Question 1
Given what we now know from the Intergovernmental Climate Change panel, how should this affect the overall ethical approach to scientific research? We've got to have massive changes in behaviour if we're to believe the figures from the intergovernmental panel, surely this has have implications for scientific research across the board from an ethical perspective. Do you have any comments?
Sir David King
I happen to think this is a very important question; it's a very deep question. As we move through this century, the challenges to the science and engineering profession are very different to the challenges we have faced before. Quite simply this is the biggest challenge our civilisation has ever had to face up to. We're trying to decarbonise our economy when in fact our economies t around the world since the industrial revolution have been totally dependent on fossil fuels. There's a massive set of challenges there, both in terms of science, engineering and technology challenges, to replace those technologies but we also have to take the society with us.
On the one hand we have got the science assessing climate change, the impacts on our society. So we have to be prepared to manage the risks to our society against the inevitable impact, we need the best science possible to inform us what those impacts are going to be, at the same time looking at the replacement of carbon.
If I just take it one step further. We arrived in the 20th Century with 1 and a half billion people on the planet. Because of all our advances we all started living longer; we saw an expanding we are now 6 and a half billion. In 2028 it will be 8 billion, by mid century 9 and a half billion.
Now anyone involved in planning needs to think about that, that in 50 years we will have of 9 and a half billion people all aspiring to the standards of living that we have today. That's impossible to deliver through the rampant consumerism that drove our economies so well in the 20th Century
You've asked a big question there and I think it sup to us as a scientific community to be well positioned to understand the implications on society. I'm sure others have comments
Chris Earnshaw (representing Royal Academy of Engineering)
To amplify, there are some very big choices to be made around some very complex subjects. This whole issue of transparency in public debate, take the public along with public policy is going to be more important than it's ever been in any of our experiences. You could say that this code is arriving at the right time. We desperately need this code to move forward in that orderly way.
Question 2
I see very much that you're directing a lot of the debate about the Universal code of ethics at the level of the individual scientist, that they're to reflect on their own activities and actions. But, at the institutional level, do you envisage that this might get to the point, where as an Institute you might start recommending that your engineers, say, withdraw from certain projects because at an institutional level, you think its unethical? Whether it is the Three Gorges Dam or whatever, what kind of action do you think might be recommended in future to your scientists or to Government?
Caitlin Watson (representing Institute of Physics)
The IoP has already had an ethical code for a long time, and that's what is accepted as ethical behaviour by our members. It's quite similar to the UEC, but several pages long. There is an onus that if you want to be a member of the Institute of Physics, you should be taking ethics very seriously. And to break the codes of conduct that we have, then our censure is to say that you're no longer a member of the Institute of Physics. If you want to do a project that breaks the ethical principles we think you should be working by, then you're no longer a member of the IoP. We believe that being a member of the Institute of Physics is very beneficial for science as well as for individuals. That's where we have our censure. I don't see that necessarily that will change; at the moment we wouldn't necessarily say 'don't do that project'.
Sir David King
The analogy there is with the BMA and medical practice.
Chris Earnshaw
Similarly, the engineering institutions would say they would expect their individual members, particularly their professionally registered members, t to put these principles top of the list. If that means making a conscious decision not to engage in some form of work then so be it. But as several people have said this isn't black and white, it's not a question of not being involved say in defence, because somehow the whole of defence is unethical. But it's a question if you are involved, then making sure you are involved in defence technologies that you are behaving you are involved in an ethically responsible way and that you can see how ethics are dealt with. Certainly, I think, the institutions have an increasing role to police that, to ensure that they are not knowingly allowing their members to behave in unethical ways. The BMA of course is seen to discipline their members who break the medical code of ethics, and I think that we have to get to the point where the professional institutions are seen to discipline their own members who clearly violate that.
Question 3
I was involved in development of the research ethics framework for the ESRC for social science which was developed a few years ago now. And one of the things we discovered that there seems to be a lot of emphasis in the academic world about teaching postgraduate students conducting research, about appropriate practice and ethics. We discovered it was actually senior social scientists that didn't see the need for an ethical code, or a new framework in this case, for example they would say, 'Are you saying that we're inducting bad research or that we're behaving unethically?'. They say that as a slur on that behaviour and we had to explain that we're not saying that, we're just saying that public expectations have moved and changed.
We shouldn't actually assume that senior members within a profession actually know about this. The need for education.
