Part 9 of a series on rethinking science and technology for the 21st century
Writing about completing the circle of science and technology policy at the start of the Copenhagen climate summit seems particularly fitting. Although the climate change context was far from my mind when I started this series, it stands as a stark reminder of the consequences of unconstrained science and technology, the possibilities of using science and technology to create a better future, and the daunting complexities of crafting policies that get us as a society to where we want to be.
Whether it’s dealing with climate change or innumerable other issues, the way we develop and use science and technology needs to be responsive to the challenges we face as a society, and the social, political and economic environment within which we face them. Simply funding scientists to do what takes their fancy isn’t likely to deliver the goods in a world increasingly dominated by the three C’s – Communication, Control and Coupling. Yet heavy-handed control of the science agenda is clearly not the answer—autonomy and open-ended research are essential to scientific discovery and innovation.
So what’s the answer? How do we ensure our investment in science and technology as a society achieves what we believe it should, without over-indulging a science elite, or stifling discovery and innovation? At the end of the last blog in this series I suggested that we need increased feedback in the policy process to make it work better.
Feedback loops take some of the output of a process and feed it back into the input – they’re a way of regulating a process so that it remains responsive, and doesn’t get out of control. Of course, the business of policy is full of feedback loops. In fact the whole political process can be seen as one rather large feedback loop – unpopular leaders and decisions usually end up being overturned, although sometimes the “time constants” are rather long. The next two weeks in Copenhagen is a prime example of feedback in policy-making – even if this is a feedback loop with a rather large time constant.
However just because feedback mechanisms exist doesn’t mean that they are as effective as they could be…
In part 8 of this series, I proposed two feedback loops in particular that will become increasingly important to developing more responsive science and technology policy: Review and Participation.
The Review loop should be reasonably clear: It deals with comparing the actual impact of policy decisions with the intended impact, and adjusting the inputs to realign the outcomes. This might mean altering the original goals, increasing (or even decreasing) the resources made available for specific areas, or changing the mechanisms by which those resources are used (for example). It seems obvious, but it isn’t often done that well in practice. There’s a fine line between too little and too much feedback, or feedback that’s fast but ill-informed and feedback that’s comprehensive but interminable! Yet if we don’t get this balance right, it will be near-impossible to craft policies that respond to the ever-accelerating opportunities and challenges presented by 21st century science and technology.
The Participation loop on the other hand may not be quite so clear. This arises in to a large degree from one of the three “C’s” – communication – but is also driven by the other two – control and coupling.
Old-style “command and control” approaches to policy haven’t a hope of working in tomorrow’s hyper-connected world. Through rapid and radical advances in global communication, people have become an inextricable part of the decision-making process – as a society, we now have a louder voice than ever before. Policy makers can either fight this, or embrace it.
Integrating the participation of individuals and groups with a stake in science and technology into the policy process is a pragmatic necessity. These are the people who will be affected by the outcomes of decisions made by governments, and who will become increasingly vocal – and influential – if they don’t like those decisions. They are also a potential force for positive change – by listening to the “consumers” of science and technology, it becomes possible to craft policies which address their actual wants and needs, rather than making assumptions on their behalf.
There is also an ethical dimension here – to what extent is it appropriate for an elite handful of decision-makers to decide what is good for the masses? Certainly, where highly complex information needs to be understood, interpreted and acted on, expert input is needed. But broader decisions on the relevance and implications of science and technology should arguably involve the people (and organizations) who stand to benefit or suffer as a result of them.
So what are the keys and consequences to developing (or further developing) these two feedback loops?
When I gave the original lecture on which these notes are based, I identified three action-areas that will both help establish the loops, and ensure their effectiveness: empowerment, engagement and evaluation.
Empowering stakeholders
Neither of these two feedback loops will work if people and organizations are not empowered to become effective stakeholders. This goes for expert stakeholders as well as lay stakeholders (which in most cases is people like you and me). However, the challenges to empowering each group are different.
Lay stakeholders need to be provided with the ability to deal with the complexities of modern science and technology – and not to be intimidated by them. Critical thinking is essential here – people need to be enabled to make sense of information, and separate out what is more important from what is less significant. Information also needs to be accessible – in its original form (predominantly as peer reviewed publications), in non-expert syntheses, and in appropriate media coverage (and I’m including blogs here). And importantly, the consequences of science and technology-related decisions need to be conveyed to non-expert stakeholders. Even though many people struggle to understand the principles behind modern science and technology, most can grasp what it means to them personally if it is explained well.
Expert stakeholders on the other hand need to learn to communicate effectively, if they are to play their part in these feedback loops. And critically, they need to learn to listen – to understand what the questions are, before providing answers.
Engaging stakeholders
This is a huge subject, worthy of several blog sites on its own (many of which already exist), and there is no way I can do it justice in a few sentences. Yet looking at stakeholder engagement from the perspective of the two feedback loops being discussed, four points are worth highlighting:
First is the need for public discourse. Without this, how will people know what is going on in science and technology, how it will affect them, and how they can play a part in shaping their future? This leads directly into participation in decision-making. Public engagement is not about communication, education or persuasion – it is about making people an integral part of the policy process – providing them with a seat at the table, where they will be listened to and taken seriously.
Effective public discourse and engagement will only be possible though if science is more completely integrated into society. Rather than being seen as someone else’s problem, science in the 21st century needs to be seen as everyone’s “problem.” This will need some cultural changes if progress is to be made, from addressing educators who can’t see the point of science, to tackling politicians and public figures that undermine it, to dealing with scientists who strive to maintain their self-allotted place at the top of the intellectual pyramid. But without changing the culture that determines science’s place within society, it will remain the realm of the elite. And in a world increasingly dependent on science and technology, this can only lead to a Technocracy – in spirit, if not in name.
