Scientific Research Governance

Scientific Research Governance

• It is important to consider who should govern scientific research, as there are important questions regarding how the scientific agenda should be set.
• Natural answers such as the autonomy of science or market forces are inadequate to decide the scientific agenda.
• A form of democracy in scientific research is needed to avoid the dangers of a "tyranny of ignorance".

Is it a Bad Question?

• The question of how scientific research should be governed is valid and should not be dismissed.
• The practice of scientific research and a political state were once so different that the question of who should govern science was inappropriate.
• Individuals were either self-funded or embedded in institutions and conformed to the demands of authorities.
• How inquiry took shape depended on the idiosyncratic ways individual inquirers were subjected to discipline from society.
• Even the Royal Society did not consider governance questions.
• "Gentlemen" were relatively "free and unconfin'd" because they were prosperous and their activities were considered harmless
• Today, scientific research is collaborative, and the significance of a question depends on its connections with others' projects.
• Contemporary research requires sophisticated equipment that would strain the budget of any private donor.
• Contemporary science is politically and economically important.
• Efforts are made to train future investigators, and governments invest in equipment and people for the state's future well-being.
• There is a distinction between pure knowledge and applied knowledge, but there are still no governance issues with pure knowledge
• Political considerations only appear in applying basic science
• Science is forced to be selective due to the impossibility of a complete account of the vast universe, and the questions we pose now will determine the resources for future application.
• There need to be debates about what knowledge is sought and how knowledge is to be applied
• Allowing ‘pure research’ to go its own way risks the materials for addressing critical problems being out of reach

Social Science

• Despite some views, science is inevitably social and not a denial of objectivity.
• Important social considerations enter the processes through which scientists decide what questions to ask and try to settle.
• It is impossible to decide what inquiries are worthwhile by consulting nature because nature does not present an agenda.
• Deciding how the research agenda for science at either a species-wide level or a more local pursuit, ought to be set is key to "Who should govern scientific research?"

Autonomy of Science

• Practicing scientists often respond that they are the right people to decide the scientific agenda.
• It's often overlooked that the virtues of autonomy shine most brightly on the wrong problem.
• Censorship and insistence on orthodoxy have nothing to do with agenda selection
• The scientific community secured autonomy in deciding its research agenda for later decades of the twentieth century via Vannevar Bush.
• Bush persuaded to agree to an offer that is, in essence, easy to refuse; Give us the money and let us decide how to invest it
• Directing inquiry into the right channels was important for the economic prosperity of the USA, and the people best equipped to find the right channels were the scientists themselves
• Vannevar Bush's rationale recapitulates central themes of Plato's Republic, saying that the task of the political state is to make the lives of the citizens go as well as possible, and should have special insight into enabling human beings to enjoy the best lives
• Expert leaders should rule without check or hindrance for their rule will genuinely benefit all.
• People are resistant because of the difficulty of believing any course of education could be relied on to produce rulers who would be both wise and good.
• Most people feel individual citizens ought to have a say in shaping their own lives.
• It's better to have the power to plan one's own career, even if involvement in decision-making increases the risks of error.
• There are issues about ourselves on which we are most reliable and shouldn't be required to defer to outside judgment.
• Expertise of scientists is incomplete when the enterprise at hand is deciding what questions are important.
• There's a type of authority that non-scientists have that ought not to be excised from decisions about the research agenda.
• This should make us uneasy about the picture of "Autonomy of Science"
• Well-intentioned experts often fail to see the issues that are most important for populations they are attempting to help.
• On a visit to Africa, a research foundation leader spoke with local tribespeople to persuade them to allow their children to be vaccinated.
• The tribe responded that they really needed vaccines for their livestock, "If the goats die all our lives are threatened".
• Fields and subfields, tend to see the world in a Manhattanite fashion
• To leave the scientific agenda in the power of scientists alone is to risk the possibility that the scientific community will misread important concerns
• Its decision will be reached through the relative vividness of the cartoons that different subcommunities are able to flourish.
• The age of autonomous science is already ending.

