Upstream engagement: public guiding research priorities
Via ‘upstream engagement’, can the public democratically guide research priorities? Recent papers suggest that despite attaching the term to the research, few projects really incorporated upstream engagement into what they did, they also highlighted obstacles just to make the job a bit harder.
Upstream engagement in science is a trendy term us science communicators like to toss around as the answer to averting much of the polarized debate, mistrust and suspicion surrounding any science or research organization involved in the controversial emerging technologies such as the biotech foods and nanotechnologies. If we are lucky it might also get some of the public interested or engaged in science and promote an informed debate. But can it work?
To carry on from my last post about the lack of a good model, a paper in the September Public Understanding of Science seems to bear this out. The paper traces the history of communicating emerging technologies and the drivers behind the theory of upstream engagement – see reference below. For a start, the authors criticize all the projects it assessed that purported to incorporate upstream engagement because they pit the classic scientific expert up on the pedestal against us, the great unwashed. Their main criticism, however, is that most of these upstream engagement projects failed to do any more than measure public opinion and follow the outdated deficit model of public understanding. That is, them dictating to us. So no mutual learning or reflective exchange, which they suggest is the core premise of the upstream engagement proponent’s claim for our more democratic involvement in the direction of scientific knowledge.
So, adequate research has yet to happen to find out if our collective intelligence on this concept is on the money, or nothing more than a drunken fireside brainstorming session – not that I have an issue with drunken fireside chats. They are cheaper than therapy.
Having a go
Despite this glaring lack of data I still think it is a concept that should happen, though I am the first to admit I have yet to investigate the research literature in detail. I am running on intuition. My version of upstream engagement requires getting the non-scientists involved before any major investment decisions about research direction have been made. The few ‘potential’ upstream engagement projects that I have read about were initiated post investment, so there was no way any engagement process was going to cause a serious diversion in research priorities. I want to know if the non-scientists, once involved, can actually influence the direction of research investment. It will mean all parties giving up an element of control, being prepared to be open and honest, listen, learn and accept. I don’t know if it will or can work, but that will be the concept of the project – an experiment to see if it can, or at least identify the obstacles and how to remove them so that it might work.
Guided by fear
Now, I have no doubt that the public can influence research priorities. Anecdotally, the noisy minorities and NGOs do an effective job of promoting their agenda and I have seen first hand in the GM food debate how decisions about how specific traits required in crop plants are attempting to be introduced by conventional methods rather than GM techniques because of the anti-GM sentiment and associated market implications. These anti-groups certainly keeps scientists honest by forcing them to engage with the public about what they do and why – or it should. But I would prefer to see a more democratic process where within some form on on-going dialogue decisions are made together about the science, rather than the reflex response guided by fear of a perceived public backlash.
There are obstacles. The ‘cognitive divide – the expert versus us – is one that will be hard to remove, and I am not convinced that it entirely should be, at least in the context that one’s expertise should be recognised where appropriate.
Katz et al also in the September Public Understanding of Science have identified other obstacles to integrating social issues into nanotechnology research and development governance in general, at least to Australia. One of these is because nanoscience is developing at a break-neck pace it is difficult to predict the wide and complex range of applications making governance, policy or even research direction complicated. Though, in my mind, if the public are involved early on and as an ongoing process with a specific research group or organisation then their knowledge will evolve with the science.
So the intelligence gathering mission begins. A few fireside chats are in order, I think
References
Monika Kurath and Priska Gisler, Informing, involving or engaging? Science communication, in the ages of atom, bio- and nanotechnology. Public Understand. Science. 18 (5) (2009) 559–573).
Evie Katz, Fiona Solomon,Wendy Mee and Roy Lovel, Evolving scientific research governance in Australia: a case study of engaging interested publics in nanotechnology research. Public Understand. Science, 18 (5) (2009) 531–545
Jason Major