Category Archives: Knowledge Ecology And Economy
Translational Science In Transition: The New Science Policy
Who owns Big Science in the UK? Does government science policy sit within wider public policy, or is it stand alone? The Cooksey Review has stirred strong feelings amongst medical scientists, and also further afield. Few science policy questions can be determined without understanding the wider public policy context.
Who pays for what in the constant race to stay at the global cutting edge in science and technology is a hot debate. Often neglected is an acknowledgement of the multiplicity of stakeholders, but this is an area which the scientists themselves sometimes ignore.
Getting to the bottom of who can / should pay for science and innovation in the UK is a difficult task. When all relevant interests – science and technology, policy makers, the economy / electorate – are perceived there is more clarity, but only rarely does this happen. The issue is however making headway as a result of changes resulting from the 2007 Budget, which promises an increase in investment in public science of 2.5 per cent from 2008-09 to 2010-11..
Both the Cooksey Review on funding for health research, and the (connected) introduction of the new Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills focus on ensuring that progress in scientific research and wider value for money go hand in hand.
Value for whom?
The really big question here is, who benefits from investment in what sort of science? This is surely the nub of the issue, but it needs a wide perspective to answer the question properly.
The emphasis seems so far to be on the ‘translation’ of blue sky research findings into marketable commodities – an entirely sensible idea in general., but not a complete one. The core issue of how much benefit accrues to whom when commodities become marketable is not easily resolved.
Whether the product eventually taken to market is a medical drug, a form of renewable energy or a development in nanotechnology, there are likely to be direct and indirect benefits and costs.
Medical priorities in research
One person’s or sector’s gain may be another’s loss – an obvious but frequently forgotten matter from the perspective of practising scientists.
This may be particularly true in the case of medical scientists, who are currently it seems most agitated, and who often have a specific, and possibly tragic, individual human condition in mind as they undertake their work. Nonetheless, this human priority cannot stand alone.
Medical scientists have not always covered themselves in glory when it comes to collaborating within the Big Science framework – the Daresbury crisis of a few years ago comes to mind – and for some of medical researchers the universe probably finishes at the point where abstract research translates (to use the new term) into pharmaceuticals. This is why, when public money is involved, others must take a wider view.
Science policy and public policy
Policy in government-sponsored science is not, contrary to much of the discussion, a singular issue. For a start, there is policy about science; and then there is policy relating science and the general public interest. These two are inter-connected, but not always the same.
Science policy variously (as examples, and in no order of priority) might be about:
* ‘translating’ or bringing blue sky research to the market;
* meeting a specific human or technical need;
* continuing promising lines of investigation which may or may not eventually go anywhere;
* establishing or maintaining national reputation, or that of an institution and / or individual/s.
Public policy relating to science might, e.g., concern:
* developing local science-based businesses;
* linking scientific and technical / medical research outcomes to the wider economy;
* developing programmes or projects in geographical or otherwise specifically identified areas, to progress regeneration or other ambitions for general benefit;
* seeking answers to particular policy conundrums or challenges, by way of developing the evidence-base available to decision-makers.
Contextual perspectives on science
To make sense of these difficult and often conflicting priorities between science and public policy requires seeing the wider contexts in which science and technology operate.
Social, economic and political backdrops are not secondary matters when government is paying directly for science to be done. They are central and critical, right from the beginning.
‘Translating’ science is ultimately about taking blue sky research to market, but it is also in another sense about making sure that stakeholders – the general public – know and are comfortable with what, through their taxes, they are paying for.
Consensus on taking science forward
From this point of view scientists need to accept that, if government pays directly, it wants to know how the research will take public policy forward.
Politicians are not usually keen to write open cheques for unknown outcomes, nor should they be.
Scientists paid by government are usually there to do their part within a policy framework geared to fairly tight timescales, to make the evidence-base available or to develop a required product. As such they rarely have the luxury of following their noses in research, just because it looks interesting.
Government funding
Sometimes there is a case for blue sky research directly funded by government, but probably, given budgetary constraints and the constant need to be immediately answerable to the electorate, not often.
The right way to support (most) blue-sky research is through the universities’ wider funding and large science-led corporations.
Such investment will, if directed wisely, bring reward in the longer term, when investors can as a result make the evidence-based case for government to invest in developing the applications of their new-found knowledge.
Liverpool Vision’s Jim Gill Reflects On Hope Street Quarter
The public realm refurbishment of Hope Street, the thoroughfare which defines Liverpool’s cultural quarter, was finally completed in May 2007. This has offered an opportunity to reflect on, and learn some lessons from, the decade of activity culminating in Hope Street’s new look. Jim Gill, Chief Executive of Liverpool Vision, agreed to share his perceptions of that decade and what it has achieved for Hope Street and the City of Liverpool.
