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Canadian Science Policy Centre hosts panel discussion on April 18, 2017 about the April 22, 2017 US March for Science

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Coming soon (April 22, 2017) to a city near you is a US ‘March for Science’. The big one will be held in Washington, DC but some 400 satellite marches are planned in cities across the US and around the world.

The Canadian Science Policy Centre has organized two panel discussions (one in Toronto and one in Ottawa) as a prelude to those cities’ marches,

A ‘March for Science’ is set to take place in over 400 locations around the world, including in Ottawa and Toronto, on April 22nd [2017]. The Canadian Science Policy Centre (CSPC) invites you to attend public panels discussing the implications of the march.

To RSVP for the Ottawa event [4:30 pm – 6 pm EDT], please click here

To RSVP for the Toronto event [4:30 – 6:30 pm EDT] please click here

The Ottawa panel features:

Paul Dufour

Paul Dufour is a Fellow and Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Science, Society and Policy in the University of Ottawa and science policy Principal with PaulicyWorks in Gatineau, Québec. He is on the Board of Directors of the graduate student led Science Policy Exchange based in Montréal, and is member of the Investment Committee for Grand Challenges Canada. Paul Dufour has been senior advisor in science policy with several Canadian agencies and organizations over the course of the past 30 years. Among these: Senior Program Specialist with the International Development Research Centre, and interim Executive Director at the former Office of the National Science Advisor to the Canadian Government advising on international S&T matters and broad questions of R&D policy directions for the country. Mr. Dufour lectures regularly on science policy, has authored numerous articles on international S&T relations, and Canadian innovation policy. He is series co-editor of the Cartermill Guides to World Science and is the author of the Canada chapter for the UNESCO 2015 Science Report released in November 2015.

Dr. Kristin Baetz

Dr. Kristin Baetz is a Canada Research Chair in Chemical and Functional Genomics, Director of the Ottawa Institute of Systems Biology at uOttawa, President of the Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences.

Katie Gibbs

Katie Gibbs is a scientist, community organizer and advocate for science and evidence-based policies. While completing her PhD at the University of Ottawa researching threats to endangered species, she was the lead organizer of the ‘Death of Evidence’ rally which was one of the largest science rallies in Canadian history. Katie is a co-founder and Executive Director of Evidence for Democracy, a national, non-partisan, not-for- profit organization that promotes science integrity and the transparent use of evidence in government decision-making. She has a diverse background organizing and managing various causes and campaigns including playing an integral role in Elizabeth May’s winning election campaign in 2011. Katie is frequently asked to comment on science policy issues and has been quoted and published in numerous media outlets, including the CBC, The Hill Times, the Globe and Mail and the National Post.

Professor Kathryn O’Hara

Professor Kathryn O’Hara has been a faculty member in the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University since 2001. She is the first person to hold the School’s CTV Chair in Science Broadcast Journalism, the first such chair of its kind in anglophone Canada. A long-standing broadcast journalist, Professor O’Hara is the former consumer columnist with CBC’s Midday , a former co- anchor of CBC’s Newsday in Ottawa, and the former host of Later the Same Day , CBC Radio Toronto’s “drive-home” program. Her work has also appeared on CBC’s Quirks and Quarks and Ideas programs. Three years before coming to Carleton University, Professor O’Hara was an independent health and science producer for outlets such as RTE and CBC. She serves on the Science and Technology Advisory Boards for Environment Canada and Health Canada and chairs the EC panel on Environment and Health. She is an Associate Professor with the Carleton School of Journalism and Communication.

The Toronto panel is organized a little differently:

Canadian Science Policy Centre in collaboration with Ryerson University’s Faculty of Science presents a panel discussion on the ‘March for Science’. Join us for coffee/tea and light refreshment at 4:00pm followed by the panel discussion at 4:30pm.

