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3. Science and Policy ‘ ATR Ame nendeormre her
By which I mean the social and ethical role of the scientist. I could have said Science and ;
History. eur
When I consider the roles that scientists play, I can think of
Discoverer Conservator of past knowledge
Inventor
Entrepreneur
Teacher TR ANS PARENT,
Adviser
Wizard

Early Warning -- Cassandra

All of them pose ethical challenged that complicate the scientist’s relationship to society.

Above all, mechanistic science can foretell the consequences of actions. and can empower
them. Nothing is more immoral than to ignore the constraints of physical reality; but that is a—
burden often resented both by the masses and by the political elites, particularly in the modern
epoch of unremitting technological change.

In discussing the relationships of science and policy, I will be focussing on process ... not try
to encapsulate final answers to the most vexing questions in a few minutes. The social
function of the scientist embraces all the roles I enumerated; it culminates with that of
Cassandra, whom I identify above all with Albert Einstein. (I recently reread the collection of
his writings and correspondence: Einstein on Peace; I recall nothing gloomier as I trace his
history as a pacificist during and post World War I; his reversal as he early perceived the
threat of Hitler; his writing to President Roosevelt to warn of the possible German
development of a nuclear bomb; of his post World War II struggles for controlling the bomb
and for World Order.) 1945, Hiroshima, is the mythical landmark of the loss of innocence.
Both the power of the Bomb, and its technical intricacy placed special burdens on scientists.
Nevertheless, it is the essence of democratic repsonsibility thet scientists still act within the
political process, that they exercise leadership without technical arrogance.

J.D. Bernal has commented that Descartes, faced with Bruno’s burning at the stake,
established the ground rules of the relationship of science to the ecclesiastical establishment,
that these should be mutually incommensurate and non-interfering spheres. That philosophy
has endured up to the modern era in the relationship of science to statecraft as well. Since
1945, the relationship has been in unresolved crisis: on the one hand, the consequences of
science to the social order are too important to be relegated to the sidelines. On the other, the
political establishments of all persuasions prefer to "Keep scientists on tap, not on top”.
Insufferable as this doctrine is, scientists must take care to ask whether they can seek a
greater influence on policy without also invoking the converse: a more explicit political
control of the conduct of science.

In contemporary society, the scientist is the one who discovers. We should complicate our
definition of discovery, usually given as the uncovering of new knowledge; hidden here is a
premise that would discount the role of scholarship, the view that all "old knowledge” is
visible and understood. Furthermore, what is discovered must be important, it must meet
some canonical criteria of significance: implicitly we look for an extension of understanding
of the natural world. This embraces experimental facts, but, quite as importantly, a certain
taste: theoretical insight and the recording, communication, persuasion and dialectic of those
insights. All this implies a community of scientists. Without such engagement in that
community, without a forum for insistence on and organized, skeptical criticism of claims of
conceptual novelty, factual discovery would be useless for still further increments, would be
totally sterile. Science is then inherently a social enterprise; an important social function of
science is the design and management of its own organization so as to optimize the creative
possibilities of its practitioners, and at the same time generate the fruits that justify the ever
more costly social investments needed for science to continue. To this day, most political
establishments are relatively unsophisticated in their understanding of the essentiality,
difficulties, and inevitable long time scales of basic scientific research. They tend to be
captivated by nicely encapsulated albeit sometimes very costly projects whose goals appear to
be well-defined -- at the expense of maintaining an alert community able to create and
capitalize on the most important, which are always the unexpected, discoveries.

It follows that the preeminent social responsibility of the scientist is the integrity of science
itself: to engage in discovery to its furthest reaches as a personal goal, to be part of the
community of discussion and criticism, to maintain the ethics of truth-telling, to use no other
standards than those of scientific accomplishment in the selection and the operation of the
managers and gatekeepers of science. To satisfy these responsibilities goes beyond being the
most efficient technician in the elicitation of scientific fact, which is the orientation of today’s
highly specialized disciplinary training. It requires relentless criticism of others’ ideas, and
equity and compassion in dealing with their claims for personal standing. It may require a
broader study of reaches of science, so as to explore their interconnections, than is achievable
in school; and likewise an attentiveness to history, to an understanding of what is known, that
may be momentarily a distraction from today’s new experiment.