Fast Trains And The North-South Divide
Is large-scale sustainable transport possible? Should we welcome Britain’s fastest-ever domestic train, which has arrived in Southampton this week? The UK’s North- South economic divide brings these questions into sharp focus. The further one is from London, the more important connectivity can become. So is carbon footprint a critical issue only after the economics have been taken care of?
Economics and environment don’t always mix. For some the pressing need is to reduce travel. For others, it is vital to improve physical connection. These complicated issues have come up the agenda again this week, with the news that the Go-Ahead Group has arranged imminent delivery of 29 high-speed Hitachi trains from Japan, which will operate from 2009 on the South Eastern network.
Low expectations?
Whilst commuters in the South are getting excited about travel times and accessibility to the Capital, those in more northerly parts of the UK are likely to be less enthused. For many the expectation of poor transport is a way of life, and there is a feeling – perhaps unjustly in respect of some local northern operators – that nothing is going to happen to change this. For others, the temptation is to believe that yet again the South is benefiting and the rest are not. Few Northerners are as yet willing to ditch their cars.
Will the new fast trains effect a change of heart? The optimists for train travel think that signs we are catching up with the Europeans will focus a national clamour for this form of transport. More dour observers suggest that because of potential damage to the environment we should not be encouraging travel anyway.
Sustainable transport, sustainable economies
I’m generally on the side of the optimists here. There’s little chance of sustainable living across Britain whilst inequalities (not just North-South, but certainly including that) are so great. I’d like to see more trains, and faster ones, right across the country. This is one area of environmental concern where we really can ask the technical people to work on the ‘clean and green’ agenda.
Science can’t solve all eco- problems, but in terms of transport and communications, we shouldn’t write technology off yet. The challenge now is for the politicians to come up with proposals which will match economic balance across the North and South with the possibilities opening up in transport.
Nothing in life stays still. Sustainability in communities of whatever size must start from the ‘can do’, the will to be positive and fair, because any other starting point is doomed in the long-run to failure.
Where The Science Meets The Social: The UK’s Wettest Summer On Record
The rain it raineth every day; but, strange as this British ‘Summer’ weather feels, we know a lot about what’s triggered the deluge. We can debate the extent of global warming, but the big issue is how to ensure it doesn’t carry on. This is where conventional science gives way to understandings of human behaviour. Hearts and minds will help us meet the challenges of climate change, not simply technology.
As everyone keeps telling us, these are uncertain times. You don’t have to have been in the floods to have felt in some way their effects….
But understanding it all is a bit of a challenge. Is it true that climate change is well and truly upon us? (I suspect, on the whole the answer is Yes) Is there anything we can do about it? (Ditto.)
Knowing what we know
And do we need to know more? I’d say Yes again, but it’s a qualified Yes.
We already know a lot; how to reduce and recycle waste, how to travel carbon-lightly, how to share resources for food, water and other essential commodities. What we sometimes don’t know is how to put that ‘knowledge’ into practice.
Taking evidence to policy
The challenges of interpreting the environmental phenomena currently around us are being taken up by some of the brightest natural scientists. Their evidence is and will continue to be both good and available for everyone to consider for themselves.
Now we must move also to include, in a quite fundamental way, the social sciences and the understandings they bring. Best progress towards confronting climate and other fears needs to embrace how people – people of all sorts, not ‘just’ those already committed to doing something, but everyone else as well – feel in their hearts, as well as how in their heads they understand.
Hearts and minds in context
Science in the service of coping with climate change is first and foremost a tool towards sensible actions and policies. It will do
that science no harm at all if it has two conjoined wings, the natural and the social, bringing together the evidence required to make action happen.
This is a dialogue in which everyone can play their part. The challenge is to articulate and explore what best makes people get engaged, positively and in a meaningful way……
A version of this article was first posted on Climatespace on 27 July 2007.
Employment Polarisation, Gender And Regeneration
An ippr report by Ioannis Kaplanis tells of increasing employment polarisation in Britain – with differences most significant amongst female employees in London. Regional economies must learn from Kaplanis’s studies, looking especially at policies for the full use and retention of women’s high-level skills. One emphasis must surely be on how very senior decision makers outside London (a hugely male population) respond to this challenge.
The Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr) has just published a paper by Ioannis Kaplanis at the London School of Economics. The report, entitled, The Geography of Employment Polarisation in Britain, offers potentially far-reaching implications for renewal and regeneration in the UK.
Polarisation, but not greater absolute poverty
In essence, Kaplanis tells us that polarisation between high-paid and low-paid occupations in Britain has increased significantly since the early 1990s, but that both categories have seen expansion when measured against middle-income activity.
This, Kaplanis suggests, is because technology (and international out-sourcing?) have removed the need for large numbers of middle-level skills, whereas very highly skilled work still requires very highly skilled people – who in turn stimulate the demand for lower-level skills such as domestic cleaning and local leisure facilities. (Perhaps this polarisation is also more likely to occur where there is a lot of private sector activity.)
The gender dimension
Most significant of all, it appears, has been this effect on female employment in London – which is hardly surprising, given that many talented young people go to London to work; and London is where gender discrimination is, if necessary, most challenged and least likely to occur before the highest levels of the glass ceiling. (Merseyside, as a contrasting example, has an appalling senior level employment record in gender terms.)
Add to such a backdrop the obvious fact that women are usually responsible for hiring domestic help (they can’t do home maintenance and have high level jobs…) and we have a win-win for female workers at both ends of the formal skills spectrum.
The regional challenge
There are many other aspects to Kaplanis’s work in addition to gender, but he does note that employment polarisation is now (the converse may have been true until the early 1990s) less evident in the UK regions than in the capital.
So here’s a challenge: get highly-skilled women outside London working at the level of their acquired expertise – and pay and promote them properly.
Then maybe the UK regions would see a turn-around of their still relatively declining fortunes. It’s only one part of the equation, but it might just prompt that desperately needed impetus towards success.
Graduate Retention Strategies: Ageist, Sexist Or Just Shortsighted?
Graduate retention is a serious aspect of any decent policy for regeneration. But the emphasis on new / young graduates alone is strange, when there are always also other highly qualified and more experienced people who might offer at least as much in any developing economy.
A recurring theme in the regeneration of cities and regions is the emphasis on retention of graduates. This is an entirely reasonable focus, given the cost of producing graduates and the potential which they have in terms of economic value. The flight of bright graduates from regional to capital cities is a well-marked issue for most regional economies.
Reducing the loss of graduate talent is generally a task allocated to the regional universities which have educated them. There is a whole sector of most regional knowledge economies which is dedicated simply to training and retaining graduates in the hope that they will enhance the economic performance of that region.
Extending the scope for retention
There are also now schemes which train ‘women returners’, women who have taken time out to raise a family or who have
only later in their working lives decided to develop their formal skills. Generally these schemes give good value for the ‘returners’ and their future employers, at least in terms of providing competent middle-level practitioners and professionals; and certainly they can make a really significant difference to the lives of the women who undertake the training.
Overlooked and under-used
But there is another group of people with high skills who are often simply not geared into their local and regional economy in any meaningful way. These are often older, highly qualified and experienced graduate women who are no longer working (but are usually not registered as unemployed), and who may remain living in an area because they have family or other personal commitments there.
These women generally do not need any further training (except in the same way that other practising professionals might need it) and they often undertake a good deal of voluntary and unpaid work in their communities. Little of this work however is given any formal economic value, and even less of it is focused strategically on the requirements of their economic location.
How could their activities be strategically focused, when these women, often for reasons beyond their individual control, may have almost no continuing professional connection in their communities?
Invisible people
In an economy with a significant proportion of women leaders and decision-makers the ‘invisible’ older female graduate might be identified as a person with serious economic potential,
someone for whom every effort should be made to find or create suitable high-level employment or enterprise opportunities commensurate with her qualifications and experience.
Highly qualified men are likely, we might suppose, to move to a job elsewhere which meets their requirements; the women may have no choice but to relinquish their employment, if their family moves elsewhere or if circumstances mean their job disappears. In many challenged regional and local economies however the scope to realise this female potential remains unperceived by those (mostly men) who decide the strategy for their local economies.
Doing the audit
Has anyone tried to estimate the numbers of ‘non-economically-productive’ highly qualified older women in a given regional or
local economy undergoing regeneration? Does anyone know what these women currently contribute informally to their economies, or what they could contribute formally in the right contexts?
Older women are often seemingly invisible. My guess, from many private encounters, discussions and observations over the past few years, is that here is an almost totally untapped resource.
Nurturing all available resources
Retention of young graduates is of course critical to economic renaissance; but so is the gearing in of the potential of older and more experienced graduates. This is another example of why economic regeneration strategists need to appreciate and nurture more carefully what they already have, as well as what they would like for the future to procure.
