Science and the politics

of openness
Science and the politics
of openness

Here be monsters

Edited by Brigitte Nerlich, Sarah Hartley,

Sujatha Raman and Alexander Smith

Manchester University Press

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Contents

List of figures and tables page viii

List of contributors ix

Introduction – Brigitte Nerlich, Sujatha Raman,

Sarah Hartley, Alexander Thomas T. Smith 1

Coda: reflections on the politics of openness in a

new world order – Alexander Thomas T. Smith 12

Part I Transparency
1 Transparency – Benjamin Worthy 23
2 Open access: the beast that no-one could – or should –
control? – Stephen Curry 33
3 Assuaging fears of monstrousness: UK and Swiss
initiatives to open up animal laboratory research
– Carmen M. McLeod 55
4 What counts as evidence in adjudicating asylum
claims? Locating the monsters in the machine:
an investigation of faith-based claims –
Roda Madziva and Vivien Lowndes 75

Part II Responsibility
5 Responsibility – Barbara Prainsack and
Sabina Leonelli 97
vi Contents

6 Leviathan and the hybrid network: Future Earth,

co-production and the experimental life of a global
institution – Eleanor Hadley Kershaw 107
7 ‘Opening up’ energy transitions research for
development – Alison Mohr 131
8 Monstrous regiment versus Monsters Inc.:
competing imaginaries of science and social
order in responsible (research and) innovation
– Stevienna de Saille and Paul Martin 148

Part III Expertise

9 Expertise – Mark B. Brown 169
10 Disentangling risk assessment: new roles for
experts and publics – Sarah Hartley and
Adam Kokotovich 176
11 Monstrous materialities: ash dieback and
plant biosecurity in Britain – Judith Tsouvalis 195
12 An Inconvenient Truth: a social representation
of scientific expertise – Warren Pearce and
Brigitte Nerlich 212
13 ‘Science Matters’ and the public interest:
the role of minority engagement – Sujatha Raman,
Pru Hobson-West, Mimi E. Lam and Kate Millar 230

Part IV Faith
14 Faith – Chris Toumey 253
15 Re-examining ‘creationist’ monsters in the uncharted
waters of social studies of science and religion – Fern
Elsdon-Baker 259
16 Playing God: religious influences on the depictions
of science in mainstream movies – David A. Kirby
and Amy C. Chambers 278
Contents vii

Afterword: monstrous markets – neo-liberalism,

populism and the demise of the public university
– John Holmwood and Jan Balon 303

Epilogue: publics, hybrids, transparency, monsters and the

changing landscape around science – Stephen Turner 322

Index 333
Figures and tables

Figure
16.1 Pamphlet on the creationist origins of
Jurassic Park’s dinosaurs disseminated by
the Southwest Radio Church. 292

Table
10.1 A framework for public involvement in
risk assessment 189
Contributors

Jan Balon is Lecturer at the Institute of Sociological Studies, Charles

University in Prague and Head of Department and Researcher at the
Centre for Science, Technology and Society Studies, Czech Academy
of Sciences. With Marek Skovajsa, he is author of Sociology in the
Czech Republic: Between East and West (Palgrave, 2017).
Mark B. Brown is professor in the Department of Political Science
at California State University, Sacramento. He is the author of Science
in Democracy: Expertise, Institutions, and Representation (MIT Press,
2009), and various publications on the politics of expertise, political
representation, bioethics, climate change and related topics.
Amy C. Chambers is a research associate in science communication
and screen studies at Newcastle University, working on an AHRC-
funded project that seeks to map the history of imagined futures in
speculative fiction. Her publications examine the intersection of science,
religion, and entertainment media, and also science fiction and horror
film/TV.
Stephen Curry is a professor of structural biology at Imperial College
London. An active blogger and campaigner, he writes regularly in the
Guardian and elsewhere about open access and the larger social
responsibilities of scientists. Stephen is a member of the board of both
Science is Vital and the Campaign for Science and Engineering.
Stevienna de Saille is currently a research fellow in the Institute for
the Study of the Human at the University of Sheffield, studying genome
x Contributors

editing, the human-tissue bioeconomy and responsible innovation

through the lens of heterodox economics. She was a research fellow
on the Leverhulme Trust project Making Science Public, studying the
emergence of responsible research and innovation.
Fern Elsdon-Baker is a professor and the Director of the Centre
for Science, Knowledge and Belief in Society at Newman University,
Birmingham, and the principal investigator on the Science and Religion:
Exploring the Spectrum project. Previously she was head of the British
Council’s Darwin Now project, which ran in fifty countries worldwide.
Eleanor Hadley Kershaw is a doctoral researcher in science and
technology studies at the Institute for Science and Society, University
of Nottingham. Her PhD is funded by the Leverhulme Trust as part
of the Making Science Public programme. Her background is in English
literature, theatre/performance, sustainability, environment and
international science policy.
Sarah Hartley is a senior lecturer at the University of Exeter Business
School, where she researches science, technology and innovation
governance. Her current work examines the role of publics and experts
– in the development of genetically modified insects, in gene drive
and in genome editing – in areas of global health, sustainable agriculture
and food security.
Pru Hobson-West has expertise in medical sociology, science and
technology studies, and ethics. Her work focuses on controversies
such as childhood vaccination and animal experimentation. Pru also
leads work in the emerging field of veterinary sociology. She is based
at the Centre for Applied Bioethics in the School of Veterinary Medicine
and Science at the University of Nottingham.
John Holmwood is Professor of Sociology at the University of Not-
tingham. He is the founder of the Campaign for the Public University.
He blogs regularly on higher-education issues for the Campaign for
the Public University, Research Blogs, Open Democracy and other
venues. His current research addresses issues of pragmatism and public
sociology. He co-edits the free online magazine Discover Society.
David A. Kirby is Senior Lecturer in Science Communication Studies
at the University of Manchester. His book Lab Coats in Hollywood
Contributors xi

(MIT Press, 2013) examines the collaborations between scientists and

the entertainment industry. He is currently writing the book Indecent
Science, which will explore the historic interactions between science,
religion and movie censorship.

Adam Kokotovich is a postdoctoral research associate at the Uni-

versity of Minnesota, studying invasive-species risk assessment and
management. An interdisciplinary social scientist, he is interested in
highlighting and opening to reflexive scrutiny the assumptions that
inform decision making related to science, risk and the environment.

Mimi E. Lam is a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Bergen,

Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities. She specialises
in seafood ethics and sustainability, marine governance, and the
science–policy interface. She studies values, beliefs and perceptions
of nature to inform societal decision making for a sustainable and
just future.

Sabina Leonelli is Professor in Philosophy and History of Science

and Co-Director of the Exeter Centre for the Study of the Life Sciences
at the University of Exeter. Her current research focuses on the
philosophy, history and sociology of data-intensive science, especially
the research processes, scientific outputs and social embedding of
open science, open data and big data.

Vivien Lowndes is Professor of Public Policy at the University of

Birmingham. She was Deputy Chair of the Politics and International
Studies Sub-Panel for the 2014 Research Excellence Framework. Vivien’s
research interests focus on local governance and community engage-
ment. She is author (with Mark Roberts) of Why Institutions Matter
(Palgrave, 2013).

Roda Madziva is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University

of Nottingham. Her research focuses on understanding the associa-
tion between immigration policies and migrants’ lived experiences.
She has worked on the use of evidence in immigration policy as
part of a Leverhulme-funded programme, Making Science Public:
Opportunities and Challenges. She has worked closely with migrant
support organisations, faith-based communities and churches at both
local and national level.
xii Contributors

Paul Martin is Professor of Sociology of Science and Technology

in the Department of Sociological Studies, University of Sheffield.
He recently completed a project for the Making Science Public pro-
gramme (with Stevienna de Saille) on ideas of responsible innovation,
and is currently working on epigenetics and the role of science in
policymaking.

Carmen McLeod is an anthropologist and postdoctoral researcher

based at the University of Oxford in the School of Geography and
the Environment, where she is exploring the social dimensions of the
human microbiome. Carmen was a research fellow (February 2013
to June 2015) on the Leverhulme Trust Programme Making Science
Public, working on the project Animals and the Making of Scientific
Knowledge.

Kate Millar is Director of the Centre for Applied Bioethics, University

of Nottingham, and President of the European Society for Agricultural
and Food Ethics (EurSafe). Kate’s research focuses on bioethics, with
a particular interest in agri-food and veterinary ethics, development
of ethical frameworks (e.g. Ethical Matrix), and stakeholder participa-
tion methods.

Alison Mohr is Co-Director (Research) at the Institute for Science

and Society in the School of Sociology and Social Policy, University
of Nottingham. Alison’s research explores the social, cultural, political
and environmental dimensions of energy transitions. She sits on the
management boards of the university-wide Energy Technologies
Research Institute and Energy Research Priority Area to champion
interdisciplinary research and public and policy engagement.

Brigitte Nerlich is Emeritus Professor of Science, Language and Society

at the University of Nottingham. She has published widely on semantics,
pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, and, more recently, the sociology of
health and illness and the cultural study of science and technology.
She was Director of the Leverhulme Making Science Public programme
between 2012 and 2016.

Warren Pearce is Faculty Fellow (iHuman) within the Department

of Sociological Studies, University of Sheffield. He researches the
relationship between science, policy and publics, with a current focus
Contributors xiii

on two main themes: public inclusion in research governance, and

climate-change communication and policy.
Barbara Prainsack is a professor in the Department of Political Science
at the University of Vienna, Austria, and in the Department of Global
Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London. Her work
addresses the social, regulatory and ethical dimensions of biomedicine
and the biosciences. Her current projects focus on personalised and
‘precision’ medicine and the role of solidarity in guiding practice and
policy in biomedicine.

Sujatha Raman is Associate Professor in Science and Technology

Studies and Co-Director (Research) at the Institute for Science and
Society (ISS) in the School of Sociology and Social Policy, University
of Nottingham. She was Deputy Director of the Leverhulme Making
Science Public research programme (2012–2016) and, latterly, the
Director (2016–2018). Her research focuses on science, democracy
and sustainability.

Alexander Thomas T. Smith holds a PhD in social anthropology

from Edinburgh University and teaches sociology at Warwick. He
conducts research on conservatism, local politics and religion in
Scotland and the USA. He is the author of Devolution and the Scottish
Conservatives (Manchester University Press, 2011) and the editor (with
John Holmwood) of Sociologies of Moderation (Wiley Blackwell, 2013).
Alex’s next book, Democracy Begins at Home: Political Moderation in
Red State America, will be published by the University Press of Kansas.

Chris Toumey is a cultural anthropologist who works in the anthropol-

ogy of science. Since 2013 he has focused on societal and cultural
issues in nanotechnology. He is author or co-author of more than
eighty papers on nanotech, including his commentaries that appear
four times a year in Nature Nanotechnology. Based on that work, plus
earlier work on issues of science and religion, he is especially interested
in relations between technology and religion.