This ideal is not always congruent with the interests of the organization, the corporation or the
state. The truth is not always the superordinate goal of public affairs. But if scientists ever
compromise themselves on this principle, Nature will be no more forgiving than will be a
society which has nowhere else to turn for objective analysis of technically convoluted affairs.

Descartes’ compromise was negotiated under force majeure; it was motivated by saving for
science its integrity within the sphere in which it could authentically operate. In modern
terms, the scientist’s ethical role is to avoid prescription. It does take mechanistic science to
foretell the consequences of actions. To ignore the constraints of physical reality will injure
people however well-meaning the intention. In warning of those limits science may be
provocative on matters of religious faith, or its modern extensions in the ideology of the
nation or ethnic group.

In the present era, scientists are often called upon, and some volunteer as well, to give advice
to society on a multitude of questions requiring scientific expertise. Many of these fall in the
category of risk-cost-benefit analyses: the greatest frustration of the scientific expert is in
dealing with expectations of perfect safety or zero pollution (in contradiction to an
Avogadro’s number, 6 x 10°23 molecules per gram-mole that assures us that every breath we
inhale contains at least one particle of Nefertiti’s perfume.) At the next step of that analysis,
it may be equally frustrating to be driven to conclusions when the evidential basis remains
tantalizingly fragile. However, the scientist has the ability and the responsibility to bring to
the analysis the same attention to objective fact, and its delineation from value inclination, as
inheres in an experiment: it is impossible to free oneself from bias, but the exercise of
scientific judgment within the discipline of the peer group can go far to identify what are the
value-oriented, what are the scientific underpinnings, of the tradeoff analysis.

A byproduct of playing a key role in major social decisions is the double-edged scalpel of
political power. Many scientists may seek more influence in the political process, partly out
of a conviction of what the scientific mind can bring to it, partly for the usual human motives
of ambition and quest for power and prestige. I have no doubt that government could be
vastly improved by changing the proportion of scientists to lawyers in its legislatures and at
the top reaches of the executive. (My text had the note that: So might other organizations,
€.g., Corporations and even universities, but I hope no one takes that as a personal comment.)
The danger is the inversion of the process: can scientists live at the court of the Prince, can
they gain more political power and prestige without the intrusion of political criteria for
advancement within the scientific community? Can they achieve their fair share of affluence
without being corrupted? Where else can society turn for untarnished advice on matters that
may have immense political and economic consequences?

Finally there is the unbidden advice, the foresight about future extrapolations for which early
warning may have inestimable social value. It is said that “prediction is difficult, especially
about the future." However, scientists are better experienced than most prophets in
articulating predictions as hypotheses; the ability to make confirmable predictions is the core
of experimental science. That art, together with an understanding of technical complexities of
matters pertaining to the environment, to human biology, to weapons effects, to technological
capabilities of different groups or countries over time, is indispensable in helping a society
foresee the long term consequences of its policies in all those spheres. Many scientific
advances in this century -- nuclear fission is the prototype -- have elicited well-founded
anxieties about the compatibility of quarreling national sovereignties with the survival of
human culture. We are so far from a feasible world model of supranational control of such
enormous powers of destruction that scientists today have a special responsibility to assist in
the design of the interim arrangements of international accommodation to domesticate such
powers. I say scientists, for it is unlikely that other vocations have offered a comparable
realism about the destructive power at stake or the possibilities of its containment.

