Science, the public and the missing MPs

I would like to start this post by saying that Dr Evan Harris is someone I have a huge amount of respect for and I write this, partly, in the hope he will read this and let me know what he thinks. At last week's Talk Science Event at the British Library (Twitter #BLTS, podcast), Dr Harris bemoaned the lack of interest in science shown by party leaders and MPs. The cause, he diagnosed, of this disinterest is the broadcast media. Now, it would be hard to say that science has not had it's fair share on TV recently so I assume the theory is that until TV news takes science policy seriously, serious politicians won't either.

Whilst that might be true, the broadcast media does not chose, at random, what to cover. To make it on the News at 10, a story has been judged to be of sufficient interest to enough people. If science policy does not make it onto the news, that suggests to me that too few people find it engaging.

This brings me to another thing Dr Harris bemoaned, Public Engagement. Listening to the recording it appears he is far from convinced that the public should be given a say in how science develops. The argument runs: we elect our respresentatives, and it is they who should make decisions about what science is done, how it is regulated and used, not the unwashed masses. Worse still, the kind of public engagement that gives people a say in science decision making is a drain on researchers, whose time is better spent doing what they do best - research.

Dr Harris is far from unique in holding these views, and to be fair a flick through the Twitter feed of #Talkfest held later in the week suggests he is not completely anti-engagement. However, I find the juxtaposition of these two bemoanments suprising in a man normally so well argued. There are two problems, as I see it:

1. Is parliament capable and legitimate? The lack of interest party leaders and new MPs show in science surely undermines the idea that an elected parliament is an effective forum to debate and then regulate science. Arguably, many MPs are no better informed than your average guy on the street and more susceptible to Daily Mail politics. The cynic in me wonders if a disinterested parliament, which just lets scientists get on with it, would be some people's ideal body to scrutinise science, but I very much doubt Dr Harris is one of them.

More fundamentally, the basis of representative democracy is electing people you believe will represent you and your best interests. If, as we saw, people don't see science as an issue upon which to elect someone and no party was at all detailed on what they would do with science, how can the current parliament claim a mandate to govern science?

2. Getting science on the news. If, as I suspect he is, Dr Harris is right that party leaders will only engage with an issue when it gets onto the news, the real issue must be how to acheive this for science policy. Look at the issues that dominate: health, crime, schools. These are all policies that have a direct and immediate impact on people's lives. More, the link between policy and what happens to you is widely understood.

Science is different, or at least science policy is. Science decisions by a government will, largely, only effect the whole population in the medium and long term and fewer people have a grasp of what research spending means for them. I would argue, then, that to get science policy on the news we must give it more immediacy. And what better way of doing that than to bring it alive, give people more of a stake in decisions and communicate? In otherwords, engage!

I would humbly suggest that more engagement, more dialogue and yes, more real, ordinary, not perfectly informed people having a say in how public money is spent on science is necessary. Without this I fear we will never see science rise up the political agenda and we will forever be at the whim of the disinterested, vulnerable to Daily Mail parliamentarians. Get the public interested, the news and the politicians that watch it, will surely follow.

Is blogging journalism? (and what the question should be)

Blogging is heralded by some, mostly bloggers, as the answer to crap science journalism and the crisis heralded for the business model of traditional journalism. Blogging, they contend, is journalism just published by a different, cheaper medium. Even better, instead of generalists writing half informed articles further butchered by mindless sub-editors, content is written by experts in their field.

On the face of it, this sounds an attractive future and perhaps the potential loss of science journalists from national news outlets is nothing to mourn. Yet the debate over the desirability of this possible future, or indeed if blogging is journalism, rages on. Ed Yong wrote a good critique of this debate a while back (although I contend it's not 2006 to still talk about this).

On one level, and as Yong points out, this is a silly debate. Blogging is no more or less journalism than writing something that goes into a newspaper – the medium through which words are made public is a moot point. What matters is the meaning of those words, where they came from, the process by which they came to be written and who they are intended for.

For the record, journalism has many definitions but my favourite is writing that reflects superficial thought and research, a popular slant, and hurried composition, conceived of as exemplifying topical newspaper or popular magazine writing as distinguished from scholarly writing. But I really don’t think the definition of journalism is that interesting.

