Scientists Reflect on Science:
Scientists' Perspectives on Contemporary Science
and Environmental Policy
A research report by the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change and the
Institute for Environmental and Natural Sciences, Lancaster University.
Claire Waterton, Brian Wynne, Robin Grove-White, Terry Mansfield.
April 2001
Acknowledgements
This document is based on an End of Award report for the project 'Scientists Reflect on
Science: How Scientists Encounter the Environment-Risk Domain'. We are grateful to the UK
Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for supporting this project during 1998-2000.
We would also like to express our thanks to all the natural and social scientists who have
taken part in the project, and have given up valuable time to discuss their work with us.
Copies of this document are available from:
Centre for the Study of Environmental Change
Institute for Environment, Philosophy and Public Policy
Lancaster University
Lancaster
LA1 4YG
Tel: 01524-592658
Fax: 01524-846339
E-mail: csec@lancaster.ac.uk
Contents:
i.
ii.
The research group
Preface
1
Summary
4
Background
4
Objectives
5
Methods
5
6
7
A counter-intuitive approach
Analysing scientists' talk
Interviews and group discussions: logistics
8
Findings
9
9
14
17
21
24
24
25
26
28
31
31
32
33
Heterogeneity of contemporary science narratives
Ecological protection
Climate change
BSE
Genetic Modification
Generic issues: how is reflection enabled or hampered within the sciences
we investigated?
Overall trends
Institutional differences and advisory status
Senior and junior scientists
Differences between men and women
The private and the public: how and where scientists reflect
Group discussions
Creating discursive fora
Implications for science-policy-public relationships
35
Bibliography
37
40
Annex A: Interview protocol
Annex B: Institutions where interviews took place
The research group
The Centre for the Study of Environmental Change (CSEC) is an interdisciplinary
research centre at Lancaster University, focussing on problems of contemporary
environmental knowledge and policy development. It forms part of the University's
Institute for Environment, Philosophy and Public Policy. Created in 1991, CSEC has
5* research rating, and extensive social-science-based research programmes, with
funding from bodies such as the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), The
Health and Safety Executive, The European Environment Agency and a range of
other bodies in the world of government, industry and NGOs, in Britain and
elsewhere.
The Institute for Environmental and Natural Sciences (IENS) is a faculty containing
the well-established departments of Biological Sciences, Environmental Science,
Geography and Chemistry and Physics. The Institute is committed to promoting
interdisciplinary teaching and research and there are many distinguished research
groups in all the member departments.
Claire Waterton is a Lecturer in Environment and Social Policy at CSEC. Her
research and teaching focuses on the sociological understanding of scientific
knowledge and the interface between scientific knowledge and policy making.
Professor Brian Wynne holds a chair in Science Studies, and is Research Director of
CSEC. Widely published as a sociologist of science, he has been a board member of
the European Environment Agency, as well as consultant to the European
Commission, the UK Department of Health, and ESRC. He was recently the Special
Adviser for the report of the House of Lords Science and Technology Select
Committee, Science and Society (HMSO 2000).
Professor Robin Grove-White holds a chair in Environment and Society, and is
Director of CSEC. Formerly Director of the Council for the Protection of Rural
England and a Forestry Commissioner, he is currently a member of the Government's
Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission, and Board Chair of
Greenpeace UK.
Professor Terry Mansfield is a research professor of Biological Sciences and a former
faculty dean. He has conducted research into the responses of plants to their
environment for over 40 years, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in1987.
He served as a member of the Council of AFRC and was chairman of their special
topic "Biological Adaptation to Global Environmental Change". He has also served
on many committees of NERC and as a council member of the Royal Society.
i
Preface
The research outlined in this report was designed originally in 1997. At that time,
suggestions of tensions between scientists and the rest of UK society were rarely
voiced, other than in terms picturing the public as ill-informed.
Since then however, there has been something of a sea change. Over the past four
years, an increasingly realistic recognition has emerged, concerning the burgeoning
'crisis of confidence' (highlighted in the recent House of Lords 'Science and Society'
report) which now tinges the public's relationships with aspects of contemporary
scientific innovation and regulation. With this recognition has come an appreciation
of the need for greater mutual understanding on both 'sides' - reflected in a flood of
recent initiatives by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, the Royal
Society, the Royal Society of the Arts, the Royal Institution, and others.
So the present research has become especially timely. We trust it contributes insight
into the situation in which many individual scientists in the contemporary world now
find themselves. Indeed, the research findings, based on interviews with a crosssection of practicing scientists, suggest that at a time when society is looking to the
latter for greater involvement in public discussions, rival preoccupations of an
immediate and understandable kind may be making this difficult. Not the least of such
concerns is the growing 'privatisation' of research funding, and the impact this trend
appears to be having on scientists' ability to reflect and think forward as a
'community'. The implications for younger scientists appear especially significant with the risk that a focus on contractual objectives and financial constraints may now
be acting to inhibit creative energy, and even to discourage talented individuals from
considering careers in science itself.
More immediately, the research is significant for the collaboration it reflects between
natural scientists and sociologists of knowledge at Lancaster. If improved
understandings between scientists and the rest of society are to become reality, then
the combined perceptions of both natural and social scientists will be necessary, to
throw light on the possible ways forward. The partnership from which this research
has emerged gives encouragement that this is indeed possible.
Robin Grove-White
Professor of Environment and Society
Terry Mansfield FRS
Professor of Biological Sciences
Lancaster University
3 April 2001
ii
Scientists Reflect on Science: Scientists' Perspectives on
Contemporary Science and Environmental Policy
Summary
This project aimed to investigate the relationship between science and society through
a research design that was focussed on interviews with scientists working in four
different scientific fields (ecological protection, climate change, BSE and genetic
modification). During the time of the project, scientific issues recurrently became
'public' areas of debate (for example, the 'Great GM debate' in the spring of 1999). As
a corollary, scientific and political institutions began to think more seriously about
'the public's' views of science (House of Lords Select Committee on Science and
Society, March 20001; COPUS Edinburgh Workshop, March 20002). As this project
was being developed and implemented it was deliberately related to other research
and practical policy initiatives in which the principles were involved3.
The aim of the project was to ascertain how scientists thought about their research in
relation to a bigger picture of policy and decision making on environment-risk issues.
The approach taken was to encourage scientists to voice their own perspectives on
issues of scientific knowledge and its relationship to policy issues such as uncertainty,
precaution, accountability, responsibility - issues that have also been a major
preoccupation of sociologists of science. The project was unusual in that it tried to
engage simultaneously with two very different intellectual cultures - that of the
natural sciences and of the social studies of science - whilst trying to retain interest
and meaning for both communities.
Interviews with 52 scientists working in the domains of ecological protection (15
interviews), climate change (9 interviews), BSE (15 interviews) and genetic
engineering (13 interviews) were carried out in 1998 and 1999. These interviews were
carried out across a range of institutional settings, including: government laboratories,
research institutes, universities, consultancy. Approximately 1/3 of the interviewees
were women, and there was an approximately equal balance of 'senior' scientists and
relatively 'junior' scientists. Group discussions with scientists were held at Lancaster
University at intervals throughout the study. These discussions involved reflecting on
the premises of the study as well as the 'findings' and have included senior
representatives from NERC and BBSRC. Further debates amidst the scientific and
research policy community have been held under the auspices of BBSRC and
COPUS4.
1
House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology, Science and Society, HMSO, March
2000
2
COPUS Forum Workshop, Building Bridges to Science, Edinburgh 14-15 April 2000
3
These included: BBSRC Expert Committee on Public Responses to Science; House of Lords Select
Committee on Science and Society; Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission
(AEBC); CSEC/Green Alliance/Unilever research project 'Wising Up'; Royal Society Committee on
Science and Society; EU Science and Governance initiative; British Council Programme 'Towards a
Democratic Science'; and others (fully referenced in the 'Outputs' section of this report).
4
NERC is the UK Natural Environment Research Council. BBSRC is the UK Biotechnology and
Biological Research Council. COPUS is the UK's Committee for the Public Understanding of Science.
1
The results of the research are of potential interest to both the (international) academic
social studies of science community as well as the UK scientific and science policy
community. Four main clusters of issues emerge from our findings:
1. Can scientists reflect on science?
Whilst sociologists and anthropologists of science have long recognised that scientists
themselves may be sources of a kind of 'folk' sociology of science (Gilbert and
Mulkay 1984; Woolgar 1988; Latour 1993), they have also often concluded that there
is no place for genuine reflection in institutionalised science (e.g. Kuhn 1962, 1963;
Mulkay 1972). Accounts of what science is like, given by scientists, have been
regarded almost always as forms of 'representational practice' and have been de- and
re-constructed by sociologists. In this context, scientists have been characterised as
having different concerns to those of sociologists and anthropologists: scientists have
instrumental concerns, rather than epistemological or reflective concerns (Kuhn 1962;
Woolgar 1988; Wynne 1997).
In contrast, this study assumed that scientists can be reflective about their own work,
but recognised that a key question needed to be explored as to what factors might
shape and limit this reflection. Results of interviews and discussions have indicated
that scientists can indeed reflect widely about their work, although the picture is not
straightforward. Interviewers found that scientists were able to talk in different
'repertoires'. At times in interview scientists seemed to be very reflective and 'open',
adopting what Gilbert and Mulkay (1984) have called an informal, 'contingent'
repertoire. At other times in the same interview scientists would adopt a more formal,
'closed' repertoire, which corresponds well to what Gilbert and Mulkay (1984) have
called the 'empiricist' repertoire. The interview design and range of questions tended
to bring out an informal 'contingent' repertoire in most of the interviews: scientists
were reflecting and talking about science, rather than representing science. Scientists
were also able to reflect on their own range of repertoires, and their ability to talk to
different audiences in different ways (Michael 1996).
2. Science transformed
Scientists' reflections provided much valuable information about the nature of the
environmental sciences in the UK today. The empirical results of the study endorse
many of the insights that Michael Gibbons et al. (1994) and Helga Nowoty et al.
(2000) have produced about the nature of contemporary science and of science's
changing 'social contract' in what they call a 'Mode-2' form of knowledge production.
In what was often referred to as a post-Rothschild5, post-Thatcher era, older scientists
commonly reflected on the pressures introduced by institutional changes that have
taken place in science since the mid 20th century, including the shrinking of corefunding and increasing emphasis on contract, industry-sponsored and user-related
work over the last 30-40 years.
Scientists in all sectors and in all the institutional settings in which we interviewed
(university, government institutes, consultancy etc.) now seem to obtain their funds
from a enormous array of sources (research councils, EU, industry, government). It
5
In 1976, Lord Rothschild's Select Committee report to the Government established the
customer/contractor principle between government departments and research organisations. When
implemented, this meant that research organisations had to tender for a much larger proportion of
overall research income.
2
appears that one of the essential skills of the contemporary environmental scientist is
to 'parallel process' (i.e. to carry out several pieces of research simultaneously) and to
attract new research grants from varied sources. There existed a very self-conscious
awareness amongst many scientists interviewed of the potential compromises and
adjustments in research as a result of both short-term funding and funding by industry
- the so-called 'commodification of knowledge'.