Some say that scientists in a given country should simply refrain from conducting science that
could have such fruits. How futile that is! On the one hand, who could have foreseen that
studying atomic structure, teasing out the neutrons, could so quickly result in weapons; one cont .
would have to suspend all science for that assurance. On the other, that abjuration might
offer some self-satisfaction to the individual scientist, but it can hardly alter natural fact.
Instead, it merely assures that the technological breakthroughs will be the monopoly of the
most unscrupulous. Even with their limited prophetic vision, nevertheless, scientists are
uniquely situated to extrapolate the future possibilities of technological advance, to offer all
possible early warning to what "society" must do to reap the most benefits, risk the least
harm. Today’s world, divided North/South as well as East/West, offers many impediments to
constructive responses to global threats, be they from natural, social or technological sources.
All the more reason for the utmost clarity of foresight.
Those foresights, together with the inherent supra-national character of scientific advance,
have made the scientific profession uniquely motivated and practised in sustained international
concer and dialogue. This is already enough to alarm sovereign states, which have sought to
humiliate an Oppenheimer, to keep a Sakharov in internal exile. In the past countries that
constrained scientific freedom did great injury to their own development, as we know from
the examples of Lysenko’s persecution of genetics in the USSR, and of the Jewish scientists
exiled from Germany and Italy before World War 2. Today, there is an even broader stake.
We are observing at the very moment an exhilarating turnaround of East/West perspectives on
nuclear arms control: for the first time in decades, we foresee the possibility of reversing the
accumulation of the most destructive weapons. The fear generated by these weapons has
achieved a life of its own in sustaining security anxieties. We see bold proposals, and new
approaches to verification including on-site inspection, in the spirit of Glasnost, that were
unimaginable a few years ago. In the long run, self-inspection and self-monitoring must be a
centerpiece of verification and compliance. We can never be fully trusting of a nation that
denies freedom of expression and communication to its own citizens. Scientists could play a
special role as monitors of sovereign compliance with international order. They have the
skills, they have the motivation; it remains for them to receive and sustain the freedom to
speak out. The shared interests of scientists in the pursuit of a universal truth remain among
the rare bonds that can transcend bitter personal, national, ethnic, and sectarian rivalries. To
achieve this, still more robust legal guarantees of freedom of access to information and of
expression, of assembly and of movement are necessary. These would be bolstered by a
corresponding openness of access by scientists to policy councils, keeping in mind the
obligations of confidence within lawful limits. The traditions of truth, of international
communication, of supranational concern, of personal courage have marked many notable
scientists as trusted guardians of shared values. They are often nuisances to the established
order, sometimes to the tranquillity of their own fraternity. To bolster the commitment of
every government to assure the freedom of expression of its own scientists, to make them
credible as tellers of the truth, scientists must redouble their efforts to make themselves
worthy of that confidence. This is why examples of fraud in science are so alarming. They
cannot be judged merely as minor inefficiencies in the scientific system (from that perspective,
the costs of fraud are far outweighed by those of sloppy thinking.) Fraud is a profound
betrayal; whom else can the public trust if not a profession avowedly dedicated to the pursuit
of truth?

These pathologies aside, there remain several systemic difficulties in the use of expertise in a
democratic society. One is the dilemma of confidence at the court: to borrow a phrase from
Wildawsky, when" Speaking Truth to Power".

The most sensitive example is the Office of the President, and his need for expert advice in
science in technology. To ensure that all of the relevant options and contingencies are
thought about, nothing is more valuable than a candid devil’s advocacy, which may be born
out of principled dissent with his policies, but should be openminded and restrained to be able
to understand his logic as well. I do not suggest that the most hostile opponents necessarily
be sought on every issue; there will be ample dissent if any broadly constituted, experienced
group of independent thinkers is recruited. Such "loyal critics” are unlikely to be recruited as
fulltime officials -- in light of their motives as well as his. He is unlikely to confide in them,
however, if they criticize his judgments in public as well as in private counsels. Obviously,
they must meticulously respect national security classification of data; but that is not the limit
of their responsibility to the executive. Their prestige as members of a PSAC will give them
advantages in public debate that a president would be loath to enhance for his openly avowed
critics. As part-time, confidential advisers, they do not expect to resign if the president
decides contrary to their convictions; but if they speak out inappropriately, they imperil the
privilege of the executive’s confidence. Academic scientists may be exposed to special
pressures on campus, and from the press and the Congress, that could undermine their
confidential relationship to the president. For many, especially those who are critical of a
given administration’s policies, the prospect of being muzzled in public expression of their
critical views may place them in a grave dilemma. Nevertheless, I believe that many
responsible scientists can be found who will honor the contract, when this is carefully spelled
out. A president may then discover that better government is consistent with being reelected,
which is well understood to be his cardinal objective.

Another concern is that of perceived elitism out of democratic control: will the expert have
unwonted and unaccountable power? This is today’s version of Descartes’ dilemma, and is
answered in part by a separation of the technical from the political judgments: easier said than
done. Authentic technical advice will make a strong effort to distinguish them, but that is
automatically feasible only in trivial cases. Within the narrow technical sphere, many
conclusions remain as judgment calls dealing with matters still in scientific controversy, rather
than logical demonstrations -- e.g. just what to say about the severity of nuclear winter or of
global warming and rising sea levels. So we look for “authoritative” judgments from
“acknowledged experts". The remedy I would advocate is the one we use in scientific
dialectic, prompt and open publication of the arguments and conclusions, and spontaneous
consensus building involving the entire community. Policy decisions often cannot wait for
such a process, even when it is understood that they are at risk of fault. Sensitive to these
realities, our formal advisory bodies, like the National Academy of Sciences or the
Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, are criticized for cumbersome due process.
It will be hard to avoid that if the imprimatur is to be an authentic one.

