What is science for?

David Sainsbury, probably the longest-serving science minister ever, was clearly an enthusiast for his brief. In a political system where ministers and civil servants come and go, the merits of longevity in a post are not to be under-estimated. Sainsbury was able to argue for science as no other minister has been able to.

It is hard to say how far this longevity is responsible for the strong standing that science has enjoyed during Labour’s tenure in power but the plaudits from scientists, commentators and opposition politicians alike at the time of Sainsbury’s departure certainly indicate some connection.

As Diana Warwick, chief executive of Universities UK, told the BBC, his ‘period of office covered a time of unprecedented investment in, and support for, the UK’s science base. David Sainsbury has been a great champion of research in higher education, and will be a serious loss to UK science and to the university sector.’

Science policy under Labour has been a period characterised by a continuation of ideas and significant growth in funding. Labour entered office with a strong position on education, ambitious policies for the numbers of students going to university, and a forceful rhetorical commitment to the value of science in the context of the knowledge economy.

The idea underpinning all of this is that investments in knowledge capital attract top firms and small hi-tech start-ups, creating demand for highly skilled workers and resulting in increased tax revenues.

Labour inherited a science policy that had changed little since William Waldegrave’s tenure in the post of science minister. In 1993, Waldegrave had successfully put together the first science white paper for well over a decade, Realising our Potential. Waldegrave, who was only in the job for two years, was actually interested in science, unlike many of his predecessors and some of his successors for whom science was a stepping-stone to a ‘more interesting’ ministerial job — or the exit door.

Before Waldegrave, science policy had been the victim of ideology and whim for some time. Science policy in the 1980s swung wildly; at one point it was based on the prejudice that the state should fund nothing that might be of use to the private sector — the thinking being that the private sector should fund such research itself. If anything, the 1993 white paper produced the opposite worry among scientists: that only research of interest to industry would be funded.

Labour did little to change direction. The emphasis on creating benefits for the private sector has, if anything, been strengthened. In the meantime, the other two aims of science policy — supporting public policy/public services and enhancing the quality of life — have remained the poor cousins of the more rhetorically pleasing ‘science-based innovation’, which is the direct descendant of Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s famous phrase about the ‘white heat of technology’ that he introduced in his 1963 speech to the Labour Party conference.

Macho, uncritical chest-beating about ‘innovation’ simply leaves the questions ‘which innovations?’, ‘in which direction?’ and ‘to what end?’ unanswered.

This innovation rhetoric goes hand-in-glove with the idea that economic growth is the goal to be achieved at all costs, with quality of life an incidental potential side effect, rather than economic activity being designed to serve our quality of life. In the light of climate change and the issues it raises around environmental sustainability, serious questioning about this emphasis is long overdue.

If the ideas behind policy have changed little, the same cannot be said for government’s financial support. Under Labour, funding for the science base has more than doubled, from £1.3bn in 1996-97, to £2.9bn in 2006-07, and reportedly £3.4bn in 2008. This is, by any measure, a huge increase in funding and has resulted in many real and useful improvements in universities and other parts of the science base.

UK research is now among the most vibrant and productive in the world. Doctoral students have a much more attractive deal. Most universities have also benefited from new or re-furbished buildings as a result of the Joint Infrastructure Fund and other initiatives.

In return for this in-flow of funds, government has pursued its agenda by establishing ever more firmly that the twin pillars of UK science policy are excellence and knowledge transfer, both aimed at innovation.

But each of these ideas is problematic. ‘Excellence’ is usually understood by scientists to mean ‘novelty’ — new knowledge at the frontier of science. But some of society’s most pressing challenges are not best addressed through new knowledge — for example, can we really wait for science to produce new designs for planes to address concerns about emissions, as recently suggested by the Prime Minister?

The notion of excellence also dominates systems of measuring and accountability in science. The UK leads the world with its research assessment exercise (RAE), yet this mainly relies on counting the number and ‘quality’ of academic publications. But because inter-disciplinary, problem-focused research is less highly regarded in large parts of academia, and therefore harder to publish in ‘top’ journals, peer-review processes such as the RAE fail to capture the relevance and usefulness of science.

The 2004 Roberts review, set up to review the RAE partly because of concerns that it was undermining inter-disciplinary and problem-focused research, simply failed to mention these matters beyond page 3.

The idea of knowledge transfer presumes that you have two separate communities, one with knowledge and the other eagerly awaiting its arrival. Yet most universities’ knowledge-transfer activities are aimed at capturing intellectual property for fear of losing out on some revenue.

This has led to a situation in which companies now complain that when they want to talk to a scientist, a group of lawyers arrives from the university first.

Is this really what is intended? The need for knowledge transfer should be seen as indicating a problem that we have two separated communities. We need to think critically about many of the things that are now being done in its name. Informal, on-going engagement between business and scientists is often the answer.

Labour’s science policy, building on its predecessor’s, has not resolved these on-going confusions and inconsistencies around the aims of science policy as well as the role of some of its instruments such as the RAE. Perhaps having a friend of science at the top is not quite what it might be, which raises the question, what will David Sainsbury suggest in his review of UK science policy for Gordon Brown over the coming months?

It is to be hoped that his report is the subject of searching debate, rather than another report that gathers dust, ironically immitating too many reports produced by academics and scientists.

Dr Alister Scott is at SPRU, University of Sussex, and is a co-Director of The Knowledge Bridge Ltd. He can be contacted at ahs21@sussex.ac.uk