Light reception sponsored by Ryerson University’s Faculty of Science

Dr. Imogen Coe

Dr. Imogen R. Coe is currently the Dean of the Faculty of Science at Ryerson University. Imogen possesses a doctorate (Ph.D.) and masters degree in Biology from the University of Victoria, B.C. and a bachelor’s degree from Exeter University in the U.K.  She is an affiliate scientist with Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, Keenan Research Centre at St. Michael’s Hospital which is where her research program is located.  She is an accomplished cell biologist and is internationally known for her work on membrane transport proteins (transporters) that are the route of entry into cells for a large class of anti-cancer, anti-viral and anti-parasite drugs.  She has served on NSERC, CIHR and NCIC scientific review panels and continues to supervise research projects of undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and research associates in her group. More about her research can be found  at her research website.

Mehrdad Hariri

Mehrdad Hariri is the founder and CEO of Canadian Science Policy Centre. The Centre is becoming the HUB for science technology and innovation policy in the country. He established the first national annual Canadian Science Policy Conference (CSPC), a forum dedicated to the Canadian Science Technology and Innovation (STI) Policy issues. The Conference engages stakeholders from the science and innovation field, academia and government in discussions of policy issues at the intersection of science and society. Now in its 9th year, CSPC has become the most comprehensive national forum on science and innovation policy issues.

Dr. Jim Woodgett

In his dual roles as Investigator and Director of Research of the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Dr. Jim Woodgett applies his visionary approach to research into the manipulation of cell processes to treat certain cancers, diabetes and neurodegenerative conditions, and to ensuring that discoveries made by the world-renowned Institute are applied to patient care. Dr. Woodgett is interested in the causes and treatment of breast cancer, colorectal cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer Disease and bipolar disorder. What links this apparently broad range of diseases is their common basis in disruption of the lines of communication within the cells, or the signalling pathways. By studying the ways in which components of these pathways are mutated and transformed by disease, Dr. Woodgett can identify new and more effective therapeutic targets. Study of the WNT pathway, which contains a number of genes which account for about 90% of human colon cancer, is a particular area of interest. Recent advancements made by Dr. Woodgett’s team in adult stem cell division pave the way for scientists to harvest large quantities of these specialized cells which hold great promise for the treatment and cure of life- threatening illnesses.

Margrit Eichler

Margrit Eichler is Professor emerita of Sociology and Equity Studies at OISE/UT. Her over 200 publications deal, among other topics, with feminist methodology, gender issues, public health, environmental issues, and paid and unpaid work. She is a fellow Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the European Academy of Sciences. Since her retirement, she has been active in various citizens’ organizations, including as Secretary of Science for Peace and as President of the advocacy group Our Right to Know.

Ivan Semeniuk [science writer for Globe & Mail newspaper]

Dan Weaver

Dan Weaver is a Ph.D. candidate at the U of T Dept. of Physics. His research involves collecting and analyzing atmospheric measurements taken at the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL) on Ellesmere Island, Nunavut. He is also involved in the validation of satellites such as Canada’s Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment.In 2012, Dan was at PEARL for fieldwork when the federal government cut science funding that supported PEARL and other research programs across the country. He started a campaign called Save PEARL to advocate for continued funding for climate and Arctic atmospheric research. Dan joined Evidence for Democracy to advocate for science and evidence-based decision-making in 2013 and is a member of its Board of Directors. Dan is also a member of the Toronto March for Science organizing committee.

Toronto tickets are going faster than Ottawa tickets.

I’m feeling just a bit indignant; there are not just two Canadian satellite marches as you might expect given how this notice is written up. There are 18! Eight provinces are represented with marches in Calgary (Alberta), Montréal (Québec), Prince George (British Columbia), Vancouver (British Columbia), Edmonton (Alberta), Winnipeg (Manitoba), Halifax (Nova Scotia), London (Ontario), Windsor (Ontario),  Hamilton (Ontario), Ottawa (Ontario), Toronto (Ontario), Victoria (British Columbia), Lethbridge (Alberta), St. John’s (Newfoundland and Labrador), Kitchener-Waterloo (Ontario), Sudbury (Ontario), and Saskatoon (Saskatchewan). Honestly, these folks in Ontario seem to have gotten quite insular. In any event, you can figure out how to join in by clicking here.