3. Scientific knowledge and decision-making
The scientists we interviewed had a sophisticated everyday knowledge of
uncertainties in their own work. Expressions of uncertainty were highly contextdependent: uncertainties were reported to have different associated meanings and
consequences for different sciences and seem to be managed in context-sensitive
ways. Like expressions of uncertainty, expressions of responsibility were found to be
highly 'relational', particularly with respect to the end-use of knowledge. The clearer
the end-use of knowledge, the more acutely felt was a sense of responsibility attached
to scientific results. Though scientists often felt a sense of responsibility for the
quality of their work, they rarely felt individually accountable for the applications of
scientific knowledge. In most cases scientists tended not to expect to relay research
results directly to policymakers. In the interviews, scientists were open about science's
limitations as a form of knowledge for decision making, acknowledging that science
can be interpreted - even by scientists - in different ways.
4. Scientists as a community?
Lack of core funding, competition for funding and the 'Mode-2' growth of userresearch communities seems to have had the effect of eroding a sense of community
among scientists. As a community, scientists appeared weak, fragmented, united
mainly through adversity - for example in the context of the widely reported public
mistrust of scientists after the BSE and GM foods controversies. Interviews suggested
a significant lack of self-understanding as a community - for example in
understanding public responses to science, or in thinking normatively about whether
the scientific community as a whole should have responsibility or accountability for
science or scientific applications. The research indicated there was little sense of
individual scientists being able to draw on, or discuss, visions for science and its
applications within 'the scientific community'.
3
Scientists Reflect on Science: Scientists' Perspectives on
Contemporary Science and Environmental Policy
Background
This research was conceived of in 1997, just a year after the height of the BSE crisis,
and at the beginning of a period of intense media, public, political and scientific
interest in the issues surrounding genetically modified foods and biotechnology. It
was therefore set against a context of great public interest in the nexus between
science, policymaking and the public.
The study also seemed to correspond well with the timing of debates in the social
studies of science. Different approaches to studying science were needed after the socalled Science Wars6 - approaches in which scientists themselves could give voice on
the kind of things that sociologists were interested in (see for example Marcus 1995,
Rabinow 1996).
Thirdly, concern about science-society relationships is currently conspicuous at policy
and governmental level in the UK. The following debates, in which this project's
researchers have taken part are an illustration of that interest: the House of Lords
Select Committee on Science and Society7 (for which one of the research team, Brian
Wynne, was a specialist adviser); COPUS Forum Workshop, Building Bridges to
Science: 14-15 April 2000; European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Developing a
New Dialogue, 10-12 November 2000; British Council Global Lecture Series, Science
and Society: Towards a Democratic Science, September - April 2000/2001;
Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission, Meeting on Public
Attitudes to GMOs, 16th Jan 2001.
There are therefore three distinctive contexts in which this study seems to belong:
public debates about science, risk and environmental policy making; science studies
debates about working with scientists; policy and governmental debates about science
and society.
Objectives
The research aimed to:
 explore practising scientists' own reflections on the role of contemporary science
in environmental decision making in four 'environment-risk' fields ( ecological
science, climate change, BSE, and genetic modification);
 look at the variation in scientists' understanding and views about contemporary
science and policy making with respect to gender; age/experience; institution or
work-place; advisory status;
 explore scientists' understanding and use of concepts such as 'uncertainty',
'responsibility', 'accountability', 'precaution' in the scientific and policy context;
6
The Science Wars was a debate that gained some heat between some sociologists of science and
scientists in the early 90's, largely centred around a key text by Paul Gross and Norman Levitt (Gross,
P. and Levitt, N., 1994, Higher Superstition: the Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science,
Baltimore, Md: John Hopkins University Press.)
7
House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology, Science and Society, HMSO, March
2000
4


explore the relationship between 'private reflections' and more publicly articulated
forms of debate about science and its contingencies, as a means to a better
'embedding' of science in liberal democratic society;
carry out the research with social and natural scientists in a way which allowed the
social science research to be critically reviewed by natural scientists as the
research progressed.
Methods
A counter-intuitive approach
'It is generally recognised that most existing accounts of what goes
on in science are partial and distorted. Often these accounts have
been culled from interviews with eminent ex-scientists or from
other public pronouncements about the nature of science: they
stress the methodological, systematic and logical basis of scientific
procedure' (Woolgar 1988).
A significant and arguably innovative aspect of this study is that we have been
working along the boundaries of two very different cultural groups: sociologists of
science who sometimes characterise scientists as unreflective and who are generally
wary of taking scientists' perspectives at face value; and scientists, who are often
affronted at the idea that they do not reflect on and around their work, and take as read
many of the conclusions drawn from sociology as science. The aim of this study was
to work with both communities by suggesting that the legitimate questions of the
sociology of science field are also legitimate and relevant questions for scientists to
ask about their own practices and culture. Therefore, the interviews were designed to
see when, how, and in what ways (and with what constraints) scientists might reflect
on and talk about the kinds of things that sociologists and science policy analysts are
interested in.
But there are important reasons why sociologists have assumed that such reflection
and talk is not possible by scientists. As early as 1962, Thomas Kuhn in the 'Structure
of Scientific Revolutions' made the important and relevant point that scientists, in the
normal course of their work, are tied into various epistemological commitments; they
are involved in a tradition-bound activity which is, in a sense, constitutionally
incapable of internal reflection. He suggested that,
'[t]hough most scientists talk easily and well about the particular
individual hypotheses that underlie a concrete piece of research,
they are little better than laymen at characterising the established
bases of their field, its legitimate problems and methods'. (p. 47)
According to Kuhn, scientists need to take the premises of their field for granted
within a paradigm of like-minded practitioners in order to move forwards and guide
research. In this sense science is like any other institution: scrutinising, economising,
channelling, such that negotiated patterns of activity seem 'natural'.
5
More recently, scholars in the sociology of scientific knowledge have studied in detail
further reasons why scientists are not likely to be able to reflect openly on their work.
Scientists, according to Steve Woolgar (1988) routinely 'deny' or forget about much of
the work that goes into doing science in order to establish the objectivity of the things
that they discover. When scientists talk about their work therefore they tend to omit
what Woolgar calls 'modalisers', such as:
a) reference to agency (the discoverer, scientist, author)
b) reference to the agents' action (claiming, writing, constructing, etc.)
c) reference to antecedent circumstances bearing upon the agents action (his/her
motive for making the claim, the interests served by acting in this manner, etc.)
(Woolgar 1988: 71).
This may occur particularly in policy fields, which have been 'scientisted' by the
authority of science (Knorr-Cetina, 1981). In terms of this project, however, the very
things that Woolgar and others have suggested scientists tend to omit, are the things
that we wanted them to talk about in interview and in group discussion. A rich history
of ethnomethodological 'laboratory studies' has, to a large extent, already begun to
describe the many different ways in which scientists talk about their work in situ, in
the laboratory or field. However, this study aimed explicitly to encourage scientists to
include the aforementioned 'modalisers' in semi-formal interview conversations
between social and natural scientists. These appear to be an important aspect of
science and its self-awareness since their treatment is key for public and policy
authority, legitimacy and trust.
An initial concern of the project was to develop ways in which we as social scientists
might go about the process of encouraging scientists to speak in this way. Two main
approaches were reviewed for their relevance to the project - broadly termed: a) the
social, and b) the cultural, study of science. It became clear that the project would
benefit from an explicit blending of both social, and cultural, studies of science
approaches. For example, in interviews it would be necessary to gain a clear idea of
the kind of 'relational networks' that any particular scientist was a part of, and to try to
understand how such networks worked - a key concern within social studies of
science. At the same time it seemed clear that we should attempt as much as possible
to interrogate scientists' own sense of meaning in the work that they are engaged
upon, and to try to understand how their thoughts and actions made sense, or were
meaningful, in their particular autobiographical and professional situations - a more
cultural approach to the study of science and scientists. Our interview questions were
drawn up with a combined science studies/cultural studies approach in mind: this
proved a good approach yielding some very rich data. (See Annex A for interview
protocol).
Analysing scientists' talk
Analysis of interviews and group discussions was carried out by the research team
through an iterative process of: reading of written transcripts; coding of transcripts
into themes; discussion and distillation of themes as items of analysis. Interview
material is the subject of continuing analysis using the software 'Atlas/ti'.
Two different theoretical perspectives were considered, and both were combined for a
more complete picture: a) traditional interpretative sociological analysis, and
6
b) discourse analysis8. A traditional sociological approach was appealing to our own
research in that it might allow us to make some statements about: different kinds of
science (the sciences of BSE, genetic modification, climate change and ecological
protection); the influence of institutional bases of these sciences (universities,
consultancies, government institutes etc.); the internal and external dynamics within
science (such as age, gender influences); and so on.
A discourse approach, however, was also adopted for its use in understanding the
data, even though some discourse analysts suggest incompatibility between discourse
and a more traditional interpretative sociological analysis (Gilbert and Mulkay 1984;
Potter and Mulkay 1985). In asking scientists to 'reflect on science', it is clear that, in
this particular study, we were looking for a certain type of 'reflective' discourse. The
kind of discourse we were looking for has been characterised by detailed studies of
scientists' discourse (ibid.) and is described as an 'informal, contingent repertoire'.
Most of the interviews were characterised by a preponderance of this kind of
repertoire. However, we have found that, even within that type of informal discourse,
there is considerable variability. And, like Gilbert and Mulkay it was found useful to
attend to the detail - to note when it was that scientists were using a contingent
discourse and when it was that they were using a more formal 'empiricist repertoire'9.
In analysing the transcripts we also paid attention to the interview process; in
particular, to the idea that scientists are engaged in an active construction of their own
'identities' in relation to wider debates (particularly in the media) throughout the
interview (as seen in the work of Michael 1996).
Interviews and group discussions: logistics
Fifty-two interviews, lasting approximately one-and-a half hours each, were held on a
one-to-one basis between scientists and a researcher on the team10. The interviews
were held in the offices and laboratories in which scientists were working at the time
8
Although it may seem somewhat artificial to make this distinction, since discourse analysis is often
considered to be part of interpretative sociological analysis, we are following the distinction made by
Gilbert and Mulkay (1984). Gilbert and Mulkay contrast 'previous approaches to the sociology of
science' which 'tell analysts stories about 'the way that science is'', with their own discourse approach
which aims to look at the question, 'How are scientists' accounts of action and belief socially
generated?' (p.13).
9
Gilbert and Mulkay characterise the 'empiricist repertoire' as follows: 'The guiding principle of this
repertoire appears to be that speakers depict their actions and beliefs as a natural medium through
which empirical phenomena make themselves evident. The stylistic, grammatical and lexical resources
of the empiricist repertoire can be seen as related to this guiding principle in the sense that they are
necessary features of texts which are consistently depicting participants' professional actions and
scientific views as inevitable, given the realities of the natural world under study. We call this
repertoire the 'empiricist repertoire' because it portrays scientists' actions and beliefs as following
unproblematic and inescapably from the empirical characteristics of an impersonal natural world.' (p.
56)
The contingent repertoire is characterised in opposite terms: 'Its guiding principle is in direct opposition
to that of the empiricist repertoire in that it enables speakers to depict professional actions and beliefs
as being significantly influenced by variable factors outside the realm of empirical biological
phenomena. When this repertoire is employed, scientists' actions are no longer depicted as generic
responses to the realities of the natural world, but as the activities and judgements of specific
individuals acting on the basis of their personal inclinations and particular social positions.' (p.57).
10
Researchers carrying out interviews were Claire Waterton, Kerstin Dressel, and Dr Mark Toogood.
Originally Dr Sue Mayer and Dr Simon Shackley were to carry out interviews. They were replaced by
Mark Toogood as they were unavailable at the time the interviews took place.
