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Lord Sainsbury of TurvilleThe Royal Society - The Socially Responsible Use of Science |
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Thank you for inviting me to introduce this meeting today. I would find it hard to think of a more relevant and important subject to be discussed during SET week. All round the country science and engineering, and their positive impacts on society, are being celebrated. Yet we also know that the pace of scientific development leaves many people concerned and feeling excluded from the key debates of the day. I want this morning to discuss the contribution that science can make to our society. No longer do people believe that science is wholly benign and that scientists never make mistakes. Equally it is foolish to ignore the huge contribution that the application of science has made to our welfare in the last one hundred and fifty years. To believe that some natural Eden existed before the Industrial Revolution, from which science expelled us, is to ignore the historical facts. And faced with the many problems and opportunities that our society confronts today, it would be a grave mistake to deny ourselves the benefits that developments in science can bring. I?d like to start by considering the process of science and the responsibilities of individual scientists. Science is arguably the oldest profession with built in self-regulation. The fundamental principles of science such as peer review and the requirement for reproducibility have led to a sound structure that ultimately gives us the most reliable explanation we have for the nature of the world around us. Self regulation can work extremely well, but it does rely upon people following the rules. Scientific standards of proof and criticism are harsh, because scientific knowledge must eventually be convincing beyond reasonable doubt. Scientific communications must be refereed to be sure that the correct methodology has been used. "Science by Press Release" is not just bad science, it is irresponsible science. The case of "cold fusion" shows how science can be devalued if the accepted processes are not followed. About ten years ago to the day, on 23 March 1989, the scientific world was rocked by an announcement that Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann had observed controlled nuclear fusion at low temperatures in a glass jar. The announcement offering the promise of a new, cheap and sustainable power source was made at a press conference in Salt Lake City. This public declaration without the normal review process associated with a scientific publication led to much criticism from the scientific community. Initially many laboratories announced confirmations, but later retracted them as experimental techniques and controls were tightened and repeated. By October 1989 the US Department of Energy had concluded that there was nothing to cold fusion, a forceful reminder that the rules of science must be observed if we are to ensure that what is made public is as reliable as possible. I appreciate that economic and academic pressures mean that individuals or research groups are often striving to be first. But there is a greater overarching responsibility to science itself. Most surveys show that scientists as a broad category are generally trusted, certainly far more than politicians in general and government ministers in particular. After teachers and doctors, independent scientists continue to be regarded as trustworthy providers of accurate information. But this trust is based upon the assumption that a scientist speaks with authority. If this is to be true, then that authority needs to be conferred by the process of science, which means subjecting work to the rigorous examination that allows us to conclude that it represents the facts as well as we can currently understand them. Scientific communications must also be a two-way process. As my predecessor John Battle always used to stress, the public understanding of science also involves scientists understanding the public. It is essential that scientists not only explain their work, but that they are sensitive to the concerns of the public. This attitude has underpinned our ongoing work on understanding public attitudes to the biosciences and our oversight of this branch of science. We have established a public consultation exercise on advances in the biosciences. The consultation will address the level and nature of the public?s awareness of technological advances; the issues arising from these developments and their importance relative to other scientific issues; the extent of people?s knowledge of the oversight and regulatory process; the issues the public thinks ought to be taken into account in any oversight of bioscience developments; and the information that the public would like to see made available to them from the regulatory system. When the consultation has taken place, we will use the results as an input to the review of the Biotechnology Advisory Committees which is taking place. We have also established a Consensus Conference on the handling of nuclear waste which involved a panel of lay people receiving information on the science and the issues involved. In this way we hope to identify the public perception of the key issues involved in the handling and disposal of nuclear waste. Once we understand public concerns, we can then start to build a meaningful dialogue. While the concerns of the public need always to be taken into account, it needs to be said constantly that the application of advances in fundamental science have had a hugely beneficial impact on our lives. The point was made elegantly by H Casimir, the distinguished theoretical physicist in 1966. He wrote: "Certainly one might speculate idly whether transistors might have been discovered by people who had not been trained in and had not contributed to wave mechanics or the theory of electrons in solids. It so happened that inventors of transistors were versed in and contributed to the quantum theory of solids. One might ask whether basic circuits in computers might have been found by people who wanted to build computers. As it happens, they were discovered in the thirties by physicists dealing with the counting of nuclear particles because they were interested in nuclear physics. Or whether, in an urge to provide better communication, one might have found electromagnetic waves. They were not found that way. They were found