What I am much more interested is, from a science perspective, can writing about science on blogs replace writing about science in newspapers? My own feeling is categorically not yet. This is simply because, like them or loathe them, newspapers command an authority that blogs do not. Read something in a newspaper and, whilst you know there is an editorial line to toe, you expect that the story has been written as an attempt to represent rather than twist the facts. You might disagree, and “editorial line” is a euphemism that contains a multitude of sins, but I still trust what I read in a paper more than what I read in a blog I have no knowledge of. Newspapers have a brand to maintain, a reputation to uphold, a bank account to ravage with defamation cases. Blogs can fold and reform at no cost.

This becomes clearer in the inverse. The blogosphere is full of misinformation on science, from vaccines to climate change, but the science community are not nearly as exorcised by this as they are by a single bad headline in the Express. Climategate became a story when mainstream papers picked it up, not when the blogs were spinning. This is because they know that the Express has much greater potential to cause harm because it is seen, by some, as a trusted source of information, an opinion former. Newspapers matter because millions of people read and believe what is in them. The same simply is not true of most, if not all, blogs.

This fact is, at once, implicitly understood by those that call for the heads of journalists when they get things wrong and ignored by the same people when they suggest blogs can replace them. Until blogs command the same kind of respect, authority and balance as, rightly or wrongly, journalists that publish in newspapers are held to, they will not replace them. Perhaps the answer is a curated site, like Comment is free, or Discover Blogs, but we know they are not immune to controversy. Furthermore, what level of curation is required and would that kill the very thing that makes blogs attractive?

The question I think we should ask is will blogs meet the needs of the science community and a diverse readership? Working out how to provide blogs the kind of authority newspapers enjoy will go some way to answering that question but that will not be trivial to do and, to me, appears some way off.

Science: Funding and Influence

In this year's Sense About Science Annual Lecture (how does one get invited to these things?) Fiona Godlee, Editor of the BMJ, makes a strong case for more independence in science. Godlee cites the various studies showing that clinical trials funded by pharmaceutical companies are far more likely to show positive results than the average.

This is hardly new, many people have written convincingly on the subject, and (whilst I'm not sure it's the final word on the matter) the Scientists for Global Responsibility report released last year gives a fairly comprehensive view of the problems. However, coming from the editor of a journal responsible for publishing these trials, Godlee's argument carries more weight. What did come as something of a surprise was Godlee's proposed solution to the problem of influence in medical research and policy - cut out conflict of interest completely.

Whether this is plausible, or even desirable, in a world where private money funds a huge amount of research is the million dollar question but it is refreshing to hear someone in a position of authority in the research community taking a stand on principle. It also got me thinking - if source of funding is a factor in research findings, how secure are other fields?

To be clear, I don't think anyone is suggesting that big pharma actively asks scientists to massage their figures, and I don't think medical scientists in receipt of industrial money intend to do so. However, the numbers speak for themselves, so there must be more subtle influence going on. What concerns me is how other funding sources might influence results, specifically how public money might have the same effect.

The recent history of science funding has seen an increased emphasis on the impact of research and a focus on subjects addressing national challenges. Whilst on one level I get this, who doesn't want us to get the most from our investment in science, who would argue that a silver bullet to climate change wouldn't be great? But if industrial funding can have such a profound, if subliminal, effect on results, can public money, given with such an explicit desire for impact, do the same? Arguably, the pressures are equivalent - come up with results that can fix something or make money and your chances of more funding are improved. Even a more fundamental focus on citation metrics could have influence given the received wisdom that it is easier to publish a positive result. If findings are inflated, will the very desire for impact undermine the ability to take publicly funded research out of the lab?

I don't know if this is a real effect and I find it harder still to think how to measure it. Presumably publicly funded research is the control for studies looking at corporate influence, but is there a universal benchmark? What money can truly be considered without strings? It may be that one could chart indicators such as average time to complete a research project, number of papers per grant, nominal positivity of results, against time. This might show research output changing as funding models change. On its own, this would prove nothing - these could just be legitimate signs of research getting better, more efficient - but would be a start.

It's tricky, and I don't have an answer. I sure no-one would argue that impact is not a great thing to have, I'm just not sure it's simple question of ask and ye shall get.