Paul Dufour

On improving dialogues between the scientific illiterate and politically clueless

By Paul Dufour

The interactions between politicians and scientists are undergoing more scrutiny these days. And well they should as science underpins much of what constitutes public policy. It is also a two-way street. Science needs to better grasp the oft-complex context behind policy and the polity needs to better understand the growing knowledge agenda.

Thirty years ago, a former science minister for Canada, issued this cri d'alarme:

"In essence, I believe that it is the scientific community that must convince the public that science — and the issues of science — are both germane and comprehensible; that science, or knowledge, can respond to the values and needs of our society; and that it is not necessarily inhumane, or threatening, nor beyond the control of society's purposes; but that it will respond to the direction an intelligent society gives to it. Scientists have an obligation not as scientists, but as citizens, to explore and explain the social consequences of what it is they do." — John Roberts, 1981.

Virtually every review or report in this country (and we have had a ton) that has touched on science and technology (S&T) has made hay with the issue of improving our so-called science culture and links with public policy. As the American Association for the Advancement of Science quaintly put it, we are often faced with the scientifically illiterate vs. the politically clueless. Both communities could use more help to get an improved grasp of their respective cultures and modus operandi resulting in better grounded decisions that will affect us all.

It's not that we haven't tried. The past experiments are many, diverse and mostly moribund like the parrot in a famous Monty Python sketch. We are probably no different in tinkering with these issues than most other countries, but we have at least three unique assets — we are bilingual, we have geography (lots of it) and we have the world's most powerful S&T player south of us. These traits have figured prominently in the design of our policies and programs when it comes to S&T.

It is refreshing to see that, despite previous weak attempts at making science policy a high salience issue, public experiments still go on with progressive ventures like:

* the Canadian Science Policy Centre via its Science Policy conferences in Toronto and Montreal;

* the SciencePages initiative of the Partnership Group for Science and Engineering;

* the Public Science web-site of the Professional Institute of the Public Service ;

* the Science and Technology Awareness Network for outreach ;

* the newly launched Science Media Centre.

While Canadian activism rarely extends to the science policy arena as it has in the UK (Science is Vital Campaign or Sense About Sense, etc) or France (Sauvons la recherche) or the US (Union of Concerned Scientists, Science Cheerleader, etc), we do our best to ensure that the public debate on science policy continues at all levels. The first Science and Policy Exchange created by students at McGill in October this year is a good example of next-generation activism.

One lesson learned in all of this: you need patience to see things through (witness the fits and starts of the origins of the Council of Canadian Academies). Timing and champions matter and you have to deploy multiple tactics as well as learn from good practice. Strong demand helps too. Another lesson is that pluralism is usually a good thing. As Jesse Ausubel notes in his marvellous piece on the organizational ecology of science advice in America, one prescription to the control and muzzling fetishes within governments is to strengthen the role of critical, pesky, independent groups.

By his count, the US S&T cohort of NGOs ranging from the American Institute of Physics to Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility is in the order of 4,000-5,000. We may not have that scale here, but we do have a good number and it would be useful to explore these growing grassroots initiatives to get a sense of their scope and influence. These NGOs — an emerging form of public science advocacy (including the renewed outgrowth of citizens' science movements via social media)— can provide a useful glue to help design the next generation of science and policy ecology and hopefully go beyond mere criticism and banal speeches to real solutions.

But all of this will require some understanding of how polity and science interact (or don't) at any given time. The woeful lack of expertise and resources within Parliament to handle matters of public policy impacted by science is one major gap. A 1983 Science Council of Canada report made this telling point: "The lack of historical precedents for the incorporation of scientific evidence in decision making is evident at every level of the federal parliamentary system."

Frank Maine, a former federal MP, underscored this weak link as early as 1976 at a science association meeting, arguing that: "Members of Parliament will be called upon to make some very important decisions in the years to come. It is therefore essential that they have ready access to scientific and technological information and an opportunity to discuss and explore the wide ranging opinions within the Canadian community".

The new SciencePages idea is an initial attempt to help bridge this gap with briefing notes on topical issues alongside the more conventional Bacon and Eggheads breakfasts or Genomics on the Hill with scientists telling MPs about the latest developments .

Another gap has been identified with the recent establishment of the Science Media Centre of Canada (based in part on the UK model), an independent, not-for-profit organization that helps journalists access the experts and evidence-based research they need to cover science in the news (see their excellent posting on medical isotopes).

Finally, lest we forget, the scientific and technological community needs to develop a greater level of sophistication whereby science lobbying is not seen as an oxymoron, where some focused training and leadership development on policy-making within governments would be enormously helpful as is done often successfully in the US and the UK. (The Howard Burton book on First Principles: The Crazy Business of Doing Serious Science should be required reading here).

In short, there is a bit of a renaissance in current efforts to fill some holes in the know-ledge galaxy where from time to time science collides with polity. As long as these remain open for public debate and rely on sound evidence, they should be supported.

Paul Dufour is Principal at PaulicyWorks (Paulicyworks@gmail.com).