Contemporary science communication as a world of political invention

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Notes

Address correspondence to: Mark Elam, Science and Technology Studies, Gothenburg University, Sweden SE‐405 30, E‐mail: [email protected]

A succinct statement of the two‐stage model is provided by Polanyi in his classic article The Republic of Science from 1962: ‘Though scientific discoveries eventually diffuse into all people's thinking, the general public cannot participate in the milieu in which they are made’ (Polanyi, 1962, p. 67).

In recent years, thanks to the work of people like Yves Jeanneret, the traditional view of vulgarization as ‘vulgarisation de qualité’ has been brought under challenge in France. Increasingly, vulgarization can be seen as activity with a greater stake in the production of scientific and intellectual authority.

Although the notion of a gulf separating those who systematically seek knowledge from those content to go about their daily business is as old as the idea of science itself, the vision of a continually expanding gulf fully denying public knowledge any relevance in the production of scientific knowledge is of much more recent origin. As Vincent (2001, p. 109) clarifies: ‘The notion of an increasing gap between science and the public is heavily dependent upon twentieth century physics. It emerged in the context of relativity and quantum physics and became the dogma of modernity, in particular in the guise of nuclear physics during the Cold War … While the epistemology of rupture has been mainly inspired by physics, at the same time it has increased the reductional tendencies of identifying all sciences with physics’. Therefore, what is today known as the traditional two‐stage linear model of science communication is firstly a twentieth‐century physics‐based model.

Quoting Merton (1937/68, p. 600) at greater length: ‘The presumably scientific pronouncements of totalitarian spokesmen on race and economy or history are for the uninstructed laity of the same order as announcements concerning an expanding universe or wave mechanics. In both instances, the laity is in no position to understand these conceptions or check their scientific validity and in both instances they can not be consistent with common sense’.

The notion of ‘extended peer review’ is borrowed firstly from the work of Ravetz (1999) in relation to what he calls conditions of ‘post‐normal science’ today.

The historical parallels drawn in this section were firstly inspired by remarks made by Shapin in his article on Boyle's experimental programme from 1984: ‘Although I shall be dealing with communication within a scientific community, there is a clear connection between this study and the analysis of scientific popularization. The popularization of science is usually understood as the extension of experience from the few to the many. I argue here that one of the major resources for generating and validating items of knowledge … was this same extension of experience from the few to the many: the creation of a scientific public’ (Shapin, 1984, p. 481).

The ‘new media tools’ Shapin and Schaffer (1985, ch. 2) describe in the making of a seventeenth century scientific public are a combination of material, literary and social technologies which together created a new public theatre of scientific knowledge production.

The contemporary continuities between technoscientific invention and political invention suggested in this paper are richly explored by Andrew Barry in his recent book Political Machines (2001).

As Rose (2001, p. 37) asserts, it is no longer ‘a matter of application of discoveries made in the academy to the real world of medicine … the laboratory and the factory are already intrinsically interlinked—the pharmaceutical industry has been central to research on neurochemistry, the biotech industry to research on cloning, genetech firms to the sequencing of the human genome. It is not just that such companies seek to apply or market scientific discoveries, they shape the very direction, organisation, problem space and solution effects of the biology itself’.

Observing the ways in which pain and suffering are linked to the production of authentic testimony in contemporary bioethical discussions, it is worth reflecting with Peters on the role torture played as an instrument of proof in ancient Greece. As he points out, torture served as ‘a cultural line dividing slaves, who respect only bodily pain, and citizens, who speak the logos in freedom. Since slaves supposedly lie compulsively, torture exposes the truth by extinguishing the power to invent … A slave could not appear in court, but a slave's testimony obtained under torture was admissable as evidence’ (Peters, 2001, p. 712). In other words, beyond supplying palpable proof of human suffering what further influence can victims of genetically defined illness hope to exert over programmes of biomedical research? Must they always remain firstly slaves to the research process, or can they aspire to some degree of control and mastery over it?

For varying levels of discussion of these alternatives see; Commission of the European Communities (2001), Durant (1999), Elam and Bertilsson (2003), Irwin (2001) and Turney (2002).

Apart from the video recording, other printed materials relating to the event still available from the Danish Council of Ethics include Lykkeskov (1999) and Det Etiske Råd (2000).

Attendance on the day in the Parliamentary Auditorium was limited to 250. To be able to attend you had to register in advance and pay a registration fee of 300 Dkr. The event was sold‐out a week in advance of it taking place. As it turned out, all but a handful of those in attendance were Danish citizens. Practically everyone in attendance had a professional background with the vast majority coming from the Danish health sector and Danish academia. The author can admit to having gate‐crashed the event after having tried unsuccessfully to register for it via the Internet from Sweden. Wandering into the event unregistered, finding a seat, asking a question from the floor, and even partaking of the organized lunch proved unproblematic, but this was probably only due to the fact that no one else was visible harbouring the same ambition.