Judith Tsouvalis is a geographer with research interests in the making

and politics of knowledge on nature and the non-human; risk percep-
tion; power relations at the interface of science, policymaking, politics
and publics; new materialism; and political ecology. Her empirical
xiv Contributors

work has focused on forestry, farming, water management, plant

biosecurity, science advice and public participation.
Stephen Turner is Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy
at the University of South Florida. His writings include Liberal
Democracy 3.0: Civil Society in an Age of Experts, and The Politics of
Expertise (both Sage, 2003). He has written extensively on the history
of geology, statistics and social science.
Benjamin Worthy is a lecturer in politics at Birkbeck College, Uni-
versity of London. His specialisms include political leadership and
government transparency. He has written extensively on freedom of
information and transparency, and his new monograph examines The
Politics of Freedom of Information: How and Why Governments Pass
Laws that Threaten Their Power (Manchester University Press). He is
also researching the impact of the UK Government’s transparency
agenda.
Introduction

Brigitte Nerlich, Sujatha Raman, Sarah Hartley,

Alexander Thomas T. Smith

In recent years the relation between science and society has become
strained. In some parts of the world, mainly in the United States,
science is said to be ‘at war’ with society (Otto, 2016). In others,
particularly the United Kingdom, scientists have been dragged into
debates over suspicion and contempt of experts, primarily economists
(Mance, 2016). These developments play out against a series of crises
in science, technology, politics and the economy, which are all
interlinked.
In politics and economics, one can mention the 2008 financial
crisis, threats posed by terrorism, rising tensions around the place of
religion in science and society, the ascent of political populism, and,
more recently, debates about the United Kingdom leaving the European
Union – an exit (dubbed ‘Brexit’) that will have profound consequences
for society, science and different forms of expertise. In the United
States, a new presidency challenges established relations between
science and politics, as well as between these domains, journalism
and the public. In technology, controversies arise from increasing
digitalisation, automation, cybercrime and much more, but also from
the maturing of novel energy technologies and biotechnologies. These
new technologies bring with them a range of ethical problems.
This volume uses recent developments in science–society relations
as a focal point for exploring the tensions and contradictions raised
by these large-scale issues. Over the last thirty years in the UK and
beyond, science, policy and the public have come into conflict in a
series of political crises. Examples include the BSE (bovine spongiform
2 Science and the politics of openness

encephalopathy) or ‘mad cow disease’ crisis, the almost intractable

disputes about the commercialisation of genetically modified (GM)
foods and crops, the effects of scientific dissent on public health (e.g.
the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine) and the impacts of
the politicisation of climate science on climate policy (‘Climategate’).
Since then, we have seen the emergence of new controversies involving
the use of scientific evidence in policy (e.g. on the proposed role of
dental evidence to assess the age of child refugees; the emergence of
ash dieback disease) and on the conduct of research and innovation
(e.g. on gene editing; management of the Zika virus), where issues
related to security are ever-present. Last but not least, many of the
topics listed above are global in nature. In this context we have seen
the emergence of highly public conflicts around global institutions,
such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, where science
and politics meet.
In order to deal with such emerging and enduring matters and their
impacts on trust in science and politics, policymakers have proposed
various solutions, such as promoting greater public engagement with
science and policy, co-design of scientific research with stakeholders,
open and participatory forms of innovation, increasing transparency
in scientific advice for policymaking, and enhancing open access to
scientific data and research outputs. Such solutions have begun to
exploit a number of new digital technologies and algorithms which
can be used for good or for ill – for sharing information quickly; for
making information public and available for public scrutiny; or for
increasing surveillance by the state, social groups or oneself.
We live in a society that increasingly aspires to open access, open
data, open science and open policy. Underpinning this trend is an
assumption that transparency and openness are in the ‘public interest’.
They are, but there may well be dark sides to this trend that need
to be examined. Indeed, these solutions to scientific and political
crises might conceal or provoke a number of problems, challenges and
questions – some new, some timeless. These are the ‘monsters’ hiding
behind transparency, publicness and openness that we want to track
down in this book. Keeping in mind that unknown troubles might lurk
behind apparent solutions, we ask: what does making science more
public, open or transparent mean, in theory and practice? Who are
‘the public’ and how are they constituted? What might ‘public science’
Introduction 3

mean for the authority and independence of science and the capacity
of publics to engage with science? What are the political implications
of making science more public or transparent, and how does this relate
to issues of legitimacy and transparency in politics and policymaking?
What role do interested citizens play in the creation of science and
the making of science policy? Who controls the new technologies and
enterprises of openness and transparency? And what will happen in
the future, given radical changes that are happening in science and
technology, as well as politics and policy, globally and nationally?
Trying to find answers to these questions provides us with a much-
needed opportunity to rethink the relationship between science and
politics and, more importantly, the role of science in public, the role of
publics in science, and the role of expertise in science and policymaking,
as well the role of faith in science and society. Others have examined
these issues, but we seek to put them in conversation with wider
political developments around migration, religion and neo-liberalism.

The book
The chapters in this volume are based on work carried out within the
Leverhulme-Trust-funded Making Science Public research programme
(2012–2017), which explored the relationships between science, politics
and publics through a number of topical case studies. The chapters
challenge received wisdoms about openness and transparency and
highlight and map the pitfalls and dangers – the ‘monsters’ in openness
and transparency. The book is motivated by the sense that there might
be metaphorical dragons or monsters hiding behind policy initiatives
to ‘open up’ science in response to perceived legitimacy crises in
research and innovation systems and in the relationship between
science and policymaking.
The phrase ‘here be monsters’ or ‘here be dragons’ is commonly
believed to have been used on ancient maps to indicate unexplored
territories which might hide unknown beasts. Etymologically, the
figure of the monster is double-edged and ambiguous in a way that
invites reflection (Haraway, 1992). ‘Monster’ has twin meanings: the
monster serves to both warn (Latin: monere) and to show (monstrare).
Calls and efforts to open up science evoke multiple conflicting impera-
tives, hopes and anxieties, which we explore.
4 Science and the politics of openness

Where earlier works in science and technology studies employed

the monster or golem figure to study the social aspects of science and
its technological creations (Collins and Pinch, 1993; Haraway, 1992;
Law, 1991), we argue that the time is ripe to examine the positive and
negative effects of contemporary policy initiatives and institutions
which purport to bring science, society and publics closer together
through processes of openness, access and transparency. Developed
as solutions to perceived crises in science/society relations, a variety
of policy initiatives hide dilemmas that need to be made visible and
need to be discussed out in the open. In sum, the chapters in this
book explore the unfolding contradictions around efforts to ‘make
science public’.

Science and the politics of openness: challenges

and dilemmas
For many years now, some science and technology studies scholars
have called for new forms of ‘post-normal’ science (Funtowicz and
Ravetz, 1993), where scientific claims and their underlying assumptions
are opened up to wider scrutiny, allowing a new ‘democratisation of
science’ (Brown, 2009). Sheila Jasanoff (2002) has argued that we are
witnessing a so-called ‘constitutional moment’ in which the claims
of scientific knowledge and technology on behalf of the public good
need to be openly justified rather than taken for granted. However,
promises of openness, transparency and greater engagement generated
by these developments must always be critically assessed. ‘People may
not possess enough specialized knowledge and material resources’ to
participate in apparently open forums (Jasanoff, 2003: 237). Likewise,
privately sponsored industry research can all too easily be used through
transparency laws to destabilise public science – for example, in cases
of environmental and health-and-safety regulations introduced in the
public interest (Jasanoff, 2006) – or to undermine political action on
climate change, as journalist Delingpole (2010), for one, has attempted
to do.
With the institutionalisation of scientific advice in government
and an emphasis on evidence-based policy, scientific evidence
has taken centre stage in many public and political conflicts.
However, there are long-standing fears of a possible ‘scientisation’ or
Introduction 5

‘technocratisation’ of politics (Habermas, 1970), which may shut out

voices from areas other than science from the policymaking process.
In this context, different stakeholders are using a range of experts
and cherry-picking the claims or counterclaims that support their
own political position. There are enduring debates about the status of
expertise, and calls to acknowledge the status of lay experts (Wynne,
1992). These have in turn informed wider debates about opening up
and democratising discussions involving scientific knowledge and
public policy matters. Science cannot function, argues the political
philosopher Stephen Turner (2003), without some monopolisation
of expertise. He therefore suggests that it is intrinsically impossible
to subject specialised knowledge to democratic discussion (see also
Collins, 2014). Yet, wider discussions about the purpose of science
and its role in matters of collective interest are political and value
based. These cannot, a priori, be left to certified experts alone (Sare-
witz, 2004), especially when laypeople or rival experts periodically
mobilise in particular times and places to call attention to novel
dimensions of public importance. In this context, how policymakers
or science advisors engage with different forms of expertise becomes
crucial.
Scientists have always interacted with a variety of publics, and
science communication is as old as science itself. However, scientists
are increasingly obliged to get involved in public engagement and,
more recently, to practise responsible research and innovation, for
reasons other than consulting, communicating with or involving
publics. Opportunities for engagement with science and policy are
being gradually replaced by mandated activities serving political
functions, such as gaining ‘impact’ and contributing to economic
growth. Fostering public engagement with science has become one
of many political and economic performance indicators. This may
lead to the instrumentalisation of public engagement (Watermeyer,
2012), and a loss of trust in science and scientists.
These developments happen in a context where higher education
serves no longer to be primarily a public good but is increasingly
marketised and privatised. Universities in the UK are now funded by
students (or their parents) who pay tuition fees as consumers rather
than as co-producers of knowledge. This means that universities now
have a much-weakened relationship with the British public, on whom
6 Science and the politics of openness

they no longer depend for the bulk of their teaching budget. There are
concerns amongst leading scientists, ethicists and lawyers about ‘who
owns science’ – that is, about the privatisation of science – and calls
are being heard for science to serve the public good more explicitly
(see Holmwood, 2011; University of Manchester, Institute for Science,
Ethics and Innovation, 2010).
Science, politics and publics are entangled in a complex relationship
with normative ideas about openness, transparency and publicness,
ideals that are being challenged not only by classic science/policy
scandals such as those mentioned above (BSE, GM, MMR, Climategate).
They are also being challenged by the emergence of new technologies,
especially digital technologies envisaged to deliver some of those ideals,
and by institutional and technological changes in the spaces where
science takes place (universities and industries) and where politics takes
place (government, the media, public forums, public consultations,
etc.). The fact that political and policy debates, expertise, and the
media have been entangled with such normative questions for some
time has, in recent decades, become a growing source of instability in
Western liberal democracies (see Smith and Holmwood, 2013). This
has raised anxieties about the role of expertise and evidence in public
debate in an age where countering ‘fake news’ and political disinforma-
tion – or what might have once been described as propaganda or
even ‘psychological operations’ – has become a central concern for
policymakers, electoral strategists, journalists, broadcasters and even
intelligence agencies following the election of President Donald Trump
in the 2016 US elections.
We are now living in a world where words like ‘facts’ and ‘truth’
have to be used with considerable care in science and politics, where
facts and truths compete with alternative facts or someone else’s truth.
In an article for the Financial Times entitled ‘The Problem with Facts’,
the economist Tim Harford explores, as the subtitle says, ‘how today’s
politicians deal with inconvenient truths’. He uses a phrase that has
gained popularity in science and society circles since 2006, when Al
Gore produced his notorious film An Inconvenient Truth, intended
to make what he held to be truths about climate change public. In
chapter 12, Warren Pearce and Brigitte Nerlich examine in detail the
film and its reverberations through ensuing climate-change debates.
Introduction 7

Such debates foreshadowed and even rehearsed arguments that are

now raging through most of science and politics, particularly in
the USA.
Meanwhile, novel energy technologies encounter issues of
justice and fairness when deployed across the world. In chapter 7
Alison Mohr argues that such technologies and innovations might
also hide monsters behind their veneer of novelty and service to
the agendas of more openness and transparency. The open-access
agenda is one major example in the context of research (Holmwood,
2013). The future of new frameworks of responsible research and
innovation (RRI) within this wider context is therefore in question.
On the one hand, the concept of RRI promises to open up oppor-
tunities to rethink the purposes of innovation (Owen et al., 2013)
and diversify ways of innovating in response to a societal challenge
(Hartley et al., 2016). On the other hand, RRI is becoming reduced
to established ways of assessing a specific technology in terms of its
risks and benefits. All these developments need to be monitored and
scrutinised not only for the opportunities and chances for improve-
ment they offer but also for the pitfalls and contradictions they might
contain.

Themes
The chapters in this book map and illuminate issues (‘monsters’)
in specific areas of science/policy practices where the complex
problems identified above play out in particular ways and in specific
cases.
The book is organised into four parts, around the themes of (1)
transparency in the context of science in the public sphere; (2)
responsibility in the context of contemporary research practice and
governance, both globally and more locally; (3) expertise in the context
of policymaking, risk assessment and the regulation of science; and
(4) faith in the context of emerging tensions and misunderstandings
between science, politics and publics regarding issues of religion. Each
of the four parts contains an opening essay by an expert on the theme,
and the book closes with an afterword and an epilogue reflecting on
the contributions to the book.
8 Science and the politics of openness

Transparency
This part opens the book with an exploration of one its core topics;
namely, transparency and openness and how they play out within
various institutional and policy domains. Three chapters circle these
concepts in different ways. Stephen Curry deals with an issue that
has risen to prominence in science and university research in recent
years – ‘open access’. He examines not only the potential of open
access to break down barriers and open up academic research and
knowledge to the wider public, but also the many barriers that exist or
are emerging to impede the open-access movement. Carmen McLeod
deals with issues of transparency and secrecy in the context of animal
research through the lens of two transparency initiatives: the Swiss Basel
Declaration announced in 2011, and the UK Concordat on Openness
in Animal Research launched in 2012. In the final chapter of this part,
Roda Madziva and Vivien Lowndes deal with transparency, evidence
and publics in the context of a very topical issue – immigration. This
chapter also contributes indirectly to the last part of the book, which
deals with faith, as Madziva and Lowndes investigate faith-based claims
being used when adjudicating asylum applications.
The part introduction by Benjamin Worthy dissects the concepts
of transparency and openness and puts them into the context of recent
research on these topics, as well as work on related issues around
security, privacy, confidentiality and accountability. Worthy also
highlights problems with radical openness in a context where ‘people’
might not be willing, able or interested to make use of the opportunities
such openness affords them.