by Hertz who emphasised the beauty of physics and who based his work on the theoretical considerations of Maxwell. I think there is hardly any example of twentieth century innovations which is not indebted in this way to basic scientific thought." These developments in physics, and others in chemistry and biology, have transformed our lives. As a result of vaccinations and penicillin we have been able to reduce the threat of infectious diseases, and using pasteurisation, sterilisation, water purification and other techniques we have been able to combat food and water-borne disease. The result has been an incredible increase in the quality and length of our lives within the last 50 years. If we take the world as a whole, life expectancy at birth rose from 46.4 years in 1950-55 to 64.4 years in 1990-95, an increase of 18 years. And equally significant, the gap in life expectancy between the more developed regions and the less developed regions fell from 26 years in 1950-55 to 12 years in 1990-95. And though it remains shockingly high in developing regions, the absolute numbers and fractions of people who were chronically undernourished fell from 941 million around 1970 to 786 million around 1990. When people today see on their television set scenes of famine and disease in developing countries they are rightly shocked, but such scenes would have been commonplace in pre-industrial Revolution in Britain. The reason why they no longer exist is due in large measure to the application of advances in science. As the historian J H Plumb, in one of his attacks on the teaching of a picture book past, wrote ?No one in his senses 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 would have accepted stoically the death of the majority of his children.? The benefits of science have been huge. But we must never be arrogant about the advance of science, as terrible tragedies such as Thalidomide, the creation of new weapons of mass destruction and a long list of environmental problems have to be set against the benefits. To many people the degradation of the environment is seen rightly as one of the major disadvantages of the spread of industrialisation. But even here the solutions depends on science. The production of CFC?s widened the ozone hole, but advances in space science and communications led to the discovery of the hole. And it is science that must guide our efforts to correct the situation. Similarly, industrial pollution will only be solved through scientific progress and the growth of clean technologies. Developments in materials are providing the steadily improving nature of transport and construction around the world whilst the physical sciences are addressing the critical question of energy usage and sustainability in the future. When it comes to the environment, good intentions are not enough. In the fields of climate change and global warming, rigorous scientific analysis is the best friend the environment has. While we can take action to reduce the demand for energy, it is not a realistic option to return to a pre-industrial past. We need advances in science to provide us with more efficient energy and cleaner emissions. We need both curiosity-driven research and an effective system of government regulations. That is why the Government, at the beginning of what undoubtedly will be the Century of Biology, is carefully reviewing the various Advisory Committees which regulate the development of Biotechnology. Faced by a period of rapid discovery in the biological sciences we must be certain that we do not have gaps or overlaps in our regulatory processes, and that we are able to consider all the safety, ethical and environmental issues that arise, in a transparent and independent way. Openness across government departments in explaining the interpretation of scientific advice is absolutely essential. Without this degree of transparency, the public cannot be expected to have confidence in Government decision-making in the scientific area, and consumers will be severely hampered from contributing to any debate. Sir Robert May will say more about this aspect of Government policy this afternoon. It is an area where the US Food and Drug administration is highly successful, and I should like to see our own world class advisory bodies as widely and as well regarded. We should never, however, make the mistake of thinking that we can at the beginning of any period of scientific discovery, estimate what the benefits and disadvantages of any technology will be, and on that basis decide whether we want it or not. Current regulatory control is based on assessment of potential risks. Accepted regulatory hurdles for a product cover the scientific evaluations of safety, quality and efficacy. To this must be added a broader consideration of the ethical and environmental implications of new developments. But I do not think the additions of a so-called "fourth hurdle", an evaluation of whether a product is needed by society is desirable. It is an impossible task to ask any group of people, however wise and far-sighted they may be, what benefits and disadvantages will flow from any new technology over the long term. History is full of examples of scientists and non-scientists alike failing to see what will be the practical impact of new technologies. In 1865, a famous editorial in the Boston Post said: "Well-informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value." This is not to say that we should never ban a particular use of a new technology, but we should think long and hard before ever stopping the development of a new science on the grounds that we can fully assess all the benefits and disadvantages that will flow from it, and on that basis decide that it is not desirable. Our lives in the coming century will be changed enormously by the scientific revolutions taking place in IT, Biology and New Materials. Many of these will affect our lives in profound ways. If we are to benefit from these revolutions as much as we should, we must make certain not only that our scientists are funded properly, but that their work is carried out to the highest possible scientific standards, and that it is regulated in an effective, transparent and independent way. That is what I believe is the socially responsible use of science. |
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Other speeches by Lord Sainsbury of Turville
(the following are available from the archive) |
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