Does science have a colour? It’s a rhetorical question. Those familiar with American politics would know that the two colours, red and blue, refer to the two main political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats respectively.
‘Science is neither red nor blue,’ the banner headline of a recent editorial in the American journal Science, appeared soon after Donald Trump won the 2024 American Presidential elections. The author, the President of the US National Academy of Sciences, said that she has been long concerned that ‘science has fallen victim to the same political divisiveness tearing at the seams of American society.’
The editorial had a background. Political endorsements by scientific journals and eloquent expressions of socio-political views by scientists have been a conspicuous feature of the last decade. Two examples are given below:
First, before the 2016 presidential election, the well-known science journal Nature said in an editorial, ‘Hillary Clinton will make a fine US president, and not only because she is not Donald Trump.’
The second, is an open letter signed by eighty two Nobel Laureates just before the last election. In it, the signatories said, ‘At no time in our nation’s history has there been a greater need for our leaders to appreciate the value of science in formulating public policy… Should Donald Trump win…he would…jeopardize any advancements in our standards of living, slow the progress of science and technology, and impede our responses to climate change’ [italics added].
One does not know to what extent, if any, this letter prompted the editorial mentioned at the beginning. However, the editorial does make a point about the role and responsibility of the scientific community which presumably includes Nobel laureates. It says, ‘scientific community…must take a critical look at what responsibility it bears in science becoming politically contentious, and how scientists can rebuild public trust…scientists…must avoid the tendency to imply that science dictates policy’ [italics added].
Before proceeding further, it may be asked why the political divisiveness in America should be a matter of concern to citizens of other countries. The answer is twofold. An editorial in the New York Times just before the elections said, ‘The world doesn’t pick the U.S. president, but it will live with…globe-spanning consequences, from the wars…to climate change and global trade.’
Given the American heft in geopolitics, science and technology (S&T), and globalised finance, it is difficult to disagree with this assessment irrespective of where one is situated, and whether or not one is a scientist.
The second reason for concern is of fundamental relevance to science as a social practice. It has to do with science’s enduring value. It applies to science and the scientific community everywhere. Science generates evidence-based knowledge. The evidence may be strong, weak, questionable, and sometimes wrong, but it is that what endows science with its value. A few of these evidence-based scientific findings are also the building blocks of what are called innovations. They lead to an improved product, or ways of doing things, and deliver tangible benefits to an average citizen.
For more than a century, innovations have been a major interface between public trust and policies on the one hand, and science and society on the other. The fact that something was seriously wrong with the ecology of innovations, where science is necessary but not sufficient, was apparent even in 1993. An editorial in Science at that time had pointed out that scientists were perceived to be ‘engaged in building toys for the rich’ though ‘the economic inequities in…society remain sharp.’
This was during the early phase of globalisation and what an economist, also a Nobel prize winner, called the ‘age of the policy entrepreneur.’ A policy entrepreneur, according to him, is an economist who tells politicians what they want to hear. Over the next fifteen years what policies were followed to promote innovations, or to address economic inequities, matter less today than the fact that the great financial crisis (GFC) of 2007-2008 came as an unexpected global shock. However, for the record, another editorial in Science, just before the financial meltdown, did point out that the ecology of innovation, in the age of globalisation, was ‘more fundamentally broken than is generally recognized.’
The financial crisis irreversibly undermined public trust in institutions and experts. The ideological roots of the broken innovation ecology became clear when the former Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, conceded that the crisis exposed a ‘mistake’ in the free market ideology. Over the next few years, it came to light that, to maximise profit, many companies with international reputations, had in fact manipulated, fabricated and suppressed scientific data or evidence in the name of innovations.
The metaphorical straw that broke the camel’s back, in this case public trust, was COVID. It dealt another severe blow to the credibility of experts, scientists included. People the world over complied with the harsh lockdown measures imposed by their Governments because they had no choice, rather than due to their trust in political leaders or institutions. The pandemic strengthened the perception of scientists as arrogant social elites, who have all the power to dictate policies but are oblivious to the problems of the common citizens.
Many saw Joe Biden’s narrow win in the 2020 election as a rebuke of public health at the polls. It prompted Holden Thorp, the editor-in-chief of Science to say, ‘Science was on the ballot’ but the narrow margin of the win indicated that ‘a significant portion of America doesn’t want science.’ These inferences did not go unquestioned.
A paper published in ‘Science’ questioned the assumption that science was on the ballot. It pointed out that ‘Labelling dissent as ‘anti-science’ is bad social science and bad politics.’ It also highlighted the fact that ‘before the present era of deregulation, government agencies…tended to enjoy greater trust.’
The open letter of eighty two Nobel laureates, seventeen of whom are economists, was unlikely to have had any significant effect on the outcome of the 2024 election. If at all, the mention of their celebrity status probably reinforced the perception that the scientific profession is more about chasing fame rather than doing something beneficial for society. It seemed to suggest that science advances via the ‘lone genius,’ rather than through the painstaking collective effort of many. It also turns expertise, in this case peer recognition, into an object of distrust.
One could not agree more when the letter says, ‘enormous increases in living standards and life expectancies over the past two centuries are largely the result of advances in science and technology.’ Science’s critical role in the ecology of innovations that deliver social benefits and improve quality of life are beyond question.
However, history also shows unambiguously that the privileged position of science in society, rests as much, if not more, on its awe-inspiring display of destructive power. The roles of the scientists in the two world wars of the last century, the Cold War, and the numerous other ones that followed, are evidence enough. The current backlash against globalisation, in the garb of nationalism, would very likely push science and its applications much closer to the defence and armament industries.
To return to the question posed at the beginning of this article, science has no colour. However, it does have a social, economic, and historical context. Facts, numbers, statistics are often context dependent. Ignoring that context while presenting evidence for policies can turn economics into free market theology, and science into scientism, an ideology.
After Trump’s win in 2016 an editorial in Nature said, ‘Americans have put their faith in an ideology.’ In the same vein, the ethical advocacy of science must begin with the recognition and acknowledgement of the ideological connotations of science as has been evident over the last several decades.
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