For those who might appreciate some cogent insight into the current science situation in the US (and an antidote to what I suspect will be a great deal of self-congratulation on these April 18, 2017 CSPC panels), there’s an April 14, 2017 article by Jason Lloyd for Slate.com (Note: Links have been removed),

…

The most prominent response to the situation will come April 22 [2017], as science advocates—including members of major organizations like the Union of Concerned Scientists, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science—“walk out of the lab and into the streets” for the first-ever March for Science. Modeled in part on January’s record-breaking Women’s March, organizers have planned a march in Washington and satellite marches in more than 400 cities across six continents. The March for Science is intended to be the largest assemblage of science advocates in history.

Too bad it will likely undermine their cause.

The goals of organizers and participants are varied and worthy, but its critics—most prominently the president himself—will smear the march as simply anti-Trump or anti-Republican partisanship. Whether that’s true is beside the point, and scientists who are keen to participate ought to do so without worrying that they’re sullying their objectivity. The many communities distressed by the actions of this administration should of course exercise their right to protest, and the March for Science may inspire deeper social and political engagement.

But participants must understand that the social and political context in which this march takes place means that it cannot produce the outcomes intended by its organizers. The officially nonpartisan march embodies in miniature the larger challenges that confront the scientific enterprise in its relationship with a society that’s undergoing profound and often distressing changes.

Let’s start by looking at what the largest representative of the scientific community, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, intends by endorsing the march. According to the AAAS’s statement of support, the march will help:

…  protect the rights of scientists to pursue and communicate their inquiries unimpeded, expand the placement of scientists throughout the government, build public policies upon scientific evidence, and support broad educational efforts to expand public understanding of the scientific process.

In other words, scientists want support for instructing—not involving—the public in the scientific process, a greater influence on policymaking, and no political accountability. That’s a pretty audacious power play, and it’s easy to see how critics might cast the march’s intent as a privileged group seeking to protect and enhance its privileges. The thing is, they wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

As science policy journalist Colin Macilwain points out in Nature, scientists and other members of the technocratic class have generally enjoyed stable, middle-class employment and society’s respect and admiration for most of the past 70 years. They have benefited from scientific and technological progress while mostly remaining insulated from the collateral damage wrought by creative destruction. Federal funding has remained generous under progressive and conservative governments and through economic booms and busts. Scientists possess a variety of relatively comfortable perches from which they can express their ideas and shape public policy.

But there are a lot of people to whom the past seven decades have not been nearly so kind. They’ve struggled to find and keep well-paying jobs in a world in which technological advancement has decoupled economic growth from employment opportunities. They’ve lost a sense of having their voices heard in policymaking, as governance and regulation becomes increasingly complex. To see a select group of people and institutions profit from this complexity has, understandably, bred resentment throughout post-industrial countries.

…

So what should scientists do to safeguard and support their community instead? A good first step would be to acknowledge the scope and depth of the problem. The biggest issue confronting science is not a malicious and incompetent executive, or a research enterprise that might receive less generous funding than it’s enjoyed in the past. The critical challenge—and one that will still be relevant long after Donald Trump has gone back to making poor real estate decisions—is figuring out how scientists can build an enduring relationship with all segments of the American public, so that discounting, defunding, or vilifying scientists’ important work is politically intolerable.

This does not excuse whatever appalling policies Trump will no doubt seek to implement, against which scientists should speak out forcefully in the language of public values like free speech. They did this successfully against requests for the names of Department of Energy employees who attended U.N. climate talks and the clampdown on federal agencies’ external communications. But over the longer term, scientists need to improve their connection to the public and articulate their importance to society in a way that resonates with all Americans.

Academia can also challenge the insularity of scientific practice (and not just in the sciences). Instead of an overriding focus on publishing and grants, renewed attention to teaching could train more students in academic rigor and critical appraisal of, among other things, the false claims of a populist demagogue. With research universities scattered throughout the country, academics should be incentivized to improve ties with people who might otherwise consider scientists to be condescending eggheads who only give them bad news about the climate or the economy. University medical centers and military bases provide great models for these types of strong local relationships.