To finish, I just wondered how the Universal Ethical Code would have prevented the situation in Korea with Mr Hwang and the other examples you gave.
Sir David King
I think the point here is that would prevent it only at the point where education has meant that everyone accepts the importance of the Code. When Hwang was a young kid at school he should have been exposed to it. The second point is that actually people break codes; that's why we have prisons. If the code is broken then the question is what? Now Hwang is no longer a practising scientist. So, there is already an acceptance that you get punished if you do things that break the code.
This I think is a way of formalising that process.
Chris Earnshaw
If I can just add to that. I think it does raise an interesting question about whether there should be an ethical audit and whether the processes should include a retrospective check that the principles are being followed. In most other professions, say accountancy, we are quite comfortable with the idea that somebody goes back and checks that the process was properly followed. We may have to do that in the world of science and engineering.
Angela Flannery (representing AstraZeneca)
I think governance is very important. We can put governance in place, but it still wouldn't prevent the odd occurrence like that. But if you think of that particular situation, if you had not just himself, but his colleagues were all aware of this code, then it would be more likely that somebody would object to it and possibly it wouldn't go ahead. It's a critical mass of people.
David Atkins (representing Food Standards Agency)
I agree. You can't stop bad things happening but if you have an environment where people understand what behaviour they have to exhibit in order for their work to be appreciated and received well, then you create a system where it is les likely that these things will happen and when they happen other people found out about them.
Question 4
Education in ethics is very important and is the base, trying to stop the corrupt people. Are you planning to make any laws relating to this ethical code?
Sir David King
The implementation of the code depends on having some form of penalty for failure. We've been just touching on it, but to be honest what we need first of all is to get broad acceptance that this code or these codes are what we want. Once we have got that broad acceptance then we can look at the implications of misdemeanours
For the moment it is a matter of culture change. It is trying to say to every scientist but also to society that scientists have got this in their grasp and are beginning to deal with it. The question of whether there should be a means of dealing with people who break the code is something yet to be decided.
I think first lets see if we can get broader acceptance
Question 5
Could I ask you about the role of the Peer Review Process, the role of scientists in that, and the implications of this code? You pick it up in 'Present and review scientific evidence, theory or interpretation honestly and accurately'. If you look back at the GM debate, the Pusztai papers the monarch butterfly papers, really threw the media into a frenzy. I'm wondering how you encourage the peer review process to be more rigorous so that these kinds of papers aren't published, and also I think there's an issue about the scientific journals themselves, some of whom I think act as magazines would, when they see a piece of work which has great topicality, and perhaps they are tempted to circumvent the peer review process.
Sir David King
Just a very quick comment. The two top journals in the world in terms of citations are Science and Nature but these are also he two that have had to retract the more papers than any others, so hype goes very close to getting papers published in these journals; people overstate their claims and then have to backtrack. It's a matter of great concern. Do others want to come in?
Angela Flannery
It is a concern although I think the peer review process generally works fairly well, but you are right, some of the journals have their own agendas. Often the reason why something like this comes to the public attention is that the scientists, to be honest, have hyped up their own results. So it's not the journal who is actually trying to publicise it, but it is usually the institute the scientist is at has some publicity mechanism and you read that these things, and then the next day you read something completely different.
The public don't really know what to think because they don't read the scientific journals they look at what's in the papers. That's another big issue that people need to think about. I think it's a question about humility about your results. Where do they fit into the bigger scheme of things? I know that scientists generally, specifically academic scientists, require that continual stream of publications and of course the more publicity you get the better, but it can actually cause a whole lot of issues.
Sir David King
Scientists don't tend to have small egos.
There are two papers - you mentioned Pusztai i, I mentioned Wakefield. I would have to say that those papers should never have been published. The quality of the work in those papers was just so poor and then the consequences of their being published. The Pusztai paper almost single-handedly led to what I call the GM debacle. The fact that our leading industrial scientific companies, AstraZeneca was one of them; just backed away from a whole area that was potentially enormous benefit.
One paper, a terrible paper, an awful piece of research gets published. How did that get past the peer review? The Peer Review process is a critical part.
Question 6
At our university, we have got a requirement that all students have to submit an ethical outline of their project before they do them. That's quite a recent implementation, but has been a really rewarding step. And the change within the students' mindset as to what this involves, what they have to think about has bee really n quite dramatic. So I would really recommend that.