7
of interviews. Although the research design was to carry out a range of interviews
across different institutional settings (government departments, universities,
consultancy and industry) it became clear once we began to identify scientists and
institutions for interview that, for example, there exist few climate change, BSE or
GM scientists formally working in consultancies (although many do 'consultancy'
from other institutional settings). Likewise there are few ecologists, climate change or
BSE scientists in industry. As a result we had fewer scientists from industry and
consultancy and many more scientists from government institutes and universities.
Therefore the disciplinary and professional variety amongst scientists interviewed is
not as inclusive as we had originally envisaged. A list of the institutions in which we
interviewed scientists is given in Annex B to give an idea of the interview locations
and different kinds of scientist who took part in the research.
A further significant logistical factor was that, in general, gaining access to scientists
in order to talk to them for one-and-a-half hours was difficult to achieve, mainly
because of timetabling difficulties: many of the scientists we approached had
extremely busy schedules. This meant that setting up interviews demanded many
weeks of intense communication between researchers and scientists (and their
secretaries). For 'focus group' discussions with scientists, which were originally
thought to be an appropriate methodology as follow up to the interview phase of the
project, scientists who had already been interviewed would have had to come to a
venue for approximately two hours in order to discuss with fellow scientists some of
the issues raised in the interviews. Based on the experience of trying to set interview
dates with scientists, we estimated that this particular methodology would most likely
fail, purely on the logistical difficulty of getting 6-8 of the relevant scientists to come
to a single venue at any one time.
As a more appropriate alternative, group discussions were held with scientists and
social scientists in their home institutions or in pre-arranged gatherings at intervals
throughout the study. These were held at Lancaster University as well as in fora
provided by BBSRC and COPUS. The discussions addressed aspects of the research
design and analysis and were intended to provide a 'reflexive loop' whereby we could
test out assumptions, work in progress and conclusions. The meetings addressed:
research questions (March 1988); first interview results and reflections on the
interview questions (September 1988); substantive results of interviews focussing on
three themes (changes in science, scientific creativity, the science-society relationship,
December 1999); discussion of main findings (December 1999 and March 2000). The
discussions proved important for 'validation' of the data against scientists'
experiences. As a research team we were able to ask scientists: Do you recognise
these results? Is the picture we are portraying an accurate one? In what respects
should it be qualified? At the same time, we saw these discussions as part of the
research itself, enabling us to reflect whether scientists were comfortable talking
about science amongst their own peers, whether scientists felt they could discuss, in a
more public forum, some of the predicaments and contingent aspects of doings
science.
Findings
Scientists do indeed have a rich 'folk-sociology' of science and its wider context. In
Woolgar's terms, asked the right questions, they have few problems in including
8
'modalisers'. The findings are of two kinds: a) exploration of the main narratives about
science today by scientists; b) consideration of the kinds of discourses we produced
with scientists. We consider first these contemporary narratives about science by
scientists.
Heterogeneity of contemporary science narratives
The research has shown clearly that debates about science and scientists need to take
into account heterogeneity within science. In this research, we have touched on four
very different areas, each of which has very different dominant and defining
characteristics, which we sketch below:
 ecological science – field/laboratory ecologists, an established and often 'applied'
field, a high level of consultancy work even within government and academic
institutions, a field without urgent, but nevertheless with sustained, policy/public
involvement and interest.
 climate change - a largely modelling community at the 'policy-end' of the
research spectrum, with an international emphasis. 'Applied' in a more indirect and
complex way than ecological sciences because its global, or regional, focus makes
specific 'stakeholders' and contexts only indirectly related.
 BSE – a field which interfaces with medical research, veterinary research,
research into health and statistics. A field of high UK policy and public interest. A
relatively young field of research.
 Genetic engineering – a field undergoing a period of controversy affecting
science, industry and government policy. A varied research base (industry,
academia, medical). A field of high level industry/public/policy interest. A
scientific area with an extremely rapid pace of development.
Because scientists are varied they have different affiliations, ways of working, senses
of responsibility and community, and different ideas about their relationship to
society. On the one hand, this sense of variability and fragmentation in science seems
to have increased with increase in research/career specialisms. But, on the other hand,
many of the common pressures faced by scientists as a whole today mean they are
becoming more alike – united by the changes that are occurring over all areas of
science (for example pressures to be more flexible and responsive to 'user' needs in a
'Mode-2' idiom). Hence there are large overlaps in the four areas studied in terms of
the 'issues' or themes that the interviews brought out. We look below at the issues
from each area of science in turn. We begin with ecological science, since this was the
most uncomplicated picture. Nearly all the main insights from our interviews with
ecological scientists were replicated in the other fields. In the other three fields,
complicating factors come into play. In climate change, there is the added
international policy dimension to the science. In BSE, the recent crisis inevitably
colours the interview material. And in the GM case, media attention and the public
dimension of GM technologies became a major focus. We explore the narratives of
each scientific area below, beginning with the simplest case, ecological science, and
ending with the more complex issues seen in genetic modification.
Ecological protection
15 interviews were conducted with scientists who worked in the area of ecological
protection. These scientists (including botanists, ornithologists, animal and plant
9
ecologists) were working in policy institutions, government research centres and a
consultancy.
A striking finding in this area of science, and yet germane to all the other areas
studied, is the notion of historical change in science, reflected upon as change seen in
the lifetime of some of the more senior scientists we interviewed. On the face of it,
this change appears to be about structural and institutional changes in the way that
scientific work is funded. For example, in many of the government institutes (e.g. the
Centre(s) for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH)), it is common to find that 60% of
scientists' work must come through contractual means (i.e. through a contract between
another institution and the CEH). This means that individual scientists, at least since
the Rothschild Report (1976) and reinforced through the Thatcher years, must apply
for and attract funding in order to maintain a viable position in his or her institution.
Hence Nowotny's et al.'s (2000) thesis that, in some key respects, scientists are
becoming more and more alike (i.e. government scientists bid for work in the same
way as consultants) is fully backed by our findings and reflected in much of our
interview material.
Of greater interest than that historical shift in funding, however, are perhaps the subtle
effects that are felt by scientists as a result of such structural changes. The essential
skills of a 'good scientist' are , arguably, changing for all scientists, more senior and
junior alike:
Interviewer: '…[I]f you could tell me a little bit in more detail
about the kind of skills that you need to do your work?'
Junior ecologist: 'Well the main thing that you need to be good at
doing is about five or ten things in parallel. Without parallel
process you're sunk.'
Senior ecologist: '….there is a need to think clearly and quickly.
The workload and the variety of tasks that inevitably people
lead[ing] science have to do these days. We have to tackle quite a
few topics. The days when we could be a specialist in one area are,
for most people, long past.'
Yet scientists in this sphere, at the same time, were trying to keep up the kind of
historical norms associated with good science, for example through publishing,
presenting at conferences, becoming a specialist in a given field:
'Yes and we have to write up papers, we have to see niches where
we can make contributions and where we can satisfy the
requirement of editorial boards and still publish to maintain our
scientific integrity and the respect of the scientific community for
us. So we've got to combine this, keeping the good science going
with getting money in. Some of the areas where people are willing
to give us money, they cause us to work in a way that isn't very
easy for us to write up good scientific papers.' (Senior ecologist)
A number of these scientists observed and reflected upon significant tensions
operating under the more multifarious market-led conditions that prevail in ecological
10
science today. These range from publishing conflicts with sponsors (as above) to
more complex problems about who defines scientific problems - the (less
knowledgeable?) contractor or the scientist? One example given was of a geologist,
working for a policy organisation, commissioning research on alien species in
Scotland - something he knew very little about:
'We now have the money controlled mostly by people who aren't
scientists or ecologists………so he's [the geologist] suddenly
inherited a thing he's not all that sure about so he's almost asking
me to guide him in setting the terms….' (Senior ecologist)
Who defines the research, and how it is defined, has become much more ambiguous
and unsettled, and hence the changes in the structure of scientific funding have begun
to ramify in unforeseen ways into other areas. We found that this underlying
structural change, congruent with many of the neoliberal forces of what is now called
the 'knowledge economy', even affected the ways in which scientists were dealing
with the important public policy issues of uncertainty and responsibility. We explore
this below.
Approaches to uncertainty
As the BSE and GM issues have underlined, the clear public acknowledgement of
uncertainties in scientific knowledge for policy is important. Yet who is responsible is
a matter which has manifestly not been settled. Looking at the way that ecological
scientists approach the issue of uncertainty in their own work, we must firstly
acknowledge the very everyday notion of this concept in ecological science, and
indeed in all the areas of science we investigated. Uncertainty is integral to the kind
of sciences we examined:
'…I would still look at the data every 2 or 3 days that's been
collected to get the feel of it…… [S]ome of the results one can
almost predict and, if there are departures, then it is a good thing to
try to understand at that point in time what's the cause of this. It
may be as being a particularly bad summer for heather growth, so
we might find that shoot lengths are less than average; or it may
just be there's something wrong with the ruler - that the person is
not putting it into the ground properly - so it's a good thing to
check on this as it's happening rather than to look at the results six
months' later and puzzle about them.' (Senior ecologist)
Secondly, many of the scientists interviewed were quite explicit about the role of
judgement in dealing with uncertainty:
'The uncertainty of the data is…. every situation is different, and
I'm thinking about a job where….we've been modelling, but there
[are] only tiny bits of information and understanding the whole
estuary….There's always, you always have to consider what
information is necessary for that situation to make that judgement.
And that in itself is a judgement.' (Senior ecological consultant)
11
The everyday awareness of uncertainly and the awareness of value judgements that
scientists make was a common feature of scientists' reflections in many interviews.
But ecological science is unlike the other sciences considered in that it often has
direct impact when applied to a certain piece of land, to a river, a species, or a lake,
for example. Ecological research can have direct application in a way that is
uncommon in, say, climate modelling. In these situations, and reflected in many of
the interviews with ecologists, scientists think about the uncertainty of data as applied
to a kind of 'experiment' that is taking place out there, in nature:
'Being an applied scientist is very good for you though in that
respect rather than a pure one, because if you're always having to
put your ideas into practice you very soon realise that you don't
know it all. You often can make real improvements and as I said
earlier one gets a great kick out of it but not everything goes right.'
(Senior ecologist)
But the sense that uncertainties were intertwined with some of the new structural
realities of science, germane to the ecological scientists, but generic to all the
scientists interviewed, is highly pertinent to our study. In a passage where a scientist
was giving examples of the way in which he adjusted the way he communicated
uncertainty depending on 'who you are communicating with', he suggested three
modes:
1. Talking to fellow scientists:
' [W]e're like lawyers talking the same language. The good ones,
the able ones, can assess, you know, the level of certainty on which
you ought to be making recommendations'.
2. Influencing ideas and policy:
' [I]t's the scientists talking to non-scientists or people who have a
bit of scientific knowledge, and there again it varies… '[W]e [i.e.
the speaker and some policy individuals] had a really civilised and
intelligent discussion….And I was able to say, 'Look, we did this,
it didn't work, I think it could be that, I think it could be that'. But
other times……' (see next point)
3. Dealing with sponsors:
'…..it's a much greater problem because when you're dealing with
sponsors (who weren't present at this meeting) who are putting
money into the project because they want advertising and are only
interested in success, you simply can't air all your doubts in public
and say, 'Oh, I have a slight worry about putting, doing this, that,
and the other', because if you raise all these worries with them you
don't get the money, and the project doesn't happen in the first
place…..[I]t is very difficult because it goes against all your
instincts as a scientist to say, 'This is going to work', or, you know,
'I'm sure it's gonna work', when actually there's a 60% probability
it's going to work, and if you say there's a 60% probability , they
won't do [sponsor] it. I have sometimes been a bit uncomfortable
about how positively I've had to speak about things, about what
12
was going to happen, and luckily the things I've spoken about have
worked, yeah. But one hasn't: it's a difficult one.' (Senior ecologist)
The point is that scientists can be reflective about their scientific work, and 'open'
about the uncertainties inherent in their work, or not, depending on the context. In
everyday practice and in interview, yes; in the presence of a sponsor, perhaps not.
