You should read it.

Except that you can’t—unless you subscribe to the Journal of Nanoparticle Research, or work somewhere that does.  Or you are willing to fork out $34.00 for the paper.

Since leaving the lab nearly four years ago, my empathy with those without ready access to the scientific literature has grown.  With the exception of a pitifully small handful of publications I subscribe to, I now have to beg copies of interesting-looking papers from better-connected colleagues.  And I’m not alone in this… A couple of years back, science writer and MD Ben Goldacre wrote

“Between medical jobs with academic affiliations I’ve had to hustle logins from friends. There are times when I’ve had to use the London Underground as a way of transporting information into my brain instead of the internet. Even in the 20th century this would have been ridiculous.”

I manage—I have enough friends who can get hold of relevant papers.  And could always work something out with a willing research institution if the going got really tough.  But what about others who want a first-hand account of what is going on in science and technology—from the curious citizen to the budding scientist?  There’s this ideal that scientific knowledge should be available to everyone—a “Scientific Commons.”  Yet most people are forced to rely on second hand accounts of breakthroughs, filtered through institutional press offices and journalists.

This is fine for those without the time or interest to check the facts for themselves.  But there are plenty of people who would benefit tremendously from access to the original publications.

In fact, I’m not sure that true integration of science within society can ever happen while access to information is restricted to an elite few.  And while much published research will be beyond the ken of many, this should never be an excuse to deny access.

At this point you may be wondering what lit my fuse and led to this tirade.  Being completely honest here, I was a little tetchy at having to request a copy of the Journal of Nanoparticle Research paper from co-author Barbara Harthorn, rather than enjoy the instant gratification of direct internet access (and I must confess here: I think I have electronic access to this journal, although if I have, the subscription details are buried amongst a billion other on-line usernames and passwords—but, that’s another issue for another day).

What really set me off though was this passage in the paper:

‘These initial results [of the nanotoxicology literature survey] have significant implications for toxicologists, regulators and social scientists studying nanotechnology and society.  The diffuseness of the scholarly literature may challenge the abilities of the public and civil society to stay informed about the toxicological implications of nanomaterials, as keeping up to date with the literature requires subscriptions to a proprietary database, and not just access to a single or a few journals.” (Emphasis added)

How ironic that most people will not have direct access to a paper that flags this as a problem!

Fortunately, things are changing.  The number of open access journals is increasing—The Public Library of Science (PLOS, co-founded by Harold Varmus—one of Barack Obama’s principle science advisors) manages a number of such journals, as does Biomed Central.  And initiatives such as “Scientific Commons” are trying their best to increase the number of open access publications available on the web.

Another welcome move is open access to older papers.  Publications from research funded by the US National Institutes of Health are now required to be made publicly available on PubMed no later than 12 months after the date of publication.  Some journals are following suite by making older papers publicly accessible—the Journal Aerosol Science and Technology is a good example.  And some universities are beginning to embrace the open access movement—In 2008, Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences adopted a policy requiring faculty members to allow the university to make their scholarly articles available free online. (although after a quick search while writing this blog, I couldn’t find anything yet on the University website).

Yet none of this helps the casual reader who wants to check the facts behind the story in the latest edition of New York Times, or the up-to-the-minute web-chatter.  And to be honest, even the open access stuff is pretty hard to find if you don’t know where to look.

Change will not be easy.  The established scientific publishers have supported peer review science for decades—centuries even in some cases—so as well as a mountain of institutional inertia to overcome, there is also something of a debt of gratitude within the academic community that comes into play.  Yet old-style publishing where the reader pays for the privilege of access is becoming increasingly untenable.  There is a growing non-academic population clamoring for access to new information.  And at the same time paradigm-shifting changes in information technology are undermining conventional publishing practices at an alarming rate.  The combination of the two suggests that scientific publishers will eventually need to re-invent themselves if they want to survive.

One way forward is to shift the cost of publishing from the reader to the writer (or the funding body).  It’s seems a good model, and one that is working for the likes of PLOS and Biomed Central—if you want your work to have an impact, you pay to have it published.  It means that the work is open access by default.  And with on-line publishing, there is no reason why publication fees should be particularly high.

But in the meantime, there are an awful lot of people out there who are still denied access to scientific information.  And at a time when science and technology are increasingly important for a smooth running society, that cannot be good.

______________________________

Postscript

I have to fess up—this is the second paper in a row of Barbara Harthorn’s that I have NOT written about (the first being the paper she recently co-authored with Nick Pidgeon in Nature Nanotechnology).  Sorry Barbara!

But now I have a dilemma—do I play along with the system and provide an incomplete (and probably inadequate) summary of a paper most people could understand in the original?  Or do I stick to my principles and eschew the summary?

Tough one!

While I think about it, those with access to the journal, can read the paper here:

Ostrowski, A. D., Martin, T., Conti, J., Hurt, I. and Harthorn, B. H. (2009). Nanotoxicology: characterizing the scientific literature, 2000–2007. J. Nanopart. Res. DOI:10.1007/s11051-008-9579-5.

And for those of you without full access… well, at least you can read the abstract.

In 2003, Harvard University’s Sheila Jasanoff wrote about what she termed “Technologies of Humility.” Recognizing the growing disconnect between technological progress and its effective governance, Jasanoff explored new approaches to decision-making that “seek to integrate the ‘can-do’ orientation of science and engineering with the ‘should-do’ questions of ethical and political analysis.”  Five years on, her (still radical) ideas resonate deeply with the science and technology ambitions of the incoming Obama administration.

Sitting down this morning, I had intended to write about three papers recently published on-line in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.  The papers (by Kahan et al., Pidgeon et al. and Sheufele et al.)—which were widely reported on a few weeks back—consider factors influencing “public” responses to nanotechnology, and challenge long-held beliefs that knowledge leads to acceptance.

However, I became distracted!  Searching for an original frame for these studies, I returned to Jasanoff’s 2003 paper “Technologies of Humility: Citizen participation in governing Science,” published in the journal Minerva (Minerva 41:223-244).  Reading it, I was struck afresh by how germane Jasanoff’s ideas are, how completely they seemed to have been ignored in US policy making, and how important they are to the science and technology agenda of the incoming Obama administration.

Rather than read a re-hash from me of what is an eloquently written and very accessible paper, I would strongly recommend you pour yourself a glass of good wine (a cup of coffee or fine tea will do just as well), carve out some quality time, and read the original—which is downloadable from here [PDF, 120 KB].  It is after all the holiday season, and what better than a good read to fill the long hours before the grind of work begins once again!

But just in case you are in a hurry and care to put up with my crude and flawed overview, here you are:

Jasanoff starts out:

“Long before the terrorist atrocities of 11 September 2001 in New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania, the anthrax attacks through the US mail, and the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, signs were mounting that America’s ability to create and operate vast technological systems had outrun her capacity for prediction and control.”