What I'm wondering is How this can be integrated into the school curriculum? Are any concerted steps being made to do this more widely?
Sir David King
I'd very much like to see this happen. I have a feeling we're all in the same place on that issue. It is being rolled out. We've got to see that it's practiced, you have heard about Government laboratories practising it and that's been really positive. WE needed to do that to see that we have something that does work at the laboratory level before we started rolling it out further, but I'm very keen to see that it rolls out to the schools, how do we get that to happen? Quite a big challenge. I'm sure the IoP and the RAEng will be backing that.
Chris Earnshaw
The work we have done in the Academy is primarily at addressing teaching at undergraduate level, but I absolutely agree that we need to do think about it at school level as well.
Sir David King
It actually comes back to the point I was making about recruitment. I think we will improve recruitment into engineering precisely because of this piece of work of the RAEng. It raises the general sense of comfort with what engineers do.
Question 7
If you have a conflict in science, if you have people with different interests, but you still have to make a policy decision, what do you base your decision on?
Sir David King
I think you're asking the question about part of my job in Government. It's a very important question for any chief scientific adviser, any adviser in Government. If you have to distil down the best science, then your job is very much part of this code. You have to make sure that you take into account all scientific opinion, and then distil it down. But you can't give to Ministers all of that exposure your job is to distil it down into a clear piece of advice. You have to say what the limits of the advice are. There are no straightforward answers to complex problems, and you need to expose the Minister to that, but you do have to boil it down to something that can be delivered to a minister whose attention span might be quite short.
Question 8
You mentioned the impact of those two papers. The Wakefield paper didn't have much of an impact outside the UK. So, the other factor that allowed those papers to have an impact was presumably a growing lack of trust in the Government scientist. This is perhaps a question for the Environment Agency, when you talk about putting in place consultation processes on nanotech, what are you going to do about the bigger challenge of getting people to see that all of your day decisions, be they about flood plains or the other elements that are in your purvue, and evidence based and that your people are seen to be scientists making evidence based ethical recommendations.
John Seager (representing the Environment Agency)
This comes down to the issue of communication and communication of risk. It runs right through our operational remit, its not just about flood plains, it's about incineration of waste; contamination and chemicals in the environment, and a whole range of different things. A lot of this comes down to communication and there are some very significant uncertainties around some of these issues. Some of the things we have learned by the upstream engagement is that it is really important to communicate and be Open and honest about those uncertainties, and that you are having to take operational decisions in an uncertain environment. The way you deal with that is through risk based decision making, that you are taking a proper assessment of the risk, and that you're taking your decisions and your actions on the basis of the information you have around the risk at that particular time.
When it comes to really big issues that affect people's lives, land their property, like flooding. Then we have found that communication is absolutely critical.
Question 9
To what extent does the Universal Code for scientists apply to those working for the military? Developing weapons does not seem, in my opinion, to agree with the 'respect for life' mentioned. There is also the issue of the extent to which the public can be informed of military scientific developments, which quite often precede civil scientific developments.
DIUS
The Universal Ethical code for scientists is, by name and nature, universally applicable, and every branch of science has to make daily decisions and perform a balancing act. Defence will always be a nation's key priority.
Question 10
Will the code be presented and promoted to the universities? It would be great to see posters of the code in every department, independently of the discipline. Also, could the code become one of the key pieces of information that a research student receives at the beginning of their studies? I guess all this may depend on each university, but does the government plan to initiate a discussion on the acceptance of the code by universities?
DIUS
The code leaflet has been made available to all sectors, and the Government is keen to initiate discussions with universities and others in the education sector. However, the focus to date has been on Government taking a lead role. Some universities have already taken steps to build on the Code and we are pleased to see this.
Sir David King has presented the Code to Universities UK vice chancellors.
Question 11
What is the expected impact of the code in the wider European context? Is there a vision of how the code may be received by other countries?
DIUS
The code emerged from European discussions and Sir David King has made other countries aware of developments in the UK. That said, the focus is on implementation in a British context.
Question 12
There are other ethical codes adopted by specific organizations (e.g. Royal Academy of Engineering). Do these codes "link" to the Universal Ethical Code, so that they can be seen as a specialization of the Universal Code rather than a replacement for that?
DIUS
This is exactly the case with the Royal Academy of Engineering's Statement of Ethical Principles