Uncertainty is expressed, we might say 'relationally' throughout our interviews - that
is, depending on the relationship being communicated and upheld. But it is striking
that, when ecological scientists talked about issues such as uncertainty and
responsibility, accountability and precaution in relation to some of the new more
stringent financial funding structures, they commonly noted the pressures the current
structural arrangements imposed:
'I guess you've got to trade off between, well there's two or three
things going on I suppose. There's one of us who's a basic scientist
who wants to get right to the very bottom of the thing, which is
difficult in most areas of science and the areas of ecology. It's
almost wishing the impossible to really know. That's going on.
There's also the fact that you're a commissioned research worker
and you've got to produce a report and you know these managers
need some guidance on this problem they have. And then a thing
that you have flying around is the fact that you really wanted more
money out of these people to fund more research. I guess that's the
one that…it can cause problems generally , I think, in science as it
is today. It's grown problems for me personally because I can, to
my mind the bottom line is good scientific advice to the user
committee, so there have been a number of times when I could
have developed the argument in a certain way which would then
land more money coming in for me, but it's not necessarily the best
way forward. I mean it wouldn't be dishonest to do it that way, it's
just not the best way, like we could do another year of observation
of cormorants at X and bring in another £20,000. I mean, I don't
know, which would help us understand the situation, but it
wouldn't be anything like that return that the first year gave you….'
(Junior ecologist)
As in all the other fields that we looked at, the ambiguities regarding to whom (one's
organisation? oneself? society?) and to what (good science? the institute's budget?) a
scientist is responsible appear to be in constant play for the contemporary scientist.
These ambiguities and tensions - which are relevant to policy - are not typically
apparent to public policy debate at all.
Summary of interview findings with ecological scientists
The interviews in the field of ecological science took place in government institutes,
policy institutions and a consultancy. They clearly highlighted many developments
that had affected science generally over the years, and there was little differentiation
between the types of institution that scientists were working in (policy, government
research centres and a consultancy: no academic ecologists were interviewed in this
field). Older ecologists looked back to a time when research budgets were under less
pressure and when scientists had more scope to determine what given budgets should
13
be spent on. This was not necessarily seen as a panacea and those ecologists
expressed significant problems with that prior situation (lack of accountability;
'irrelevant' research etc.). But what can be seen from ecologists' reflections in
interview is that the new structural arrangements in place for most scientists these
days have ramifying effects, touching upon aspects of science that are crucial for both
science and policy, such as: the treatment of uncertainty; the quality and quantity of
scientific publishing; a sense of responsibility and accountability within science; and
even a sense of identity for the contemporary scientist. These themes ran through
interviews with climate change, BSE and GM scientists too, with variations according
to the salient issues (and sometimes events) occurring in those fields.
Climate Change:
In contrast to the field of ecology, in climate change science the sense that a scientist
has direct individual involvement in the application of his/her work occurs less
frequently. Most of the climate change scientists we interviewed were modellers,
often with some additional meteorological, biological or policy expertise. The
modelling community seems to be one where individual agency, concerning the
impact of the work carried out, is more diffused. In the interviews there was often
little sense that the scientist felt his or her work individually would make an impact
on climate change problems. Climate modelling was talked about much more as a
contribution to more comprehensive knowledge about the climate and it effects. No
one person expected to crack the problem. Compare, for example the following
quotation taken from an interview with a senior ecologist, where what we might call
agency is manifestly imbued in the work and in the individual scientist:
'…[T]here are sites out there that I could take you to that wouldn't
be there if it wasn't for the work that I'd done earlier. It'd be
ploughed up or something like that. Or if it hadn't been ploughed
up it wouldn't have been managed in a particular way and wouldn't
have the rare animals and plants that they've got on them at the
moment. So I know that there are quite a large number of places all
over Europe that I could go to and say, this is pure vanity, I could
say, 'Well, if I hadn't provided this knowledge or persuaded
someone to do this, these things wouldn't be there.'' (Senior
ecologist)
with a typical quotation taken from an interview with a climate scientist:
'Well the people that we deal with directly are the same ones that
get sent off to these meetings like the Kyoto thing and…..So it is
directly to them that we report to….It's more or less, give them the
input and then leave it, but we do tend to keep in touch with them
in terms of discussing possibilities for more funding or whatever.
But beyond and above them we don't have any contact with anyone
else…it's more a case of letting you get on with it and they'll ask
questions.' (Junior climate change scientist)
Another modeller stressed the indirect nature of the link between climate modelling
and policy:
14
'We do work for the DETR for whom it's important that we
communicate the results. I wouldn't really categorise them, [or] the
work that we do for the European Commission, as particularly
policy driven. It is, but it's indirect, there isn't the same onus on
you to communicate the results.' (Senior climate modeller)
One aspect of this much more removed sense of agency was that modellers did not
tend to feel the same direct sense of responsibility that we could detect in the
interviews of some of the more applied ecologists. The question arose as to whether
climate change modellers felt, in a sense, more of a community, with shared
responsibilities for a pool of knowledge? This seemed to be the case for some
modellers, particularly since they often had to share data in order to represent such a
large and complex system as 'climate'. Aware of the many different assumptions that
climate modellers incorporate into their own models (often using inputs from other
people's model outputs) modellers are more likely (than ecologists, for instance) to
experience epistemological doubts about the knowledge they produce:
Modeller: 'we've done some runs with a more recent model that's
more complex…and we've done our runs with their output just
more recently, and the area of die-back is much larger, and you get
almost half of Brazil disappearing, so, it's hard to believe, but that's
true'
Interviewer: 'It is hard to believe…'
Modeller….'Yeah, it is to some extent, but their GCM has also
published, so they say, 'Well, you know, those are our results', and
that's, and they reckon their GCM is the best that exists. So the
current state of knowledge would say that, 'Well, that is the most
likely thing to happen, given what we understand about the
system'.
Interviewer: '…Is this…what [would happen] if the model is true?'
Modeller: ….'Well, you can't really get rid of probability, you can
just say that, well, this is what we believe will happen if you
believe these assumptions.
Interviewer: 'Right.'
Modeller: 'So that's as far as you go.'
Interviewer: 'But I suppose some people who are actually
responsible for global climate management might want to know
whether you believe the model, you know?'
Modeller: 'Yes, I guess you can't really..'
Interviewer: 'You know what I mean?'
15
Modeller: 'I know what you mean, but you can't really say whether
you believe it or not. I guess you can have a feeling about how
much you believe it. I think there's a lot of, there's a lot more
uncertainty in climate modelling than there is in the kind of
modelling we do.' (Junior climate change modeller)
In the last passage the modeller is referring to uncertainties in an input to his own
model 'run'. This input, he felt, carried many more uncertainties than some of the data
in his own model. Modellers seem very aware of the assumptions that are built not
only into their own models, but of the assumptions that are built into the imported
inputs that are derived from other models. They acknowledge that this makes
modelling results difficult to convey to those not involved in the field, who do not
share the same background knowledge about the assumptions made. Adding to this
complexity, from within this community of climate change scientists, it is clear that
climate change scientists appreciate that there are different cultural branches within
the science. Biological experimentalists are contrasted with modellers, in one
interview, for example: whereas modellers are interested in the big picture, biologists
are interested in finding out more about the detail, the detailed impacts of climate
change. In another interview climatologists were contrasted with economic modellers
working on climate change issues.
Summary of interview findings with climate change scientists
The climate change scientists we interviewed, in both universities and in government
institutes, have experienced many of the same structural and funding pressures as
reported by the ecologists we interviewed. Climate change science seems to be no less
directed by user-needs and no less subject to a highly competitive research
environment. However, in the global climate sphere, it seems difficult to define who
'users' might be, and what knowledge generated is for (to refine models or to predict
realistic outcomes?). This produces ambiguities about knowledge and its meaning (as
we saw above) and conflicts about what kind of knowledge is 'needed':
Senior Climate modeller: '[T]his I suppose is a bit of a problem
that I have with my colleagues - another one - which is that they
try to, for the UK, talk up the impact of climate change for the
UK.'
Interviewer: 'Why do you think they do that?'
Senior Climate Modeller: 'Well, because it brings in money,
funding, support. And it's an unfortunate thing. The place where
climate change I think will have an important impact, tropical
altitudes, third world countries, you can't get research support to
look at the position for them. And that's the tragedy of it.'
Knowledge generation in the global climate domain appears to be very complex,
comprising many different methodological approaches, but also many ambiguities
about the kinds of communities imagined as being the end-users of knowledge.
Modellers seem to sustain different levels of meaning for their data, some of which
16
are related internally (to modelling), and others which are related to the understanding
of applied situations (for example tree growth as a result of climate change). There are
effects of these different relationships on scientists' understandings of responsibility
and uncertainty as well as their conceptualisation of accountability and precaution.
The effect is, principally, to direct focus on responsibility, accountability, and the
accurate communication of uncertainty within the science, as opposed to thinking
about those qualities as being attached to the way that the science is applied. This
implies that the climate change community might consist of individual scientists who
carry a rather restricted view of their own agency and responsibility in relation to their
knowledge and practices. Whether questions of uncertainty, responsibility,
accountability and agency might be picked up and considered at the level of a
community of climate change scientists is a moot question for the research.
BSE
The 'BSE affair' has presented unusual contemporary insights into the way in which
science and society inter-relate through policy. A pervasive characteristic of the
BSE/CJD crisis has been the extent of uncertainty and ignorance that all the scientists
we interviewed acknowledged as being in the science. The BSE scientists were
unusual in comparison to the other scientists we interviewed: at the time that the
interviews were being conducted, the Phillips inquiry was underway11 - this was a
time of natural reflection within the field therefore. In such a relatively small and
comparatively new scientific field, all the scientists we interviewed had worked
through a time when BSE science was thought to be driving policy, and where policy
had manifestly failed. In addition, the human dimensions of the BSE crisis had
sensitised those working on BSE, whether in a medical, pathological, veterinary or
agricultural capacity, to the public dimensions of the science.
It is therefore perhaps not so surprising that in the BSE case, examples were
encountered of stark contrast between what might be called 'private reflections' and
more publicly articulated forms of scientific knowledge. For example, it has been
suggested by the European Parliament that the UK government and their scientific
advisors had a clear knowledge of the potential risks of transferring BSE to humans
from 1989 to 1996 (European Parliament, quoted in Wynne and Dressel 2001).
However, the recollection of a senior scientist illustrates the private acknowledgement
of huge uncertainties in the science:
'Now with BSE there was almost nothing known…….So, there
was a lack of knowledge, there was a very big gap and one really
couldn't see how to bridge that gap. We could bridge it in terms of
probabilities, but they were only probabilities, and it was rather a
11
The BSE Inquiry: The Report. The inquiry into BSE and Variant CJD in the United Kingdom, 2000.
