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July 21, 2008

ESOF soundbites

“Our scientists are working like CSI detectives to combat nuclear terrorism.”
Gabriele Tamborini of the European Commission compares the scientists of Europe’s Joint Research Centre to a popular American television show.

“They come up with an answer in 45 minutes. We take a bit longer.”
Klaus Mayer, also of the JRC, outlines one of the differences between the scientists and their television counterparts.

“The Carbon Slaughterhouse.”
Philip Teller tells the conference what his company BioGasol calls its process for turning plants into fuel.

Posted by Daniel Cressey at 05:16 PM |

‘Can scientists and politicians be partners?’

Given that he has been a health minister in the UK, is still in politics and was addressing a science conference you might think that Norman Warner would obviously think scientists and politicians can be partners.

Addressing this question in his keynote speech though, it’s clear that it is not all plain sailing.

“Governments tend to have a slightly bi-polar approach to science. On the one hand they are excited by the possibilities of harnessing science to economic growth, prosperity and life-saving interventions,” he says. “On the other, they would prefer not to have to deal with some of the ethical dilemmas and controversy that often accompany advances in knowledge.”

Scientists, says Warner, have to realise that science is part of our social and political systems. How scientific advances are handled has to be negotiated, and “scientists are often unaware or reluctant to acknowledge that a negotiation is going to have to take place before there is public understanding and acceptance of particular advances”.

Warner’s conclusion is that scientists and politicians can and need to be partners. But from some of the other things in his speech it sounds not so much like the two groups can be partners but that they already are, and need to get better at talking to each other.

Posted by Daniel Cressey at 05:13 PM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

July 20, 2008

ESOF soundbites: Alan Leshner

Alan_Leshner.jpgAlan Leshner, the CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, spoke today on European and American views of science. There were too many good quotes to pick just one…

“We just whisper the ‘American’ part…”
On AAAS being an international association, despite its name.

“People still respect science and technology. … There is a problem however. They have no idea what science is.”
Explaining why one survey can show people appreciating the benefits coming from science while another can show they think astrology is scientific.

“We’re one of the few countries in the world that didn’t have climate change until three months ago. And now we do.”
On American government science policy.

“I used to have a t-shirt with all of the acronyms used by the NSF [National Science Foundation] and nobody knew what they all meant, including me.”
Regarding science’s love of acronyms.

Posted by Daniel Cressey at 05:35 PM |

July 19, 2008

Europe ‘needs independent science advice’

Sir David King knows a thing or two about science policy. For seven years he was chief scientific advisor to the UK government, telling it what it needed to know (and a few things it would probably rather not have known) about everything from climate change to animal diseases.

So it’s worth listening to him when he says that the European Union should have proper independent science advice and a scientific advisor to deliver it.

“There isn’t a pro-active system of scientific advice within the [European] Commission,” he says.

Which is slightly concerning when you consider the annual science budget of the union is measured in millions of Euros.

Posted by Daniel Cressey at 05:40 PM |

Judging the merits of the hidden

How can you scrutinise a scientific decision that has to remain secret? And if you can’t, how can you be sure the right decision has been taken?

At today’s session on nuclear weapons policy James Acton argued that we should be more open on even such sensitive topics.

Acton, of King’s College London’s War Studies department, has been looking at the UK’s move to build new nuclear submarines rather than refurbishing its existing fleet. Was this the right decision? His rather frustrating conclusion: “it is impossible to judge; we just can’t know”.

“In an open democratic society that is deeply unsatisfactory,” he says. “Governments love to say a decision was taken on the basis of purely technical factors. This becomes deeply problematic when the essential technical details are classified.”

What we need, says Acton, is some kind of peer review for classified decisions. The answer could be a version of the American Jason Group, a set of security cleared but independent experts who can scrutinise and criticise government plans. Another possibility would be setting up version of the American National Academies in countries such as the UK and France.

“If there were people who were influential and were calling for it it could happen,” says Acton.

Posted by Daniel Cressey at 05:27 PM |

ESOF soundbites

“The main decision is for a government to be extremely careful and respectful with the beliefs of the people; but at the same time making laws that help everyone.”
Bernat Soria, Spain’s national health minister, on creating legislation for stem cell research in religious countries.

“I don’t mind that the US has closed itself off to innovative scientists because I hope they’ll come to the UK instead.”
Sir Richard Mottram sees the positives in the American clampdown on overseas researchers (more on this topic).