Looking back over 20 years of “ ‘normal accidents’, which were strung like dark beads through the latter years of the twentieth century and beyond” Jasanoff notes that

“Scientific and technical advances bring unquestioned benefits, but they also generate new uncertainties and failures, with the result that doubt continually undermines knowledge, and unforeseen consequences confound faith in progress.”

This opens up a discussion on risk, which Jasanoff argues, is not “a matter of simple probabilities, to be rationally calculated by experts and avoided in accordance with the cold arithmetic of cost-benefit analysis,” but rather is part of the human condition, and “woven into the very fabric of progress.”

“Critically important questions of risk management cannot be addressed by technical experts with conventional tools of prediction. Such questions determine not only whether we will get sick or die, and under what conditions, but also who will be affected and how we should live with uncertainty and ignorance. Is it sufficient, for instance, to assess technology’s consequences, or must we also seek to evaluate its aims? How should we act when the values of scientific inquiry appear to conflict with other fundamental social values? Has our ability to innovate in some areas run unacceptably ahead of our powers of control? Will some of our most revolutionary technologies increase inequality, promote violence, threaten cultures, or harm the environment? And are our institutions, whether national or supranational, up to the task of governing our dizzying technological capabilities?”

According to Jasanoff, effective technology management needs to go far beyond the “speaking truth to power” paradigm that still seems to link knowledge to power.  And in particular, greater accountability in the production and use of scientific knowledge is essential.

“Accountability in one or another form is increasingly seen as an independent criterion for evaluating scientific research and its technological applications, supplementing more traditional concerns with safety, efficacy, and economic efficiency.”

But how can new approaches to establishing and ensuring accountability be developed within the constrains of existing ways of doing business?  Jasanoff argued back in 2003 that the time was ripe for seriously re-evaluating existing models and approaches.  And at the close of 2008, her recommendations are all the more pertinent for a lack of enlightened progress in the intervening years.

From this starting point, Jasanoff develops the idea of “technologies of humility”—“social technologies” developed around a framework that poses “the questions we should ask of almost every human enterprise that intends to alter society: what is the purpose; who will be hurt; who benefits; and how can we know?”  These are presented as a counter-balance to what she refers to as the modern reliance on “technologies of hubris”—a command and control approach to science and technology that seeks to clear the way for science-driven innovation.  Instead, Jasanoff reasons that

“there is a need for ‘technologies of humility’ to complement the predictive approaches: to make apparent the possibility of unforeseen consequences; to make explicit the normative that lurks within the technical; and to acknowledge from the start the need for plural viewpoints and collective learning.”

In developing her ideas, Jasanoff highlights problems that continue to plague the sustainable development of emerging technologies—especially when it comes to addressing and managing potential risks.  In discussing the limitations of conventional peer review in the context of oversight and risk management, she notes that a spate of highly-publicized cases of alleged fraud in science in the 1980’s showed that

“regulatory science, produced to support governmental efforts to guard against risk, was fundamentally different from research driven by scientists’ collective curiosity.”

This is a lesson that the US government still seems to be struggling with—at least when it comes to nanotechnology—if the recent report from the National Academies of Science is anything to go by.

The issue of peer-review opens up the question of how science should be evaluated within different contexts.  Jasanoff remarks that, as new approaches to knowledge production are developed, so new ways of assessing quality are needed.

“Besides old questions about the intellectual merits of their work, scientists are being asked to answer questions about marketability, and the capacity of science to promote harmony and welfare.”

This is challenging the old way of doing things, and raising the need for new ways of ensuring socially responsive and responsible science and technology.  As Jasanoff points out, “science that draws strength from it’s socially-detached position is too frail to meet the pressures put upon it by modern society.”

The overarching message here—and Jasanoff delves deeper into the problems and potential solutions than these notes reflect—is that new approaches are needed to partnering with society in the science and technology enterprise.  And she reflects that

“while national governments are scrambling to create new participatory forms, there are signs that such changes may reach neither far enough nor deeply enough to satisfy the citizens of a globalizing world.”

Sobering words that are, if anything, more relevant now than they were five years ago.

But what is the solution?  Jasanoff develops four focal points for socially relevant and responsible science and technology—framing, vulnerability, distribution and learning.  These are packed terms, and you really need to read the paper to understand better what she is proposing.  But here are some pointers:

Framing: The quality of solutions to social problems depends on the way they are framed.  Get the framing wrong, and the solutions suffer.  Jasanoff argues that frame analysis—how you define and approach a problem—is a critically important yet neglected tool for policy-making, which would benefit from greater public input.

Vulnerability: Population-based approaches to risk assessment and management typically overlook the condition and perspectives of individuals, and in doing so underplay the importance of various socio-economic factors.  Jasanoff notes that through participation in the analysis of their own vulnerability, ordinary citizens may regain their status as active subjects, rather than remain objects in yet another expert discourse.

Distribution: Issues here stem from “end-of pipe” approaches to legitimizing science and technology advances, and disconnects between groups that benefit from advances, and those that pay for them.  Jasanoff suggests that sustained interactions between decision-makers, experts and citizens, starting at the upstream end of research and development, could yield significant dividends in exposing the distributive implications of innovation.

Learning: There’s a tendency within the science and technology community to think that increased learning reduces divergence in opinions—as if there is one true “answer,” and more learning is the means to discovering it (see Kahan el al. in particular on this).  But as Jasanoff points out, experience is subject to many interpretations—as much in policy-making as in literary or historical analysis.  In other words, while the science might be clear, the decisions it leads to rarely are.  Jasanoff recommends that new avenues be designed through which societies can collectively reflect on the ambiguity of their experiences, and assess the strengths and weaknesses of alternative explanations.

Looking through Jasanoff’s recommendations, her emphasis on citizen participation in governing science and technology comes to the fore.  It is clear—from her perspective—that old-style command and control models of science and technology innovation no longer work, and that change is needed.

Sadly, in the US at least, we seem no closer to making progress than we were five years ago.  The recent National Academies report on the US government’s nanotechnology risk-research strategy indicated that, despite huge efforts to get things right within the federal government, outmoded paradigms and bureaucratic constraints undermined the whole process.  And movement on citizen participation in governing nanotechnology is near non-existent—despite clear calls for progress to be made in the 2003 Twenty First Century nanotechnology R&D Act.

And nanotechnology provides just one example—emerging technologies like synthetic biology, and the convergence between nanotech, biotech and information tech, are poised to stress the system to a far greater extent than nanotechnology alone has so far done.  How then will our “technologies of hubris” cope?