A relatively new complication, at least in the biomedical area, is financial conflict of interest.
Schools of engineering, business and law have long since worked out a reconciliation of many
of the value conflicts, especially as between teaching and industrial service, and these are
often mutually synergistic. The sudden expansion of interest in the applications of biology
and other basic sciences raises new questions: conflicts may well arise between proprietary
applications and research traditionally in the public domain, and substantially funded from
public sources. Most of the conflicts are within the domain of university regulation, and
regulatory standards are widely accepted.

No one should quarrel with the social merit of providing academic expertise to private
industry. Besides its indispensable contribution to technological innovation and efficiency,
that independent expertise should also enhance the responsible authenticity of industrial claims
for their products, and accelerate early awareness of possible public hazards. Some public
grievance may be well founded on the depletion of experts able to speak on controversial
matters with absolute and overt detachment, thus complicating if not frustrating considered
policy decisions in fields like nuclear energy, pharmaceutical regulation and military
procurement. On many important public policy matters we are caught between passionate
critics (who have a certain ax to grind in seeking public interest and support) and experts who
are already affiliated with the promulgation of a new technology. We have little choice but to
call on expertise that is potentially conflicted, demanding open disclosure of conflict as a
minimum prerequisite. Final judgments must still be made by those who are beyond
imputable taint -- and such are ever harder to find. If that talent is sufficiently highly prized,
perhaps society will learn to remunerate experts NOT to engage themselves in industrial
consultation, so they can be available for judicial roles.

The legal adversarial system, many scholars will say, is dedicated to "justice" rather than
"truth". In court, interested parties in conflict should have equal opportunities to contrive and
present their case -- and justice should emerge from fairness of process. The scientist feels
quite uncomfortable with formal rules of evidence, excluding data by how they were procured,
and at the discretion of a litigant, and especially with having to be presented as a witness for
one or the other side. For the same reason, most scientists hesitate to speak out when they
read preposterous allegations about some alleged chemical atrocity: they don’t want to be
identified as advocates of the company. A few courts are beginning to seek their own advice,
independent of the litigants’ witnesses, in complex litigation. This is especially important
when their rulings will be precedents for many other cases.

At some point, most scientists who delve in policy will become advocates of firmly held
positions. In quest of keeping society from disaster, they expose themselves to two dangers:
a) that their involvement in political action preempts their continued scientific productivity,
and b) that they lend their prestige to a cause more than scientific arguments. Scientists who
become publically visible for any reason are hounded to do this, sometimes in very good
causes which pose conscientious difficulties of refusal. In the end, both will corrupt the
objectivity that is the scientist’s unique gift to society.

Finally, we face the question: can the scientist foretell destructive uses of new discovery?
Should they be suppressed? Who, if ever, should make such a decision?

I can imagine findings -- e.g. that would make immense destructive potencies available to
anyone -- that would give me pause. It is beyond credulity to expect that my own silence
would close the matter: what Nature can offer, some person will surely find in due course.
(An exception can be made for enterprises that require large scale industrial investment; we
think of the atomic bomb as a creature of World War II; and it is just possible that plants for
the production of U-235 or Plutonium would not have been built in peace time. It is hard to
visualize what could have suppressed the discovery of the neutron, and in turn of nuclear
fission. That given, the bomb would have been delayed at most until the next war; and
possibly not at all via the path of civil power production.

Most technologies are dual use -- consider space vehicles or the computers that guide them,
and their military counterparts. In the medical field, the same knowledge that offers us
answers to infectious disease like AIDS offers the potential for more sophisticated biological
warfare. In a crude and conflict-ridden world system, voluntary suppression of new science
would be a feeble bulwark, likely to leave a monopoly of technological power in the hands of
the most unscrupulous. The possibility of ever greater power of mass destruction, and most
worrisome its proliferation to less responsible and fanatical groups, has set political culture in
a race with technological advance. No one has seen that more clearly than the Scientist as
Cassandra; and, yes, time is running out.