One possible approach to increasing the level of science and technology engagement is to build science and technology constituencies – groups of people with a vested interest in seeing science and technology developed and used effectively in specific areas. The idea comes from medical research, where highly vocal involvement from non-expert stakeholders can have a huge influence on research investment, direction and application.
This approach is fraught with difficulties – the possibilities for ill-informed decisions are rife when poorly informed groups lobby for narrow areas of research to take a specific course. But putting that aside, it’s intriguing to ask what would happen if communities were energized to be a part of research initiatives into areas like clean energy, water access, transport, food production? What if passive lay “stakeholders” were given the opportunity to be active stakeholders, who could see a direct return on their investment in supporting and being a part of research initiatives that meant something to them?
Science and technology constituencies are a potentially dangerous idea – they take power away from the established elite for a start. But it’s an intriguing concept nevertheless, and one that should probably be explored further.
(Re)Evaluating drivers, mechanisms and policies.
Finally, what’s the relevance of these feedback loops to people in a position to review and influence policy decisions?
In my original lecture, I highlighted three areas that policy makers and research funders should be focusing on: challenge-informed science, new knowledge stimulation, and knowledge-coupling.
Challenge-informed science. This is a bit of a hot potato. The question of how you strike a balance between so-called blue skies research and applied research has vexed the science community for years, and at times has become extremely heated. But rather than argue for one or the other, I would reframe the question and ask “how can we best develop science and technology policies that are socially relevant?”
Science for its own sake is essential – as I explain below. But policy makers are accountable for how they spend a limited pot of public money. For instance, if a country or region is facing challenges that will impact severely on peoples’ lives and livelihoods, and that could be alleviated through strategic investment in science and technology, it is hard for policy makers to argue for the bulk of science funding to go towards research that is irrelevant, which may serendipitously lead to some solutions to some future challenges, or which will lead to relevant knowledge but too late to be of any use.
Of course, the counter-argument is that it is naïve to assume that science and technology can be coerced into providing rapid solutions to challenges. I would agree with this. Yet at the same time, it is entirely possible for science and technology to be framed and guided—informed—by challenges (and opportunities) that society is facing now, or is likely to face in the future. This doesn’t preclude blue skies research – but it does increase the chances of science and technology leading to socially relevant solutions.
And it should never be forgotten that practicing science is not an inalienable right – scientists (and technologists and engineers) and ultimately accountable to their patrons – who in this day and age tend to be their fellow citizens.
New Knowledge stimulation. So where does that leave blue skies research? I would argue that there is always a justification for supporting open ended, exploratory research for three reasons: It enriches society through raising our awareness of who we are and the universe we live in; it leads to serendipitous discovery; and it lays a foundation on which more applied research and technology innovation can be built. It is essential to the science enterprise. The only question is where the balance between open ended and ends-justified research should be.
I would argue that blue skies research should not dominate science and technology, except where there is a strong and specific argument for it to do so (the mega-expensive Large Hadron Collider comes to mind, where progress can only be made with substantial investment and little promise of practical return). I would also suggest that it should be led by the most able researchers—those most capable of pushing the boundaries of knowledge. And it should still be held accountable – even if this means communicating the more metaphysical and philosophical impacts of the work. Blue skies research should never be a free ticket for researchers to do what they want at someone else’s expense.
Knowledge coupling. “Interdisciplinary research” is a buzz phrase that has been around for decades – often as a means of winning grants, which are then used for anything but true interdisciplinary research. Yet it’s hard to deny that some of the more significant advances in science and technology occur at the intersections between different areas of expertise. And it’s not only when researchers work between different scientific disciplines that innovation occurs – collaborations between scientists and engineers, social scientists, experts in the humanities and others are proving to be equally profitable.
What we are seeing is the effect of “knowledge coupling” – ensuring knowledge can flow between different fields of expertise with ease, leading to new ideas, new avenues of research and, ultimately, new advances in science and technology. This seems to be a more useful concept than “interdisciplinary research” as it captures the essence of how knowledge and information lead to discovery, innovation and progress. The more we can remove barriers to this cross-disciplinary, cross-expertise and cross-sector flow of knowledge, the better we will be at both stimulating new science, and using it effectively.
Pulling it all together
Developing and using science and technology effectively in the 21st century will not be easy. Increasingly, we’re facing “wicked problems” – problems that many stakeholders are interested in, but which remain elusive and ill-defined. Science and technology are leading to some of these problems, but they also hold the keys to solving them – but only if we learn to use them wisely and effectively. Integral to this process is getting the policy framework right, so that informed and effective decisions can be made. And this in turn will depend on how the outcomes of the science and technology enterprise are fed back into the inputs – leading to policies that are responsive and effective.
As scientists, leaders, decision-makers, lobbyists and others gather in Copenhagen over the next two weeks, it will be an interesting test of how effectively science and technology policy are serving society, and how far we still have to go if we are to rise to the emerging challenges of the 21st century. Will we see the “nasty brutish debate with science caught somewhere in the middle” predicted by Tim Harper, or will a more mature and enlightened approach emerge?
I suspect Tim is right on this one, but hopefully he isn’t – because more than ever before we need to get science and technology right if we are to deal with the opportunities and challenges that Coupling, Communication and Control are going to throw our way over the coming decades.
Notes
Rethinking science and technology for the 21st century is a series of blogs drawing on a recent lecture given at the James Martin School in Oxford. This is a bit of an experiment—the serialization of a lecture, and a prelude to a more formal academic paper. But hopefully it will be both interesting and useful.
Previously: Riding the wave: Rethinking science & technology policy
Next: Science and Technology Innovation – looking to the future