This article is also linked from the New Start magazine blog of 14 March 2007.
Students: Customers, Clients Or Collaborators?
Not all academics are happy to see their students referred to as ‘customers’. They have a point. The role of college lecturers is to ensure that their students gain the knowledge and skills required to take them further in their chosen fields. The ‘student as customer’ model is incomplete, if only because teaching staff inevitably know more about the chosen field than do learners. Along with the actual knowledge required, there may be scope to look afresh at the skills base students need – and at the implications of that for the ‘consumer’ status of students.
Edward Snyder, Dean of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, is vexed about the notion of students as ‘customers’. In an article published by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, he writes:
‘Do we really want to tell them [students] that they are customers – and that they are always right – when we [post-graduate tutors] are in the last, best position to influence their overall academic, ethical and professional development?’
An important question
Prof Snyder asks an important question here – and it applies at least as much to pre-university and undergraduate students as it does to his very high fliers.
I recall one particularly demanding group of college students (all
groups, as any teacher will tell you, have their own signature character and dynamic) who informed me very early on in their course that they didn’t want to ‘do’ a given part of the syllabus because it was ‘boring’.
My riposte – that they were on an externally prescribed and examined course, so were going to have to get on with it, and they could tell me their views again when they had completed that part of the syllabus – left some of them genuinely puzzled. It had never occurred to them that choices and judgements are best made on the basis of direct experience, not just hearsay or even less. For optimum results, you can’t just pick’n’mix college education as you might your Saturday grocery shopping.
An extra dimension
The student – tutor interaction can never just be that of customer
– salesperson; though it might sometimes be described as client – professional (for instance, when the learning is by overt mutual consent very focused and directed).
Usually, however, the learner – teacher relationship should be that of collaborator – facilitator, within a context of guidance and the tutor’s expertise in the field being studied. This should ideally include encouragement by that tutor of efforts by the students to collaborate with each other (and, if possible, with more experienced practitioners) to explore the wider meanings and skills which lie behind the subject in question.
Beyond that, there may also, by mutual consent, be a role for tutors as their students’ professional mentor and / or coach.
The challenge
There is a challenge here. It is relatively easy to evaluate
‘customer satisfaction’ and to respond to what one learns as a provider from such evaluation.
It is more difficult to measure the impact and future value of collaboration and skills development. But that is what adult students often require, just as much as younger learners.
The question is, how is this complex interactional ‘contract’ best negotiated between students and teachers, at a time when we are all encouraged from a very early age to see ourselves just as customers, selecting at whim what we will or will not ‘consume’?
Read more articles about Education & Life-Long Learning.
Policy-Related Scientific Research In Context
Avian influenza (‘bird flu’) has again made us aware of the scientific research which underpins government policy. Some have great faith in this science, others have none. Our growing understandings of how scientific research and public policy inter-relate can however help inform both science itself, and how political / policy decisions might be taken in real life.
Avian influenza has provoked quite a debate in The Guardian about how science and politics inter-relate.
Recent contributors to this debate include Erik Millstone and Simon Jenkins, who are right to raise the issue of scientific advice to the Government in respect of avian influenza – just as Ministers are right to take this advice seriously.
But in reality there is no such thing as ‘pure’ scientific research. All research, whether ‘natural’ or ‘social’, is predicated on often taken-for-granted understandings of context.
However inadvertently, therefore, the gap between scientific advice and policy / politic, whether in the case of avian influenza or any other issue, is wide not as Prof Millstone and Mr Jenkins might in different ways seem to suggest.
The questions underpin the research
Scientific advice arises from scientific research questions, and scientific research tends to be structured largely around ‘received’ understandings of the issues involved – including, inevitably, contexts of those issues.
In other words, natural scientists, as non-experts in matters socio-economic, will tend, if unchallenged, towards uncritical acceptance of the status quo or predominant contextual view of the situation in the same way as any other ‘person in the street’.
It is not surprising therefore that science, in selecting which techno-scientific issues to address, has in the past often focused on the interests of the most collectively powerful and visible operators.
Socio-economic impact and policy
This is now changing as questions about socio-economic impact are, rightly, articulated more loudly.
It is encouraging that Government politicians and policy-makers are beginning to recognise the critical importance of framing scientific research, from its inception, around contextual as well as ‘purely’ scientific questions.
Articulating these wider understandings better from the inception of any piece of research is the way to ensure that scientific advice can best inform political decision-making. And doing this certainly does not diminish the robustness of scientific endeavour; rather the converse.
