Navigating Conflict Between Science and Government Policymakers – Past and Future

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In a new CSHE paper entitled “Science and Its Discontents: An Evolutionary Tale, Donald Kennedy analyzes the roots and implications of conflict between the conduct of science and government predilections in the United States, including the security state and neoconservative control of Washington.

Kennedy provides his comments after extensive experience as a biologist, president of the Stanford University, and until recently editor-in-chief of Science Magazine. He discusses three major conflicts are discussed: the emergence of new security and secrecy regimes that seek control of science; religiously derived moral viewpoints that seek to limit scientific research; and the purposeful shaping and censoring of scientific findings for political gain. All three policy issues, argues the author, have their roots in a growing public mistrust of science and its purposes, but also the actions of the current presidential administration.

“It should be no surprise that this is common practice,” states Kennedy, “because the President has signaled his disinterest in serious science and scientific opinion from the very beginning. One major science appointment in the administration after another has been delayed, or given to a candidate with few qualifications save political loyalty, or given to a scientist with little or no access to the President or his cabinet officers.”

Political interference in science policymaking is a model that needs to be quickly abandoned. What is needed, he argues, is a set of rules rooted in several common understandings or rules. First, policies resting on scientific or technological issues, like all public policies, are decided in the end not just by experts, but by a variety of people and interests. Second, objective scientific results, tested by repeated efforts at confirmation, are necessary (though not sufficient) elements in such policy decisions. Third, if the scientists responsible for those findings are controlled or silenced by particular policy interests, or committed in advance to any particular category of policy outcome, the resulting decisions are likely to be wrong.

“If adopted in advance of the installation of the next administration,” Kennedy states, “such a set of rules could be seen a forward-looking improvement in governance, rather than as yet another criticism of what has been going on in this one.”

For access to the study, see: http://cshe.berkeley.edu/publications/publications.php?s=1

Donald Kennedy is the former editor-in-chief of Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and President Emeritus Stanford University. This paper is a version of one of three Clark Kerr Lectures on the Role of Higher Education in Society that he gave at both the Berkeley and UC Irvine campuses during the 2007-08 academic year.

CONTACT:
Donald Kennedy
KennedyD@leland.stanford.edu

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