Responsibility
This part continues to explore the topic of openness, but with an
additional focus on responsibility and justice. Three chapters move
from the global to the more local, and from global environmental
change and energy justice to concerns about responsible innovation
in the context of Western concerns with genetically modified foods
and crops.
Eleanor Hadley Kershaw presents us with an overview of the
opportunities and challenges that emerge when trying to foster science/
Introduction 9

society or science/public co-production of research and engagement

within a global institution – namely, Future Earth. Alison Mohr, by
contrast, deals with the tensions that emerge when Western energy
technologies are distributed in the global South and how co-production
between energy experts, social science experts and local community
experts can help in this context. In both cases, openness is the sine
qua non for such global enterprises to succeed. In the final chapter,
Stevienna de Saille and Paul Martin tackle in an almost playful but
deadly serious way some of the potentially problematic (or monstrous)
consequences of the ‘opening up’ agenda written into responsible
research and innovation frameworks. They do this by inspecting stories
about monsters that have been told and are being told around GM
foods and crops.
The part is introduced by Barbara Prainsack and Sabina Leonelli,
who tease out the discursive promises and risks of using buzzwords
such as ‘openness’ and ‘responsible innovation’. They also examine
the tensions explored in some of the chapters between efforts at
centralisation on the one hand and opening up research and institutions
to epistemic diversity on the other, as well as between inclusiveness
and social justice.

Expertise
This part continues to explore issues around expertise, experts and
publics. The first chapter in this part, by Sarah Hartley and Adam
Kokotovich, focuses on the always hot topic of risk and risk assessment.
They make the claim that public involvement in risk assessment is
not reaching its full potential and argue for a new role for experts
and publics, supported by a detailed analysis of a particular case study;
namely, the European Food Safety Authority’s public consultations.
We then move from food safety to emerging diseases, in this case the
emergence of a plant/tree disease: ash dieback. The chapter by Judith
Tsouvalis finds a similar disconnect between experts and publics and
a similar divorce between ‘risk’ assessment and public values. Both
chapters make a plea for not dealing with risks from a purely expert
and technoscientific perspective. Warren Pearce and Brigitte Nerlich
in turn explore a particular case study, the release of the film An
Inconvenient Truth in 2006, as an example where climate change
10 Science and the politics of openness

expertise is taken out of the pages of science journals and into the
public sphere, and the opportunities and problems this generates.
Sujatha Raman, Pru Hobson-West, Mimi Lam and Kate Millar use
a famous political speech, ‘Science Matters’, as an opportunity to rethink
the role of engagement by minority publics in constituting the public
interest around science in alliance with expertise.
This part is introduced by Mark Brown, who sheds light on the
tensions between experts and publics by providing a historical overview
of the relationship between science and democracy. He examines the
legitimacy of expertise in the current political climate and points out
that ‘avoiding technocracy without fostering populism is a key challenge
of our time’.

Faith
This part continues to explore some of the topics addressed in the
previous one, dealing with expertise, experts and publics, but with a
particular focus on science and religion. The chapter by Fern Elsdon-
Baker questions the expertise of social scientists when dealing with
a particular type of ‘public’ – namely, people who in one way or
another lean towards a creationist view of life on earth. She makes a
plea for researchers to not posit as a ‘fact’ a presumed clash between
scientific and religious world views, cautioning against assuming that
the latter is always a monstrous public in conflict with science, and
to explore public perceptions of evolutionary science and religion
without either being overshadowed by this prejudice. The second
chapter, by David Kirby and Amy Chambers, is a fascinating explora-
tion of the struggle between film-makers and religious communities
over shaping public views of science, including evolution, through a
history of censorship. Chris Toumey introduces this part, weaving
together reflections on science and religion with the themes of openness,
expertise and responsibility in new and unexpected ways.
The book is rounded up with two closing statements, one an
afterword by John Holmwood and Jan Balon reflecting on markets,
neoliberalism, populism and the demise of the public university, which
is one current issue that bedevils our (academic) lives. This is followed
by an epilogue by Stephen Turner, who weaves together all the chapters
presented in this book into a coherent story, by projecting them against
Introduction 11

a much-needed historical background involving science, politics and

publics.
Of course, a volume published in 2018 devoted to debates about
the fractious relationship between science, policy and publics would
be remiss if it were not to make more than a fleeting reference to the
extraordinary year in politics that was 2016. In June, the UK voted
in a referendum to withdraw from the European Union. At the time
of writing, formal negotiations are under way between the British
Government and their European counterparts following Prime Minister
Theresa May’s decision to trigger Article 50, which begins the two-year
countdown to ‘Brexit’, on 29 March 2017. The UK referendum was
followed six months later by the election of the billionaire Republican
Donald Trump to the White House. The outcomes of both the British
referendum and the US presidential election have profound conse-
quences for science, which only serves to emphasise – sadly, from the
point of view of many of our contributors – the importance of the
questions explored in this volume in the current political climate.
We therefore end this introduction with a coda by Alexander Thomas
T. Smith, which provides a brief snapshot (as of spring 2017) of the
political landscape following these two electoral events, with a focus
on some of the repercussions for science funding and policy in both
countries.
Coda: reflections on the politics of openness
in a new world order
Alexander Thomas T. Smith

Politically, 2016 was a convulsive, tumultuous year. On 23 June, the

United Kingdom held a referendum on whether to remain a member
of the European Union. On a turnout of 72%, a narrow majority – 52%
– voted to ‘Leave’ the EU. The Conservative Prime Minister David
Cameron, who had called the referendum and campaigned to ‘Remain’,
had not anticipated defeat and announced his intention to step down
the day after. Within a handful of weeks, the Conservatives elected a
new leader – Theresa May – who took over as prime minister on 13
July. Although she had supported Remain in the referendum – albeit
without much enthusiasm publicly – May now declared that ‘Brexit
means Brexit’ and committed her government to triggering Article
50, which would begin the two-year negotiations, and countdown, to
Britain’s departure from the EU.
Around the same time, across the North Atlantic, the Republican
Party was about to nominate the maverick billionaire Donald Trump
as its candidate for the US presidency. Trump had seen off a wide
field of ex-governors and senators in a heated campaign for the
nomination and now faced the Democratic Party’s presumptive
nominee, former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. Few at the time
imagined the pugnacious, impatient and thin-skinned Trump would
defeat a veteran Democratic Party candidate like Clinton. After Britain
unexpectedly voted to leave the EU, however, some began to wonder
if the unthinkable might now just become possible.
The challenge for Trump remained winning enough electoral college
votes to secure the White House, in so-called battleground states
Politics of openness in a new world order 13

where there live significant minorities whom he repeatedly offended

during his chaotic campaign. A month before the November election,
a recording surfaced of Trump boasting about his lecherous behaviour
towards women. With his campaign seemingly in meltdown, most
pollsters and political commentators expected Trump to haemorrhage
support, particularly from female Republican voters. Such was the
seriousness of his self-inflicted political wounds, some even thought
he would resign before election day. The New York Times gave Clinton
a 92% chance of winning.
The election, held on 8 November, proved that the unthinkable
could, indeed, happen. Despite losing the popular vote to Clinton by
three million, Trump picked up almost all the battleground states:
Florida, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and
Wisconsin (Clinton held Virginia). States that were rumoured some
months earlier to be in contention, including Arizona where a sub-
stantial Latino population was thought to be mobilising against Trump,
remained solidly Republican.
The victories of both the Leave campaign in the British referendum
on EU membership and Donald Trump in the US presidential election
stunned many experts, pundits and political commentators. Both
results seemed to highlight volatility in the British and US electorates
that had been long speculated about, but which now finally found
tangible form, as democratic facts.
Most of the contributors to this volume wrote their chapters before
these two political earthquakes turned many of our assumptions about
what the citizenries of our respective countries are thinking on their
heads. As this book goes into production, in the spring of 2017, we
are troubled by a suspicion that, already, global events risk eclipsing
the intellectual concerns about which our authors have written so
eloquently here. Brexit and Trump have now become synonymous
with instability and uncertainty. Politics, in both countries, has been
anything but normal ever since.
After 100 days in the White House, it is clear that President Trump
has been keen to conduct himself much as he did as a candidate,
riding the crest of a nativist–populist tide and railing against various
kinds of elites, in Washington DC, the mainstream media and in the
universities. Those concerned about the future of science policy,
including the funding of research and teaching in both the social and
14 Science and the politics of openness

natural sciences, are right to be worried. Trump has threatened to

cut funding to the National Science Foundation and even abolish the
National Endowment for the Humanities. A long-time sceptic of
human-induced climate change, he has described global warming as
a ‘hoax’ perpetuated by the Chinese. In a provocative move, Trump
appointed Scott Pruitt administrator of the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA). Pruitt, a lawyer from Oklahoma, is on record as having
rejected the scientific consensus on climate change. His appointment
has been destabilising to the EPA as an institution and has raised
questions about the future of climate science under Donald Trump.
It also generated anxiety amongst environmentalists, activists and
policymakers keen to see the USA uphold its international obligations
and continue to demonstrate leadership in reducing the global
economy’s dependence on burning fossil fuels, fears that were confirmed
on 1 June 2017 when President Trump announced the US would quit
the Paris climate accord. On 6 March 2017, one friend on Facebook
shared with me an anonymous message from a friend of his who
works at the EPA:

[Yeah] it’s as bad as you are hearing: The entire agency is under lockdown,
the website, facebook, twitter, you name it is static and can’t be updated.
All reports, findings, permits and studies are frozen and not to be released.
No presentations or meetings with outside groups are to be scheduled.
Any Press contacting us are to be directed to the Press Office which
is also silenced and will give no response. All grants and contracts
are frozen from the contractors working on Superfund sites to grad
school students working on their thesis. We are still doing our work,
writing reports, doing cancer modeling for pesticides hoping that this
is temporary and we will be able to serve the public soon. But many of
us are worried about an ideologically-fueled purging and if you use any
federal data I advise you gather what you can now. We have been told
the website is being reworked to reflect the new administration’s policy.
… [You] all pay for the government and you should know what’s going
on. I am posting this as a fellow citizen and not in any sort of official
capacity.

On their own, Trump’s intentions vis-à-vis climate science would raise

enough questions. For advocates of science who believe the latter
thrives best in conditions of ‘openness’ – one of this book’s central
themes – there have also been other causes for concern.
Politics of openness in a new world order 15

One particular worry is that Republican lawmakers might use

principles of transparency and reproducibility, which are fundamen-
tal to advancing the scientific method, to ‘weaponise’ science against
itself, using data generated from poor-quality studies to undermine
scientific credibility and consensus with a view to discrediting and
defunding science programmes not to their ideological liking (see
Yong, 2017). Another concern has arisen in response to calls during
the early days of the Trump administration to close the border to
citizens from a handful of Muslim-majority nations in the Middle
East and North Africa. The White House has cited concerns about
national security in its justification for promoting this policy, which
was articulated alongside further calls to build a wall along the
US–Mexico border and deport millions of undocumented migrants
living in the country. While the so-called ‘Muslim ban’ has been
challenged successfully in the courts, the cumulative impact of
both policy proposals has been to weaken the United States’ claim
to be a country welcoming to immigrants and refugees. Many
supporters of science worry this will discourage members of the
international scientific community from collaborating with col-
leagues based at US institutions. Could the apparent hostility of the
Trump administration towards Latino and Muslim migrants fuel a
more negative impression that the USA is no longer ‘open’ to those
seeking opportunities for collaboration, employment or study in the
United States?
Similar anxieties have animated debates about the future of science
and higher education in the United Kingdom following Brexit. For
now, it would seem that British scholars and scientists have much to
lose when the country departs the European Union. If the UK Govern-
ment embraces what has been coined a ‘hard’ Brexit, resulting in
membership of the European single market being sacrificed in favour
of uncompromising controls over borders and immigration, there is
a risk that UK science will be denied opportunities to access EU
research funding, participate in wider exchanges such as the ERASMUS
scheme (European Region Action Scheme for the Mobility of University
Students), or even attract well-qualified undergraduate or postgraduate
students from EU member states. British-based researchers who are
not citizens of the UK but are EU nationals worry about their future
beyond the conclusion of Article 50 negotiations. Anecdotal evidence
16 Science and the politics of openness