The solution is to rethink the interface—or contract if you like—between science and society.  When better to start this process of rethinking than with a fresh new science and technology-focused administration.  And where better to start with Jasanoff’s technologies of humility.

And those three papers that started this rather side-tracked discussion?  I must beg Dan, Dietram and Nick’s forgiveness because, excellent and relevant as their papers are, I have run out of space!

Instead, I would direct you to Richard Jones’ excellent Nature editorial on the three papers, together with his blog at Soft Machines.  Or if you prefer a raunchier style of commentary, check out Tim Harpur’s thoughts at TNTlog.

And as you read both the papers and the commentaries, think about what might need to change for these insights to lead to more socially integrated science and technology development.

____________

Endnotes

The three Nature Nanotechnology papers I woefully neglected to comment on are:

Pidgeon, N., Harthorn, B. H., Bryant, K. and Rogers-Hayden, T. (2008). Deliberating the risks of nanotechnologies for energy and health applications in the United States and United Kingdom. Nature Nanotechnology DOI: 10.1038/NNANO.2008.362.

Scheufele, D. A., Corley, E. A., Shih, T.-J., Dalrymple, K. E. and Shirley S. Ho, S. S. (2008). Religious beliefs and public attitudes toward nanotechnology in Europe and the United States. Nature Nanotechnology DOI: 10.1038/NNANO.2008.361.

Kahan, D. M., Braman, D., Slovic, P., Gastil, J. and Cohen, G. (2008). Cultural cognition of the risks and benefits of nanotechnology. Nature Nanotechnology DOI: 10.1038/NNANO.2008.341.

Sheila Jasanoff’s 2003 paper is:

Jasanoff, S. (2003). Technologies of humility: Citizen participation in governing science. Minerva 41:223-244. DOI: 10.1023/A:1025557512320

]]> http://2020science.org/2008/12/24/a-manifesto-for-socially-relevant-science-and-technology/feed/ 8 http://2020science.org/2008/11/05/five-good-books/ http://2020science.org/2008/11/05/five-good-books/#comments Wed, 05 Nov 2008 04:47:24 +0000 Andrew Maynard http://2020science.wordpress.com/?p=407

Obama and science – Essential bed-time reading for the next Administration

Finally, the campaigning is over, everyone knows more about fruit flies than they ever wanted to (thank you Sarah Palin), and on an historic day America has “voted for change.”  As the country looks forward to a radical change in leadership, the coming weeks are going to be wall-to-wall analysis of what an Obama administration will mean for everything from the economy to energy.  And 2020science.org will be there in the thick of things.  But after a heavy night of vote-watching, I thought something a little lighter was in order.

So here as an antidote to election fatigue are five good books every “convalescing campaigner” should have by their bedside as they work on regaining their strength.  And as you might expect, I’ve thrown in a subtle but nevertheless significant emphasis on good science policy.

But first some explaining is in order, because I suspect that the list below will raise more than a few eyebrows.

Much as I love science and technology, I’m savvy enough I hope to realize that not everyone has my passion for the subject.  In fact, when it comes to making big decisions that affect millions of people, I’m not sure that an obsession with scientific minutiae is necessary or even helpful—too many distractions to obscure the big picture.  (And there are always plenty of experts that can be tapped into when necessary with the right networks in place).

But I do think that an understanding of what science is, how it works, and how it can be used, is essential to good policy making.

Bottom line: It probably isn’t a good idea to try and turn the President of the United States into a scientist.  But it does make sense to ensure he has a good feel for how science (and technology) can be used to strengthen the country and change people’s lives.

And so my bed-time book list aims to enlighten the reader on how to use science wisely in a complex society, rather than educate them on the nuts and bolts of scientific knowledge.

Without further ado therefore, and in reverse order of preference, we have:

A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson. OK, so Bryson goes into the minutiae occasionally, but this is a book that succeeds where many fail in communicating what science is and why it is important—probably because it was written by someone who isn’t actually a scientist!  A close contender for this spot was Natalie Angier’s The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science.  Another great book, but while Bryson provides a rather homely thanksgiving dinner of a book, Angier’s Canon is more like the after-dinner truffles—exceedingly good, but best in small amounts!

The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, by Francis Collins.  Wherever you are on the God-scale, this book has one overarching message—scientific evidence is not a matter of belief.  An important message for anyone making big decisions who doesn’t want to really mess-up.

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. Because all work and no play makes anyone rather dull—no science here, but a reminder that there’s more to a functional social life than being a geek!  And if Jane Austen’s original is too much to stomach, there is always Helen Fielding’s re-write in the form of Bridget Jones’ Diary.

Bad Science, by Ben Goldacre. A searing exposé of the dangers of misrepresenting and misusing science, written by a physician and columnist for The Guardian newspaper.  A highly accessible, entertaining and essential read for anyone using scientific knowledge to make informed decisions.  Unfortunately the book is not available directly in the States, but beg, borrow or steal a copy—or order it directly from Amazon.co.uk.  Or failing that, check out Ben’s blog at www.badscience.net.  (look out for more on this book in later blogs).

The Bromeliad Trilogy, by Terry Pratchett. Ignore for a moment the fact that this is a fantasy tale, was written for children, and is in fact three books and not one.  Because this rather subtle and deceptively deep fable speaks volumes about the interplay between belief, technology and awkward citizens when tough decisions are needed under changing circumstances.  But more than anything else, it eloquently explores the importance of humility and conviction in leadership.  Read it, and you will be reminded that understanding the implications of science and technology is just the beginning of good decision-making.  And as a bonus, you will have a great set of books to share with the family.

So now I batten down the hatches and wait for the abuse to flow (“wot, no Einstein for Dummies?” I hear you say).

But before you post a suitably acerbic comment on the inanity of my choices, consider this:  What does it take to use science (and technology) most effectively in the service of society?  I would put high on my list three things: Humility, an open mind, and a willingness to change course in the light of new information—three things that all five books here tackle head-on.

Enjoy ☺

(Note: this entry was originally posted with the title “Five good books (Bed time reading for convalescing campaigners)

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With just over a week to go before the 2008 US presidential election, there’s no shortage of opinions floating around on the key science and technology-related challenges facing an incoming Obama or McCain administration.  But while advice swirls around issues like nanotechnology, synthetic biology, the environment, and establishing a top-level presidential science adviser as fast as possible, there is less talk about overarching goals that will underpin the science and technology policy agenda for the next four years…

Last Friday the journal Science published “10 meaty topics” for the 44th president to chew on, while a few weeks back we had “six easy pieces” from bioethicist Arthur Caplan (billed as a “Cheat Sheet for the Next Administration on Science & Tech Policy”).  And both the Woodrow Wilson Center and the Center for the Study of the Presidency have issued practical advice on ensuring a sci-tech savvy Whitehouse come the new year.

