Science and the Public Interest

There was a thought-provoking program on scientific innovation on Leading Edge last night, which I caught on my way to the Apollo in Herne Hill. They interviewed an author and engineer called Anne Miller who has studied how to overcome resistance to new ideas in some detail and has written about her findings in a book called The Myth of the Mousetrap.

They also spoke with someone called Don Braben, a scientist who is vehemently opposed to the idea of leaving science to the vagaries of peer review. He proposes that much more research has a genuinely 'blue skies' quality - that is scientific managers concentrate on hiring creative people and then give them the freedom and the time they need to explore things that interest them. This seems like exactly the right approach to science, and is close to what most of us think science is supposed to be about - a mass of divergent projects some of which might end up having some interesting results, a few of which will end up changing the world.

But the current model of proposal and peer review works against this culture of scientific freedom - ideas that might turn out to be world-changing will often (nearly always, perhaps) seem preposterous to a group of informed experts. The difference between a truly innovative approach and a blunder can only be established in retrospect.

I have been arguing for a while that in journalism the public needs to be much more closely involved in the commissioning process. In science I think the public's role is somewhat different. Part of our responsibility is to ensure exactly the kind of scientific freedom that Braben advocates. There is a place for applied research, that is for research within established parameters that does not seek to achieve game-changing results. This kind of research can and should be open to much higher levels of public scrutiny and involvement - it is, after all, our money. But some significant portion of research should be left at the discretion of scientists themselves. Every effort much be made to create a space in which curiosity is given free rein.

To put it another way, some science is like journalism, in that the researcher knows what they want to find out and broadly how to go about it. Some science isn't. It is speculative and easily dismissed up until it is proved to be correct. The challenge is to replace the oligarchy of peer review with a democratic field of public engagement with science on the one hand and an anarchic space for individual inquiry on the other.