suggests there has already been a negative impact on prospective

collaborations between UK- and EU-based research institutions, even
though Britain remains a EU member state until at least 2019 and
can access European research funds during that time. Whether or
not British researchers find clear answers to their many questions
following the snap general election Prime Minister Theresa May called
for June 2017 remains to be seen.
The uncertainties science now faces, in both the UK and the USA,
underscore the importance of the issues explored in the chapters that
follow. One hope of this volume is to stimulate a conversation about
the relationship between science, publics and openness and it would
seem, in what we might characterise as politically ‘monstrous’ times,
the need for such a conversation has now become especially urgent.
How might we, as scholars and supporters of funding for scientific
research and teaching, respond in this moment of ‘crisis’ for the
disciplines we hold dear?
There are examples from which, I would suggest, we can draw
inspiration. On 22 April 2017, thousands of supporters of science
marched in the United States, the UK, indeed hundreds of cities
worldwide. The so-called ‘March for Science’ attracted considerable
media attention. Such initiatives help raise awareness of the issues
facing the science community as a result of the policy uncertainties
that Brexit and Trump’s election have unleashed.
I also take inspiration from my research subjects in Kansas. Since
2008, I have been visiting the state regularly, conducting ethnographic
fieldwork on grassroots Republican Party politics (see Smith, 2013,
2015, forthcoming). My particular interest has been this: how do
political moderates seek to empower themselves in the face of right-wing
extremism and religious conservatism?
Kansas was the perfect field site in which to explore this question.
It has been on the front line of the United States’ culture wars for the
last three decades. Infamously, in 2005, the State Board of Education
held a series of hearings on evolutionary theory, with a view to making
the case for the teaching of intelligent design in the high-school science
curriculum. At the time, evangelical Christians who believed in
young-earth creationism had captured the Kansas Board of Education.
The hearings attracted media interest from around the globe before
Politics of openness in a new world order 17

moderate Kansans mobilised and overturned the creationist majority

on the State Board of Education in 2006.
I began this research at a time when US satirists, cultural com-
mentators and politicos relished asking the rhetorical question that
Thomas Frank (2004) popularised when he asked What’s the Matter
with Kansas? I commenced this study before the Tea Party move-
ment came along, before the election of the socially conservative
Sam Brownback as governor of Kansas, before far-right Republicans
seized control of the state legislature and introduced destructive tax
cuts that continue to imperil a wide range of government services,
including public education. And I began this research before Donald
Trump helped unify and give voice nationally to an angry nativist
constituency.
But the question I sought to find answers to, in the United States’
heartland, now seems more vital than ever. If Kansas has been ahead
of the curve as far as US debates about the interface between science
and democracy are concerned, this is where I find hope. Because on
the day Donald Trump was elected president, moderate Kansans quietly
turned up at their polling booths and elected a string of moderate
Republicans and Democrats to the state legislature in what some are
beginning to understand was an important rejection of the far-right
economic and social policies that Trump appears keen to continue
championing nationally. Now, with a moderate majority in Topeka,
Republican and Democratic Party legislators, working together, are
trying to fix the damage wrought on the state’s finances after almost
six years of a reckless politics. More than anything, this gives me hope
– for science, for expertise, for publics that value education, for
the renewal of a measured and moderate politics on both sides of the
Atlantic.
If it can happen in Kansas, it can happen anywhere.1

This coda was written at the beginning of 2017.

1 National and international media organisations extensively covered both the

UK referendum on EU membership and the election of Donald Trump as US
president. My primary sources here are the BBC, the Guardian and the New York
Times.
18 Science and the politics of openness

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Part I

Transparency
1
Transparency

Benjamin Worthy

Christopher Hood and David Heald define transparency as a glass-like

process allowing those outside to look in, a metaphoric and literal
‘peering through the window’ illustrated by the glass of the German
Reichstag (Heald, 2006; Hood and Heald, 2006). The concept is
synonymous with openness and is rooted in the idea of letting in light
or knowledge (Bok, 1986). Transparency over the last decade has
been entrenched within political discourse as a kind of universal good
that is both an instrumental means to a number of positive outcomes
(such as improved trust or accountability) and an end in itself (Meijer,
2013). It is, moreover, an idea that is universally supported across the
political spectrum as a means of opening up institutions to public
scrutiny (Birchall, 2014).
Underneath this acceptance, transparency can entail many things.
Darch and Underwood describe it as an ‘ideologically-determined
political initiative that can be deployed to achieve a range of different
agendas’ (2010: 4). As these chapters show, the exact dynamics and
divisions of the use of the term vary from country to country and
area to area. Transparency resembles democracy itself, in that there
is a general consensus on the concept but its interpretation is ‘open
to complexity, contradiction and numerous varieties’: it is in some
senses an empty signifier that can be filled by very different interpreta-
tions or emphases (Stubbs and Snell, 2014: 160). It can have numerous
different aims and purposes, from monitoring by the public to hierarchi-
cal control of lesser bodies (Heald, 2012). Below are just three examples
of what transparency can mean:
24 Science and the politics of openness

• Political empowerment: it is a highly politicised instrument

of empowerment, embodying different democratic norms and
values (Fenster, 2012a).
• Policy solution: it can be a ‘dramatically satisfying answer to
every crisis and question about the state’ (Fenster, 2015).
• Economic improvement: it is a means of increasing efficiency
and even wealth, connected to a ‘consumer-citizen’ idea of
delivery and performance measurement.

On a symbolic level, transparency policy can then be used as a

radical weapon of empowerment, a tool of modernisation and a means
of demonstrating an institution or organisation is more ethical, more
honest or more trustworthy. Such a policy can ‘allow an incumbent
to make credible promises of greater transparency and anti-corruption
efforts to a wary public’ (Berliner, 2014: 479). It also represents an
‘apparently simple solution to complex problems – such as how to
fight corruption, promote trust in government, support corporate
social responsibility, and foster state accountability’ and is an acceptable
response to problems ‘at moments of crisis or moral failure’, a ‘visible
response to public disquiet [with] attractive, palliative qualities for
politicians and CEOs who want to be seen to be doing rather than
reflecting’ (Birchall, 2014: 77).
However, beneath the symbolism of any openness policy its dominant
message is fundamentally contested. Questions asking what sort of
transparency is created, of whom and by whom, expose the complex
politics underlying its use (Berliner, 2014). As the famous freedom-
of-information (FOI) campaigner Tom Blanton said, the goal to initiate
transparency is ‘not a sudden conversion’ but one created by the ‘specific
conditions of competition for political power’ (quoted in Darch and
Underwood, 2010: 64). There is a constant, highly politicised struggle
to define what a policy of openness can and should do (Fenster, 2015;
Yu and Robinson, 2012). Classic arguments for transparency are rooted
in both rational choice theories of behaviour change and principled
ideas of the moral rightness of openness (Birchall, 2014; Chambers,
2004; Darch and Underwood, 2010). For governments it is often imbued
with a very particular, often neo-liberal, conception of state–society
relations. More radical conceptions see it as a weapon that can be
used against these same neo-liberal ideas and reverse the assumptions
Transparency 25

of who is being open to whom, and debate the size of the political
spaces opened (or closed) by its arrival (Birchall, 2014). Julian Assange
and Theresa May are both vocal supporters of transparency, but they
are unlikely to agree on what it means and who it should affect.
Transparency remains a ‘contested political issue that masquerades
as an administrative tool’ (Fenster, 2012b: 449).
Transparency is in sharp contrast with the idea of secrecy. The
dangers of secrecy to becoming enlightened, and the opening up of
forbidden matters resonate across mythology, from Pandora’s box to
the story of Faust. Modern bureaucratic secrecy grew from the mysteri-
ous aura that surrounded the divine right of kings in the seventeenth
century (Bok, 1986). This secrecy was justified by the demands of
security or to protect sensitive decisions, and bound up in an aura
designed to elicit awe and often buried in a ‘rich array of ritualistic
and symbolic practices’ (Costas and Grey, 2014: 1425–1426). Secrecy
can be secured in the shape of formal institutional rules and regulations
(such as official secrecy legislation or gagging clauses), or it can be
obtained informally through unofficial concealment, taboos and
socialisation (such as codes of silence, or agreed and shared needs
for secrecy).
The clash between openness and secrecy equates, rather too simply,
to that between good and bad, and democratic and undemocratic.
There has been a growing view in democracies across the world that
secrecy, or too much concealment, is ‘incompatible with democracy’,
and it continues to be associated with evil, with ‘stealth and furtiveness,
lying and denial’ (Bok, 1986: 8). This characterisation oversimplifies
a more nuanced reality, as secrecy is closely entwined with a more
positive notion of privacy, while publicity can be associated with
manipulation and distortion (Bok, 1986). There are also broad swathes
of social and political activity where confidentiality is accepted and
deemed necessary, from the work of juries to peace negotiations, and
even staunch advocate of openness and transparency Jeremy Bentham
qualified the power of publicity with the need to prevent injustice
(Chambers, 2004).
A further difficulty is that transparency is many things at once. It
is achieved through laws but also by technology and experiments. It
is partly about making politicians and institutions accountable for
what they do – sometimes over minor matters and sometimes over
26 Science and the politics of openness

big ones. Yet it can be, and often is, a practical tool to help people in
their everyday lives. For all the attention given to scandals such as
MPs’ expenses, FOI legislation and access to online data are most
often used to help individuals and for local or ‘micro-political’ issues
(Worthy and Hazell, 2017).

Transparency and institutions

Transparency regulations have been slowly applied across many
institutions in the past two decades, from government to central banks
and from local to supranational bodies. To take the example of the
UK, the Freedom of Information Act 2000, which is possibly the
centrepiece of Britain’s transparency regime, operates in more than
100,000 public bodies from central and local government to the police,
hospitals, libraries and schools. Alongside this, specific sector-based
laws have allowed people to access certain data about a range of areas
from medical records to estate agents’ fees, while open-data policies
straddle many policy areas. Transparency regulations have also spread
to the private sector, from procurement openness clauses in contracts,
to publishing data on ownership of companies and multinational tax
reporting.
Thus, the boundaries surrounding transparency are constantly
moving. Disclosures using formal routes sit alongside leaks, semi-
authorised disclosures and plants, innovations, and radical actions
like WikiLeaks or the Panama papers that can all kick-start transparency
and gradually shift the border between open and closed or legal and
illegal disclosures (Pozen, 2013). There is rarely a clear distinction
between how transparency is produced. For example, is it through
an appeal to FOI laws, a leak or whistleblowing? As a consequence,
the legitimacy of disclosure falls along a continuum, with government
press releases at one end and Edward Snowden at the other. It is most
often the government that delineates what it sees as the legal boundaries
of openness; for example, of FOI laws or secrecy legislation. Government
frames the narrative over where transparency begins and ends. The
exact effect of transparency varies from institution to institution. Local
government has long held open meetings and has probably dealt more
successfully with demands for transparency than central government.
Parliament has struggled with scandal but has altered its culture towards
Transparency 27

being more open (Worthy and Hazell, 2017). The overt assumption
behind these changes is that transparency will trigger a chain of
reactions across institutional domains:
• The public will be interested and use the information and data
that are published.
• The public and others will act upon the data to leverage change
across organisations.
• Transparency will trigger cultural and behavioural change within
institutions.
Research increasingly questions and modifies each of these assumptions.
There is no general ideal user of information and, while some openness
initiatives generate public interest, others do not. FOI laws in the UK
are well used, but the numerous open-data experiments have proved
far more variable. As Roberts (2015) points out, the chain of events
from asking for or accessing data to actually receiving them and levering
change is long and weak. If or whether it can lever reforms depends
on the context in which the information is placed and whether the
instruments are available to enforce institutional or behavioural change
as a result (de Fine Licht, 2014). The hope lying behind transparency
that such information will influence or persuade rational, calculating
voters or engaged citizens has not been borne out (Bauhr and Grimes,
2014). Users and voters hold ‘deeply engrained’ views about government
and other institutions that are hard to dislodge. Any change coming
about as a result of new information appears to be brief and subject
specific (Marvel, 2016).
As to whether transparency drives cultural change, it can and has
opened up diverse institutions from local government to parliament.
How exactly an agent or body reacts to pressure for transparency can
vary, from enthusiastic experimentation to minimal compliance and
occasional outright resistance (Prat, 2006). Transparency reforms can
transform a body or can be diluted, getting lost amid institutional
wrangling or grinding to a halt against institutional resistance to
change, as seen in the EU (Hillebrandt et al., 2014). While the evidence
is slight for any perverse chilling effect, some politicians undoubtedly
see transparency as a burden and symbolic of a constrained government,
and have built a powerful counter-discourse around its (largely
unsubstantiated) negative effects.
28 Science and the politics of openness