Finally, scientists and technologists must also attend to the social implications of their research. This includes anticipating and mitigating the socioeconomic effects of their innovations (here’s looking at you, Silicon Valley) by allocating resources to address problems they may exacerbate, such as inequality and job loss. The high-level discussion around CRISPR, the revolutionary gene-editing technology, is a good example of both the opportunity for and difficulty of responsible innovation. This process might be made more effective by bringing the public into scientific practice and policymaking using the tools of citizen science and deliberative democracy, rather than simply telling people what scientists are doing or explaining what policymakers have already decided.

…

If you have the time, please read Lloyd’s piece in its entirety. The piece has certainly generated a fair number of comments (121 when I last looked).

I have run a couple of posts which feature some well-meaning advice for our southern neighbours from Canadians along with my suggestion that they might not be as helpful as we hope.

Jan. 27, 2017 posting (scroll down past the internship announcement, about 15% of the way down)

Feb. 13, 2017 posting

Science, Scotland, and independence

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A referendum on Scotland’s independence will take place later this year on Sept, 18, 2014 and. in the meantime, there’s a great deal of discussion about what a ‘yes’ vote might mean. Canadians will be somewhat familiar with this process having experienced two ‘sovereignty’ referendum votes (1980 and 1995, respectively) in the province of Québec and two 1948 referendums (the first result was inconclusive) in Newfoundland where they chose between dominion status and joining the Canadian confederation (Referendums in Canada Wikipedia entry).

One of the features of Québec’s sovereignty or independence proposals is a desire to retain the financial advantages of being party to a larger,established country while claiming new advantages available to an independent constituency or as they say ‘having one’s cake and eating it too’.

While there are many, many historical, cultural and other differences between the situations in Québec and Scotland, it is not entirely surprising to note that there is at least one area where the Scottish/UK debates seem to be emulating the Québec/Canada debates and that is the desire to retain the advantages of being part of the UK with regard to science research funding.

According to a Dec. 2013 (?) posting of the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) ‘Future of the UK and Scotland’ blog two reports discussing the subject of science research funding in the context of Scotland’s proposed independence were launched in November 2013,

In November [2013], two papers were published regarding the future of Scotland. The first, ‘Scotland analysis: Science and research’, written by the UK government, and unveiled by David Willetts, UK Science Minister earlier in November, focuses solely on the issues related to science and research in Scotland,  whereas the second one, a Scottish Government White Paper, addresses a whole range of issues associated with independence in Scotland with a brief discussion of the futures of science and higher education in Scotland (Chapter 5- Education, Skills and Employment).

Both papers testify to the strength of the Scottish science base and the contribution of Scottish universities to the UK research base as a whole. …

However, when it comes to the independence debate, the two papers present contrasting positions. The UK government paper highlights the disproportionate level of funding and research support that Scottish universities receive compared to the rest of the UK, warning that the funding will not continue at the same level in an independent Scotland. According to the paper, while Scotland only contributes 8% to the GDP, it receives 13% of the research funding from various funding bodies. Should Scotland go independent, the paper argues, the UK research funding flow will stop and it will be up to the Scottish Funding Council to decide whether to keep public research funding at present levels. [emphasis mine]…

Adopting a different perspective, the Scottish Government White Paper argues that it will be in the interest of both sides to remain in a ‘common research area’, which shares research councils, access to facilities, and peer reviewing. According to this paper, Scotland universities have made a huge input to UK research and the research councils have been partly funded by Scottish taxpayers. Therefore, Scotland will seek to remain in the ‘common research area‘ and will negotiate a formula to continue funding research councils based on population, but with Scottish research institutes receiving lower or higher funding support based on their research performance. [emphases mine]

… The Scottish Government White Paper presents an ideal research system which maintains the positive aspects of the current system but eliminates other features (for example, attracting international research talent through modifying immigration policy). [emphasis mine] …

At a workshop, organised by the ESRC Innogen Centre in November [2013] and attended by Scottish-based industrialists, academics, policy agencies and senior research managers, there was considerable debate about uncertainties such as these. There were real worries about how the current high levels of research funding could be continued and how Scotland would be able to compete on research

A July 5, 2014 news item on BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) News online mentions the latest doings in this area of Scotland’s independence debate,

Medical and scientific research across the UK would suffer if Scotland votes for independence, according to the heads of three academic institutions.

