Sunday 7 April 2013

Why you should care about government science with an epilogue by Dr. Seuss


The news headlines across Canada are filling with stories of the current federal government’s jettisoning of science programmes.  It is correctly an assault on federal government science consistent with the modus operandi of this government, e.g., their attacks on the environmental laws, environmental NGOs, and international aid programmes to name a few.  The attacks appear to begin as a goal derived from a decision on a perceived black or white issue followed by the “put your head in the sand and don’t stop the attack until the goal is achieved” assault.  Never deviate from the plan; our decision is correct, we are elected (regardless of electoral flaws or dubious manipulations) and therefore the chosen ones; it matters not what new information we are given; and in the language the current government probably best understands, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.

Not all of this behaviour is bad.  It is good to think about and discuss issues and try to find solutions including changing how we have done things in the past.  But it is a very serious problem with guaranteed consequences when we change things we don’t understand.  Most of us can attest that in a fit of frustration with a non-functional mechanical or electrical device, we have fought to open it up, dismantle it, and then reassemble it only to learn the expensive lesson that we pooched it forever.

This is what is happening with our “device” we call the federal government.  The device has some problems, the decision makers have decided to fix it, they have looked at a piece called federal science, they don’t understand how it works, fits, or functions, and so they are discarding it as non-essential.  And as we will learn in the near future, as we always do, there was a reason that piece was in the device.  It may need to be fixed, but the device can’t work without it.

To understand why federal science programmes are a part of a functional government device, we need to first understand how science works.  Science is the study of the world around us, or in simple terms our environment.  Art and other disciplines also study our world, but science is further defined by a process of advancement of knowledge we call a standardized method: observe the world around us and collect data, hypothesize about meaning and predict results of hypotheses, test predictions to confirm or reject hypotheses, and generate new questions and quests for data (the hypothetico-deductive method if you care to look it up).  Scientists are wrapped up in some or all of these activities within the realm of the world they study, i.e., the disciplines of science.  Science is also divided into questions that have immediate relevance to us often called “applied” sciences such as engineering and human medicine, and questions that are important for advancing understanding, but not necessarily of immediate need that are sometimes referred to as “pure” science, e.g., identifying all the species of the oceans.  These terms are not accurate descriptors, but I’ll keep them for this anecdote.  Pure science proceeds slowly and is driven by financial grants mostly from governments for scholarly activities such as writing journal articles about studies and experiments.  It typically happens at universities.  Much of applied science is driven by markets for products or services and therefore it can respond quickly and with significantly more funding than pure science.  It occurs in both universities and the private sector. 

Applied science also includes questions not driven by market forces but rather society needs, e.g., how much exposure of a chemical is safe for humans or how much industrial/human/agricultural effluent can we safely discharge to natural environments.  It also includes the undertaking of long-term monitoring of environmental conditions necessary for detecting change in natural systems, i.e., diagnosing when they become sick.  These are clearly very important questions for humans and their environment, but such science has little immediate market potential.  In fact, it can be mundane and lack innovation because it is driven by public policy and not novel inquiry and it sometimes requires 20+ years to gather enough data to test predictions.  Unfortunately, there is minimal private funding for this type of science.  It is unattractive to academic scientists at universities because the financial support models for their research depend on innovation, novel ideas, and regular publication of results.  This realm of applied science is as critical for us as any other science and therefore societies all over the world provide direct support via government research scientists and their teams.  This is why you should care about federal science.  It is one of the ways in which our society directly protects itself and prepares for living in the future.  And if you don’t believe such science is a fundamentally, economic issue, then think about the cost of cleaning up the environment after the Exxon Valdez oil spill (>$5B) or the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (>$37B directly and an estimated >$20B lost to local economies).    

Had the inner politicos of the current government asked why federal science programmes were required, they would have learned the essential function of this piece of the “device”, and thus why federal science can’t be jettisoned without consequences for our society.  The current government may have understood and accepted the risk of not controlling this science, but such behaviour is akin to running into the Canadian Boreal forest at midnight without a light and hoping that you won’t hit a tree.  You can say that someone else will shine a light into the forest, what the government says when it suggests the necessary science will be done at universities and in the private sector, but there is no guarantee that someone will build the appropriate light or shine it where you need it when you need it.  There is a better chance of missing trees if support for the light building and appropriate light-shining are being supplied, i.e., you planned and provided funding programmes (not the case now in Canada).  Even so, there is still no way to guarantee you will get the lighting you need when you need it to ensure your safety.  That is why we do this kind of science within government; to guarantee we are safe and protected in the future.

There is still time to stop the current assault on federal science before it incurs what is certainly a costly future for us.  Alas, the assault is unlikely to stop because the current government has blinkered itself and covered its ears to logic even when the truth affects their oft-stated bottom-line, i.e., the economy.  It is not wrong to make changes in how we do federal science including cost cutting; however, jettisoning something because you don’t understand it or don’t want to understand it is a fool’s folly.  Moreover, scrambling the communication spin of such political follies and then forcing the delivery on bureaucrats who know better but are forced by politics into this unpleasant position, and Ministers and party staff who are similarly intelligent enough to understand this folly is, in addition to being disingenuous to those of us who voted for these politicians, rather 'Grinchy'.

“The Grinch had been caught by this little Who daughter
Who'd got out of bed for a cup of cold water.
She stared at the Grinch and said, "Santy Claus, why,
"Why are you taking our Christmas tree? WHY?"

But, you know, that old Grinch was so smart and so slick
He thought up a lie, and he thought it up quick!
"Why, my sweet little tot," the fake Santy Claus lied,
"There's a light on this tree that won't light on one side.
"So I'm taking it home to my workshop, my dear.
"I'll fix it up there. Then I'll bring it back here." 

Seuss, Dr. 1957.  How the Grinch Stole Christmas! New York: Random House. 

2 comments:

  1. Excellent post, particularly like the imagery of running in the boreal forest without a light and hoping not to hit a tree. In the many media reports on these science-related changes, few address the consequences. Perhaps because they're too depressing to consider...

    Sidenote - in 2nd paragraph, using the phrase 'males at least' is unnecessary. Any experienced field/lab scientist - regardless of gender - has taken devices apart in the hopes of making them work (perhaps even better) than before.

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  2. Thanks for the comment. Others agree that I don't need to single out men as failed non-fixers of devices, so I have edited it.

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