Transparency and the public

In the chapters in this part we can see that transparency policies can
be a powerful tool for opening up bodies as they give citizens the
‘capacity to penetrate … defences and strategies’ built up over centuries
to preserve secrecy, and offer them the chance to create what Jeremy
Bentham called a ‘system of distrust’ to monitor their rulers or those
acting in their name (Bok, 1986: 9).
Generally, only a very small percentage of the population ever use
the tools of transparency (Worthy and Hazell, 2017). There are a
number of ways by which the public learns about transparency issues.
First, they often appear in the media and political discourse as solutions
to crises. Scandals, exposés or shocks, ranging from political corruption
to financial crashes, create a demand for greater openness. Alternatively,
the lack of openness is seen as the cause of the crisis (Roberts, 2012).
Secondly, as Fenster (2015) points out, transparency has also ‘captured
the popular imagination’ in narratives about whistleblowing or heroic
leaks, such as the leaks on the 2009 MPs’ expenses or those by Snowden
in 2013. The existence of mechanisms such as FOI laws provide daily
reminders in the media of the role and value of openness.
As all the chapters in this part mention, public interest in and use
of the new transparency opportunities vary from case to case. There
is a broad public awareness in the UK that some formal means of
transparency exist, such as the FOI laws, and there is a general (if
vague) support for them. In terms of leaks and ‘radical transparency’
such as Snowden’s leaks and WikiLeaks, public opinion is unclear and
shifts between different contexts. While there is a powerful supportive
folklore on whistleblowing, expectations and concerns over national
security can divide opinion as to the ethics and effects of these actions
(Fenster, 2012a; Roberts, 2012). Some fascinating experiments indicate
that the public support and are reassured by the presence of transpar-
ency mechanisms but have little desire to use them, instead preferring
to rely on other citizens to operate them and unleash their benefits
(see de Fine Licht, 2014; de Fine Licht et al., 2014).
Research shows that there are numerous disconnects over public
opinion and transparency, and various factors that can shape its impact:
• Context is key. Although transparency is seen as a good thing,
the battle over what it means and what its limits should be
Transparency 29

undoubtedly raises a series of competing and contradictory

issues. Transparency overlaps with the ethics of leaks, privacy
and national security. The view held by the public of any kind
of transparency at any one time is highly context depend-
ent. A leaker of classified information like Snowden may be
viewed very differently than the anonymous leaker of MPs’
expenses.
• Flawed assumptions. The idea underlying transparency – namely,
that information empowers rational, calculating citizens – is
misplaced, though politicians continue to press it. All those
who receive information have biases, and employ heuristic
assumptions that shape their ideas and views. These views may
interrupt the flow or change the meaning of information dis-
closed. All transparency systems and instruments are shaped
by the environment and political context in which they are
created (Meijer, 2013).
• Competing visions and meanings. The debate over transparency
and its effects continues, but may further complicate discussion
rather than resolve it as different sides pull against each other.
Governments seek a depoliticised (or redirected) transparency
focused on efficiency or improving services, while activists seek
greater openness of different parts of the state (and, increasingly,
the private sector). The different language used and different
aims may push discussion in divergent directions.
• Fluid borders. The exact boundaries of transparency are
constantly moving. Disclosures through leaks, semi-authorised
disclosures and plants, innovations such as open data, and ‘radical’
actions like Wikileaks can all provide an impetus to transparency
and gradually move the border between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ or
‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ (Pozen, 2013). Meaning is greatly complicated
by the closing off of certain issues, not least the transparency
of citizens through government surveillance, a rarely mentioned
aspect of the wider transparency debate (Birchall, 2014).

The chapters
The three chapters in this part discuss these themes in different areas,
looking at the opportunities and pitfalls that transparency presents
30 Science and the politics of openness

across three very different institutions and systems. They show it is

far from simple to understand transparency.
Stephen Curry examines the potential of open access to academic
research to break down barriers and open up research and knowledge
to the wider public. There have been notable steps forward from funders
and also from individual online innovators. However, acceptance of
the idea across academia has been patchy. So far, there is evidence of
some progress but there are economic and cultural barriers to the
need to publish, in some cases triggered by outright resistance to the
principle of engaging more widely, as seen in the case of NASA. Demand
for greater access on the part of citizen users is just as uneven.
Nevertheless, the momentum provided by funders and technology
means open access is here to stay.
Carmen McLeod examines one of the most sensitive connections
between openness and privacy in the transparency of animal testing.
This chapter maps two rather different approaches, in the UK and
Switzerland, and argues that information supplied about animal
experiments will not be enough to mend the historically troubled
relations between animal-research science and society. On the one
hand, it is argued that the public have a clear right to know about
what is done in their name and, on the other, there is held to be a
right to privacy and a need for protection. The case illustrates how
the demands of transparency must be balanced with other competing
and compelling needs and rights. At its borders, transparency interacts
in complex ways with other sensitive rights including privacy, confi-
dentiality and security.
The final chapter by Roda Madziva and Vivien Lowndes on Christian
asylum seekers and the UK Border Agency (UKBA) challenges some
of the assumptions about openness and the idea that clear, neutral
information is the bedrock of transparency. Information is profoundly
shaped by its sociopolitical context and the hidden and not-so-hidden
biases or ignorance that shape our environment. Their qualitative
research shows how vital basic data may be misconstrued and mis-
understood, and also placed within particular institutional narratives
that not only close off the fairness that such procedures bring but
even create perverse outcomes.
Increased openness is frequently offered by governments or
organisations as a symbol of their difference from their predecessors
Transparency 31

or competitors, or their commitment to certain values and ways

of working. Yet these chapters show that while transparency can
change institutions, institutions can also remake transparency in their
own image.

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2
Open access: the beast that no-one
could – or should – control?
Stephen Curry

‘The main thing, it seems to me, is to remember that technology

manufactures not gadgets, but social change,’ declared science historian
and broadcaster James Burke in a lecture given in 1985 (Burke, 2005).
This was several years before the rise of the personal computer and
the internet. But history’s knack of repeating itself means that the
words are no less true of the digital transformation of the world in
the last two decades. The recasting of information into digital forms
that can be replicated and transmitted instantly across the globe has
changed our relationship with it in myriad ways. This poses commercial
challenges in some industries – music, film and newspapers, for example
– but at the same time has given rise to whole new businesses such
as search engines, social networking and online retailing. It has also
created opportunities for the public to access public information, which
is changing the provision of government services and opening up
new avenues for democratic dialogue.
The effects have been no less profound within academia, even if
they have been slower to work through the system. Our relationship
with research papers and data is changing because it is easier and
cheaper than ever before to put these scientific outputs into the public
domain. In the era of printed journals this possibility had never arisen
because of the costs of production and distribution. Now that these
have largely disappeared, the question is: why not make all scientific
research publicly available?
However, this simple question does not have a simple answer. There
remains considerable debate about the extent to which open access
34 Science and the politics of openness

should be allowed to perturb the mores of scholarship and research

or to breach the walls of the academy. At the core of discussions on
open access, at least in policy formulations, is the idea that the public,
as taxpayers, should have access to the research that they fund.
Academic perspectives on open access, by contrast, tend to be more
focused on the internal operations of scientific research, although
there are signs that the issue is stimulating discussion within the
academy on how research findings should be made accessible to the
public.
The growth of open access has coincided with a shift in thinking
about public involvement in science, from the deficit model of public
understanding of science initiatives, which tended to see the issue
as one of ordinary people’s lack of knowledge, to the more balanced
notion of public engagement (Stilgoe et al., 2014). This makes it tricky
to identify the precise effects of open access, which is the aim of this
chapter. To set the scene, I will give a brief description of the open-access
movement and recent policy initiatives, and discuss their impacts on
the attitudes of scientists towards the broader open-science agenda
and public engagement. I then consider the effects of open access (and
allied moves) on the authority and independence of science – two issues
that are perturbed by the increasingly blurred boundary between the
academy and the public. Lastly, I examine the sometimes surprising
feedback effects on open access that arise through the collaboration of
advocacy groups and citizen scientists with professional researchers.
Although it lurks mainly in the background of the public engagement
arena, the topic of open access nevertheless provides a useful focus
for some of the broader issues raised by the interaction of public and
academic domains. It sharpens the questions of what exactly the public
wants or needs in terms of access to scientific research, and what the
academy is prepared to yield in return for continued public support.
Although open access has the capacity to change the dynamics of
engagement between the public and the academy, the realisation of
this potential requires examination of the balance of power between
them, and clarification of the notions of academic freedom and
responsibility. The journey since the 1990s suggests that no-one is in
overall control of these processes. This is perhaps inevitable, and may
even be desirable in a democratic society that aspires to be more
open.
Open access 35

What is open access and how has it been implemented

as a policy?
Open access is very much an academic initiative, largely conceived
as a tool for researchers. Its origins lie at the messy confluence of
digital technology and open licensing for software (Eve, 2014; Suber,
2012), but a defining moment appears to be Stevan Harnad’s ‘subversive
proposal’ of 1994 (Harnad, 1994). This advocated the free electronic
dissemination of research results, but was envisioned as ‘applicable
only to ESOTERIC … scientific and scholarly publication’ to further
learned enquiry by ‘fellow esoteric scientists and scholars the world
over’. The 2002 statement from the Budapest Open Access Initiative
(Chan et al., 2010) defined open access to the research literature as:
its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read,
download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these
articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use
them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical
barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet
itself.
This encapsulates a broad notion of the intended audience, listing
‘scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds’, but
falls short of explicitly mentioning the public.
Even so, the statement did identify open access as an ‘unprecedented
public good’, a concept used by economists to identify commodities
that are non-excludable and non-rivalrous – in other words, available
to all and undiminished by their use (Stephan, 2012) – and a label
that draws the notion of public value into the discussion. The public
dimension has certainly featured in the formulation of government
open-access policies, which have tended to enshrine the rights of the
public as taxpayers. David Willetts, the former UK Minister for
Universities and Science, and a strong driver of open access, trailed
his thinking in a speech to the Publishers’ Association in May 2012:
‘As taxpayers put their money towards intellectual enquiry, they cannot
be barred from then accessing it’ (Willetts, 2012). He did not elaborate
on what the taxpayers might do with this access, despite the fact that
his interest in the issue was first stirred by his own difficulties in
getting hold of research papers while writing The Pinch, a book on
the intergenerational social contract.
36 Science and the politics of openness

In a similar vein, the 2013 White House memorandum on open

access stated simply that ‘citizens deserve easy access to the results
of scientific research their tax dollars have paid for’ (Holdren, 2013).
The EU’s guidelines on open access for its Horizon 2020 research
programme list the same goal, but also see open access as a way
to ‘involve citizens and society’ through ‘improved transparency of
the scientific process’ (EU, 2014). Again, the details of how citizens
might be involved are left as an exercise for the citizens. Perhaps
that is because making publicly funded research accessible is just one
component of a broader open-data policy landscape that is shaped by
a diverse set of motivations. Return on investment remains a central
preoccupation for governments, and the release of public research and
data is clearly seen as a way to stimulate innovation in new products,
services and markets. But there is also, in the UK at least, a desire
to improve public services, and a developing recognition of the link
between transparency and democratic accountability – both for govern-
ment and for the governance of scientific research (Boulton et al.,
2012).
The emergent concept of responsible research and innovation (RRI),
which places value on public input into efforts to anticipate the risks
associated with novel avenues of research, such as nanotechnology
or systems biology, seems likely to be co-opted as a further justification,
but appears to be too recent to have figured in open-access policy
formulations (Stilgoe et al., 2013).

What are attitudes to open access among scientists?