The claim was made by the presidents of the Royal Society, the British Academy and the Academy of Medical Sciences.

Sir Paul Nurse, Lord Stern and Sir John Tooke said scientific collaboration would be damaged by a “Yes” vote.

…

In a joint letter to The Times newspaper, the three academics also claimed that maintaining existing levels of research in Scotland would cost Scottish taxpayers more should the country leave the UK.

They wrote: “Scotland has long done particularly well through its access to UK research funding.

“If it turns out that an independent Scotland has to form its own science and research budget, maintaining these levels of research spending would cost the Scottish taxpayer significantly more.”

They went on to state that the strong links and collaborations which exist across the UK “would be put at risk”, with any new system aiming to restore these links “likely to be expensive and bureaucratic”.

The presidents wrote: “We believe that if separation were to occur, research not only in Scotland but also the rest of the UK would suffer.

…

However Academics for Yes, a pro-independence group which comprises 60 academics from Scottish universities, said a “Yes” vote would protect the country’s universities and allow research priorities to be determined.

Its spokesman, Professor Bryan MacGregor from the University of Aberdeen, said: “On the one hand, we have the UK and England contexts of cuts in research and science funding, high student fees with unsustainable loan funding, an immigration policy that is preventing and deterring international student recruitment and the possibility of an exit from the EU and its research funding.

“And, on the other, we have a Scottish government committed to funding research, to free access to universities for residents and to attracting international students.

…

Earlier this year a group of 14 clinical academics and scientists put their names to an open letter raising “grave concerns that the country does not sleepwalk into a situation that jeopardises its present success in the highly-competitive arena of biomedical research”.

But the Scottish government, which currently provides about a third of research funds, has argued there is no reason why the current UK-wide structure for funding could not continue post-independence.

Kieron Flanagan in a Feb. 12, 2013 posting on the Guardian political science blog explored the possibilities (Note: Links have been removed),

Let’s face it: few people on either side of the Scottish independence debate are likely to be swayed by arguments about the impacts independence might have on scientific research. Yet science is a policy area where major changes would follow from a “Yes” vote for an independent Scotland. Nonetheless, the commentator Colin Macilwain passionately argued that Scottish science is ready to go it alone in a recent Nature opinion column.

…

… an independent Scotland could choose to continue to subscribe to the UK research councils in the same way that associated non-EU countries pay to take part in the European research programmes. It would have a strong moral claim to continued access, and it would be difficult to see how a UK government could refuse such an arrangement. Continued access to the existing research councils would allow Scotland to ensure that a diverse range of funding sources remains available to its scientists, and might also help encourage UK research charities to continue to fund research in the country.

So, while Macilwain is certainly right that Scottish science can go it alone, those working in Scottish science may conclude that the additional costs of running a small country research system, the additional risks of maintaining autonomy for funding decisions in a much smaller political world, and the consequent reduction in diversity of funding streams together outweigh the attractions of building a whole new research system from scratch.

While I think Flanagan is quite right when he says the impact that a ‘Yes’ vote will have on science funding and research in Scotland is unlikely to sway anyone’s vote, it’s fascinating to observe the discussion. I don’t believe that any such specific concerns about science and research funding have ever arisen in the context of the Québec referendums. If someone knows otherwise, please drop a line in the comments.

In any event, I can’t help but wonder what impact a ‘Yes’ vote will have on other independence movements both in Canada (Québec certainly and Alberta possibly, where mumbles about independence are sometimes heard) and elsewhere.