Scientific and poltical responsibility shared
The selection of ways forward in policy is ultimately a political responsibility; but making sure that ‘scientific’
questions acknowledge the whole spectrum of contextual interests is a responsibility which, thankfully, scientists advising decision-makers are themselves increasingly aware that they must share.
A version of this posting was published on The Guardian letters page of 17 February 2007.
Further commentary follows the e-bookshop.
BRCs: The Science Golden Triangle Wins Again
England’s Northern Universities are upset that the Biomedical Research Centres (BRCs) of excellence are all in the ‘Golden Triangle’ of Oxford, Cambridge and London. ‘Added value’ economic impact has been sidelined. With intimations of southern advantage and selective assessment perspectives, is this a re-run of the 4GLS synchrotron debate on location in the ‘north’ or ‘south’?
Prof Alan Gilbert, Vice-Chancellor of Manchester University, is championing medical science in England’s northern universities, after his institution was not selected as a comprehensive biomedical research centre of excellence (BRC). This accolade, worth 8-figure sums to each institution, has been awarded only to universities in Oxford, Cambridge and London.
Once again, the Golden Triangle has triumphed over everywhere else in England.
And once again the southern economy hots up as northern sensitivities are similarly inflamed.
Who decides?
The decision to support only Golden Triangle universities was made by the Department of Health / NHS National Institute for Health Research
(NIRH) high command, on the basis of assessment by a panel of experts working outside England of the international excellence of medical science in the competing universities.
This panel does not seem to have laid much emphasis on the impact of macro-investment in the knowledge economy on regional economies as such.
History repeats itself
So here we go again.
More science money is being invested where money has already gone. Comparatively less is made available where investment has historically been more difficult to obtain.
When the big debates about synchrotron investment in the North of England were conducted, the medical science people were
hardly to be seen. The Wellcome Trust, a major player in bio-medical research, was widely regarded as unhelpful to those making the northern case, and even some northern university medical scientists did not support it.
Yet investment (usually of government money) in scientific institutions with capacity and established further potential is critical to wider long-term prospects for the UK economy.
Biggest impact, greatest added-value
Prof Gilbert says that universities must not ‘ask favours because we have been disadvantaged historically’. But in fighting his case he could look at the Daresbury (4GLS) – Rutherford Appleton (Diamond) synchrotron debates to see that the issues may be slightly different.
It is not ‘asking favours’ if those of us, the public whose money is
being spent, demand equity in terms of investment opportunities for top-level science.
Wider perspectives
The NHS is a very closed institution which has not, historically, been good at acknowledging it is now an important part of the wider knowledge economy.
Patient care is the aspect of this huge organisation which most members of the public experience, but that should be a fundamental ‘given’. It cannot provide refuge from the fact that, medically or otherwise, international science knows no silos.
Excellence in context
Nor can a rightful emphasis on patient experience permit us to forget, as collectively holders of the public purse, that any public investment needs to work in as many different ways as possible.
As the growing success of the U.K.’s ‘northern’ Darebury Laboratories has shown, internationally excellent science, public benefit across the nation and added-value regional development can evolve hand in hand, if enough decision-makers have the vision and courage to ensure that this will happen.
Would You Choose The Iberian Lynx – Or A Road?
People who care about the environment do not always have the same priorities. For some the emphasis is on maintaining the habitat of ‘natural’ flora and fauna. For others the most important objective is sustaining an environment in which human beings can flourish now.
Who is right, and can these two objectives both be achieved?
There is a story going the rounds of a fairly recent environmental conference in southern Europe. The issue under debate was whether or not a large road should be built across the Iberian peninsula, to reduce the economic disadvantage of those who live at the ‘far end’ of it.
The problem however is that this region is a very significant natural habitat for rare species of animals and other living things – including the endangered Iberian lynx. Many conservationists therefore strongly oppose the idea of economic regeneration in the areas where the lynx is still minimally present. “How do I choose?”, demanded one policy maker.
Conflicting priorities
Here is an example of where ‘normal’ politics – regeneration and increased economic advantage for people with relatively very
little in the way of the claimed benefits of modern living – seems to clash fairly directly with the concerns of the environmental conservationists.
Obviously, there is an argument that, without environmental conservation and attention to natural diversity, there is likely to be no life of any kind on earth. But this may be a less immediate or pressing concern for those who have little material advantage, than for those more economically blessed. So what should the politicians and policy makers do?
What’s the way forward?
Can these two concerns be brought together in the context of real-time politics?
Would you go for the road or the lynx?
Dreaming Realist 