But most of the opinions laid out here and elsewhere address either the big science-based issues facing the next president, or the organizational challenges of getting a science-informed administration together that can hit the ground running.  What about the overall goals that are going to define the science, engineering and technology agenda for the next four years?

Don’t get me wrong; I think it’s essential that the next administration gets its act together on filling key science and technology positions as fast as possible, and identifies priority areas for research and development investment.  But a set of overarching goals is also needed, that will enable good intentions to be translated into effective policies.

So with this in mind, here are five goals the incoming administration could do worse than think about as it begins to reformulate America’s science and technology agenda:

Foster science-based decision-making. Build a network of respected and authoritative science advisers that reaches to the heart of government.  And in the process, enable decision-making processes that rely on science-fact rather than science-fantasy.

Develop a social challenges-driven research agenda. Use some of the biggest issues facing society—energy, health, water, food—to drive a multidisciplinary research agenda that serves people’s needs.  Make discovery-driven research an integral part of this process; creating a well of new knowledge and ideas that can be used to improve people’s lives.  Enable researchers to cross normally rigid disciplinary and institutional boundaries to address common concerns.  And re-examine the way that investment in science and technology can best serve societies’ long-term needs.

Build Constituencies. Engage citizens in research that is relevant to them.  Inspire and enable everyday people to take an interest in, support, and even participate in, research that could change their lives.  Make the scientific enterprise personal—where there are goals that will make a difference to individuals, help them to become part of the process. It works with medical research—it should work in other areas as well.

Nurture critical thinking. Institute formal and informal education programs that empower people to make evidence-based decisions.  Not everyone is interested in science.  But everyone should be able to distinguishing between good science and bad science—especially when important decisions are to be made. While many people struggle with the complexities of science at some point, most people are capable of understanding the implications of scientific and technological innovations—given half a chance.  As Arthur Caplan writes; “the American people are not dense.”

Cultivate civic scientists. Develop a generation of scientists, technologists and engineers that can, in the words of Neal Lane, “step beyond their campuses, laboratories, and institutes and into the center of their communities to engage in active dialogue with their fellow citizens.”  Because these are the people who will be most effective in informing science-based decisions, making a social challenges-driven research agenda work, building constituencies around key issues, and empowering citizens to think critically.

Developing such an overarching set of science policy goals will never replace addressing the big issues outlined in the Science article and others.  But it just might make the process a little easier.

Sitting here absorbing the atmosphere at the Synthetic Biology 4.0 meeting in Hong Kong, I have the strangest feeling of being transported into a Kim Stanley Robinson novel.  It’s not the cutting edge science being presented that is responsible, exciting and innovative as this is.  Neither is it the spectacular and futuristic setting, high above Clear Water Bay at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.  Rather, it’s the sense of a community that has come together to redefine how science and technology are developed and used within society; coupled with the possibility that they might just succeed!

The reference to Kim Stanley Robinson comes from his Mars trilogy, where he chronicles in some depth a hypothetical convergence between science, policy, business and social concerns, in redefining how things are done in a complex and challenging future.  Although this is pure science fiction, Stanley Robinson captures what might happen if a community of visionaries, entrepreneurs and social activists come together to change the world; united by a desire to work together and a belief that anything is possible.

The analogy might be a little far fetched, but the buzz that pervades the Synthetic Biology 4.0 meeting is at least partly due to a sense of people coming together from very different backgrounds with a common purpose, and a healthy naivety when it comes to attempting the “impossible”.

And the mix of people and perspectives here is truly eclectic.  Discussions on open-source synthetic biology and the creation of genetic building blocks interleave with workshops on social impacts and posters on community regulation.  Yesterday the meeting heard from Alex Ng, a high school student on one of last year’s winning teams in iGEM—the International Genetically Engineered Machines competition.  This morning, Waclaw Szybalski—credited with first coining the term “synthetic biology” in the 1970’s—addressed the meeting.  And this afternoon, Pat Mooney of the ETC group—one of the most vocal groups questioning the unconstrained development of synthetic biology—will be chairing a series of talks on social implications.

And threaded through everything is this feeling of a grass-roots movement that truly believes that it can change the world from the bottom up.

This is as important as it is exciting.  New partnerships between the developers and users of emerging technologies like synthetic biology are needed if these are to truly serve society.   The grass-roots buzz at Synthetic Biology 4.0 promises a new community-driven approach to developing effective partnerships.  But the process is fragile.  Diverse stakeholders and interest groups are still willing to sit around the table and trade ideas and concepts.  But what happens when the stakes are raised—when the possible becomes the probable?

The hope is that this new way of working together can be made as robust as possible as early as possible, so that when the commercial successes come and the tough social questions are raised, this new network of partnerships doesn’t dissolve into old factions.

An idea that only belongs in science fiction?  I hope not!

Forget the economy, healthcare, the war in Iraq.  For some, the next President of the United States will need to rise to a far higher bar:  Is he an e-mail junkie, or still stuck on snail mail?

John McCain’s lack of e-mail-savvy was the butt of recent Obama/Biden campaign ads.  “Things have changed in the last 26 years.  But McCain hasn’t” goes the refrain.  The subtext: if voted in as leader of the free world, could he actually lead in a technology-dependent society?  In contrast, Barack Obama’s online social networking campaign-orchestrated by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes-promises a truly plugged-in president.

Yet strip away the superficiality and there is something missing in both campaigns-where is the science that will support the technology needed to keep America great in the 21st century?

Don’t get me wrong, we desperately need new technologies to address some of the biggest challenges facing America and the world beyond. By the end of the next administration, there will be an estimated seven billion people on the planet, all wanting food, shelter, and water, and most of them striving
for a first-world quality of life.  With dwindling natural resources and an environment struggling to absorb humanity’s assaults, old technologies simply won’t hack it in the 21st century.   Energy security, curing cancer,  quality of life in old age, plentiful clean water, climate change-none of these challenges will be met without developing and using brand new technologies.

But technology innovation is only as good as the fuel that powers it, and that fuel is science.  Without strong investment in science, the technology innovation “well” will quite literally dry up-or move elsewhere.  In 2005, Representative  Frank Wolfe (R-VA) recalled asking a group of scientists how the U.S. is doing in science and innovation.  Forty percent said the country was in a “stall,” while nearly two thirds thought the nation was in decline.  This is not good news if we are looking to home-grown technologies to make the future a brighter, better place.

I say home-grown because in today’s knowledge economy you can be sure that if there is a gap in the idea market, someone will fill it.  The less America invests in the science that will drive technology innovation, the
more other countries will take the initiative.

Thomas Friedman writes in The World is Flat,  “Let me put this in very simple language: There are many more Indians and Chinese than there are Americans and a much, much higher percentage of them are studying science,  computer science and engineering.”  This is good news for global science-based technology innovation as a whole-as long as you don’t mind America becoming Asia’s sidekick.