The science of offering science advice—a confusing plethora

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There’s a big fuss being made about the upcoming changeover from one chief science *advisor (John Beddington) to another (Mark Walport) to the UK government with ‘advice’ and commentary being offered in the Guardian newspaper and in the journal Nature and likely elsewhere.

Roger Pielke Jr. , professor of environmental studies in the Centre for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado (US) and author of The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics, has written a ‘letter’ to Walport in his Apr. 15, 2013 posting on the Guardian science blogs (Note: Links have been removed),

Congratulations Dr Walport on your appointment as the UK government’s chief scientific *adviser. You join a select group. Since the position of chief science adviser was established in the US in 1957 and in the UK in 1964, fewer than 30 men (yes, all men) have occupied the position. [emphasis mine] Today across Europe, only Ireland, the Czech Republic and the European Commission have formal equivalents, which also exist in Australia, New Zealand, and soon perhaps in Japan and at the United Nations. [Scotland has a chief science *adviser; Korea has a special *Advisor for Science and Technology to the President of South Korea and that advisor, as of Oct. 2011, was professor Hyun-Ku Rhee]

In the United States, the science adviser is an assistant to the president with the formal title of Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. All US science advisers (except notably the first, James Killian, who had a background in public administration) have been trained in some area of physics, reflecting the cold war origins of the position. [emphases mine]

Pielke goes on to describe the science adviser mythology in the US. Apparently extraordinary access to the US president and the notion that scientific advice will be given more weight than other types of advice form the cornerstones of the mythology. The reality is somewhat different as Pielke notes,

Despite such expectations, the science adviser is an adviser just like any other in government, with a limited portfolio of responsibilities and expectations for accountability. Science advisers are not superheroes with special access and supra-political authority. Making effective use of the position within government requires the scientific community to realistically calibrate their expectations for the role.

He does outline some specific roles (the fourth was bit of a surprise to me)

Budget champion. The science adviser is a coordinator, and at times, a champion for research funding across the federal government.

Issue expert. The science adviser has a unique ability to assemble expertise to address specialised or cross-cutting policy issues.

Options Czar. The science adviser may also serve as what I have called an “honest broker of policy options”, helping the president or prime minister to understand the scope of available choice on a particular topic.

Institution builder. A fourth role is to oversee the institutionalisation of scientific advice across government. The provision of useful advice requires a commitment from policymakers to the use of evidence, but also to the creation and maintenance of strong institutions. The science adviser has a crucial role to ensure institutional integrity by providing advice on advice. [emphasis mine]

Taking into account that fourth option and this final paragraph, I have a question,

The UK has more than its fair share of this expertise, which I encourage you to take full advantage of during your tenure. These experts can provide you with much useful advice on advice. [emphasis mine] Just as there are calls for policymaking across government to be more evidence-based, so too should science and technology policy.

Has Pielke been reading Frank Herbert’s Dune? This business about “advice on advice” reminds me of a writing device Herbert used “the feint within the feint within the feint.”  Herbert, of course, was suggesting that there was layer upon layer of meaning and strategy within all exchanges. It seems to me Pielke is either suggesting that there are already layer upon layer of meaning and strategy within the business of being a science *advisor or, perhaps, he’d like to add those layers.

I gather the Walport appointment was announced well in advance as Colin Macilwain wrote an Aug. 28, 2012 essay, with a radically different perspective about the appointment and the situation regarding chief science advisers in the UK, for Nature,

The position of scientific adviser wasn’t set up to secure science budgets or communicate government policies to the public. Instead, advisers were meant to address competitiveness by bridging the great divide between what UK physicist C. P. Snow called the “two cultures”: scientists and engineers on the one hand, and the non-technical elites who govern London and Washington DC, on the other.  [emphasis mine]

It was the launch of Sputnik that led US President Dwight Eisenhower to appoint James Killian as his country’s first scientific adviser, in 1957. Seven years later, Harold Wilson was elected UK prime minister after pledging that a new Britain would be “forged in the white heat” of scientific and technological revolution. He appointed his first scientific adviser, Solly Zuckerman, in the same year.

