One of the great ironies of our recent debate with climate scientists at RealClimate over the possibility of cleanly separating science and politics in efforts to connect science with the public, policy makers and journalists is that there is a vast amount of peer-reviewed literature that says such separation is impossible. The irony of course is that a big part of RealClimate’s activities have been to correct the misguided views of the so-called “climate skeptics” or “climate contrarians” who are at odds with more “mainstream” views on climate science. RealClimate’s commitment to the primacy of mainstream, peer-reviewed knowledge seems to be fairly narrow in scope as they are perfectly comfortable and confident in dismissing the “mainstream” views of the field of science and technology studies (STS). In jest I wonder if we should we call them “STS contrarians”?

Consider the following excerpt from Shelia Jasanoff’s excellent book, “The Fifth Branch: Science Advisors as Policymakers”, (at pp. 230-31). In her 1990 book Jasanoff, a leading voice in the discipline of STS, focuses on science advisory bodies and organizations that bring science to decision makers and the public, and I think in 2005 it is fair to include as advisory bodies weblogs seeking to communicate science to decision makers, even though weblogs didn’t exist as a means of providing scientific advice in 1990:


“Although pleas for maintaining a strict separation between science and politics continue to run like a leitmotif through the policy literature, the artificiality of this position can no longer be doubted. Studies of scientific advising leave in tatters the notion that it is possible, in practice, to restrict the advisory practice to technical issues or that the subjective values of scientists are irrelevant to decision making.”

She also writes (at p. 249) “The notion that scientific advisors can or do limit themselves to addressing purely scientific issues, in particular, seems fundamentally misconceived … the advisory process seems increasingly important as a locus for negotiating scientific differences that have political weight.”

STS contrarianism is of course not limited to the climate debate (though, interestingly, it does seem to have a stronger presence in the earth and environmental sciences than in fields of the life sciences or engineering). But some in the STS community are not particularly concerned. For example, last year with Steve Rayner I guest edited a special issue of the journal Environmental Science and Policy that focused on the efforts of scientists to engage in a political battle over the implications of Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist implicitly through science and not overtly through political or policy debate. In the process of putting that issue together a reviewer commented (I can’t remember for which paper) that the various papers seemed to be revisiting the now thoroughly discredited notion that science and politics can in fact be separated. This reviewer was of course from the STS community and simplistic notions of separating science and politics and to him was obviously no longer interesting from a research standpoint.

But this reinforcing set of circumstances – scientists who dismiss or unaware of STS and STS scholars who may be more in interested in the intellectual rather than practical aspects of their field – raises some interesting questions about the role of STS in the sciences, and its own political orientation and agenda. In other words, the same sort of questions that STS often targets at other scientists and disciplines are also applicable to STS.

Michael Guggenheim and Helga Nowotny ask these sort of questions in their excellent essay (PDF) critically assessing the current state of STS.

“STS likewise has never established its own research agenda of unresolved problems. Yet, if it does not want to become trapped in an unending present of joyful repetition, albeit in the guise of rebellion, it will have to create a future that is neither Sisyphus-like, and therefore closed, nor utopian or dystopian, as so many future expectations of other actors in society are when assessing the benefits and burdens of science and technology. In a caricature of its own theoretical stance that scientific problem choice is not the outcome of an inherently rational selection process within science, nor that Nature whispers into the ears of scientists which problems to choose, STS hardly ever showed interest in the functioning of its own processes of problem selection or which issues, originating in wider societal developments, it did take up or not. Nor did it delve into the processes through which contrasting theoretical positions within STS are negotiated or eliminated. What, if anything, did Society whisper into STS ears? If problem choice within STS is at least partly seen to be the outcome of larger societal processes, then a vision of the future would be needed which takes into account the processes of its own professionalisation and its likely effects. This implies the capability to select problems for their own – scientific and intellectual – sake and to transform them into research priorities which are seen as a collective, and not simply as an individual task. It also implies the willingness and capability to transmit the relevance of scientific activities to a wider audience and perhaps even to one’s ‘clients’.”

Important questions for scholars of STS (and its close cousin, science and technology policy or STP, to which I am more closely aligned) are raised by the current state of STS coupled with the presence of STS contrarians in important positions on issues of significance to society. Among these questions:

1. Is it even worth engaging scientists on knowledge of STS? Our dialogue with RealClimate has taken place at the highest levels of professionalism, but my experience suggests that the professionalism of the RealClimate folks is not always the case in such dialogues. Raising issues of science and politics, science and society can be threatening to some scientists and downright offensive to others. At times such dialogues can devolve into ad hominem attacks of one sort or another. I have numerous colleagues who simply choose not to work with or debate scientists on such topics. It is probably no surprise that the areas in science which STS has the most traction happen to be those in which scientists are most open to STS perspectives, such as is the case in bioethics and the life sciences. It should come as no surprise (as Guggenheim and Notwotny observe) that many STS scholars converse among themselves and have little stomach for engaging with practicing scientists, particularly those who practice STS contrarianism. (G & N also raise the possibility that STS can become “captured” by its clientele.)

2. STS requires greater reflexiveness in its studies. This is a point that G & N make well. If STS scholars see their job as simply producing knowledge to be added to the great reservoir of knowledge (i.e., basic research in STST), are they then just buying into the linear model of knowledge production and use that they so often critique as neither descriptively accurate or normatively desirable?

3. STS has an overt political agenda, which is typically some form of the democratization of knowledge. But within STS there are many narrow and wide political agendas (as is present in any area of expertise). If separating science and politics is impossible, as STS scholars have shown, then this must also be the case in STS as well. How does STS handle this reality? (I’d argue that STS scholars need to serve as honest brokers on policy just like other experts.)

Our recent engagement on STS issues with climate scientists should be viewed thus as an experiment. How might we communicate the scientific community the knowledge and lessons learned from those who have expertise in STS (and STP)? Is it worth engaging with rank and file scientists or should the focus of such dialogues be on the scientific elite? What about the public and elected officials? The answers to these questions are not straightforward, and the actions that best serve common interests are not immediately clear.

What is clear is that the STS community has only begun to explore its own significance for science policy and as it broadens its reach, it is surely to continue to prod and provoke scientists who remain comfortable in their outdated views.