Fortunately, America still has the edge in some areas of science-driven technology.  Advances in U.S.-led fields like nanotechnology and synthetic biology for instance are radically altering how we can use conventional science in unconventional ways.

But the gap between the U.S. and the rest of the world is closing rapidly.  Outmoded science policies, inadequate investment in science research and education, and a lack of respect for scientific evidence are all conspiring to weaken America’s scientific leadership.  In 2007 the National Academies’ Gathering Storm report concluded that unless the US government takes urgent action “We can expect to loose our privileged position” as world-leaders in science and technology.

This report addressed immediate steps “federal policymakers could take to enhance the science and technology enterprise so that the United States can successfully compete, prosper, and be secure in the global community of the 21st century.” The resulting 20 recommendations covered increasing the nation’s talent pool by vastly improving K-12 science and math education;  sustaining and strengthening basic research; making the U.S. the most attractive place in the world to do science; and ensuring America is the premier place in the world to innovate.

Many of the recommendations are still languishing in political limbo.

McCain’s “cyberphobia” and Obama’s tech-savvy make great headlines.  But at the end of the day, it is their commitment to strengthening the U.S. science enterprise that matters.  And whoever is installed in the Oval Office next January will need to have one of the most sophisticated science policies in recent times in order to underpin the technology-based solutions society so desperately needs.

To be honest, I’m unlikely to loose any sleep over the next president’s e-mail prowess. But I do care that they understand the importance of investing in building a science-savvy society, which can both generate and use new knowledge in the pursuit of a better world.

Technology innovation is essential to America’s success in the 21st century-that’s a given.  But before the technology, it’s the science,  stupid!

Read Thomas L. Friedman’s “The World is Flat” or Neal Stephenson’s “Cryptonomicon”, and you get a glimpse into how the hacker culture that emerged at the tail end of the twentieth century revolutionized the digital world.  Will a confluence of emerging technologies—including information tech, biotech, and nanotech—lead to a similar revolution in the biological world?

Behind every computer screen is a complexity of software and hardware that together create a virtual world in which many of us spend more time living out our lives than is probably healthy—whether crunching numbers, playing games or churning out our latest blog.  This world is built in part (some would say a large part) on the work of technically savvy individuals—hackers—who have learned the art of manipulating the fundamental building blocks of the digital world.  

According to that fount of all knowledge Wikipedia, a “computer hacker is a person who enjoys designing software and building programs with a sense for aesthetics and playful cleverness.”  A big attraction of hacking is the ability to change “reality” (albeit a digital reality) by manipulating the software (and hardware in the broadest interpretation of “hacker”) that defines it. And the factors that make this possible? Easy access to knowledge and tools, and the development of global grassroots networks for information sharing.

But here’s a question: what are the chances of a biology-based hacker culture arising; enticed by the lure of tinkering with biological codes that define living systems, rather than digital codes that govern digital systems?  The answer is that it is already here.  The “biohacking” culture is alive and kicking, and already pushing the boundaries of what is possible and acceptable. 

Reading through a just-released report on the social and ethical challenges of synthetic biology commissioned by the U.K. Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (Synthetic Biology.  Social and Ethical Challenges.  PDF, 740 KB), I was particularly intrigued by a short section on what has been termed “garage biology.”  (For a succinct overview of the report , I would recommend Richard Jones’ recent blog entry at Soft Machines.)  On the subject of garage biology, authors Andrew Balmer and Paul Martin of the Institute for Science and Society at the University of Nottingham had this to say:

“As DNA sequencing becomes cheaper and quicker and second hand equipment becomes available on eBay the power to create synthetic sequences may be dispersed to many individuals and groups.  Biohackers have also become known by the portmanteau ‘biopunk’ (biotech punk), that has its origins as a science fiction genre.  The most recent, and significant addition to this movement has been the online publication of a ‘Primer for Synthetic Biology’, a manual, written in simple, non-technical language, for those wishing to engage themselves in some bio hacking.”

With my interest piqued, I went on-line to check out the “biopunk” community.  A quick search brought up this recent comment from a teenager on the biopunk.org website:

“A few weeks ago I had somebody in school complaining about her eating disorder, Ceiliacs disease or something, and how she can’t eaten certain foods because of it. She has mentioned this before, and frankly I was tired of it, so I spent just *20* minutes on the internet during my lunch period and found a cure hidden in the patent database, and then told her how to use http://e-oligos.com/ and thenhttp://biohack.sf.net/ and http://openwetware.org/ to get the materials she needs from http://labx.com/to implement the solution in some gastrointestinal bacteria and cure it herself. Problem freakin’ solved.” [http://www.biopunk.org/on-the-state-of-biodiy-biopunk-culture-t36.html]

I have no idea whether synthetic biology is as accessible to the masses as this comment would imply (I suspect not).  But clearly there is a growing culture of people interested in playing with genetic software and hardware in much the same way as conventional hackers play with computer software and hardware.  And this is being spurred on by increasingly easy access to tools and knowledge within a growing grassroots community.  

Additional parallels between digital and biological hacking abound.  For instance, one of the drivers behind the development of the digital world most of us now inhabit was the open source movement, providing open access to computer code on the understanding that hackers shared any improvements made to the code with the rest of the world.  Similar movements are growing up around synthetic biology, with the significant difference being that the “code” is now biological.  A good example is the BioBricks Foundation that is developing an open source registry of standard biological parts that can be used to “program living organisms in the same way a computer scientist can program a computer.”

While only time will tell whether the biopunk movement will have the same impact on synbio as the hacker culture had on the digital world (and there are plenty of skeptics out there who are doubtful), the idea of “hacking biology” appeals to plenty of people.  Especially where it brings within their grasp tools that enable engineering-based concepts to be applied to biological systems.  Drew Endy—a leading proponent of synthetic biology—had this to say in a recent interview:

“Programming DNA is more cool, it’s more appealing, it’s more powerful than silicon. You have an actual living, reproducing machine; it’s nanotechnology that works. It’s not some Drexlarian (Eric Drexler) fantasy. And we get to program it. And it’s actually a pretty cheap technology. You don’t need a FAB Lab like you need for silicon wafers. You grow some stuff up in sugar water with a little bit of nutrients. My read on the world is that there is tremendous pressure that’s just started to be revealed around what heretofore has been extraordinarily limited access to biotechnology.” [Edge, issue 237, February 19 2008]

While the debate surrounding the social and ethical development and use of synthetic biology tends to focus on issues such as bioterrorism, uncontrolled releases, global justice and the creation of “artificial life,” it is quite possible that a successful biopunk movement will change the context within which this debate is conducted. How do you establish a framework for socially and ethically responsible development when the person you need to reach is an adolescent teenager constructing new biological code in their basement?  