Neither Eisenhower nor Wilson hired a scientific adviser so that their countries’ researchers could win more Nobel prizes or publish more papers. What they meant by ‘science’ was military and industrial competitiveness achieved by harnessing science and technology. …

Unfortunately, in both countries, the scientific adviser’s role has evolved in ways that marginalize its impact on competitiveness. …

I have read C. P. Snow’s essay where two cultures are mentioned and while he notes many versions of  ‘two cultures’ notably the ‘developed and developing’ worlds and ‘science and the arts’, I don’t recall anything about government and scientists. Still, Macilwain’s essay provides a contrast to Pielke’s take on science *advisor positions.

One last thing about science *advisers, the City of Southampton appointed their own in Aug. 2012, as per David Bruggeman’s Aug. 9, 2012 posting on his Pasco Phronesis blog (Note: Links have been removed),

The U.K. local council for Southampton has announced the appointment of a chief scientific adviser.  Professor AbuBakr Bahaj is the first person to hold the post, and is Professor of Sustainable Energy at Southampton University.  Southampton is a major port city on the southern coast, and part of a major urban area of over a million people.

The City Council, in announcing the appointment, describes the position of science adviser as a “role to champion science and engineering as a key driver of the economy and ensure the city uses science effectively in all policy-making.”  [emphasis mine] Perhaps based on Professor Bahaj’s background, his first projects will involve energy efficiency in city buildings and services.  To emphasize the partnership with Southampton University, the City Council leader will sit on two university panels concerned with research.

Note that the City if Southampton hies to the original impulse behind the ‘chief scientific adviser’ position. I did check the city website (Southampton City Council) today (Apr. 15, 2013) and was not able to find any further information about the position. They do not have seem to have created a webpage devoted to their Chief Science Adviser nor is there mention of the position on Professor AbuBakr Bahaj’s University of Southampton webpage.

Professor Bahaj did write about his hopes for the position in an Aug. 9, 2012 posting (on the one of the Guardian blogs) about being appointed as Chief Science Adviser for the city of Southampton (Note: A link has been removed),

The role of a city CSA [Chief Science Adviser] is not only to provide advice in addressing the above challenges, but also to establish city- and region-wide networks that will create new mechanisms to support local authorities and its communities.

Today about 51% of the world’s population live in cities, which occupy about 2% of land mass yet consume approximately 80% of the global resources. The world population is projected to grow to 9 billion by 2050 from its current estimate of 7 billion. Such an increase will undoubtedly affect the urban areas of the world, requiring new thinking in how cities could adapt to such population growth.

As for *advisor/*adviser, I tend to write advisor but both spellings are perfectly fine as per Wicktionary [advisor],

In general, adviser and advisor are interchangeable. However, adviser is used more generally to mean someone who is giving advice (what they are doing), whereas advisor is more commonly used when it means the primary role (what they are), such as job title, etc.

In the UK, Ireland and Asia the spelling is traditionally adviser, though US spelling advisor is becoming increasingly common …

For some reason, I just couldn’t make up my mind as to which spelling to use today.

“Occupy” Science for the 21st century

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Colin Macilwain‘s Nov. 23, 2011 column, Science’s attitudes must reflect a world in crisis, for Nature reminded me of the “Occupy” movement and ‘the 99% who are effectively supporting 1% of the population. Excerpted from Macilwain’s Nov. 23, 2011 column,

At the World Science Forum in Budapest last week, some scientific leaders finally acknowledged the new reality. In particular, representatives of developing countries — which account for a fast-growing share of global science — talked of radical reorientation of research priorities to better match the pressing needs of their populations. And behind the scenes, analysts are mapping out fascinating, and sometimes alarming, possible scenarios for global science after the crash.

…

Questions were soon raised, however, when Princess Sumaya bint el Hassan of Jordan’s Royal Scientific Society captured the mood of the developing world. “We must ask ourselves why so much scientific research is driven by the consumer needs of a tiny elite,” she said. “We’re being naive if we envisage business-as-usual for science in the new century.”