The lone Danish natural scientist with an official spot in the conference debate programme was Professor Elisabeth Bock from the Institute for Molecular Pathology at Copenhagen University.

The complete text of Shickle's talk is provided in Det Etiske Råd (2000); on the video recording from 9 November his talk comes after 4 hours and 20 minutes.

One participant in the day's proceedings at pains to emphasize he was still not a buyer of ethical deliberation was Joseph Coates: ‘I have a deep‐seated suspicion of ethicists because they tend to deal in the abstract, the remote, the theoretical, and you and I don't live in that world. Much of the ethical discussion I hear has no logical linkages or connections. It is just the bubble in the belly and my belly bubbles as good as your belly bubbles. So there you are!’ (On video during the third hour).

On Danish NGOs engagement with biotechnology see Lassen (1999) and Jelsøe et al. (1998).

Although not widely publicized, this control the biomedical research community has been able to exercise over its own ethical regulation was questioned by legal and political experts within VR in connection with the putting forward of guidelines for stem‐cell research (see Persson and Welin, 2001; Leijonhuvud and Welin, 2002; Jewert, 2002).

For complementary accounts to the one provided here of the role played by the liberal press in the Swedish debate on stem‐cell research see Ideland (2002) and Persson and Welin (2001).

In relation to what Bergström calls a ‘politics of attraction’, ethical guidelines on research take on the identity of good or bad advertisements for particular research environments in international competition for researchers and funding. One can ask if VR's ethical guidelines on stem‐cell research announced in close connection with the 2001 Nobel Prize festivities, when the international spotlight was already turned on Sweden, were not just as much about international marketing as domestic regulation.

The political obstructors of research named in the editorial are Alf Svensson, leader of the Christian Democratic Party; Maud Olofsson, leader of the Centre Party; and the representatives from the Christian Democratic, Centre and Liberal Parties who sat in the Swedish governmental Biotechnology Committee (1998–2000)—Per Landgren, Lennart Brunander and Lennart Rhodin.

What sort of public forum is the liberal press for debating controversial research? As Ideland (2002) and Persson and Welin (2001) have already discussed in relation to the Swedish stem‐cell debate, the liberal press can easily be transformed into a site of orchestrated debate under close editorial control. Who speaks; who is ignored; who is spoken for; the space devoted to different contributions and their timing; as well as the rhetorical forms available for argument and their combination, all are subject to editorial discretion. The liberal press is firstly the editor's political laboratory.

In the interview Landgren also expresses his reservations about a process of ethical regulation where researchers are allowed to take the lead in setting guidelines for researchers, and where the same scientists may sit on a number of different ethical committees simultaneously. These worries, however, were not addressed in subsequent debate in DN.

Rather than disqualifying himself out of debate by drawing insulting and distasteful comparisons, Landgren can be seen as having fallen foul of a reverse ‘Frankenstein Effect’ produced by the Swedish liberal press. While in other countries it is common for bioscientists to be presented in the media as in danger of following in Frankenstein's footsteps (see Turney, 1998), in the Swedish liberal press it is the bioethicists who are portrayed as constantly on the verge of monstrous behaviour.

Among the recommendations of the Biotechnology Committee is that a Board of Technology be established in Sweden similar to the ones already in operation in Denmark and Norway. Such a Board is considered by the Committee to be of pivotal importance for the future governance of Swedish biotechnology and would be tasked with co‐ordinating new processes of technology assessment offering ordinary citizens not only greater insight, but also greater opportunities to participate in, and exert an influence over scientific and technological decision‐making (see Utbildningsdepartementet, 2000, pp. 331–337).

Taking into account the way in which the views and opinions of individual members of the Biotechnology Committee—Par Landgren and Lennart Rhodin in particular—were represented and commented upon in DN during 2001, it does not seem unreasonable to suggest that the broader objective was to mobilize the liberal press to diminish the credibility of the findings and recommendations of the Committee as a whole.

As Peters (2001, p. 709) reminds us, there are many sides to witnessing. A witness can be either the one who speaks, or the person who sees and hears, or the utterance or text itself. Objects can be taken as bearing witness as well as people. TV cameras and tape recorders can be mechanical witnesses by being somewhere to see and hear things for us. Just the mere existence of a person can be their witness, like the Holocaust survivor's witness against fascism, or Louise Brown's witness as the first ‘test‐tube baby’ to the feasibility of assisted conception. Witnessing opens doors on new realities.

In general, the evaluation and ‘benchmarking’ of different science communication initiatives must be viewed as a highly complicated and politically sensitive task today.

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Notes on contributors

Mark Elam

Address correspondence to: Mark Elam, Science and Technology Studies, Gothenburg University, Sweden SE‐405 30, E‐mail: [email protected]