In Silencing science, Shaun Hendy supports the need for New Zealand scientists to communicate with the public and even to adopt the potentially controversial role of advocate. Critical scientific advocacy can avert disastrous consequences—consider acid rain and ozone depletion. This book explores justifications for and restrictions of science advocacy and discusses the dangers of silencing scientists.
Scientists are trained to explore and find new knowledge but may find their knowledge and particularly their advocacy is not welcome. In a world filled with noise, how can society distinguish between red herrings and warnings that require action? Hendy outlines American political scientist Roger Pielke’s framework of four valid roles of scientists with regard to the relationship between science and policy: the pure scientist, the science arbiter, the issues advocate, and the honest broker.
Within the first few pages of this BWB ‘short book on a big subject’, I was hooked. Hendy begins with Fukushima’s magnitude 9.0 earthquake. He posits that the Fukushima disaster might have been avoided or at least mitigated by greater advocacy on the part of Japanese seismologists whose advice about the possibility of a tsunami had been ignored. In 2013, Japan’s Science Council pointed out the ‘need for scientists to re-examine whether they had truly responded to the trust and mandate given to them by society’ after the Fukushima disaster.
Professor Hendy is based in the Physics Department of the University of Auckland and is Director of Te Pūnaha Matatini, a national Centre of Excellence. In 2012, Hendy was awarded the prestigious Prime Minister’s Science Communicator Prize, a fact that remains modestly unmentioned. This book provides further confirmation that he is indeed an accomplished science communicator. In Silencing science, Hendy demonstrates skilfully that he can peel layers back from familiar stories and give the reader new insights. After setting the global scene with Fukushima, Hendy moves to his task of examining the relationship of science and society in New Zealand.
In New Zealand, there is widespread recognition that scientists have a responsibility to communicate with the public. University academics are intended to be the ‘critic and conscience of society’. Scientists involved in National Science Challenges and other initiatives are encouraged to communicate at all stages of the research process, to get input from the public as well as share research results and implications. The government funds the Science Media Centre which acts as a matchmaker between experts and the media. Yet Hendy warns against complacency.
Hendy’s first chapter focuses on the Fonterra botulism scare and Canterbury earthquakes and examines the crucial role of scientists in communicating with the public during crises. Protagonists of both these stories, Dr Siouxsie Wiles and Dr Mark Quigley, have been recognised with the Prime Minister’s Science Communication Prize, with Hendy’s account demonstrating clearly why they were deserving of the accolade. Both Wiles and Quigley stepped up to fill a communication vacuum, one that is potentially more acute and quickly formed in New Zealand than in countries with a deeper reserve of expertise. As Hendy points out, many public scientists are constrained from public communication by commercial funding arrangements and others by their advisory roles with government. This can leave few available to answer questions for the public and there are disincentives for taking up the baton.
While Hendy promotes the crucial need for thoughtful and effective science communication and the function of critical advocacy, he recognises that there are inherent challenges in communication about controversial topics that relate to government policy. He calls for more honest brokers and concludes with a suggestion that the public needs a Science Adviser as embodied by the Public Commissioner for the Environment. The model is one of independence, honest criticism and accountability to Parliament rather than to a minister or ministry.
Hendy mentions the comment that Prime Minister John Key made about Mike Joy, a freshwater ecologist from Massey University, in a BBC interview: ‘He’s one academic, and like lawyers, I can provide you with another that can give you a counterview.’ Scientists might justifiably resent being compared with lawyers whose support shifts with the client. While science is a human endeavour and therefore influenced by values and biases, what sets it apart as a way of understanding the world is the requirement of testing, reproducing results and querying explanations from different viewpoints.
In addition to his suggestion of a public Science Adviser, Hendy makes a case for open science—greater public exposure to the practice of science, warts and all. As seen above, a greater understanding of the process of science could be of benefit to many. Hendy suggests that the public would benefit from greater awareness that in science, uncertainty is inherent and scientific consensus is the result of a robust process of questioning and debate among experts. Scientists will critically consider various plausible explanations before settling on the most likely and so diversity of views is vital to the process of testing. The diversity of views and publication of dissenting opinions means that it is possible to find single studies that differ from the consensus. Hendy provides the example of Katherine Rich from the Food and Grocery Council, who found scientists willing to write in opposition to legislation of folate supplementation. So in spite of strong evidence favouring the practice of folate enrichment of bread to reduce incidence of spina bifida—an approach used in many countries including the USA and Australia—this policy was not implemented in New Zealand.
Silencing science was particularly useful and interesting to me as a relative newcomer to New Zealand. Having heard aspects of these stories, Hendy’s documenting and contextualisation filled gaps in my knowledge. His perception, thoughtfulness and access to a variety of key players makes it likely that this book will be illuminating for most, filling out different parts of stories for each reader. Silencing science is a compelling read.