Reaction to open access among academics has been mixed. Some
have embraced it enthusiastically. Others, though sympathetic in
principle, have criticised various aspects of its implementation; still
others have objected to the less restrictive forms of creative commons
(CC) licensing as a gross infringement of authors’ rights (Allington,
2014; Mandler, 2014). There have been lively internal debates between
open-access advocates, publishers, learned societies, universities,
funders and representatives of different scholarly disciplines (Eve,
2014; Hochschild, 2016; Mainwaring, 2016).
While most scientists seem sensitive to the resonance of open access
with the amateur ethos of sharing that still survives within the research
Open access 37

community, scientists are busy people with many pressing preoccupa-

tions, and generally only turn to the issue once a manuscript has been
accepted for publication and the question of compliance with funder
policies arises.
The lack of engagement among research scientists has not been
helped by the convoluted history of open-access policy development.
In the UK the implementation of a new policy by Research Councils
UK (RCUK) in 2012–2013 stumbled at first. The original strong
preference for ‘gold’ open access was subsequently refined to make it
clear that ‘green’ open-access routes were acceptable alternatives (RCUK,
2014). The terms gold and green open access have yet to sink deep
roots in academic or public minds and require some clarification.
Gold open access entails making the published paper immediately
available via the journal, which may require payment of an article-
processing charge, with obvious cost implications that were not well
received, particularly at a time when public funding for research was
under severe pressure. Green open access generally means that the
author’s peer-reviewed manuscript (not yet formatted or copy-edited
by the journal) is made available in an institutional repository. The
green route is free to the author – its costs hidden within repository
investment and the traditional subscription model of publishing.
Moreover, green open access is often subject to publisher embargoes,
which constitute delays of months or years before the manuscript is
released to public view.
A subsequent announcement that the Higher Education Funding
Council for England (HEFCE) will require all publications to be open
access to qualify as submissions to future research excellence framework
(REF) exercises was agnostic on whether open access should be achieved
by the gold or green route (HEFCE, 2015). Although a bold move
(Eve et al., 2014), this dislocation from the thrust of the RCUK policy
added to confusion among researchers. A recent review of UK open-
access policy by Adam Tickell has recommended the harmonisation
of RCUK and HEFCE policies in order to simplify the requirements
imposed on researchers (Tickell, 2016). Good policy requires effective
implementation, especially by authors and their institutions. Although
one of the ultimate aims of open access is the public interest, it is
possible to detect in these machinations a greater preoccupation with
the interests of researchers.
38 Science and the politics of openness

Some advocates see open access primarily as a service to science,

its purpose being to accelerate and enrich the processes of research
by freeing up public access to primary literature. Indeed, scientists
(Breckler, 2006) and humanities scholars (Osborne, 2013) frequently
express their suspicion that the public has little need of open access
because they would not be able to understand research papers, a
view sometimes deployed in defence of the status quo (Anderson,
2015).
There is little doubt that the sophistication of the research literature,
coupled with its formal, jargon-laden style, is a barrier to understanding
by the proverbial man or woman in the street. But such elitist views
underestimate the sophistication of some members of the public, as
we shall see below, and constitute a risky attitude in a democratic
society. They also discount the benefits of lay summaries, which are
increasingly being offered by journals, or of mediation by science
bloggers (who can range more widely in an open-access landscape).
Concerns have also been expressed in some quarters that open-access
policies are an infringement of academic freedom. Such arguments
tend to expand the definition of academic freedom beyond its broadly
agreed provisions to protect the right of scholars to investigate and
publish on topics of their choosing without fear of sanction from
university employers or governments. Kyle Grayson, for example, has
asserted that it should also include the right ‘to place your research
where you believe it will have the biggest impact on the audience that
you are trying to reach’ (Grayson, 2013), while Rick Anderson argues
it also entails ‘the right to have some say as to how, where, whether,
and by whom one’s work is published’ (Anderson, 2015). In particular,
Anderson argues that these freedoms are lost in the imposition of
CC BY licences, which allow free reuse by third parties (provided
that acknowledgement and reference back to the original are made),
and that open-access policies requiring such licences amount to
‘coercion’. The coercion of academics is discussed in journalist Richard
Poynder’s lengthy critique of HEFCE’s new policy of admitting only
open-access papers in future REF assessments (Poynder, 2015). He
argues that the exclusionary and divisive nature of the REF, which
assesses only a minority of university researchers and teachers and is
widely viewed as punishingly bureaucratic, makes it a strange bedfellow
for the egalitarian impulses of the open-access movement. Poynder’s
Open access 39

view is that open-access advocates ‘made a fundamental error when

they sought to co-opt government to their cause’.
There are certainly some legitimate issues to be tackled here (Kingsley,
2016). The freedoms given to users of CC-BY-licensed open-access
content to create derivative works remain a fixation among some
humanities scholars (Mandler, 2014), fearful of remixing that obscures
attribution or the author’s original intent. Against this view, Eve and
Kingsley have argued that such concerns are overstated and reflect
an underestimation of the protections afforded by CC licences and
the ethical norms of the academy (Eve, 2015; Kingsley and Kennan,
2015).
Nevertheless, it is undeniable that open access rubs up against
academic freedom, as acknowledged by Curt Rice in making the case
that open access can actually bolster the privileges accorded to scholars
(Rice, 2013). Academic freedom remains a contested concept that
should be considered negotiable as the place of scholarship within
society continues to evolve. The concerns expressed by critics have
mostly reflected a preoccupation with academic freedoms and rights,
but it is also necessary to consider the question of responsibilities. A
counter-view to Poynder is that the linkage of open access to the REF
can be seen as entirely appropriate, since both are forms of public
accountability. Whether funders should have a say in how the research
that they support should be published is also a legitimate question,
especially if the aim is to broaden the readership so that it might stir
as many minds as possible, be integrated into their thoughts and give
rise to new syntheses and insights. What more could – or should – a
scholar hope for? That is a question that has been addressed rather
cautiously, not least because researchers and their institutions remain
in the thrall of journal impact factors for their career advancement
and research assessment.

Has open access changed attitudes of scientists to

public engagement?
Arguably, open access may serve as a useful first point of contact for
many scientists with the broader audience for their research and
public-facing open-science movement. But how effectively does it
expose scientists to their public duty – for many, a concept defined
40 Science and the politics of openness

only by the aspirational ‘plans for public engagement’ sections found

in grant application forms?
We should note first that the UK Government’s Public Attitudes to
Science survey (Castell et al., 2014) has revealed a popular demand
for scientists to be more involved in discussions with the public about
their research. Anecdotally, there is an increasing acknowledgement
by scientists of the need to interact with various public constituencies
(e.g. patient groups, environmental activists, citizen scientists), though
at the same time they are wary of how to go about this. For example,
should such interactions happen in academic or public forums, including
social media? There is also fear of exposure to the demands of advocacy
groups that refuse to play by the academic rules of engagement.
Even when the encounter with open access raises questions of public
interest, penetration of the academic mindset has been limited, in
part because of the complexity of issues at stake. These include questions
of the reliability of open-access research literature (raised by concerns
about vanity publishing in author-pays business models) and the
questionable peer-review quality of so-called predatory journals, both
of which potentially undermine public trust in research. It is difficult
to quantify the extent of these problems, which are mitigated by the
desire of serious scholars to protect their reputations. To a significant
extent they predate the rise of open access (Kingsley and Kennan,
2015) and address deep systemic problems with traditional peer-review
processes of scholarly publishing (Smith, 2006). Related concerns have
emerged more recently over the non-reproducibility of scientific
findings, through either error or fraud in the original work (Casadevall
and Fang, 2012). Open access is not touted as a ready solution to such
ills, though the fact that it maximises the readership of the research
literature clearly enhances the capacity for post-publication detection
of inaccuracies.
The question of the cost of open access is one that has also exercised
academics, but more because of its perceived incursions into research
budgets, particularly by the gold-favouring RCUK policy, or the
demands placed on authors not in receipt of research grants. The
broader question of the total cost of scholarly publishing has received
less attention – though it has not been ignored entirely (Hochschild,
2016; Kirby, 2015; Mainwaring, 2016). In part, this is because academics
are largely ignorant of the cost of journal subscriptions, which are
Open access 41

normally managed on their behalf by university librarians. Although

the direction of travel is away from subscription models towards a
totally open-access world, the details of the transition remain obscure
and mired in enduring arguments between various stakeholders.
Economic modelling suggests that a fully open-access publishing
system could deliver savings by creating a market where there is genuine
competition for publishing services (Swan and Houghton, 2012), but
these have yet to be realised.
There is no easy escape from the dysfunctional features of the market
in journal subscriptions, in which journals cannot be regarded as
competing products by their purchasers and market forces are distorted
not only by academic ignorance of the costs but also by preoccupations
with journal prestige (Schieber, 2013). As a result, relatively little
thought has been given by scientists to the argument that they should
be supporting university librarians in their bids to get value for money
in negotiations with publishers over subscription fees. There is a
pragmatic case that researchers should be made sensitive to the issue
of cost, especially when there is pressure on public funding, in order
to avoid signalling privileged or insular attitudes. However, the
complexity and lack of predictability of the pace and extent of transition
to a functioning open-access market are significant impediments in
this debate.
For some scientists the argument for open access is a moral one.
Mike Taylor’s insistence that paywalls are immoral and that the sci-
entists’ job ‘to bring new knowledge into the world’ requires them to
make it freely accessible is a challenge to long-standing norms of the
academy (Taylor, 2013). From another perspective, while welcoming
the potential of open access, Hochschild has raised moral questions
about its redistributive implications, particularly for poor scholars in
the global South under business models that require payment of
article-processing charges (Hochschild, 2016), which have yet to be
answered satisfactorily.
Nevertheless, there is a growing sense that the ground is shifting
in response to public need. Recent initiatives by funders and publishers
to provide free access to research on Ebola virus and Zika virus in
response to serious public health crises have thrown a spotlight on
the slow and restrictive practices that have come to dominate publishing
(Curry, 2016). In announcing the moves to speed the release of Zika
42 Science and the politics of openness

virus research, the statement of the consortium of funders and publish-

ers led by the Wellcome Trust spoke of an imperative. It was not
described as a moral imperative, but did seem to resemble one. The
logical corollary to these initiatives is to ask why they should not be
extended to other infectious diseases – HIV, tuberculosis and malaria
infections have caused more harm than Ebola or Zika – or even to
other research areas where there is a strong public interest, such as
antimicrobial resistance; climate change; or secure supplies of energy,
water and food? Here, the idea of open access has prised open a
gateway that has the potential to be transformative. It has yet to be
converted into a mainstream conduit to the public domain, but the
norms of the academy and its duty to the public interest are evidently
still being negotiated.
The pressures towards greater openness seem increasingly irresistible
and they may increase yet further as the latest generation of scientists
– which has grown up with the internet – takes its seat in the academy.
Among them are some notable idealists. Neuroscientist Erin McKiernan,
for example, sees access to information as a human right and has
pledged to work as openly as possible (McKiernan, 2015). The Open
Access Button was created by two medical students, David Carroll
and Joe McArthur, as a web-browser tool to help readers who encoun-
tered publisher paywalls to access free versions of the research papers
they wanted (Carroll and McArthur, 2013). Sci-Hub, a freely accessible
repository of over sixty-two million research papers created by software
developer and neurotechnology researcher Alexandra Elbakyan, is a
more radical and controversial reaction to journal paywalls. Though
the repository is clearly in breach of copyright law – at the time of
writing, Sci-Hub is the subject of a legal complaint initiated by Elsevier
– Elbakyan has defended it by citing the provision in the UN declaration
on human rights that asserts the right of everyone ‘to share in scientific
advancement and its benefits’ (Taylor, 2016). The moral complexities,
which have sombre echoes of the case brought against open-access
activist Aaron Swartz after he had downloaded several million docu-
ments from JSTOR, are beyond the scope of this chapter. However,
the work of these activists highlights the perspective of young people
that the present state of scholarly publishing is increasingly ill fitted
to the digital world. That perspective raises important ethical and
Open access 43

technical arguments about scholarly publishing that cannot ultimately

be settled in court.

How does open access affect the authority and

independence of science?
Scientists commonly see themselves as part of a self-governing com-
munity of experts, and science as a responsible, self-correcting process
of knowledge generation. For this reason they defend institutions
such as peer review, which provides scientific control over what is
published. In the UK this perspective shores up the Haldane principle,
the right of scientists (within certain strategic constraints set by
government and research councils) to determine which research projects
should be funded. However, this view of self-governance is coming
under challenge, from government transparency, journal impact and
RRI agendas; from related shifts in the responsibilities owed to public
engagement; from some of the public trust issues mentioned above
in relation to the reliability of the research literature; and from special-
interest campaign groups (e.g. on animal research, climate change,
and genetic modification).
While the boundary between academic science and the rest of the
world has never been impermeable, it demarcates the sphere of authority
and independence of scientists. The growth of open science and social
media are making this boundary more porous, and it is worth consider-
ing as a potential locus for future interactions with open access.
For the most part the relationship between scientists and social
media remains guarded. Some have embraced the openness provided
by new democratising channels of communication, but many continue
to sneer at blogs, even those written by scientists. Although there
have been cases where meaningful scientific critique has appeared in
blogs, the view still prevails that these are not appropriate channels
for discussions between scientists. For example, following the publica-
tion by NASA researchers of a claimed discovery of bacteria that
could incorporate arsenic into their DNA, the space agency refused
to engage with the critique published on the blog of microbiologist
Rosie Redfield because it did not feel it to be ‘appropriate to debate
the science using the media and bloggers’ (CBC News, 2010).
44 Science and the politics of openness

However, there is a growing sense that NASA’s view is out of date.