Mass Market

• While scientists are relatively autonomous, they have to cater to governmental and societal desires to get funding
• It's becoming difficult for investigators to follow lines of inquiry that their own pure curiosity mark out for them
• The scientists' autonomy is already compromised because they are not dependent on enterprises
• Those whose main concerns are economics shape the research landscape in which they must operate.
• Perhaps the introduction of outsiders can correct myopia
• Markets are credited with communication preferences to members of society.
• Keeping the research enterprise on track may result from entrepreneurs addresses problems that the public wants solved
• “Market forces” don’t represent the preferences of all citizens, either within a society or worldwide, but only of those who can pay.

Scandalous Underfunding

• There has been scandalous underfunding of research into the diseases that afflict the world’s poor.
• Scourges like malaria, tuberculosis, and intestinal infections receive only about 1/100th of the research resources they should command.
• Research goes unsolved for lack of attention because of anti-aging creams and diet pills
• The drug was not available because there was "no market for it”
• The market has its own form of myopia and entrepreneurs are typically oblivious to possibilities that will work well in the long run
• "Market forces" will favor just those scientific programs that can be expected to deliver profitable knowledge quickly.
• The hope that the market can correct the forms of scientific shortsightedness founders on the consensus of society and of the species as a whole
• Market forces would generate a democratic scientific agenda
• The lines of inquiry should not be determined by the ignorant
• Vulgar democracy has its own form of myopia.

Myopia

• Lack of understanding from ordinary citizens will inevitably detract from the accumulation, results will be delayed and citizens will not achieve
• Voters are unlikely to vote for deep theoretical progress
• An example would be how vulgar democratic science would pick Bateson over Morgan
• Outsiders voting can hurt the non-utilitarian value of knowledge
• There is belief in public goods but this can only be achieved if all know science

Proposals

• Human societies have had what's called an Inquiry-and-Information-System (IIS)
• The IIS must identify questions to which the members of the society need, or want, answers, to consider possible answers, determine when the issue has been settled, & transmit the information thus
• Institutionalized science is at the center of the IIS
• We can distinguish the 3 functional subsystems:
  • Inquiry: determines which questions ought to be pursued by experts
  • Certification: considers pieces of information should be considered genuine
  • Transmission: lays out the ways knowledge becomes available
• Traditional thinking has been skewed towards certification and standards
• Democratic pressure on the inquiry subsystem is also felt in the other subsystems as well.
• We've seen the deficiencies of deferring to experts and of vulgar democracy.
• Scientists and the public have their own authority
• It is called 'The Ideal of Well Ordered Science' combine above factors

Well-Ordered Science Ideal

• Science is well-ordered when there is the full diversity of thought
• The preferences are the raw wishes that are tutored
• The tutoring is meant to acquaint options and possibilities
• All parties will realize there is an attempt and wish to satisfy all.
• Well ordered science ideals will include mutual understanding, negotiation, and concern
• Also should not neglect the expertise of the scientific community lest it lead to a tyranny of ignorance
• All ideas are to be transformed
• It would be absurd to bring vast numbers of people together to have lengthy discussions of all potential plans for scientific inquiry
• It is only meant to be an ideal, but that does not mean goals should be ignored.
• Pessimists may believe that this point does not need to be reached or isn't wanted.
• There are institutions through which will improve science rather than the current way
• Institutions should focus on the desperate needs of the world’s poor
• Instead of clashing visions, there needs to be a complete view of science that may open up for institutions
• Scientists at the end of their careers should be able to produce that picture through deliberation
• They could present the picture to representatives of different communities for understanding
• A 'Scientific Forum' could take seriously the wishes of the group involved but it may most likely fail
• Any organization should bring closer ideals

Worries and Hopes

• A proposal can be criticised.
• It's said that basic research will be slighted while stifling creativity and making research unpredictable.
• Basic research ought to display why it is significant
• The history of medicine is significant
• People with great talents are a strategy for scientific investigation
• There ought to be account that the investigation learns from ventures
• Casual assumptions should be a questioned
• There is unreliability
• The science forum can be be aware of points
• There is the danger of apoplexy of non scientists
• Knowledge, wisdom and research are key
• One should never estimate the future but should guard to catastrophes
• There is the notion of science as one of the greatest points.
• Science has to be public and there has to be criteria
• The accomplishment has to be from by everyone