CBC-Radio
The Proper Role of Science: Sir Peter Gluckman
( REUTERS/Chaiwat Subprasom )
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The Harper government muzzled scientists. Donald Trump's
administration is now doing the same. But a better relationship between
science and government is possible. Sir Peter Gluckman
is the Chief Science Advisor to the Prime Minister of New Zealand. This
episode draws on a conversation he had with host Paul Kennedy and a
talk he gave organized by Canadian Science Policy Centre, and hosted by the Institute for Science Society and Policy
at the University of Ottawa. His point: science's proper role is to
help decision-makers make scientifically-informed decisions.
Ideas
Science is in trouble: it's under attack from the outside and elitist on the inside. So what should science be doing?
Science in a troubled age
"Is scientific advice of any value at all? If experts in a
post-trust, post-truth world are marginalised as elites and can't solve
our problems anyhow, do they have any value? In my opinion, scientific
advice in this context is more important than ever...
Scientific uncertainties can be inappropriately exploited and injected
into complex societal debates. We've seen many values debates obscured
by inappropriate co-option of science to avoid the values debate. We've
seen that in climate change, where there wasn't really a lot of debate
over anthropogenic climate change for a long time. But there were
awkward economic debates to be had. We're seeing it over the safety of
genetically modified foods and so forth. And I think this issue of
science being misused as a proxy for societal values-based debate is
very bad. I think it short-changes democracy."
Science as elitist
"The scientific community is not beyond reproach. Science can
get easily caught up in an elitist framing, particularly when
we're arrogant. Because we must admit that science cannot solve every
problem. Nor can we claim that it does. Nor can we claim that we know
better than politicians how to solve the problems of the world.
We've seen many examples of scientists expressing considerable hubris
and arrogance in trying to say they know what to do and ignoring the
many other dimensions of addressing a problem. And of course, science is
not the only input into policy-making."
Science vs common sense
"I think the issue [is] how you interpret the data. For example, you
could pour a whole of the data into a computer and it might turn out
something like: "where people eat more ice cream, there are more
burglaries" -- to use a silly example. It doesn't mean that ice cream
eating causes people to be naughty and steal things. What it's just
telling you is there's a confounder, and the confounder is on hot days,
people leave their windows open, and where windows are open, burglars
are more likely to enter them.
You can't look at data without
having an understanding of the system within which the data is looking.
And particularly, just using that simple example, if you knew nothing
about anything else you might naively think that eating ice cream caused
people to become burglars.
But when you get into things like
the relationship between poverty and crime, or environmental
contamination and ill health, these issues become really important. And
you have to have expert domain knowledge to interpret what the data
might be saying to you, and to ask the right questions of the data."
Making science accessible
"I think if we go back to when I was a young scientist -- which was a
few decades ago -- I think those scientists [who] appeared in the media
were seen to be show ponies. It was disregarded. They lost respect from
their colleagues. Now I think we understand that scientists who are
good communicators are critical parts of the relationship between
science and the rest of society. And that relationship is critical if
science is to be well-used by society."
Scientists as knowledge brokers
"Scientists especially in the brokerage role need to recognize that
in a democracy, policymakers have the right to ignore -- but hopefully
not to deny -- the evidence, even if in my view it's unwise and
ultimately counterproductive to do so. But the reasons they might ignore
the evidence might involve many values-based considerations that
scientific knowledge could inform but cannot resolve: political
ideology, public opinion, fiscal consequences, diplomatic consequences,
etc. The nature of democracy means that there are always multiple
trade-offs at play in every decision a government makes, and different
stakeholders have very different perspectives."
Source: http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-proper-role-of-science-sir-peter-gluckman-1.3994101