This is a major challenge to the development of safe and societally accepted synthetic biology.  Biological hacking may never develop on the scale of computer hacking —“life” might shatter our hubris by turning out to be more complex than anyone imagined.  But I do not think we can afford to be complacent here.  The four recommendations made in the BBSRC report will definitely help pave the way towards socially and ethically responsible synthetic biology: recognizing the importance of maintaining public legitimacy and support; ensuring the scientific community engage with society on the impacts of their work; pursuing partnerships with civil society groups, social scientists and ethicists; and putting in place a robust governance framework before synthetic biology applications are realized.  However, I suspect that these are just the first steps in a long process to ensure society as a whole takes responsibility for developing and using an increasing level of control over the basic building blocks of life wisely.

As a final thought, when a hacker causes the digital reality in their computer to malfunction through tinkering, they can simply reboot and start again.  It might not be so simple when hacking life itself.  This may be a flawed analogy, but it is probably something the new socioethics of synbio should address if serious mis-steps are to be avoided.

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This post first appeared on the SAFENANO blog in June 2008

On March 18th, the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke died in his home in Sri Lanka at the age of 90.  A master developer and assembler of ideas, Clarke will be remembered fondly by many for igniting their enthusiasm for science, and how it might be used to better our lives.  His passing leaves a hole in the ranks of science heroes who inspire us to look beyond the obvious, and question the unquestionable.

My early childhood was full of the stories of Clarke, Asimov and others, and without a doubt these writers set me on a path to exploring how the world works and how we can extend our reach with this knowledge.  Clarke had the knack of taking what was known, and pushing it that little bit further into the realms of the “what if…?”.  In doing so, he was the perfect foil to the established scientific community; asking the questions others shied away from and stimulating the process of discovery and development afresh.  But he also excelled at raising scientific consciousness across the board, and sowing the seeds of effective and informed science engagement.

Ironically, my first exposure to the possibilities of nanotechnology came through the one novel of Clarke’s that I struggled with first time round. The Fountains of Paradise (1979) revolves around construction of the first elevator to space.  In the book, “hyperfilaments” of diamond crystal are used to create a tether that is both strong and light enough to tether a satellite in geostationary orbit to the earth.  Nearly thirty years later, Clarke’s vision is closer than ever to becoming a reality.  The big difference between the book and current research: his fictional hyperfilament has been replaced by carbon nanotubes—same atoms, similar properties, just in a slightly different configuration.

Recently re-reading The Fountains of Paradise, I understood why I struggled with it as a young teenager.  The novel is an exploration of the interface between society and technology, and how each influences the other; not the type of stuff that was grabbing my attention at the time.  But with the advantage of years and a professional interest in nanotechnology, science and society, Clarke’s writing now comes across as both insightful and visionary.  Clarke understood the science, but wasn’t constrained by scientific conservatism.  More importantly, he realized that science and technology happen within a social context; and that the successful generation and use of new knowledge must rely on scientific literacy and public engagement.

Clarke excelled in increasing people’s interest in and understanding of science, and laying the grounds for informed science engagement—demonstrating unequivocally that fiction is a powerful illuminator of truths in the world of facts.  He will be sorely missed in a society that is increasingly reliant on technologies to solve new and old challenges—including nanotechnology.  Who now will inspire us to fully engage in the opportunities and challenges that twenty first century science and technology promises?

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This post first appeared on the SAFENANO blog in March 2008

Can current approaches to doing science sustain us over the next one hundred years?  An increasing reliance on technological fixes to global challenges — including nanotechnology — demands a radical rethink of how we use science in the service of society.

Over the next century we will perhaps be facing the greatest challenge in the history of humanity: sustaining six billion plus people on a planet where natural resources are running scarce and our every action results in a palpable environmental reaction.  Progress towards sustainability will only come through integrating relevant science with socially-responsible decision making.  Yet the science policy dogmas of the 20th century may be stretched to breaking point in the face of 21st century challenges.

And these challenges are immense. The U.S. National Academy of Engineering recently published 14 “grand challenges for engineering” — the culmination of a year-long project exploring and reviewing the greatest technological challenges facing us in the 21st century.  At the top of the list is development of economical solar energy and fusion-energy, followed by crafting carbon sequestration methods, improving access to clean water, creating improved medicines, preventing nuclear terror, and eight other pressing needs.  The challenges are a stark reminder of the limitations of our current capabilities, and what needs to change if we are to continue growing as a society in harmony with our surroundings.

The solutions to many of these challenges will come from emerging areas of science and technology that include nanotechnology, as well as areas such as synthetic biology and cognitive science — the science of how we use our mind to think and learn.  These are not the physics, chemistry and biology of 20th century science.  Rather, they represent a blurring of the boundaries between conventional disciplines — a mixing-up of ideas and concepts that has the potential to stimulate tremendous innovation.

For example, nanotechnology combines elements of physics and chemistry to find new solutions to old problems.  Cheap, efficient solar cells and access to clean water are just two areas that this emerging technology is showing promise in.  But combine the ideas of nanotechnology with molecular biology and you open the door to playing with the building blocks of life itself — DNA.  Imagine what we could achieve by inventing new organisms that harvest energy, clean up pollution, and build new materials atom by atom.  Sounds like science fiction, but simple nanotechnologies are already being used in daily life; and synthetic biology is rapidly becoming a reality, with the first artificially constructed bacterium genome reported in January of this year.

In addressing the major challenges of the 21st century, it is the convergence of these new technologies that will deliver the solutions.  But policymakers, scientists and engineers will only be able to transform the new knowledge from research to practice if strong policies and frameworks are in place to support and nurture these emerging technologies. 20th century science and technology thrived on the twin dogmas of partitioned disciplines and knowledge diffusion.  Vast investment in basic research was thought to lead — eventually — to technological solutions; a Darwinian natural selection of the best ideas generated by self-absorbed researchers.  And while “interdisciplinary collaboration” was the mantra of many a grant proposal, few ventured far from the comfort of their particular disciplinary caste.

But if 21st century solutions are to be found to 21st century challenges, we need a new way of doing science.  This “smart science” must train future practitioners to work across conventional boundaries and remove the barriers to interdisciplinary research that continue to persist.  It must be socially relevant.  And it must engage citizens at every level — with the recognition that scientists need to be socially literate, as much as citizens need to be scientifically literate.

It is no exaggeration to say the state of the world our children’s children inherit will depend on the choices we make now, and one of the critical choices will be how we will develop and use science in the service of society. As we approach the 2008 U.S. presidential election, there is a ground-swell within the American scientific community in support of a presidential science debate.  While the idea of politicians talking science might have minority appeal, the consequences of bad science policy will have a major impact — and one that will be felt much sooner than the end of the century or even the end of the next term of office.