The website PubPeer.com has used the tools of social media to create
a platform for open discussion of the research literature. It has emerged
as a prominent venue for the identification of errors in research papers
and, on occasion, instances of scientific fraud. A controversial feature
of the platform is that commenters may remain anonymous (or
unregistered) and their academic credentials unknown – but the
scientists behind the site assert that the quality of comments
from registered and unregistered users is indistinguishable (PubPeer,
2015).
The organic – some might say unregulated – growth of PubPeer
reflects the enabling power of the internet and is diagnostic of unmet
need in the publishing system. However, although the identity of
many of its users is unknown, their comments and criticisms still
largely reflect the same internal debates among researchers about
quality control in the published literature. Different challenges arise
when the research being discussed touches on matters of public interest
or concern. Although there is a recognition that transparency is the
key to developing and maintaining public trust (Boulton et al., 2012;
Stilgoe et al., 2013), and that scientists have a duty to respond intel-
ligently when confronted by challenges to their research, the upsurge
in such challenges engendered by social media can pose severe difficul-
ties. As Lewandowsky and Bishop have pointed out, ‘openness can
be exploited by opponents who are keen to stall inconvenient research’
because campaigners may not be ‘committed to informed debate’
(Lewandowsky and Bishop, 2016). These may be difficult debates for
the scientific community, but they are important and inevitable in a
democratic society – and need to be conducted with some care (Pearce
et al., 2016).
Open access has not yet assumed a prominent role in these interac-
tions. However, they seem likely to become more frequent in an
open-access world and should, it is hoped, also be better informed.
Moreover, a general disposition towards openness is a core part of
building trust through transparency. Experiments in open-access
journals with open peer review (e.g. F1000Research, Atmospheric
Chemistry and Physics) further increase the transparency of the
scientific enterprise, as well as helping to mitigate some of the worst
effects of anonymous peer reviews.
Open access 45

What is the impact of open access on the capacity of

different publics to engage with science?

As noted above, open access was not primarily conceived as a service

to the general public or as a driver of public engagement. Policy state-
ments may have nodded in this direction by mentioning the rights of
taxpayers to access the work they have funded, but there is a degree
of blindness here because, of course, not all citizens are taxpayers.
Nevertheless, there is a broad array of public audiences for the
research literature. This includes politicians and civil servants, policy
researchers, media, non-governmental organisations, large and small
businesses, independent scholars, graduates of various disciplines,
patients’ advocacy groups, and citizen scientists. The impact of open
access on these groups has not yet been investigated systematically
and is hard to quantify. It seems likely to be relatively minor, given
that only a minority of research articles is reckoned to be open access:
current estimates are that around 20%–30% of the research literature
is freely available through journals or repositories, though the growth
trend is upward (Laakso and Björk, 2012; Research Information
Network, 2015).
That said, there are various citizens’ groups that, for different reasons,
want not just increased access to read the research literature but also
to be able to make their own contributions to it. These include advocacy
groups, particularly around healthcare and environmental issues (e.g.
pollution, biodiversity), as well as the citizen-science movement. Such
groups predate the internet (and open access). In the 1960s and 1970s
the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science and Science
for the People, for example, formed around concerns about weapons
research and environmental pollution, but activists and advocates
have been greatly stimulated by the organisational power of the web
and the general increase in access to information that it affords. For
example, a 2007 report concluded that health professionals have both
underestimated the ability of patients to access and provide useful
online resources and overestimated the hazards of imperfect online
information (Ferguson, 2007). The threat of a phenomenon that was
initially seen as a challenge to paternalistic medical practice is dissolving
amid growing recognition that informed patients are valuable partners
in managing healthcare.
46 Science and the politics of openness

The particular benefits of open access in this space appear patchy

and uneven, perhaps owing to the relative novelty of citizen science
and the still-limited extent of research that is published in this form.
But there are initiatives to overcome this. PatientPower campaigns
for greater access, as well as providing other sources of information,
while PatientInform is an initiative run jointly by publishers, medical
societies and health professionals to enable access to the research
literature to member organisations (though not directly to members
of the public). The demand for access is widespread – in 2006, 80%
of internet users were reported to have searched online for information
on at least one of sixteen different medical conditions (though demand
for access to the primary research literature will only be a fraction of
this). This type of search activity is most prevalent among younger
people who have grown up with the internet, and seems likely to
increase as they reach middle and old age.
Just as interesting is the growing involvement of patient groups in
medical research, which has led to innovations that are likely to increase
awareness of the potential of open access. A striking recent example
springs from work on the rare genetic disorder, N-glycanase 1 deficiency
(known as NGLY1). The condition was identified after Cristina and
Matt Might linked up with genetics researchers in the search for the
underlying cause of their young son’s problematic physical and mental
development. Genome sequencing identified previously unknown
mutations in the N-glycanase 1 gene, and triggered the search for
other patients. Thus far the case follows a pattern of parental advocacy
that is familiar from Hollywood movies such as Extraordinary Measures
or Lorenzo’s Oil, but the interesting twist here – which is an important
signal of the dynamism of patient–researcher interactions – is that
the push to develop a treatment for NGLY1 has kick-started a citizen-
science project (Mark2Cure) to text mine the research literature. In
its first publication (made available as an open-access preprint on the
bioRxiv), the project has shown that groups of citizens can identify
and link keywords within the biomedical literature as accurately as a
researcher with PhD-level training (Tsueng et al., 2016).
The Mark2Cure study does not have any citizen scientists as authors,
but this is being normalised as an appropriate role. The open-access
British Medical Journal ‘welcomes studies that were led or coauthored
by patients’, while the health and social care journal Research
Open access 47

Involvement and Engagement (also open access) has a patient advocate,

Richard Stephens, as a co-editor-in-chief. Beyond patient groups,
citizen-scientist authors can readily be found in the literature on
environmental pollution (Davis and Murphy, 2015; Padró-Martínez
et al., 2015).
Similar developments – and challenges to traditional authority – are
detectable across the whole spectrum of citizen-science projects, even
in those areas where interest is driven by curiosity rather than personal
need. Citizen-scientist projects vary enormously in scope, format and
level of engagement between lay people and professional researchers
(Shirk et al., 2012; Silvertown, 2009).
Attitudes to and experiences of open access vary within the
citizen-science movement. Anecdotally, project organisers from the
ranks of academia have reported sporadic demands for research
papers that are usually satisfied on an ad hoc basis by distributing
electronic versions accessed through university library subscriptions.
Nevertheless, there is sensitivity to the issue. Robyn Bailey, who leads
the ornithological NestWatch project at Cornell University, told me
in an email that she was pleased to have been able to publish a paper
co-authored with citizen scientist Gerald Clark in the open-access
journal PeerJ (Bailey and Clark, 2014), recognising the need to
share the results with all participants in the project. But she also
acknowledged the pressure on academics to publish in high-impact
journals, which can dramatically increase the costs if immediate access is
desired.
These factors are recognised by other citizen-science projects but,
although there is widespread understanding of the need to ensure
that the results of such projects are made available to participants as
part of a positive-feedback loop, open-access publication appears to
be a relatively unusual avenue for doing so. Newsletters and blog posts
serve as alternative means of communication that have the advantage
of being more digestible, though for many rare diseases there are few
secondary resources, and affected communities have no choice but
to look at the primary literature. The Zooniverse, a diverse collection
of projects, is unusual in having a clear policy requiring results to be
published in open-access venues.
Citizen science is a dynamic and innovative area. Demand for access
to the wider research literature seems likely to increase as the
48 Science and the politics of openness

more-engaged participants seek to better understand the science behind

their projects. Given the increasing sophistication of the contributions
made by citizen scientists, it also seems appropriate to ensure that
papers arising from their projects are made available to the whole
community by open access. A recent open-access paper from the
EteRNA project – an online game designed to search for improved
methods for predicting the fold of RNA (ribonucleic acid) sequences
– has three gamers – Jeff Anderson-Lee, Eli Fisker and Mathew Zada
– as co-authors (Anderson-Lee et al., 2016). This arose because Rhiju
Das, the project leader at Stanford University, noticed that Anderson-
Lee and Fisker had independently compiled extensive documentation
on their approach to the RNA-folding problem, and he encouraged
them to write it up. EteRNA has an informal open-access policy that
is about to be written into the end-user license agreement. ‘It just
seems like the right thing to do,’ Das told me (personal communication,
email, 24 February 2016).
The positive-feedback effects of open access on citizen science are
important, not just for recognising citizen scientists’ contributions
and enhancing their knowledge and skills, but also as a way of making
professional scientists more aware of the high-level capabilities of
their citizen counterparts. The wider impacts of citizen science are
difficult to assess, but it is an activity that could further increase the
porosity of the walls of academia in ways that could have other societal
benefits; for example, enhancing citizen participation in discussions
around RRI.

Concluding remarks
Open access appears to fit naturally with the goal of making science
public, but its particular contributions can be difficult to discern. The
picture presented in this chapter is unfinished because the forces at
play have yet to reach any kind of equilibrium. Though the pace of
change may not be fast enough for its most enthusiastic supporters,
there has been an indisputable rise of open access as a result of the
advocacy of academics and the policy initiatives of governments and
funding agencies. Awareness of the challenge to traditional modes of
scholarly publishing is widespread within the academy, which appears
to be sympathetic to open access in principle, even if the various
Open access 49

requirements of policy implementation are not universally welcomed.

Signs that it may encourage scientists to be more outward facing are
emerging, but they are hard to separate from more general moves to
open up the academy.
On the side of the public – or publics – levels of awareness and use
are more limited. In certain quarters open access is seen as very
important, but it is also just one form of research information that is
available to citizens on the internet. That said, it is important to
recognise that intermediaries to information such as journalists,
bloggers or advocacy groups, also stand to benefit from increased
open access.
The idea of open access as a journey has become something of a
cliché, at least in the UK, but it retains a kernel of truth. Although
the direction of travel is upwards from a relatively low baseline, the
trajectory remains prone to deviation. Few would have predicted the
present destination at the outset of the 1990s. Just as the diffuse
boundaries between disciplines are reckoned to define a territory of
creative interaction, the public–academy boundary that accompanies
open access appears to be fertile ground. This is not just true of technical
innovation and challenges to customs and practice in the academy.
There are signs too, among academics, new publishers and citizen
scientists, that it can bring new life.
As the primary producer and consumer of the research literature,
the academy remains in overall control. But there are pressures from
above and below for open access as part of the open-science agenda
that offers the benefit of greater integration and mutual understanding
between scientists and society. There are risks here, particularly in
contentious areas of research that attract attention from combative
campaigners, but few would contend that these can be mitigated by
restricting access to the research literature. Public dialogue is an
essential feature of democratic societies and can only be served by
measures to increase the knowledge base of that conversation.

Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to David Willets, Dorothy Griffiths, Imran Khan
and Jack Stilgoe for their insightful discussions; to Katherine Mathieson,
Roland Jackson, Lydia Nicholas, Steve Royle, Robyn Bailey, Betsy
50 Science and the politics of openness

Carlson, Jason Holmberg, Chris Santos-Lang, Lea Shanley, Yonit Yogev,

Emei Ma, David Sittenfeld, Rhiju Das, Chris Lintott, Grant Miller,
David Slawson, David Baker, Caren Cooper, Harold Johnson, Sara
Riggare, Tania Tirraoro, Mariana Campos and Ginger Tsueng for
their helpful responses to email enquires; to Amy and ‘OA’ for comments
via my blog; and to Bev Acreman, Laurence Cox, Richard Fisher,
David Mainwaring and Richard Poynder for criticism of a preprint
version of this chapter.

