Summary of Science and democracy (The No-Nonsense Guide to Science, Chapter 7) - Ravetz - 2006

The relationship between Science and Democracy

Science and democracy are two of the positive themes associated with our age. Our societies and institutions are judged partly by how they meet the criterion of democracy, and it is now accepted universally that science is the base of economic growth that allows our modern democracies to excel. Therefore the relationship between democracy and science is important, and needs to be scrutinized accordingly.

Democracy does influence science. Firstly, ‘science’ played a crucial part in the debate against the dominance of religious thinking and the role that religious institutions played in social life. Secondly, due to the fact that good science requires freedom of inquiry and fairness, dictatorships often suffer due to the repression of freedom when it came to science, whereas open democracies tended to excel.

The Research World and Democracy

Some aspects of world research are democratic. For example, papers can be accepted from any author, regardless of sex, race or gender orientation. The most important factor is the results of the paper, not who the researcher is.

However, you do need to have the opportunity to ‘get on the ladder’ which not everyone has the opportunity to do. Also, women are systematically disadvantaged in science, due to gender prejudice.

Therefore, science does contain some aspects of democracy but it still has some way to go.

The role of Science in improving the world

People who believed in the role of science in improving the world often suffered from simplistic, idealistic ideas about the independence of science from politics. Of course science has improved the world in thousands of ways, but it is linked to politics and power. The government and big-businesses, which often do the sponsoring and funding, have vested interests in the research that is being carried out. Therefore, they will often only fund research in their interest, like tobacco firms and research negating the negative effects of smoking. In the past, science has also been affected by racism, like the Syphilis study in America which allowed black patients to stay sick and die. The businesses that control the media also have influence in what scientific research reaches the public. Therefore, although it is arguably a ‘free society’, science is inevitably tied up with politics and power and has its restrictions.

Science and Policies

To understand policy-related science it is useful to investigate what steps the science had to go through before the discovery was found. Although the discovery is the core of the work, this discovery was pre-determined by many choices. Therefore, it is important to find out what the choices were that resulted in the selection and shaping of the research that is eventually carried out.

Firstly, the sequence starts with what the policy issue actually is. There are nearly always conflicting and contrasting views on what is the policy issue. For example, with road accidents, do you consider the drivers, the passengers or the pedestrians? What is the issue in the problem of road accidents?

Thus, scientific research derives from the definition of the policy. Scientific research that is not regarded as high priority in how it relates to policy will have a lower chance of being funded or carried out. Therefore, whoever defines the policy problem will have more influence than those who don’t. The eventual science that is carried out may be accurate and objective, but what science does not get done? When one thinks about what science does not get done, then it is easier to see how politics influences the knowledge and science that we undertake. Another example of this is that in governments run by dictators, all of the science, the issues and knowledge will tend to favour the vested interests of the powerful as oppose to those without power.

In addition, another influence that society has on science is the methods chosen in a scientific inquiry. Due to the fact that science can never be proven to be the absolute truth, all science relies on the burden of proof which is implicitly assigned in investigations. In statistics, the common consensus at the moment is with significance tests and confidence intervals. What is statistically significant often determines what is published and therefore what is released to the public. In a country with higher democracy, concern for safety and precaution is given more value and this therefore shapes and selects the knowledge and ignorance we have as a society.

Levels of openness and Science

Science needs to be public if it is to be as useful as possible in a democracy. However, the system at the moment is quite complex and can therefore be open to exploitation and abuse. For example, in clinical research good news about treatment often gets published more than bad news. This causes problems because when meta-analyses are carried out, the results can be misleading due to the negative results not being published and thus include in the meta-analysis.

It is now well known that pharmaceutical companies have consistently hid or omitted test results that were not favourable to their interests. This highlights one of the dangers of science in democracy, that the research is often influenced by the actors who have vested interests. This is not helped by the fact that whistle-blowers are often faced with high levels of hostility. Even governments have been found to victimize those institutions or researchers that publish criticism against the government.

The assessment of technology

This section raises issues about democracy and the science that is used in technology, which can serve the industry and the state. Although it can be progressive, we now know that bad things can come from technology too. Therefore, technology needs to be brought under control with democracy.

Two steps towards the role of democracy in the control of technology include the freeing of two illusions. The first one being that technological progress is always inevitable. With the Concorde as an example, there have been a sufficient amount of failures to know that technological progress is not always inevitable. The second illusion is that ordinary people do not have influence with technological development. To use the Concorde as another example, the small pressure groups involved managed to prevent the suppression of critical arguments in regard to the Concorde. These arguments helped in the rejection of the Concorde as a viable project.

When considering a new proposed technology, questions that can improve the traditional mind-set are who needs the new proposed technology? Who will benefit from the technology? Who will pay the costs? How will it be regulated and by whom? And what happens if the new technology goes wrong?

These simple questions are not simple to answer though. New technology always opens up an unknown area and so some questions and effects cannot be foreseen. However, these questions can play an important role in opening up a dialogue in regard to the proposed technology.

In addition to these difficulties, it is close to impossible to know the possible effects of a technology when it is still in its early stages of development. Therefore, the proposed solution is to have various forums at different stages of the development, which will allow for a constant review of the issues at hand.

Science and democracy in poor countries

All of the weaknesses of science that were mentioned in this article are even more common in poorer countries. These weaknesses can even lead to science being used to inhibit the development of democracy, instead of contributing to it.

Multi-national corporations (MNC’S) can often have far more power than the local institutions which means these MNC’s can define the issues at hand, sometimes at the expense of the well-being of the country. An example of this is the imposition of agricultural technology in some poor countries which have actually led to the crippling of rural areas and damage to the local environment. Solutions to this agricultural problem often lie in local initiatives by local farmers but unfortunately this is sometimes incongruent to the ruling technological agricultural paradigm, which is often dictated by the MNC’s.

Therefore, the democratic deficits in science should be paid more attention. In addition, the role of richer countries in the democratic deficit of these poorer countries should also not be disregarded.