The end of the 21st century might look a long way off.  But it is the choices we make now that will determine the consequences our grandchildren and their children are faced with.  20th century approaches to science got us a long way, but they lack what it takes to address the challenges now facing us.  Nanotechnology and other emerging technologies that hold the seeds of future will not and cannot be sustained by 20th century thinking.  Instead, we need a 21st century approach to science to get us through the next one hundred years — and we need it sooner rather than later.

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This post first appeared on the SAFENANO blog in March 2008

What determines your view of nanotechnology—the message, or the messenger?  Most of us would like to think it is the message that governs our internal risk-benefit analysis.  But research published this week suggests other factors may be at work.

Dan Kahan at Yale Law School and his colleagues are shaking up our ideas on effective communication and engagement when it comes to complex issues like emerging nanotechnologies.  They have already demonstrated what many jaded science communicators have learned the hard way—that shouting louder and longer about the facts doesn’t necessarily lead to “right-minded” thinking in the general population.*  In their latest study (available here) they show that when it comes to balancing possible nanotechnology benefits and risks, the messenger is quite possibly as important as the message.

In brief, the team assigned positions on nanotechnology risks and benefits to four fictitious cultural advocates and recorded the risk perceptions of 800 people, based on which advocate was giving which message.  In technical terms, both subjects and advocates were broken down by their different worldviews: hierarchs versus egalitarians, and individualists versus communitarians (mystified by the terminology?  You’re not alone!).  In practice, this led to four visually distinct advocates:

• the smooth “leader of industry”—complete with power-suit (individualist/hierarchist);
• the paternal community leader—sporting jacket and tie (communitarian/hierarchist);
• the slick young entrepreneur—sans tie (individualist/egalitarian); and
• the bearded Prof.—also without a tie (communitarian/egalitarian).

(My descriptions by the way – not Dan’s.)

The results: when subjects with egalitarian tendencies were exposed to an advocate who looked like a fellow egalitarian calling for a suspension of nanotechnology development, their perception of the risks went up.  And when hierarchs heard someone who looked like another hierarch advocating nanotechnology development, their perception of the risks went down. In other words, the perceived values of the messengers were strongly biasing the subjects’ perceptions of risk.  According to Kahan:

“when individuals of diverse cultural outlooks observe an advocate whose values they share advancing an argument they are predisposed to accept, and an advocate whose values they reject advancing an argument they are predisposed to resist, cultural polarization grows.”

The fun really started when the fictitious thought-leaders were given the opposite message to what you might expect—the “leader of industry” calling for a suspension of nanotechnology and the Prof. advocating its development.  People tended to follow the advocates, even though the views being expressed were out of sync with their worldview! Kahan again:

“if, however, individuals observe an advocate whose values they share advancing the argument they are otherwise predisposed to resist, and an advocate whose values they reject advancing the argument they are otherwise predisposed to accept, there is a complete inversion of the positions on nanotechnology risks normally associated with particular cultural outlooks.”

This limited message-mixing exercise gives a tantalizing taste of what a planned follow-on study might reveal. But even accounting for its somewhat narrow scope, the conclusion is inescapable: the messenger is important.

Even more intriguing to me (or worrying – depending where you lie on the egalitarian/hierarchist/whatchamacalit/thingummybob scale) is that people may be willing to follow the opinions of advocates based on what they look like. (okay, so it is a little more complex than that, but what is clear is that visual impressions of empathy count—possibly more so than the science).

So where does this leave us with nanotechnology?  For a start, in case we hadn’t quite got the message yet; the science does not speak for itself.  If we are to communicate nanoscience and nanotechnology effectively and engender a meaningful dialogue amongst citizens and other stakeholders, we need to think carefully about who the messengers are, and what messages they convey.

The cynic in me finds this rather worrying—are we opening the doors to manipulating public opinion here, simply by choosing advocates that look the part? (To be honest, when first reading through this study the cynic in me also thought “so what’s new—haven’t we always suspected that in today’s society image is everything?”).

But Kahan eloquently makes the point that if we want enlightened public deliberation on nanotechnology, we have a means to neutralize cultural bias. The study shows that when multiple messages come from advocates having different outlooks—what Kahan calls “advocacy pluralism”—cultural bias begins to disappear.  And this opens up the pathway to dialogues that are less likely to divide along cultural lines.

This surely is where we want to be, if the long-term aim is to enable science-based decision-making.  But getting there will require action on the part of governments and others: to identify and equip suitable messengers; and to develop understandable and level-headed messages.  And this must be followed by genuine citizen engagement, if the door to science and technology decision-making is to be opened wider to allow the public in.  Only then will we be able to work effectively in partnership towards nanotechnologies that deliver on their promise.

And for those readers who are currently holding judgement on this piece until they know what I am wearing; let’s just say that in the complex world of cultural advocacy power-dressing, I strongly believe that less is more.

* Kahan, D., Slovic, P., Braman, D., Gastil, J. and Cohen, G. (2007). Nanotechnology risk perceptions: The influence of affect and values, Wilson Center Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, Washington DC.

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This post first appeared on the SAFENANO blog in February 2008

A trip through the newly refurbished St. Pancras station in London this week, and home to the widely-proclaimed “longest champagne bar in Europe”, prompted the following thought: At the champagne bar of modern science, are risk researchers the cappuccino drinkers tucked away in the corner?

I’m not sure how far I would dare push such an analogy, but sometimes it seems that scientists who focus on understanding and addressing risks have the less glamorous end of the deal. Attending the European Nanotechnology Occupational Safety and Health (NanOSH) conference in Helsinki, I was struck afresh by the difficulties of evaluating the relevance and importance of risk-related research.  The criteria usually used to assess exploratory and applications-focussed research don’t seem to fit comfortably here.  With some notable exceptions, risk research is more often than not evolutionary rather than original; it doesn’t tend to expand our fundamental understanding of the universe; and there are not that many examples of it making people fabulously rich.  Getting published in a high impact journal like Science or Nature is really tough if you are in the risk research business.  And health and safety Intellectual Property often seems, quite frankly, as common as the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

But does this mean—as some seem to believe—that risk research is somehow second-rate science?  Or is there a danger of applying the wrong criteria when assessing its value, and so coming to the wrong conclusions?

Most risk research is focussed specifically on solving problems and preventing harm.  Where it is successful, the chances of something unpleasant happening are reduced or removed.  On the way, it can be as innovative as other areas of research.  Yet original discoveries are often incidental to its main purpose.  The ultimate aim of risk research is not to be original or to make money (although both may be serendipitous spin-offs). Rather, it is to improve the quality of our lives and the environment in which we live—this is what drives many of its practitioners.