Apparently, the International Council for Science (ICSU) has been conducting a foresight exercise led by Dr. John Mark s. From the presentation description on the World Science Forum 2011 programme speakers page,

Dr. John Marks is an independent science policy consultant and research manager. Recent assignments include the interim directorship of the Netherlands Centre for Biodiversity Naturalis and Chair of the international review panel of the research of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute. He is Chair of the ICSU Taskforce on Foresight, a member of the Netherlands UNESCO Committee and a member of the Board of the Netherlands space research organisation SRON.

…

In the current foresight a scenario approach is used to define four world views differing in economic, social, political, and environmental context and with different positions of science. These worlds lead to different challenges and consequences for international collaboration in science.
ICSU’s global multi-disciplinary membership composed of professional scientific societies and national academies of science, as well as its partners and stakeholders, have been engaged through consultations. The aim was to solicit viewpoints and, ultimately, buy‐in on the organization’s future direction. The collection and analysis of potential key drivers and creation of exploratory scenarios is designed also to assist ICSU Members and others in their own strategic thinking.
Using these insights, ICSU is designing a ‘success scenario’ to imagine how the international science landscape would look if it is optimally serving the needs of societies across the globe; to consider what actions ICSU and other actors would need to take to realise this; and to test the plausibility and  robustness of such actions.

According to Macilwain, these were the four scenarios presented (from Macilwain’s Nov. 23, 2011 column),

The first and most sunny, with more globalization and high engagement, would see a series of positive outcomes, including much more interdisciplinary research. The second — more globalization but low engagement — is rather like what we had before the crash, only worse. The ICSU PowerPoint slide for this showed bunches of vainglorious yuppies with mobile phones and portable computers, doubtless creating more gizmos and expensive drugs that most people in the world can’t afford. The third scenario would have more nationalism, with high engagement. That might create a series of little Denmarks pulling away from each other to deal with their own problems, with their own research strategies and regulatory regimes.

Finally, and most ominously, there’s more nationalism, with less engagement. This predicts old-fashioned, stick-to-your-knitting, single-discipline science, aligned with resurgent nationalism.

The ICSU foresight exercise will be completed in February 2012.

The 2011 Canadian Science Policy Conference (Nov. 16-18, 2011) was being held at roughly the same time as the World Science Forum 2011 (Nov. 16-19, 2011) and it is tempting to consider the new political interest being shown by scientists in Canada as being reflective of an international movement.

I’m not sure that notion stands up to scrutiny since the World Science Forum was first convened in 1999 and has been convened bianually since. From the History page,

In convening a World Conference on Science for the Twenty-First Century: a New Commitment, from 26 June to 1 July 1999 in Budapest, Hungary, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Council for Science (ICSU), in co-operation with other partners, initiated a unique forum for a much-needed debate between the scientific community and society.
Inspired by the success of the World Conference on Science, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in partnership with UNESCO, ICSU and AAAS [American Association for the Advancement of Science] established a series of follow-up events called World Science Forum, taking place biannually in Budapest.
During the three days of each Forum over 500 scientists, decision-makers from the world of politics, industry, representatives of the civil society and the media express their views on the new challenges facing science in the 21st century. Participants from almost 100 countries convene every second year on and around World Science Day, the 10th of November – a day dedicated to science by UNESCO. To commemorate this day, the UNESCO Science Prizes are awarded here at World Science Forum.

…

The 2011 event is a beginning of a new era in the history of World Science Forum. In order to distribute the achievements of this enterprise and to make it a true world event, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences with the consent of UNESCO, ICSU, and AAAS has proposed to change the format of WSF so that it is organised on every second occasion in a partner country. What with the welcome offer of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences it has been decided that the 2013 World Science Forum will be organized in Rio de Janeiro.

The question I have is this, are Canadian scientists even asking some of the questions that are being considered on the international stage (even with Macilwain’s misgivings)?