The BSE Inquiry was announced in Parliament on 22 December 1997, and set up on 12 January 1998,
to establish and review the history of the emergence and identification of BSE and variant CJD in the
United Kingdom, and of the action taken in response to it up to 20 March 1996; to reach conclusions
on the adequacy of that response, taking into account the state of knowledge at the time; and to report
on these matters to the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the Secretary of State for Health
and the Secretaries of State for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
17
long gap, and the bigger the gap, the more dangerous your
assessment of the probabilities is.' Senior BSE scientist
'We had no statistical data to make a judgement, we just had all
this information which we knew. I told you: the hierarchy of
infection routes; then we knew the hierarchy of crossing species
barriers and so on; and so one could say at the end, a whole
number of, perhaps, least likely things had to come together in
order for it to pose a risk to humans. But there was no reason to
suppose…no way you could be sure that that wouldn't happen'.
Senior BSE scientist
In the advisory situation that existed in the eighties and nineties, scientists could
conceive of their recommendations as being entirely separate from the interpretations
of that knowledge, which was seen as the duty of government:
'So the probabilities of that risk were indeed low. Nevertheless, as
we said, although you think the risks are low, if this projection is
wrong, the consequences could be very, very serious indeed. So in
a way we passed the parcel back to the government, at least that's
the way we saw it, and they had to interpret this, because the gap
was very, very large….'. Senior BSE scientist
One could say that the 'agency of knowledge' was self-consciously handed over from
the advisory scientists to the policy makers in this instance. In the BSE case, 'agency'
with respect to knowledge became a recurring theme of interviews. In the BSE field,
more than any other field that we have investigated, the scientists we interviewed
seem to have felt very much part of a bigger collective - one which was not only
'scientific'. In many cases that bigger collective was the Ministry of Agriculture
Fisheries and Foods (MAFF), often referred to simply as 'the civil service'. In other
cases the scientists we interviewed worked under the aegis of the Health Service as
medics. These latter 'scientists' often saw themselves and constructed their identities
more as 'doctors' or medics rather than scientists.
The experience of being part of a larger collective in MAFF, in particular, seems to
have had significant impacts on scientists' senses of intellectual freedom, creativity
and contribution within their respective fields. Activities such as the definition of
researchable questions; the publishing of findings; the pursuit of research funding; the
planning of medium- or long-term research trajectories; and even the availability of
necessary research materials were all affected in one way or another by MAFF civil
service culture.
Junior BSE scientist: '[T]here is one paper that we spent not a lot
of time on, I don't know the time-scale, but we did a lot of work, a
lot of good work, and as far as we were concerned, you know, that
was due to the results, and they should have been published. But
because we work in the Ministry…he wasn't allowed to publish it,
which I thought was so wrong'.
18
Junior BSE scientist: 'Obviously any peer-reviewed publication
that we put up is ostensibly produced from us, but we again that
has to go through policy for approval before we can submit it to a
journal. So we couldn't write a paper on TSEs and send it directly
to a journal, we have to send it to the CVO first.'
Interviewer: 'Really? What, even a summary?'
Junior BSE scientist: 'With the summary.'
Interviewer: 'A peer-reviewed paper?'
Junior BSE Scientist: 'Yes. For policy implications. And they can
say, 'Yes, go ahead, that's fine.' Or they can say, 'Perhaps you
should change the emphasis slightly for policy purposes'. Or, 'It's
not a good time to release that information, please don't'. So there
are all sorts of additional hurdles, if you like, before you can
actually submit a paper to a journal.'
These restrictions were often accepted by the scientists we interviewed as being
necessary institutional measures in the policy context. What the restrictions did,
however, was to reinforce a sense that scientists in the BSE field were, first and
foremost, civil servants. Although scientists understood and accepted this, there were
also frustrations, for example over the issue of funding and discretion to fund. A
major frustration has been felt by scientists who wanted to follow a particular research
trajectory, but couldn't because their applications were reviewed by (they felt) the
wrong sort of body.
Junior BSE scientist: 'I decide what I'm going to do and I either
sneak it in unfunded or submit proposals to have it funded. Then it
goes up through the management structure here to the chief
scientist group who will decide whether they will fund it; we only
have one real source of funding here. And that's where things have
become difficult and I haven't figured out yet how far we can go
and what freedom we have. There's a perception that the chief
scientists group have an aversion to science really, if anything
smacks of science then they seem to back off, you know, they
describe almost anything as blue-skies research - things which are
not blue skies research at all.'
Scientists had their own views on the merits of the system, and the tensions that arose
from being both within a scientific and a civil service culture:
Junior BSE scientist: '[T]hey should perceive that that a certain
amount of scientific output that isn't directly usable coming from a
institution like this will generate the scientific credibility that all
the other applied research will rely on. If this place has no
scientific credibility, then there's no point declaring our country
BSE free.'
19
The system was often referred to as being too policy oriented, producing ignorance
about the next scientific questions that needed to be asked, given the uncertainties in
the science. Two problems were raised: the first was that those policy bodies
reviewing research proposals were not educated enough about the science to make a
reasoned judgement. The second concern was that those same review bodies were
over-preoccupied with budgetary concerns:
Interviewer: How does the question of accountability come into
your work?
Senior BSE Scientist: ' They're more interested in me being
financially accountable than scientifically accountable.'
These tensions were often felt more acutely because of a) the evident (and distressing)
human dimension to the crisis and b) that fact that BSE/CJD science was such a new
and untested field, needing creative exploration:
' [W]hen you watch the programmes and , you know, especially the
young people that are dying with CJD, I mean, it's so
heartbreaking, that to think that you are actually involved, or
hopefully finding out more about it. It's a new thing, we don't
know what's going on. It's really important that we find out, so it
makes it worthwhile. You're doing it for a reason. It's not just 'Oh
well, the virus is working,' and 'That looks nice,' and , you know,
'It's a nice result'. It's actually, at the end of the day, we are trying
to find out what's going on, so that there's maybe something we
can do, look for a test, and that's obviously the main thing.' (Junior
BSE scientist)
Finally, and, again, partly as a result of the ongoing BSE/CJD crisis and of the
inquiries and publicity surrounding such issues, BSE scientists have, of all the
scientists interviewed, perhaps the least faith in the confidence that everyday people
might have in scientists. The following is an illustrative excerpt from one of our BSE
interviews:
Interviewer: 'Do you think people trust scientists?'
Senior BSE Scientist: 'Not at all'.
As another interviewee suggests, BSE scientists seem to be extremely clear-eyed
about the effects that the BSE/CJD crisis has had on public confidence:
'Well, I think that there has been, certainly in our field, I think
there's been some betrayal of trust. Generally, the public had a lot
of trust in vets and scientists in general and have been prepared to
sit back and believe it when a scientist says, 'Such and such' - it's
actually been seen as being factual and correct. Now, I think we've
swum significantly away from that towards this idea that, 'Actually
it's a mad boffin talking, and we need to be very wary about what
they're saying, because perhaps they're not really in touch with us,
the people.'' (Junior BSE scientist)
20
Summary of interview findings with BSE scientists
As in the ecological science and climate change interviews, BSE scientists, many of
whom work under MAFF, are under great pressure to produce research under often
stringent economic realities. Of all the sciences investigated, the BSE field seemed to
engender the strongest sense of being a community (as part of MAFF or the Health
Service). However, in the case of MAFF scientists, this seemed a beleaguered
community, with many scientists feeling they were part of a negative research culture
under the aegis of the civil service. Who is shaping BSE science? How are
commitments being made? Are the right commitments being made? These were some
of the questions brought up by the BSE interviews. Individual scientists often
expressed that they had too little agency in these matters, nor did they appear to trust
the institutions who did. This apparent lack of agency seemed to be in tension with the
often acute sense of responsibility that this small community of scientists appeared to
feel in the face of the BSE crisis.
If anything, the overall climate probably tended to reinforce an atmosphere of
openness in talking about uncertainties, about scientists' own individual senses of
responsibility and senses of accountability. In this time of crisis within the field, many
BSE scientists seemed to want to reflect on their work: all talked freely about their
actions, motives and the pressures shaping their field. Scientists' reflexivity, in this
case, seems to be brought on by criticism and a related sense of insecurity, rather than
by an intrinsic tendency to self-criticism (Wynne 1996). It is almost as if the status of
the field was at such a low ebb that scientists had nothing to lose in not conforming to
a positive portrayal of the science (Mulkay 1972). The interview was one forum in
which scientists could think about the wider pictures in BSE science: another fora of
discussion and reflection, which was talking place simultaneously, was the Phillips
inquiry. From reports of the inquiry it appears that many similar issues were raised in
both fora (Dickson, D. 2000)12.
Genetic modification (GM)
'Institutions under siege, in the words of Mary Douglas, seek to
'channel perceptions into forms compatible with the relations they
authorise'. To protect its boundaries, an 'instituted community
blocks personal curiosity, organises public memory, and heroically
imposes certainty on uncertainty'. (Dorothy Nelkin 1996, quoting
Mary Douglas 1986)
Scientists working in the GM field seemed to feel that the field as a whole was under
an intense media spotlight during the year in which we carried out the interviews
(1999). This put individual scientists under a certain amount of pressure and seemed
to affect their argumentation during the interview. There was a strong sense of the
GM scientist being referred to as a kind of anti-hero in press coverage of GM issues
as a whole - seen particularly in the GM foods debates that had taken off in the spring
of 1999. Scientists seemed to have taken on the identity of anti-hero and often
attempted, in interview, to create arguments that showed that they and their science
12
'Mad Cows Cast Long Shadows', Nature, Vol. 407, 26 October, p. 929.
21
could actually be seen as 'heroic', asserting their own identities in relation to negative
portrayals of GM science as a whole (Michael 1996). One way scientists did this was
by discrediting other elements of the debate: one scientist, for example, began talking
about the role of politician and NGOs in the GM issue. He suggested that,
'[w]hat is suffering in the middle is the environment, because
neither of those people actually care about the environment: they're
more concerned about their political agenda'. Senior GM scientist
Scientists often reported that that quality of the public debate had been demeaning to
both science and the public and that it had been inadequate to convey what they felt
were important aspects of biotechnology today. Many scientists wanted to 'turn the
debate around', wanted to portray biotechnological developments as a 'good' thing,
and wanted to see a wider set of questions being asked around genetic modification.
Some interviewees sought the inclusion of a wider frame in order to legitimate their
own scientific work by, for example, suggesting that genetic modification needs to be
looked at in a much broader agricultural context and in the light of a cost-benefit
analysis of current farming methods versus some of the new technologies. In their
quest for a higher level of public debate, the scientists we interviewed were often on
the defensive - suggesting that 'science has nothing to hide'. Scientists in the GM field
seemed, a) to have internalised an identity as impartial research actors, but also b) to
have identified conditionally with the envisaged applications of the science and
technology, as 'scientific-rational' too.
A general sense gained from the interviews with this sector is that they felt curiously
in touch with public opinion about their research (due to the media coverage of the
GM food issue), yet at the same time overwhelmingly cut-off and mistrusted by the
public. Some scientists had tried to remedy this sense of isolation - for example by
stating their position on GM issues on the world wide web. Others felt incapable of
trying to shape a better relationship between themselves and the public.
One effect of the intensity of public debate in the media surrounding GM foods was to
make scientists very sensitive to the perceived compromises and dangers of accepting
funds and grants from industry in order to carry out research, although most scientists
or institutions could not afford to decline such funding. Illustrative of these
sensitivities, many scientists stressed the 'independence' of their research (with or
without industrial sponsorship).
