Editors’ Introduction: Science, Normativity and the Public

Social epistemology is becoming increasingly aware of its normative foundations, in particular regarding the organization of scientific communities. Given that the most relevant epistemic output of their activity is a collective agreement on a set of propositions, we may inquire into the fairness of the procedures generating such consensus and the existence of other normative criteria that either determine those procedures or help us in their critical assessment. Intuitively, we may expect scientists taking part in it to follow certain rules in order to regulate their debates. Social epistemologists have been trying to make these norms explicit and either justify or criticize their cogency in terms of the intuitions they capture. One way or another, these norms reflect our expectations as to what scientific debates should be like. So far, such expectations are usually taken as given: when, say, Helen Longino, Philip Kitcher or Miriam Solomon present their models for a social epistemology of scientific activity, they argue as if their own intuitions as to the normative underpinnings of scientific debates were widely shared among their colleagues, scientists and the public in general. This is the standard strategy in moral analytic philosophy and it is not at all unfruitful. But since we are trying to make epistemology more social, perhaps we better not take such expectations for granted.

Our preliminary research suggests that our normative intuitions about science are currently undergoing a substantial revision. This is namely due to the emergence of an interest‐driven approach to scientific research which is spread more and more among scientists, and is perhaps best appraised in terms of what is now mainstream economic analysis—rather than using conventional sociological tools (cf. Mirowski and Sent 2002; Zamora Bonilla forthcoming). Under this assumption, we wanted to bring together social epistemologists and empirical science scholars to discuss how our intuitions about norms in science are changing and how we should revise it in view of the growing commercialization of research. The collection of papers that we present in this special issue of Social Epistemology is a sample of the many contributions presented and discussed in the workshop on “Science, Economics, and Democracy” which, under the auspices of the Urrutia Elejalde Foundation, we organized in Madrid in March 2005 to address these questions. Three different topics are considered here. First, whether a more adequate response to these normative challenges would be to bring closer social epistemology and political philosophy. Second, whether we should adopt a more parsimonious normative stance, a piecemeal amendment of our current regulation of science in view of particular problems rather than a general legislation of scientific research. Third, whether the public shares these normative concerns and has taken sides.

In “Science as Public Sphere?”, Jesús Vega and Francisco Javier Gil claim that the institutional organization of science reveals certain normative traits that are best appraised by the Habermasian idea of a public sphere: institutional autonomy, provision of public goods, epistemic virtues organizing scientific activity. Instead of treating them as self‐evident, our intuitions as to the sources of scientific normativity are thus traced back to a particular political culture, the Enlightenment, which generalized and justified in various ways by current political philosophy. Vega and Gil argue that scientific results as such are independent from this normative framework, but this is essential to ground the institutional compatibility of science and democracy. They conclude that the privatization of scientific research will damage its public acceptability in our current democracies.

The two papers by Justin Biddle and Jakob Vestergaard contend that the current normative standards regulating scientific institutions cannot adequately cope with market pressure. But instead of claiming for a general reform of such standards, they defend concrete normative arrangements that can preserve the values originally incorporated into such institutions. Biddle focuses on the case of Vioxx arguing that the epistemic inadequacies that led to the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of this noxious drug can be understood as a result of problems in the organization of biomedical research. If we want any normative standard of science to be effective, argues Biddle, we should focus on its concrete implementation in a particular institutional design, rather than on its a priori justification. It may be argued that these are two separate issues, but since most normative accounts of science argue as if the relevant rules were already in operation—at least, to a certain degree—and contributing to the success of scientific research, Biddle’s case study compels us to be more precise as to how our idealized standards relate to their actual counterparts. His defence of an adversarial approach in the assessment of biomedical research seems a good step in this direction.

In the same spirit, but drawing on a previous case study by J. Tuunainen, Vestergaard argues that the only way for universities to engage in commercial activities is to keep the roles of researchers and entrepreneurs separate. His claim is grounded in the incompatibility of incentives for both roles that is often documented in cases such as the one examined in the paper (a spin‐off company launched by a professor of the University of Helsinki). Yet, far from advocating a retreat from markets, Vestergaard discusses various examples of university organization that could successfully implement this separation of roles.

