To Advocate, or Not?
March 14th, 2006Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
When should a scientist get involved in political advocacy related to policy making in the area of their expertise? And once having decided to get involved, what form of advocacy should the scientist engage in, given that there are numerous options for scientists as advocates?
In my experience, such questions are rarely discussed among scientists. Some assert that politics is necessarily a bad thing to be avoided and refuse to admit any role in advocacy, even among those who are clearly advocates. In discussing such things one prominent scientist went so far as to assert that in his entire life he had never done anything that might be construed as political. Others simply assert that what is in their own personal special interests is obviously in everyone’s interest, and that people who disagree must be science abusers and morally corrupt. Still others gather in tribes with like-minded colleagues, particularly in the blogosphere, creating very real instances of Cass Sunstein’s echo chambers. The discussion of advocacy in science often takes place in its own echo chamber of the science studies community.
I came across an article about malaria in Kenya (courtesy of the always excellent SciDev.net), which had the following very interesting passage, which raises questions about roles and responsibilities of scientists in broader society:
Kenya is the third leading nation in research on malaria in the world, according to a survey published last November by Thomson Scientific’s Essential Science Indicators (ESI) — an in-depth analytical tool that offers data for ranking scientists, institutions, countries and journals around the world.
USA is the leading nation followed by England. France, Germany and Switzerland are ranked fourth, fifth and sixth, respectively. Available as a ten-year rolling file, ESI covers ten million articles in 22 specific fields of research and is updated every two months.
But despite the fact that Kenya is a leading producer of research data on malaria, it remains one of the countries with the highest malaria mortality rate in the world. Why the disconnect between research and control?
Prof Bob Snow, the head of Malaria, Public Health and Epidemiology Group, Centre for Geographic Medicine at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri), blames lack of mechanisms to translate research into policy and implementation. “The problem is not with the scientists that malaria burden in Kenya is still very high and raising. As scientists, we have done our part and done it very well. The major problem is that unlike in Britain and other countries, there is no mechanism to directly translate research findings into national policy or to translate research into action.”
Prof Snow, who has been involved in malaria research in the country for the last 18 years and is ranked fifth in the world in malaria research, feels the government does not fully comprehend the role of researchers.
“As scientists in Kenya, we have to do two jobs. We have to conduct research and then convince the government or the Ministry of Health to adopt our research findings. This should never be the case. There should be a mechanism that automatically facilitates adoption of research findings by the government.”
What mechanism? How created? Run by whom? What does it mean to “adopt research findings”? Automatically? These are the questions at the core of 21st century science policy. Asking and answering these question are of course political exercises themselves and can create some discomfort among scientists/advocates. Consider the cirle-the-wagon reactions often seen here to suggestions that the IPCC might not be an optimal means of connecting science and decision making. And consider the frustration expressed by scientists such as James Hansen about their role in the political process.
As people focus attention on press releases, NRC committees on hockey sticks, drug approval processes, government science reports, national academy statements, science in developing countries, etc. etc. it will be these questions of process that will be important to keep at the fore.
March 14th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
“What mechanism? How created? Run by whom?”
It is revealing that we don’t ask those questions about things done in markets. Nobody creates or run markets. Markets emerge and run smoothly with nobody in charge. In markets information flows smoothly because nobody is in charge of moving it. Good ideas swiftly turn into action because individual people have the right incentives. Right incentives are “the mechanism”.
Governments lack the information and the incentives to take full advantage of human ingenuity. In the case of malaria, I would let private firms do the research and get the profits. The expectation of profits is “the mechanism”. The expectation of government getting in the way of profits prevents people from making the right efforts.
March 14th, 2006 at 2:47 pm
Marcelino- Thanks for your comments. Bozeman and Sarewitz (2005) take on this question in a paper titled:
Public values and public failure in US science policy
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/beech/spp/2005/00000032/00000002/art00003
You can get an earlier version free here:
http://www.cspo.org/ourlibrary/documents/efficient.markets.pdf
March 15th, 2006 at 9:37 am
Francis Fukuyama on intellectuals in policy debates:
“I believe that a democracy is better off having intellectuals pay systematic attention to policy issues, even if it is occasionally corrupting. Having to deal not with ideal solutions but with the real world of power and politics is a good discipline for an intellectual. There is a fine line between being realistic and selling one’s soul, and in the case of the Iraq war many neoconservatives got so preoccupied with policy advocacy that they blinded themselves to reality. But it’s not clear that virtue necessarily lies on the side of intellectuals who think they are simply being honest.”
http://www.the-american-interest.com/cms/bhl.cfm
March 15th, 2006 at 1:41 pm
Fukuyama’s mea culpa is indeed instructive. In good Trotskyite tradition the neocons took an intellectual concept and attempted to force history. Competing viewpoints were treated with disdain and a mountain of non-supporting information was ignored. As a result we got the tragedy of Iraq.
“But it’s not clear that virtue necessarily lies on the side of intellectuals who think they are simply being honest.” If only we could get this message through to the keepers of the paradigm on the GW debate, it might help them.
I can see the merit in Biochemical’s viewpoint above but I would like to point out that government has a role even if it is just as a source of big bucks. The NRC has produced huge good.
The frustrations of advocacy will never go away. In the matrix of human society courses let alone objectives are never clear. It is like a chaotic system. You input and It spins around and does nothing. Then one day. boom, results emerge. Patience hurts.
March 15th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
Good, compelling comments and thank you Roger for the good link.
I also wonder why we don’t ask Biopolitical’s questions about markets.
Because I do, also, wonder about markets and information flowing “smoothly”. I find information to be highly asymmetrical, and if it did flow “smoothly” we wouldn’t have market failures, inequality, etc. because we cannot calculate Pareto optima without knowing the price of externalities. And how would a system with no one in charge ‘adopt’ findings without pricing externalities?
Best,
D
March 16th, 2006 at 12:39 pm
Dano, of course we must ask the same questions about markets and about governments. I am not arguing that markets lead to perfect outcomes. I am arguing that information flows more smoothly in markets than in governments, and that markets adopt findings faster and more efficiently than governments.
(Additionally, for at least most functions markets have less severe externalities than governments. Free markets also have ways to internalize externalities without the need of having someone in charge.)
March 16th, 2006 at 6:47 pm
I agree, BP, but Roger is asking questions about science policy and by extension, actions that are taken to effect change in the future at differing temporal scales; these questions of impacts on societal integrity are not answered or addressed by markets, which act on shorter temporal scales and reflect people buying things (else markets would install road, sewer and other long-range planning-related infrastructure).
Certainly markets are partners at many scales, and the questions I hear (and presumably what Roger implies, although I don’t speak for him [Roger breathes a sigh of relief here]) are the same as Roger asks (not what markets buy), and the implicit and explicit implications are that markets are a component of the system. Paul above points this out, and I originally commented because often markets get a free pass as if the ‘wisdom’ in markets is self-evident or the solution. Thinking ahead is the solution, and political will is needed to make it so.
Best, sir,
D