'So that's something advisory that we've done, but it hasn't been
contracted, and I like it from that regard that it hasn't been
contracted. No-one can ever say that we were in the pocket of
whoever paid us to do it. It was done on our own initiative without
money and is good in that regard.' Junior GM scientist
A further effect of the public debate at the time was that almost everything that the
GM scientists said in interview could be related back to the media formulation of the
issues. So for example, the term 'responsibility' was linked to a sense of responsibility
for examining GM issues in a traditional scientific manner, and not to isolate
particular research results (as Dr Arpad Pusztai was alleged to have done by reporting
22
one set of results in isolation from a more consolidated research picture13). The issue
of uncertainty, likewise, was conceptualised as something that was determined by the
relationships surrounding it:
'It depends so much on the circumstances and the situation. In
areas which are not highly politically charged, like we produce
information of the disease resistance of varieties and give
agricultural advice on how to manage that variety. Sometimes we
have to do that on the basis of rather thin amounts of information
and data but we felt on balance it was important to get the
information to the farmers so that at least they were warned that
perhaps a variety invite these kind of particular diseases…With
GMOs it's a different situation because of all the political issues.
What we do there is we supply information to the Department of
the Environment and MAFF confidentially to help them shape
policy and to decide what should be done. And do it on that basis.
And we'd probably hold back on publishing until we're actually
certain of our results. For example, none of the work that I have
done with GMOs has been written up and read in papers.' (Senior
GM scientist)
In the above passage, different levels of uncertainty are deemed acceptable for
different issues and constituencies. Scientists understandings of uncertainty are
understood, it seems, in terms that are not exclusively 'scientific' as we can also see in
the following passage on the issue of oil seed rape and the uncertainties of
hybridisation:
'But yes, I mean the whole area is fraught with uncertainty which is
aggravated by the fact that many people feed on uncertainty and
say that, because it's the uncertainty that feeds that agendas of the
political organisations and the NGOs.' (Senior GM scientist)
The GM Scientists, in other words, seemed well aware of what we might call the
social relations of uncertainty and aware that they themselves play a part in shaping
those relations. As much as in the BSE field, if not more, scientists in the GM domain
were intensely aware of the public dimensions of their research and to the way that
public sensibilities were actually shaping their sense of responsibility, agency, and the
way that they approached and communicated uncertainties within science.
Interestingly, scientists were much more in tune with the idea that public sensibilities
needed to be heeded and worked with, and much less wedded to the idea that the
technology of genetic modification itself demanded a particular kind of conduct and
responsibility. The following kind of view is much harder to find in the transcripts:
'Because we are manipulating life in such a fundamental
molecular…it is an extremely powerful technology and its
13
Many of the interviewees referred to this episode in which, prior to its publication in peer-reviewed
scientific publication, Dr. A. Putszai had released scientific information about tests on genetically
modified potatoes into the public domain. This information was subsequently retracted and stated to be
erroneous. Dr Pusztai lost his research position as a result of his actions (Scientist in Genetic Food
Scare Suspended, The Guardian 13/8/98; Malcolm, A. 'Potato Blight', Biobits, November 1998)
23
repercussions in individual and collective life in the broader
environment are potentially very powerful. And therefore it brings
with it a very big responsibility as a person, to make sure that this
is, this knowledge and technology is applied very responsibly,
because it's clearly something that can be abused as well as used
constructively'. (Senior GM scientist)
Summary of interview findings with GM scientists
The scientists in the GM field seemed to feel almost overcome by the level of media
debate and reaction to events in the GM field. They seemed to feel cut off from the
public debate, as portrayed by the media, but at the same time they reacted to the
media portrayal of the issues in nearly all of their discussions, including wanting to
portray 'goodness' in their own activities. Many of the scientists we interviewed were
looking at the regulatory or safety aspects of biotechnology, whereas others were
working in horticultural institutes looking more at the development of the new
technologies. There were often, therefore, differences in outlook, and different
appreciation of the media tendency to highlight precaution in GM science. This was a
difficult time to ask GM scientists to reflect on their work: GM scientists, on the
whole, appeared very sensitive to what they understood to be the public mood,
perhaps threatened by it in many cases, and their argumentation was often defensive.
However, interviews in the GM field were interesting in that they illustrated that GM
scientists, sensitised by media attention, seem to be actively adjusting the way that
they employ concepts such as uncertainty and responsibility in their discourse. There
was a strong sense that individual scientists were doing this according to their own
intuition and their own senses of the issues as perceived through the media. Individual
scientists, in other words, seemed to be feeling their way about how to represent their
science at a particularly fraught time. There was, it seemed from interviews, an
absence of any suggestions that there were community-level reflections supporting
these responses at the same time. Thus scientists seemed to talk as isolated figures
giving little sense of wider community support in a time of 'seige'.
Generic issues: how is reflection enabled or hampered within the
sciences we investigated?
Overall trends
Before looking at specific factors which, initially, we imagined might influence
scientists' thinking (institutional base, gender, advisory status) we look below at some
trends from the interview findings that we could say are generic to all the scientists
interviewed. They are summarised below:



Scientists are undergoing changes through the tendency for scientific research to
have much shorter term, more unpredictable, and more variably-controlled
planning horizons.
Scientists have many varied relationships with funders and users, policy bodies,
etc., making questions of responsibility, loyalty, accountability much more
complex than has been the case in the past.
Scientists are learning pragmatically to relate to different kinds of user and funder
– but very much feeling their way on a case-by-case basis.
24






In many cases there exists a pervasive ambiguity as to where scientists'
responsibilities lie (e.g. are financial imperatives more important than knowledge
based imperatives for conducting more research?).
Scientists are unclear whether the research agenda is, or should be, science-driven,
user-driven, industry-driven, policy-driven, budget-driven.
Notions of independence in science have become much more complex due to
novel funding arrangements and the 'commodification of knowledge'.
Scientists have little support when they encounter new challenges brought about
by structural changes in science and society. There are few, if any, other than
'private' fora in which these issues and experiences can be expressed and debated,
and conflicts aired and resolved.
Existing senses of community among scientists are fragmented and variable.
Although today's scientists tend to be encouraged to relate their research to issues
that concern society, they may have little understanding of how they can do this,
or (in some cases) why they should.
It would appear from these kinds of findings that scientists are being stretched in two
directions: on the one hand current conditions in science dictate that they should be
responsive and close to a variety of funders' needs (note that these can vary from
public sector/public/policy needs to the more obviously commodified domains of
industrial sponsorship). On the other hand, many of these new relationships do not
seem to be providing scientists with a correspondingly new sense of purpose or
professional identity. The relationships appear too labile, and perhaps too instrumental
(simply bringing in research funds to host institutions). In addition, these new
relationships themselves seem often to break down existing relationships and senses
of community (often because they are fiercely fought over and are, in addition, highly
ephemeral in nature). There seems to be a sense, therefore, of scientists having little
sense of a home-base, a secure environment in which to identify and nurture ways
forward, moral dimensions, questions of responsibility, accountability and agency
within an institutional setting. As we have stated, scientists can, and evidently do,
consider these aspects of doing science individually, but such considerations do not
seem to have a place at the institutional level. Although fragmentation of 'science' and
the 'scientific method' into different disciplinary cultures has been a recognised
phenomenon for some time (Galison 1987), we are talking about fragmentation even
within what might be called unitary disciplinary contexts. Thus there is at one level a
common ethos of adjustment across the sciences, but a deep sense of contextual disintegration at another level.
Institutional differences and advisory status
There are evident differences in the way that the scientists we interviewed think about
their science and the way it relates to a broader world of policy and decision-making
between the different fields of ecological science, climate change, BSE and genetic
modification. Some sciences had undergone a kind of trauma as a field (BSE and
GM) and this affected the way that scientists were able to think and reflect. In other
respects there were surprising convergences in the way that scientists seemed to think
about their work across fields.
Scientists in universities, consultancy, government institutes, policy bodies often
appeared to reflect in very similar ways about the current conditions of science, the
25
way scientists had to work, what the pressures were, what their personal and
professional satisfactions were. With the exception of BSE scientists working under
MAFF, the results of this study tend to endorse the suggestion that scientists are
becoming more alike across this spectrum (Nowotny et al. 2000)14. Similarly, there
appeared to be little difference in the way scientists reflected and talked in interview
dependent upon their 'advisory status'. Although the research had hypothesised that
we might be able to look at the results of interviews in the light of scientists' different
'advisory status' (i.e. we imagined a spectrum from senior advisors to government to
scientists who had no advisory role), advisory status was often a difficult category to
define, in practice, since scientists had often had several different kinds of
relationships with policy or funding or advisory bodies over the course of their career,
making a stabilisation of advisory status meaningless at any one point in time. Nearly
all of the scientists had had some experience of trying to communicate complex
scientific results to non-scientific domains, and the research concentrated on the
specific examples of this, rather than trying to establish any kind of trend according to
advisory experience.
Senior and junior scientists15
Sociologists have suggested that intellectual noncomformity within science is related
to a scientists' position in the prestige hierarchy of the research community (Merton
1968; Mulkay 1972; Zuckerman 1968). Assuming that such noncomformity might
also include the ability to reflect critically on one's own work and field, it would
follow that the most senior and most junior scientists might have the greatest ability to
be critically 'reflective' about their work and its relation to policy. Without quantifying
the data (which we have not undertaken to do in this study) we cannot say whether
older scientists and junior scientists think more critically and openly about science in
comparison to their peers in mid-career. But what we can see from the data is a
marked difference in perspective from the senior, more experienced scientist to the
younger, post-doctoral scientist beginning a research career. The observations are
summarised below:
Many of the more senior scientists have seen big changes, for example:
 Increased competition for funding since early 70s;
 Increased competition with peers;
 Blurring of differences between academic/research institute/govt./
consultancy/industry scientists;
 Involved in new funder- and user- relationships;
14
Scientists who worked directly under MAFF seemed to be working under specific - and different institutional conditions. This seemed to be related to the tight control that MAFF appears to hold over
funding (often MAFF itself seemed to be the only relevant funding body for MAFF scientists),
publication, and the conduct of research projects (methods, timetabling, conference attendance etc.).
15
In terms of our interviewees, the terms 'senior' and 'junior' do not always conflate with 'older' and
'younger' although, for obvious reasons - to do with time in post, experience, etc. - this is most often
the case. Senior and junior categories were sometime problematic in that you might encounter a 'junior'
scientist, seen as junior within his or her institution, but perhaps seen as authoritative (and in a sense
senior) within his or her own particular sub-field of science. In small sub-field of science, it may be
easy to rise to the top and to command respect from your peers - thus in a sense achieving a kind of
seniority which may not be recognised in one's institution. The categories we refer to are judged
according to our perception of the status of each scientist we interviewed within his or her institutional
setting.
26





Research trajectories becoming increasingly uncertain, funder-dependent, or userdependent;
Sense of community becoming more ambiguous, more fractured than in past;
Sense of accountability under pressure – changing from being primarily about
knowledge, to primarily about financial accountability;
Short-termism becoming normal in research;
Less clear control of research agendas.
Junior scientists could be defined a 'different breed':
 Require different skills to navigate fast-pace, short time-scales, intense bidding
and multiple funding pressures and relationships;
 Rewarded for flexibility and grant-success;
 Responsibilities often to many different bodies (institution, many different
funders, disciplinary group);
 Require ability to sustain many different kinds of relationship;
 Difficult to identify sense of community: perhaps belong to many different
communities?