Both Vestergaard and Biddle acknowledge that since public institutions (universities or state agencies) are involved, there are public interests at stake that should be protected. Yet, like Vega and Gil, they rely on our intuitive understanding on what those interests may be. Since the conference took place in Madrid, we invited some empirical scholars to present their surveys of the opinion of the Spanish public in that respect. In their paper in this collection, Antonio López Peláez and José Antonio Díaz Martínez focus on how a subset of Spaniards, what they call the informed public, perceives science as conveyed by the national media. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of the discourse about biotechnological breakthroughs recorded in various discussion sessions conducted in 2004 with samples of the informed public, López and Díaz argue, among other things, that these groups request that the government assumes the responsibility of regulating all those issues where they feel insecure about their real understanding of the scientific issues at stake. In other words, at least in countries like Spain, there seems to be a clear grasp of the existence of the normative implications of scientific research, but since this is poorly understood, there is also public uncertainty about the way to solve them.

In a similar spirit, but now drawing on the results of a large‐scale poll commissioned by a state agency devoted to the promotion of science and technology in Spain (also conducted in 2004), José Antonio López Cerezo and Montaña Cámara contend that the public interest in science mostly depends on how its results are socially appropriated. There is evidence that shows that the more involved the public becomes in decision‐making processes with a scientific dimension, the more will the public learn about science. Yet, there is also evidence that suggests that the public’s interest in science and pseudo‐science could coexist without any perceived contradiction. In other words, the public interest does not seem to be grounded in a clear understanding of the epistemic values that we would like to see protected by state agencies or universities.

To sum up, this collection of papers shows that there is work to be done in social epistemology to build up our normative intuitions about science on more solid ground. The problem seems to be at the sources of such normativity. There seems to be a wide consensus on the imperative for scientists to serve the public interest, at least in certain institutional settings. Yet, as it often happens, when scientists are given the opportunity to pursue their own particular interest and the public speaks for itself, our intuitions about what science ought to be collapse. Scientists turn out to behave like everybody else when tempted by financial or professional rewards, without being deterred by the epistemic values incorporated in their research. And the public view of these seems to be unrelated to a real understanding on the matters at stake. We should therefore refine our arguments as to why and how we want science to be regulated, without presupposing a common implicit answer. The different strategies to meet this aim explored in this collection of papers seem all promising enough as to deserve consideration. Let us see whether they can pass the test of debate.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank all the participants in the workshop for making it such a fruitful event. Steve Fuller contributed the most to organize it and he was the first to suggest the possibility of publishing this special issue. The authors cooperated in a way that deserves praise. Miranda del Corral kindly helped us in the preparation of the manuscripts for publication. Jeremy Howick and Julian Reiss provided useful comments. We should acknowledge the constant supporting contribution of the Urrutia Elejalde Foundation, and the funding received from the CSIC (Instituto de Filosofía), FECYT (Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología) and the Spanish Ministry of Education (grant SEJ2004–20076E). Another research grant on the emergence of scientific norms (HUM2005–01686/FISO) supported the authors’ research.

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Notes on contributors

David Teira Serrano

David Teira is Assistant Professor in the Department of Logic, History and Philosophy of Science (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid) and Research Associate of the Urrutia Elejalde Foundation. His PhD thesis “Azar, economía y política en Milton Friedman” won the best dissertation award of the Spanish Society for Logic and Philosophy of Science in 2003.

Jesús Zamora Bonilla

Jesús P. Zamora Bonilla is Professor in the Department of Logic, History, and Philosophy of Science (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid) and academic co‐ordinator of the Urrutia Elejalde Foundation. His research focuses on the economic analysis of scientific knowledge production. He has also worked on the problem of scientific realism and truth approximation. His papers have been published in Synthese, Philosophy of Science, Perspectives on Science and Episteme.