“You can be part of government and have an independent mind.”
Bruno Tertrais, of Fondation pour la Recherche Strategique France, tackles the question of whether governments can get independent advice internally.

Posted by Daniel Cressey at 03:05 PM |

Science for and against terrorism

richard-mottram_01.jpgScience can be a great help for those fighting terrorism but there’s an unpleasant flipside to this, Sir Richard Mottram told ESOF this morning.

“There’s the awkward fact that lots of terrorists are scientists, engineers or doctors,” says Mottram, a former secretary of intelligence in the UK. “… You can’t have an open society and open science in the traditional way without running some very significant risks.”

In his keynote speech on science and terrorism he also claimed that some of the scientific advances in the fight against terrorism, such as biometrics and exploiting new surveillance techniques, could eventually “have significant impact on the character of the free society we are seeking to sustain against the efforts of terrorists to undermine it”.

I grabbed a few moments with him…

Continue reading "Science for and against terrorism" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey at 01:21 PM |

ESOF misplaces Ireland

LOGO NO IRELAND DETAIL.bmpThose looking at the logo of this year’s meeting might have noticed a rather large island missing from its stylised outline of Europe.

Today Patrick Cunningham, the Irish Government’s chief scientific adviser, is speaking at the conference. We shall see if he has any comment on the matter.

Let’s hope this doesn’t turn into a row of the size that occurred when the European Union left Wales off a map in 2004.

UPDATE

Dublin is actually bidding to host the 2012 forum. As you can see on this website the bid team have had to redraw the ESOF logo in order to mark their city on it. This appears to have had the consequence of dragging Canada onto the map

Posted by Daniel Cressey at 08:06 AM |

July 18, 2008

Has your institution signed the researchers’ charter?

EU code pic.bmpIn 2005 the European Commission produced a researchers’ charter. This voluntary code* is supposed to set out researchers’ rights and responsibilities.

Since that time there have been about 100 signatories covering 900-odd institutions and the Commission is keen to raise awareness of the document.

But a rather strange fact emerged at a conference session on the topic today: some people are working under the code without even knowing about it. “Even the institutions that have undertaken the code, some have not undertaken awareness raising internally,” said Massimo Serpieri, of the Commission’s Directorate-General Research.

This did not impress Jean Patrick Connerade, former president of Euroscience and a man not afraid to cross swords with powerful people.

“We’ve got to be careful,” he says. “There could be a tendency for institutions to sign up for it because it sounds great and then to put this thing away in cupboards and hide it from their personnel.”

So to our researcher readers: is your institution on this list? And have you ever heard of the code?

*officially called: a Code of Conduct for the recruitment of researchers and a European Charter for Researchers.

Posted by Daniel Cressey at 05:21 PM |

ESOF soundbites

“This population explosion will present a series of interconnected challenges that are qualitatively different from those facing humanity at the start of the 20th century – ranging from food and energy security to increased terrorism and the impacts of climate change.”
David King, former head of the UK’s Government Office of Science, explains why population growth is one of the subjects of his keynote lecture on the environmental challenges of the 21st century


“I consider myself an environmentalist, having worked 25 years in the nuclear industry.”
Cutting carbon dioxide emissions is true environmentalism, says Adrian Bull of power company Westinghouse, as he takes issue with a question about opponents of the nuclear industry.

Bonus video: ‘There’s plenty of room at the bottom’.
A performance of this nano-science play will show tomorrow. See if you can work out what is going on in this recording.

“Science journalism at its best”
Banner above one of the exhibition stands this morning. The stand was empty apart from a pile of magazines with the headline ‘Who’s fooling whom?’

Posted by Daniel Cressey at 10:53 AM |

ESOF: Science for a Better Life

ESOF08 LOGO.bmpToday in Barcelona the Euroscience Open Forum 2008 kicks off, with the auspicious slogan ‘Science for a Better Life’. Probably the largest interdisciplinary science conference in Europe, ESOF (generally pronounced eee-soff) has an array of talks covering everything from science in policy to science in art.

This is the place to be if you want to hear Nobel Laureates in Chemistry discuss poetry, argue over whether links between academia and industry are evil, and find out the answer to the question ‘are science journalists vulnerable to intellectual and moral corruption?’ That’s just me opening the programme at random in three different places; but I hope to know more about all three topics by the time the conference ends on Tuesday.

Posted by Daniel Cressey at 09:22 AM |

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