 Short-term horizons for research and livelihood (contract researchers);
 Careers likely to be heterogeneous in terms of specialisms, expertise;
 Have more ambiguity about what it takes to be a 'good scientist'.
As we have suggested earlier, the structural shifts identified by the older and younger
scientists do seem to have subtle repercussions on reflection and thinking concerning
uncertainty, responsibility, accountability and precaution. It seems from our
interviews and group discussions, that there may be certain identifiable conditions
which might make scientists less amenable to open reflection. Inhibiting factors might
include: funding pressures, financial pressures, social hierarchies within institutions,
sexism, media pressures. Scientists often reflected in interview on these pressures and
on the way in which they could affect their thinking about their work. It appears that
when these kinds of pressures become overwhelming, or affect scientists' senses of
identity and self-esteem, the tendency is to narrow the focus in a mode of selfpreservation, which can dramatically restrict scientists' conceptions of responsibility
and accountability within their own practices. The most prevalent inhibiting factor
apparently affecting the ability of scientists to reflect on the wider policy and social
implications (and understandings) of their work appears to relate to questions
surrounding funding pressures, and, more specifically, contract funding.
Older, more experienced scientists tend to suggest that serious reflections and creative
progress are hindered by the current climate (in which short competitive contracts are
the norm), whereas younger scientists, who have known no other means of doing
research, seem to be acquiring skills to deal with the fast pace and very directed
requirements of contract research with less sense of creative conflict. In practice, most
of the scientists we interviewed, even if they have been judged to be 'older' or in midcareer, have adapted to a much more flexible, contract research style of working,
since it has been the norm at least since the early 70s, but in some cases well before
that even, to adapt scientific research to pertinent policy issues or specific funding
opportunities.
27
But a question for research councils and policy bodies has arisen though the analysis
of the interview material – namely, at what price are 'younger' scientists working
predominantly on short contracts (often several at a time) building such flexible and
multi-faceted career paths? In an article written for the British Association for the
Advancement of Science (BAAS)'s Science and Public Affairs (Waterton 2000) we
have suggested that attention be focussed on this issue of funding, since it seems to be
a source of frustration amongst all scientists, but also perhaps a creator of blockages,
in the sense that scientists seem to find it hard to think beyond the immediate horizon
of intense and competitive funding issues to more 'outward'-looking issues concerning
the relationship of their work to the public domain. This could have very sharp
practical implications for issues seen to be central in the BSE and GM cases, such as
whether scientists, or 'users' (the policy community), are responsible for making sure
that uncertainties are recognised, and for identifying the relevant questions to be
addressed through future research.
Differences between men and women
Preliminary analysis suggests that there may also be interesting qualitative differences
between women and men scientists, although this requires further study. Women
seem to:





Be good at making and maintaining relationships with 'clients' or funders in
consultancy-type situations;
Articulate concerns about uncertainties in knowledge easily;
Generally bring to work a strong personal sense of responsibility;
Make strong connections between research and research-relevance to society;
Have few boundaries between professional and personal senses of satisfaction in
their work
See, for example, the following excerpt from an interview with a senior climate
change scientist. The way this scientist links her handling of uncertainty to her very
personal sense of responsibility (personal but brought into the professional sphere) is
typical of many of our women interviewee responses:
Interviewer: 'I'd like to come back to, particularly, the area where
we were talking about science that's not very certain, that has lots
of open endings, how to communicate that?'
Senior climate change scientist: 'How to communicate that? Yes.
Nightmare time. People always want a certain thing, don't they?
They become very frustrated by uncertainty.'
Interviewer: 'Yeah, well, how do you manage that sort of tension, I
suppose, between…'
Senior climate change scientist: 'Ruthlessly, I think. Ruthlessly. I
see some of my colleagues which have driven down the path of
imposing certainty in something that is fundamentally uncertain
just in order to satisfy that constituency and I think that's most
28
unsatisfactory. I don't go down that path at all. But then maybe I
don't get the prizes that come….'
Interviewer: 'What are the pressures and prizes that are…?'
Senior climate change scientist: 'The prizes are research contracts,
invitations to sit on national committees, invitations to
conferences, that kind of thing.'
Interviewer: Right. And you say you don't do that, so….?
Senior climate change scientist: 'I do do some of it. I probably
don't get as many invitations as I would do if I was prepared to be
more certain in my pronouncements about climate change. I think I
do have the reputation of being a bit unwilling to come down on a
particular side which is exactly correct. I'm very unwilling to come
down.'
Interviewer: 'Why are you so unwilling?'
Senior climate change scientist: 'Because it's very uncertain
(laughs). And I don't think, to be quite, I suppose they would say,
you see, that there are ways of making that uncertainty more
certain. I haven't seen this.'
Interviewer: 'You're not convinced on that?'
Senior climate change scientist: 'No, I'm not , no.'
Interviewer: 'Is that because of the particular kind of work that you
do?'
Senior climate change scientist: 'Because we don't know. There is
no certainty in climatology. You can't be certain.'
This woman scientist seemed to maintain a broad perspective on her particular branch
of science whilst obviously attentive to the micro-dynamics (prizes, research grants,
etc.) associated with certain codes of practice and ways of communication. Her
attention to the 'bigger picture' is a stance that she seems to take in relation to her
colleagues. This stance-taking was observed in others of the women scientists'
interviews, and is perhaps unsurprising in that women are the minority gender in
science. The researchers tried to ascertain in our interviews whether being in a
minority had any effect on women scientists' work and on the way that they
approached their work. Suggestions that women felt they were working in a sexist
environment, and that this did affect their sense of contribution and agency were
encountered:
Interviewer: 'So what about communicating, you know, in science,
you know, so many uncertainties actually in the science itself…do
29
you get called in sometimes to make judgements about certainties?
It doesn't sound like you might do?'
Junior BSE scientist: 'Not generally, no.'
Interviewer: 'You know, you're actually asked to say, what sort of
probability is this?'
Junior BSE scientist: 'Again, that tends to be done at the
consultancy level, which is a layer above me. All of those
questions go to X, who answers them.'
Interviewer: 'But you give advice to X presumably? X takes
account…?'
Junior BSE scientist: 'I'm a woman. What could I possibly have to
say?'
Often, however, when asked directly whether gender had a bearing on their work,
women suggested that it did not. But even in the face of this assertion it was
sometimes possible to see ways in which women might be managing sexism in their
work environment, for example in terms of intellectual deference to more senior male
colleagues.
Women, in most of the interviews, seemed to talk very fluently and easily within what
we have called the 'contingent repertoire', making them appear very reflective and
open to thinking about their work in a wider context. Other studies of women
scientists, for example Bergvall's study (1996) of the discourse of women engineering
students, have suggested that women often use linguistic means such as asides,
laughter, support talk and self-effacing remarks to challenge received roles. If women
use these linguistic means generally, this may give us some clues as to why they
appear to be particularly open to reflection, since many of these linguistic means tend
to support a contingent discourse.
During the course of the research an on-line debate in Nature on women in science16
and an on-line consultation on the subject of women in science, engineering and
technology carried out by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology
(POST)17 have both addressed many questions about women in science, their status,
numbers, their career trends, etc.. We hope to pursue further funding to look
specifically at issues connected to women in science, because of the interest in this
area and the suggestion in our own data that there may be further qualitative issues to
explore concerning the relationship between the qualitative experiences of women in
science and what we might call the culture of contemporary science.
16
(http://helix.nature.com/debates/women/)
17
www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/hansard
30
The private and the public: how and where scientists reflect
Interview discussions
Analysis suggests that scientists are very willing to discuss in interview the reflections
they may have had about their work and its wider social and cultural aspects.
However, it was clear that such reflections would not constitute for them a requisite
part of their work. Often these reflections remain essentially as private thoughts, or
thoughts shared only with those with whom they are in intimate daily contact
(colleagues within their own research specialism, or in the same institute or
department, for example). As such, they do not become a part of an explicit public
debate and discourse about science. There are, it seems, few open fora in which
scientists would consider it worth their while to discuss how they approach research
planning, who is responsible for asking the right questions, the conduct of research,
changes in science and its relationship to society, changes in the demands and
pressures faced by scientists, changes in the status of scientific knowledge in
environmental regulation, planning and policy-making. Scientists seem to feel little
incentive or opportunity to discuss such issues at large, even though much of the
public's so-called 'misunderstanding' of science (an issue that does concern most
scientists), is predicated on just these kinds of wider science-society concerns,
questions and observations.
The interviews were successful in a sense in that they provided a forum in which
scientists felt able to reflect, and to explore openly (despite some of the pressures they
were under) many of the contingent factors affecting their work, many of the
historical accidents of fate and many of the 'backstage' elements of doing science
(such as the occurrence and treatment of uncertainty, scientists' sense of
accountability and responsibility etc.). Scientists often brought to the interview
discussion many of the issues that we intended to discuss even before they were
explicitly introduced by the interviewer.
Group discussions
The willingness to put issues on the agenda and to discuss personal reflections in an
open and reflective manner was far less prevalent in group discussions with scientists.
In group discussions, discussion and debate was harder to instigate, and the focus of
discussion harder to maintain. Issues that had seemed central to scientists'
preoccupations in interviews seemed much more remote in group discussion.
Scientists often followed the issues for debate that the research team proposed, rather
than putting their own agenda on the table. This was clearly a manufacture of the
research setting: it is much more difficult to discuss personal insights in a larger,
slightly more formal setting (such as a seminar room), and in the presence of one's
peers. But perhaps it also illustrates (as one scientist remarked) that scientists are
unaccustomed to talk about the broader science-policy-society aspects of their work in
such a semi-formal context. Scientists seemed unused to the kind of gathering which
the research instigated (20-30 scientists in a seminar room discussing issues of mutual
interest to social and natural sciences). As another scientist remarked, 'We need to do
more of this'.
The group discussions that took place illustrated both the benefits (most participants
seemed to find the issues pertinent and interesting) and the difficulties of orchestrating
31
such meetings. For the purposes of the research, the meetings acted as a kind of
sounding board whereby we could ask whether we were asking the right kinds of
questions (at the beginning of the study) and whether our findings were recognisable
to scientists (at the end of the study). Although this could be construed as a kind of
shallow indulgence (had we really known what we wanted initially, and had we been
really sure of our findings finally), this was not the case. The meetings were designed
to try to create a genuine interaction with environmental scientists in order to see if
we could work together (albeit in a limited time-frame) on aspects of the research.
Perhaps the greatest hurdle was becoming accustomed to this very situation, and the
clearest message that came from attempts to do this was that the meetings (in order
for scientists to feel truly involved) would have to be more frequent and more integral
to the research process. Their wider relevance and use, however, were hinted at
through occasional remarks that it was 'good to do this kind of thing'. From a research
angle the meetings created the sense that ownership of the research, and the way in
which it was framed, was hybrid: incorporating issues that were of concern to both
natural scientific and social scientific communities.
Creating discursive fora
One of the key findings of the study has been that scientists do not seem to have a
sense that there is a community from which they can gain support in facing some of
the challenging roles they encounter as practising scientists. Thus there was the sense,
in many interviews, that scientists are making up the rules as they go along in terms of
the appropriateness of certain forms of knowledge and behaviour in the face of
different policy, advisory and public contexts. Findings from group discussion tended
to reinforce the notion that scientists are only beginning to think about and discuss
issues that seem tangential to science, but central to the related science-policy-public
issues in which most of them are involved in one way or another.