I suspect that this disconnect between the aims of risk research and the criteria under which research in general is evaluated has undermined the importance of investigations that aim to reduce possible harm.  Over the years, the risk research community has grown to accept a reality of meagre funding levels and marginal recognition outside those groups it immediately impacts on.

Yet as nanotechnology moves with increasing rapidity from the lab to the market place, misunderstandings that lead to risk research being evaluated against the wrong end-points are in danger of preventing the right work being done by those best qualified to direct, fund and undertake it.

The need for a strong risk-focussed research program to underpin safe emerging nanotechnologies is almost universally agreed on.  But as decision makers use a generic set of criteria to direct and evaluate risk research, it seems we become increasingly vulnerable to favouring projects that are innovative and profitable, over those that reduce the chances of harm occurring.  More than once, the sentiment has been expressed that nanotechnology risk research proposals are just not up to the mark.  Knowing the quality of researchers in this field around the world, and their struggles to obtain adequate funding, I can only assume this is a mark that is more relevant to exploratory and applications-driven research, rather than preventing harm.

Listening to the presentations in Helsinki, I found it hard to believe that the risk research community is not up to the task at hand.  Here were people that were systematically and expertly chipping away at the unknowns surrounding the safe use of engineered nanomaterials.  In many cases the research wasn’t flashy, it would not lead to IP, it “merely” led to an incremental understanding of potential to cause harm, and it wasn’t always original.  Placed alongside research into the next great nanotech applications, much of it would seem dull and unimaginative.  But none of this detracts from its importance to protecting the quality of life of people working with and using the products of nanotechnology.

Good science is good science, independent of the field of research.  Yet let’s not fall into the trap of confusing good science with original and profitable science.  Risk research may not be as sexy as other areas of research, but that should not prevent us from recognizing its importance or relevance.  Safe and sustainable nanotechnologies need the expertise and perspective of researchers trained in understanding and minimizing risks.  We cannot afford to marginalize them by evaluating what they do against the wrong criteria.  And we cannot afford to starve them by directing funds to more fashionable but less able investigators.

And just for the record, mine was a cappuccino.

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This post first appeared on the SAFENANO blog in December 2007

Some nanotechnology events should come with a health warning, perhaps along the lines of: “This meeting could seriously alter your perspective”.  Because nanotechnology crosses such diverse areas of interest and expertise, there is a danger of being exposed to ideas that are radically different from your own.  And where exposure occurs, “infection” becomes an issue.

I think I missed the “interdisciplinary inoculation” while I was a kid—there must be one, because I have colleagues who participate in interdisciplinary meetings, and come away unaffected.  But I seem to be particularly susceptible to “interdisciplinary infection”.

Take this last week.  I was enticed over to San Francisco to meet with a group of “informal science educators” (first sign of infection—an expanding jargon vocabulary)—a group of “radical” enthusiasts dedicated to engaging people in science in every imaginable way. This was the annual meeting of the Nanotechnology Informal Science Education (NISE) network in the US—a National Science Foundation-funded network of science museums and researchers, working to increase nanotechnology awareness, knowledge and engagement through all sectors of society.

Leaving the meeting (which in the interests of full disclosure, I should note was the most enjoyable nano-meeting I have been to in a long time), I found a new phrase had crept into my psyche that I just couldn’t shake off—“technologies of humility”.  Resigned to the consequences of mixing with such a diverse crowd, I started digging around to find out more about this idea.

The concept of “technologies of humility” has its origins in the work of Sheila Jasanoff [1, 2].  Jasanoff argues that

“governments should reconsider existing relations among decision-makers, experts, and citizens in the management of technology. Policy-makers need a set of ‘technologies of humility’ for systematically assessing the unknown and the uncertain.” [2]

In contrast, she describes the refinement of conventional (i.e. current) science and technology policy as “technologies of hubris”—policies crafted to reassure the public, and keep the wheels of science and industry turning.

Jasanoff’s arguments and use of language will be unfamiliar to many involved in the generation and use of scientific knowledge—her use of the word “technologies” for instance refers to the social and policy-based mechanisms of how science is done.  Yet her conclusions are clear—in today’s evolving society, we cannot continue to force new sciences and technologies into old ways of thinking.  The simplistic separation of research into basic and applied studies has dominated science policy for over half a century.  Yet according to Jasanoff, this model no longer works.  Instead, we need new approaches that acknowledge the partiality of modern science; that recognize the context within which research is conducted; and that respond to new ways of generating scientific knowledge.

Reading Jasanoff’s work, it strikes me that current nanotechnology development is underpinned—at least in part—by the technologies of hubris: Decision-influencing is dominated by an informed few; context-insensitive science policies are being pursued; and interactions with “the public” are frequently limited to a one-way “dialogue” of promotion.  In contrast, Jasanoff describes technologies of humility as

“methods, or better yet institutionalized habits of thought, that try to come to grips with the ragged fringes of human understanding – the unknown, the uncertain, the ambiguous, and the uncontrollable.” [2]

Given the limitations of science to foresee, predict and control the future, she argues for different forms of engagement between experts, decision-makers and the public to tackle complex issues—to use another jargon phrase, the social contract with science needs to be re-negotiated.  Intriguingly, as well as these technologies of humility covering formal ways in which all stakeholders can participate in the development and use of new developments like nanotechnology, Jasanoff also states the need for

“an intellectual environment in which citizens are encouraged to bring their knowledge and skills to bear on the resolution of common problems.” [2]

This surely highlights the importance of raising science awareness and engagement throughout society.  But it also suggests that everyone potentially touched in some way by nanotechnology has something of value to contribute to its development.

Whatever the future of nanotechnology, maybe we should be approaching it with humility rather than hubris as we strive to develop quality of life-improving technology innovations.  To twist an elegant concept rather tortuously, perhaps we need to think in terms of “nanotechnologies of humility”—being up front about uncertainties and mistakes, listening to and learning from the people that nanotechnologies touch, and ensuring someone is accountable for decisions that are being made.

Or maybe I just need to get that interdisciplinary inoculation jab.  After all, those science and policy leaders at the top know what they are doing… don’t they?

Postscript.

This is a very shallow discussion of how our understanding of the interplay between science and society is changing, and I would encourage you to explore Sheila Jasanoff’s work further.  I should also note that the person principally responsible for “infecting” me in this instance was Rick Borchelt, Director of Communications at the Genetics and Public Policy Center.  And finally, do check out the NISE Network website—they are doing some pretty cool stuff.

References

1.    Jasanoff, S. Nature 2007, 450, 33.
2.    Jasanoff, S. Minerva 2003, 41, 223-244.

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This post first appeared on the SAFENANO blog in November 2007