Preston Manning: Who should speak for science in the public arena? – Financial Post

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How should the science community respond when representation of evidence and conclusions is incomplete, erroneous, self-serving, or misleading?

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One of the most important questions raised by governmental responses to the COVID crisis is Who should speak for science in the public arena?

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Every government in the world claims that its response to this health crisis is science-based. Scientific papers and authorities are liberally quoted in describing the nature of the virus, the best ways to combat its spread, and the role of science and technology in developing vaccines as the ultimate protective solution.

But who is doing most of this quoting of science, this referencing of scientific authority, and this presentation of the science of COVID to the public? Often it is not the scientists speaking directly for themselves but politicians, civil servants and media commentators.

In the case of politicians, few have a solid background in the basic sciences and most of us would have difficulty on our own clearly explaining the operations of a flashlight battery let alone that of a virus, even with the help of Professor Google. This shaky grasp of the application of science to a public issue makes it more likely that the politicians choice as to what science to reference and how to apply it will be more strongly influenced by non-scientific factors such as political ideology and partisan positions. For example, since the Trudeau government has embraced critical race theory and identity politics, will it not be more inclined to embrace and promote the conclusions of a scientist or science team that has also embraced these theories than the findings of a scientist or science team that ignores or even rejects them?

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Civil servants may well have scientific degrees and expertise but they are lodged in public bureaucracies, hierarchically organized with multiple divisions of responsibility and a fundamentally different approach to information processing and decision making than that prescribed by the scientific method. Thus the filtering of scientific observations and hypotheses through a bureaucratic system is likely to bring yet another bias to the application of science to a public issue.

And in the case of the communication of science by public media commentators, this cannot help but be influenced, at least in part, by the media-world reality that negative is more newsworthy than positive, feelings are more newsworthy than facts, disagreement is more newsworthy than consensus and short-run is more newsworthy than long-run. Public policy guided mainly by newsworthy science is not truly science-based policy.

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Calling for an expanded and direct communications role for scientists in the public square on public issues is not, however, without its own challenges. For example, the language and style in which scientists normally communicate with each other are not usually the best language and style for communicating with the public. Are scientists able and willing to make the adjustments required to be more effective public communicators and will those adjustments be supported or misunderstood by fellow scientists?

How should the science community respond when the representation of scientific evidence and conclusions by politicians, bureaucrats, and media commentators is incomplete, erroneous, self-serving, or misleading? Should scientists publicly challenge and correct such representations even if doing so might result in a possible withdrawal of government funding for the science in question?

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And how should the science community respond when the acceptance and use of scientific findings by a government or funding body is heavily influenced by non-scientific ideologies such as those of critical race theory and identity politics? Suppose, for example, that a scientific paper published by a research team is scientifically flawed but the team itself satisfies all the criteria of political correctness possessing gender balance and racial diversity and expressing itself in appropriately nuanced language. Should the data and hypotheses of such a paper be scrutinized and challenged by other scientists via the tried and true procedures of the scientific method if doing so might generate public accusations of prejudice and intolerance? In other words, how should the science community respond if faulty science can be insulated from genuine scientific analysis and correction by clothing it in politically appealing garb?

Over the coming months, various internal meetings and external conferences will be held to evaluate the governmental and societal responses to the COVID crisis and the lessons to be learned from them. One of the largest will be the annual Canadian Science Policy Conference in November. A priority question to be addressed by such gatherings is Who should speak for science in the public square?

Preston Manning was the founder of the Reform Party of Canada, and served as leader of the official Opposition in Parliament.

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Preston Manning: Who should speak for science in the public arena? - Financial Post