On the other hand, many scientists suggested that they might benefit from practice in
this area. The research has given some insight as to how social and natural scientists
might create discursive conditions suitable for scientists in order to discuss issues
amongst themselves, as well as to prepare themselves for thinking about the issues
that others may need to know from the science community. As many in sociology of
science and policy fields have stated, policy, and society more generally, needs to
know more about the everydayness of science, about the contingencies of doing
science, about scientists' moral imaginations, and about scientists' conceptions and
experiences of the relationship between science and society (including policy
relationships). This also corresponds directly with the injunctions of scientific leaders
such as Sir Robert May (ex-chief scientist for the government, now President of the
Royal Society) that public understanding of science should embrace the ways in
which knowledge is produced, not only its contents.
The potential usefulness of being able to talk to scientists in what we have
characterised (after Gilbert and Mulkay 1984) as the contingent repertoire can be seen
from interview material. Although it is clear that this is by far from a simple situation
(scientists talk in many different discourses or repertoires during the course of an
interview) perhaps it can be recognised that sociologists, policy analysts and others
can talk to scientists in this way, and indeed about this repertoire itself, quite
explicitly. Despite the fact that discourse analysts have suggested that the contingent
32
repertoire is fundamentally unstable (suggesting that although scientists may use a
contingent repertoire, they quickly resort to an empiricist discourse in the majority of
instances), and although this project has found that contingent talk is much more
difficult to sustain in a group discussion, it does seems possible, based on the
experience of this study, to actively attempt to stabilise this discourse, to establish it
as a valid way of talking about science in the context of society today, and perhaps to
'ground' it in recognisable social-institutional dimensions of modern science. Social
scientists have a potential role, as well as responsibilities, in this domain.
Implications for science-policy-public relationships
One of the key practical issues with potentially great importance for the conduct and
quality of public debate (which includes scientists as key players) over scientificpolicy questions, is: if scientists were able in a more open and ‘public’ mode, to
reflect on their esoteric trade, their knowledge, and the various contingencies in the
domain of its production, such as how responsibility is shaped for the questions which
science addresses - would this more foregrounded culture of realism about the origins
of knowledge improve the general public sense of comfort with modern science, or
cause it to deteriorate? It has been suggested in the fields of risk science for example,
that more frankness and public transparency about the contingent aspects of the
generation of risk scientific knowledge, including recognition of the dimensions of
lack of predictive control, would not undermine its public credibility but would (all
else being equal) improve it (Wynne 1992).
Whilst it would be unrealistic to claim to have definitively answered this important
practical question - for science and for policy – it can be seen from our findings not
only that scientists are capable in principle of engaging in this different kind of public
self-representation and relationship; but also that, from our sampling - nonrepresentative though it was - the typical scientist in policy related fields like those we
studied, sees the point of, and is ready to make this broad shift, and maybe also
believes that it would bring important benefits to science as well as to public policy.
In passing, we can here identify a key focus for future empirical research, on the kinds
of translation which are forced on scientist-advisers and communicators –
representing scientific knowledge - by the expectations and sovereign demands of
their political ‘clients’ – government officials, Ministers and perhaps also the media.
It may well be that this powerful key ‘passage-point’ (bottleneck?) in the salient
communications networks is operating with mistaken understandings of the public
and of the policy world which seriously understate the readiness of the typical public
to engage with uncertainty, fluidity, multivalent complexity and contingency, and
which thus effectively mistrust the public to respond maturely to the possible public
foregrounding of the more contingent, reflective discourses which we have explored
amongst scientists in this project.
This observation would be consistent with the findings of bodies such as the House of
Lords Science and Technology Select Committee’s Science and Society inquiry as
well as some academic research (Nowotny et al. 2000; Wynne 1992; Irwin and
Wynne, 1996). Furthermore it would not only be wholly consistent with,
but would also provide a much-needed coherent (if challenging) conceptual
foundation for the emergent practice of the new deliberative, public-dialogue mood
advanced by Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Office of Science and Technology, The
33
Royal Society, POST, the House of Lords S&T Select Committee and others, all of
which explicitly recognise the need to develop scientific understanding of the public
as much as the converse.
34
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36
Annex A: Interview protocol.
The protocol below was used as a guide in all interviews. The protocol divides up into
4 rough sections:
 Questions 1-6: Autobiographical history of interviewee; skills and expertise of
interviewee; personal and professional satisfactions and dissatisfactions with
work.
 Questions 7-11: Relationship of interviewees' work to policy and decision-making
spheres; reflections on interactions between these different spheres.
 Questions 12-17: Interviewees' understanding and experience of responsibility,
uncertainty, accountability and precaution within their area of science.
 Questions 18 and 19: Reflections on the issues discussed in the interview; how,
where and with whom scientists reflect; how scientists think they are viewed by
others.
Scientists Reflect on Science
Interview Questions For Practising Scientists
1) Initially, then, it would be helpful if you could tell me about your own area of
scientific work. What you do now. How you came to be doing what you are doing
now - a short history of your career to date, if you like.
2) Can you tell me something more about the kind of work that you do - e.g.
modelling, statistical, empirical, involving fieldwork, analytical etc.. What kinds of
skills do you need? How varied is your job? What are the different elements of work
that make up your job? (e.g. writing papers; conferences; lab work; seeking contracts;
communication with scientists; communication with funders and policy bodies etc.).
3) What is the real motivation for you doing your job and your research? Are your
motivations connected to commitments inside/outside the purely scientific realm?
4) Does being a scientist in your sphere of research (e.g. a 'BSE scientist') have any
particular significance for you?
5) What would you say is the most important thing in you work that you do, for you
personally?
6) What is the most important thing that you do professionally? Is there any tension
with the personal sense of achievement we talked about in the last question?
Are there any aspects of your work that you really don’t enjoy, or that you find
difficult for one reason or another?
7) We're interested in the area where science and decision making come together. Can
you tell me about ways in which you find that you have to relate your research to
people seeking information in order to make, or inform, decisions or policies?
37
8) What is your relationship to such people or bodies (e.g. contractual, expert advisor,
partnerships etc.)? Is there more than one way in which you are communicating
outside the strictly scientific world, to decision makers, policy people, advisory
committees etc.? Can you give some examples?
9) How do different types of science-policy relationships work? How do you see your
own role in relation to these other types of organisation? How do you translate your
knowledge from one sphere to another?
10) Are these interactions satisfying in professional terms ( i.e. does the
communication work well, the flow of knowledge smooth?) Where are the
difficulties?
11) What about these interactions in terms of the personal sense of achievement we
talked about earlier? Are the relationships you make between doing science and
giving advice, or shaping policy satisfying to you personally? Or not?
12) We have seen in the press recently a lot of coverage of the role (and sometimes
the conduct) of scientists in difficult areas such as genetic engineering, public health
scares (such as food scares), and of course BSE. This seems a difficult yet interesting
area. One of the aspects that we are interested in is how the question of responsibility
is handled in relation to scientific knowledge, particularly in relation to the question
of who is able to define research questions, who is able to define the boundaries of
research, who (or what bodies) decide what is and what is not relevant scientific work
and, ultimately, relevant scientific evidence and knowledge. Do you define your own
research agenda, or the shape and scope of your research? Or do such responsibilities
lie elsewhere?
13) On responsibility again. But more on the responsibilities attached to
communication. How do you judge whether what you know should be communicated
to others as advice? How do you weigh up what to include and what not to include in
giving advice on complex matters? In what ways does it depend on whom you are
giving advice to, and what you judge their responsibilities to be?
14) Is responsibility a thing that you feel professionally, or is it something that you
would say is more a personal feeling that you bring to your work?
15) Some questions now about working with scientific knowledge. We know that
scientific knowledge has certain qualities - for example in the ecological domain,
there are often many uncertainties associated with the knowledge, because of the
complexity of the interactions in nature. So, how do you communicate things like
uncertainty? Does the way that you do this relate to a sense of responsibility?
Have you ever had to communicate knowledge that you have felt to be difficult to
translate into advice because of the attached uncertainties? Can you give examples
from your own work?
16) How does the question of accountability come into your work, particularly when
you are giving information that will be used as 'scientific advice’? Any other ways in
38
which you are accountable? Or in which accountability is a feature of your working
life?
17) In the environmental policy world the word precaution is often used as a
normative principle with which to guide society's use of scientific knowledge - i.e.
that if we think we know something dangerous or bad is happening in the natural
world, we should do something to ameliorate the situation, even if the scientific facts
are not 100% available. How does that precautionary principle work in one's own
work as a scientific researcher? Or is it absent from the research itself? Can you think
of any examples which suggest that you are working according to a precautionary
principle? Or ways in which this principle is guiding the agenda of the research?
18) Do you think about the kinds of issues that we have covered in this interview
much?
It is useful to think about these kinds of issues? Is it usual/unusual for you to discuss
these types of issues?
Do scientists discus these issues amongst themselves much?
19) How do you think scientists are viewed in society more generally?
39
Annex B: Institutions where interviews were carried out with senior and junior,
men (m) and women (w) scientists.
1. Genetic Modification:
Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) Furzebrook (senior; m)
Department of Plant Sciences, Oxford (senior; m)
Department of Plant Sciences, Oxford (junior; m)
Guy's Hospital, London (senior; m)
Homerton College, Cambridge (senior; m)
John Innes Research Institute, Norwich (senior; m)
John Innes Research Institute, Norwich (junior; w)
John Innes Research Institute, Norwich (junior; w)
National Institute for Agricultural Botany (NIAB), Cambridge (senior; m)
NERC Institute of Virology, Oxford (senior; m)
NERC Institute of Virology, Oxford (senior/junior; m)
NIAB, Cambridge (junior; m)
NIAB, Cambridge (junior; w)
2. BSE:
Burnley General Hospital and Department of Health (senior; m)
CJD Surveillance Unit, Edinburgh, (senior; m)
CJD Surveillance Unit, Edinburgh (senior; m)
CJD Surveillance Unit, Edinburgh (senior; m)
CJD Surveillance Unit, Edinburgh (senior; m)
Central Veterinary Laboratory (CVL), Weybridge (senior; m)
CVL, Weybridge (senior; m)
CVL , Weybridge (junior; m)
CVL Weybridge (junior; w)
CVL, Lasswade (senior; m)
CVL, Lasswade (junior; w)
Department Zoology, Oxford (senior; m)
Institute for Animal Health, Edinburgh (senior; w)
Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit, Cambridge (senior; w)
VEERU, Reading University (junior/senior; m)
VEERU, Reading University (junior/senior; w)
3. Climate Change:
Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) Bush (senior; m)
CEH Bush (junior/senior; m)
CEH Bush (junior; m)
CEH Bush (junior/senior; m)
Climate Research Unit (CRU), UEA (senior; m)
CRU, UEA (senior; w)
CRU, UEA (junior; w)
CRU, UEA (junior; m)
IENS, Lancaster University (junior; m)
40
4. Ecological Protection:
Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) Banchory (junior; w)
CEH Banchory (senior; m)
CEH Banchory, (junior; m)
CEH Banchory (senior; m)
CEH Furzebrook (senior; m)
CEH Furzebrook (senior; w)
CEH Furzebrook (junior; m)
Ecological Resources Management (ERM), Edinburgh (senior; w)
English Nature, Peterborough (senior; m)
Institute for Freshwater Ecology (IFE), Windermere (senior; m)
IFE, Windermere (senior; m)
IFE, Windermere (junior/senior; m)
IFE, Windermere (junior; m)
Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) Peterborough (senior; w)
JNCC, Peterborough (junior; w)
41