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independent-advice.
Tsueng, G., Nanis, M., Fouquier, J., Good, B. M., and Su, A. I. (2016). Citizen
science for mining the biomedical literature. bioRxiv, 13 June. doi: http://
dx.doi.org/10.1101/038083.
Willetts, D. (2012). Public access to publicly-funded research. Gov.uk, Department
for Business, Innovation and Skills. Retrieved 4 March 2016 from: www.gov.uk/
government/speeches/public-access-to-publicly-funded-research.
3
Assuaging fears of monstrousness: UK and
Swiss initiatives to open up animal
laboratory research
Carmen M. McLeod

Suspicion always attaches to mystery. … The best project prepared in

darkness, would excite more alarm than the worst, undertaken under
the auspices of publicity. (Bentham, 1999 [1791]: 30)

The relationship between animal laboratory research science (AR)

and society has a particularly complex, contested and troubled history
and is associated with secrecy and obfuscation. Various works in the
literature show societal fears that scientific experimentation on animals
is a monstrous activity,1 asking: ‘What kind of person would do such
an experiment?’ (Merriam, 2012: 127). Two recent policy initiatives
– the UK Concordat on Openness on Animal Research (UKC) and
the Swiss Basel Declaration (BD) – seek to open up science–society
relations and AR in order to build more trust and assuage fears of
monstrousness within this space. These initiatives illustrate the chal-
lenges of negotiating or restoring trust in the relationship between
science and society (see Dierkes and von Grote, 2000; Jasanoff, 2004;
Wynne, 2006) and the complications of implementing an open-science
agenda (Levin et al., 2016). This chapter explores the complexities of
trust and openness in science and society relations through a compara-
tive analysis of recent openness initiatives in the UK and Switzerland,
examining the influence of historically troubled relations between AR
science and society and considering whether the provision of more

1 One of the most well-known fictional accounts depicting the animal researcher as
a monster is H. G. Wells’s (1896) The Island of Dr Moreau.
56 Science and the politics of openness

information and greater transparency will be enough to mend the

relationship.2
Historically, AR has been practised outside the purview of the public
(Garrett, 2012), and intense debates between the AR community and
society have sorely tested their trustful relations in the past. In the
UK and Switzerland accusations of betrayal can be found on both
sides of the science–society divide. In the UK, the legacy of so-called
‘extremist’ and violent animal-rights activities from the 1990s and the
2000s continue to taint the AR relationship.3 Scientists and scientific
institutions working in AR claimed that secrecy was necessary for
security reasons as they were virtually ‘under siege’ (Festing, cited
in Shepherd, 2007: 1). In Switzerland there is a similarly troubled
relationship of trust between AR and society (Michel and Kayasseh,
2011).
In both countries the public has heard accusations of cruelty used
in animal laboratory experiments, and animal-rights and anti-vivisection
organisations often frame secrecy as a way to conceal activities that
are unpalatable to the public. In the UK, for example, a number of
undercover operations by animal-rights and anti-vivisection organisa-
tions have found that some scientists and animal-research technicians
were not meeting required welfare standards towards the animals in
their care.4 These exposés suggested that scientists could not be trusted
to follow procedures or apply ethical practices of animal welfare in
their laboratories, and also raised concerns about the adequacy of the
regulatory system governing animal research. Furthermore, the UK
and Switzerland are particularly pertinent cases to consider in this

2 The chapter draws on data collected during a thirty-month project: Animals

and the Making of Scientific Knowledge. This project included semi-structured
interviews with scientists and other members of the UK AR community, and a
focus group with members of the Basel Declaration Society, as well as a range
of documentary sources such as organisations’ webpages, newsletters, commit-
tee notes and other grey literature, along with secondary data, such as media
reports.
3 For a comprehensive historical overview of animal rights ‘extremism’, see Monaghan
(1997, 2013) and Hadley (2009).
4 A summary of undercover investigations in the UK by the British Union against
Vivisection is provided by Linzey et al. (2015: 58–67).
Assuaging fears of monstrousness 57

context, as both countries claim to have among the strictest regulations

worldwide governing animal research.5
Since 2012 there has been a dramatic rise in transparency discourses
from the UK and Swiss AR communities, which emphasise the
importance of greater openness about the activities, goals and justifica-
tions for continuing to use animal laboratory experiments. The BD
and the UKC are key policy initiatives within these transparency
discourses that aim to build trust. However, a growing social-science
scholarship questions the assumption that greater transparency will
necessarily improve accountability and trust within governance
frameworks (Hood and Heald, 2006; Meijer, 2013; Worthy, 2010),
and highlights the potential tensions between secrecy and openness
(e.g. Birchall, 2011; Jasanoff, 2006; Strathern, 2000).
The ‘technologies of secrets’, a term employed by Holmberg and
Ideland (2010) in a Swedish case study, refers to the patterns that
underlie the fluid and flexible boundaries of openness and secrecy.
They argue that, in the Swedish context, AR openness initiatives are
often carefully stage-managed so as to allow what they term ‘selective
openness’ in order to control (and preserve) existing power relations
between science and the public. McLeod and Hobson-West (2015)
suggest that, in contrast, openness initiatives in the UK, at least, are
allied towards ‘cautious openness’, potentially allowing for greater input
from interested members of the public. However, their research also
highlights the variation in the discursive framing of the meanings of
openness and what outcomes might be expected.
For scientists and institutions, opening up animal research also
comes with attendant anxieties about the dangers of being more
transparent, and whether such risks will outweigh the benefits of
allowing greater public access inside the laboratory. In particular, the
notions of openness, trust and mistrust must be considered against the

5 For example, in 1985 it was claimed that ‘the current Swiss law for the protection
of animals is already one of the most stringent in the world’ (Jean-Jacques Dreifuss
(University of Geneva), cited in MacKenzie, 1985: 17). The revised Swiss animal
protection law, which came into effect in 2008, is also described as ‘one of the most
strict worldwide’ (Swissinfo.ch, 2014). Similarly, in the UK there are frequent claims
that the country has ‘some of the strictest [animal research] regulations in the world’
(Science Media Centre, 2013).
58 Science and the politics of openness

backdrop of the troubled relationship between AR and society, which

since the early 1980s has included betrayals and controversy. In the
UK, fears of the past continue to haunt AR practices. This troubled
history is also pertinent in the Swiss context, as is outlined below.

The troubled history of animal research and

science–society relations
The Head of the UK Animals in Science Regulation Unit (ASRU)
recently commented that a ‘vicious circle of distrust’ has developed
in the AR domain (MacArthur Clark, 2015). This narrative of distrustful
relations associated with AR dates from the 1970s, particularly the
impact during the 1990s and 2000s of both the increase in exposés
of unethical and non-compliant activities by scientists and serious
instances of hard-line and violent animal-rights activism. This historical
context remains a fundamental challenge to trust in contemporary
debates about transparency and AR.
The UK has a long history of AR protests, including some animal-
welfare and anti-vivisection organisations that have been campaigning
since the end of the nineteenth century. Although most organisations
have tended to engage in non-violent forms of protest, during the
1970s and 1980s a marked increase in direct action (both legal and
illegal) brought animal research into the spotlight (Matfield, 2002).
From 1996 many AR breeding facilities were targeted, resulting in
the closure of several of the smaller companies (Monaghan, 2013).
Huntington Life Sciences, the largest contract research company in
Europe, then became the focus of a campaign involving attacks on
company infrastructure and staff, as well as secondary targets such
as banks, stockbrokers and client companies. In 2001, owing to fears
about the impact of animal-rights groups on Huntington Life Sciences,
the Royal Bank of Scotland refused to renew a loan to them of $20
million. This led to concern about the future of the country’s bioscience-
based industries, and the UK Government introduced legislation
targeting illegal animal-rights activities, which included a specific
police task force with powers to arrest any person found protesting
outside a private residence (Matfield, 2002).
Direct-action animal-rights activities continued throughout the
2000s against other AR-related organisations, including pharmaceutical
Assuaging fears of monstrousness 59

companies (Monaghan, 2013). In addition, several UK universities

were also targeted. The most high-profile (and ongoing) protest involved
the University of Oxford in 2004, following the University’s announce-
ment that a new biomedical sciences building would include a rehoused
animal unit. A campaign was initiated by a group called SPEAK in
an effort to halt the construction of the new building, with the particular
concern that primates would be housed in the unit. While this campaign
began as lawful protests with letter writing and non-violent demonstra-
tions, the co-founder of SPEAK was eventually convicted in 2009 of
conspiracy to commit arson.6 In addition, the Animal Liberation Front
began publishing warnings that individuals associated with the new
building (including building contractors and suppliers) ‘were going
to get some’ (Animal Liberation Front communiqué posted on their
Bite Back website, cited by Monaghan, 2013: 938).
Two incidents stand out in this historical narrative for their mon-
strous and distressing nature, because they involved grave robbing.
In 2004 a campaign of intimidation was carried out against the Hall
family who owned Darley Oaks Farm (breeding guinea pigs) in Staf-
fordshire. This campaign included sending threatening letters to
employees, and then the body of the owner’s mother-in-law was
removed from a cemetery by four activists who were linked to the
Animal Rights Militia. Her remains were not recovered until 2006
(Ward, 2005). In media coverage the animal-rights activists responsible
were described as being ‘worse than animals’ (Wright and Pendlebury,
2004: 9). The second case of grave robbing occurred in Switzerland
in 2009, when the CEO of Swiss-owned Novartis, Daniel Vasella and
his family, were targeted. An urn with Vasella’s mother’s ashes was
stolen from the family cemetery and has never been recovered.
Additionally, two crosses were placed in the family plot inscribed
with the names of Daniel Vasella and his wife, also depicting a fictional
date of their death (Stephens, 2009).
This historical narrative of violent direct action against AR scientists
and supporters has had a powerful impact on relations between the
AR community, animal-rights and animal-welfare groups, and the

6 SPEAK is a grassroots organisation that continues to organise protests and rallies

in Oxford and Cambridge on animal-related issues. See, for example, http://
speakanimalliberation.blogspot.co.uk/.
60 Science and the politics of openness

wider public. However, since 2012 there has been a general sense that
the more extremist and violent actions against animal researchers
and animal-research institutions and industry have largely diminished.
Speaking of Research, which began in the UK as a pro-AR group and
now provides international AR news, articulates a narrative of fearful
scientists now being able to speak up for their research:
Until recently scientists were afraid to talk about their own research
using animals, resulting in animal rights groups monopolizing the debate
on animal testing – however in the last few years all this has changed.
(Speaking of Research, 2015)

In the UK this decline is attributed to a number of factors, including

tighter policing leading to the imprisonment of core violent perpetra-
tors, and the amendment and introduction of new legislation (Mona-
ghan, 2013).7 Several initiatives have also been developed to support
people who have been affected by violence from animal-rights activists.
For example, in 2004 a group called Victims of Animal Rights Extrem-
ism was set up with a membership of 100 people who had suffered
violence and harassment. This group lobbied the UK Government to
establish legislation specifically giving harsher convictions for illegal
activities linked to animal-rights ‘extreme acts’ (Bhattacharya, 2004).

UK and Swiss initiatives to open up animal research

Following the decline in instances of violent and illegal actions against
AR researchers and institutions, the AR community has increasingly
begun to point to transparency as a means to reduce continued
opposition to AR, as well as a way to address misinformation. In the
UK and Switzerland, in particular, significant initiatives have emerged
which portray openness as the key to building greater rapport between
scientists and citizens over the use of animals in research.
Two major surveys of public attitudes to animal testing made a
significant contribution to the initiation of these new transparency
initiatives because they suggested there was declining public support for
AR. The first was a Special Eurobarometer on Science and Technology

7 Although some statistics from the USA suggest that individual scientists are more
likely to be targeted now, rather than institutions (see Grimm, 2014).
Assuaging fears of monstrousness 61

carried out in 2009 across six EU countries (see YouGov, 2010). This
survey reported that 84% of respondents mostly agreed that new
guidelines should ban all animal experiments that cause severe pain
and suffering. The survey also found that 80% mostly supported
the publication of all information about animal experimentation,
except confidential data that would allow the names of researchers
or their work places to be disclosed. The European Coalition to
End Animal Experiments (ECEAE) argued the poll highlighted a
gap in understanding between the AR community and the wider
public:
The outcomes of the Eurobarometer survey prove once again that there
is an obvious gap between the claims of the scientific community about
animal use and public opinion about the issue. (ECEAE, 2010)

The second significant contribution to the development of new

transparency initiatives was a poll carried out in the UK in 2012
funded by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (see
Ipsos MORI, 2012). The poll suggested that support for animal research
had declined, along with trust in the governance of these procedures.
The poll found the number of people who object to animal research
of any kind had risen (to 37%), as well as those who lack trust in the
regulatory system (33%), and more than half the respondents (51%)
suspected there was unnecessary duplication of animal experiments.
These findings were widely reported in the media with headlines
linking this growing opposition to failing trust, such as this comment
from the Guardian: ‘Public opposition to the use of animals in medical
research is growing and trust in both scientists and the rules governing
the controversial practice is falling’ (Campbell, 2012).
There was some variation, however, in how scientists and com-
mentators interpreted the results of the poll. For example, Professor
Sir John Tooke, president of the Academy of Medical Sciences, said
he was concerned at the poll’s results. Stephen Whitehead, chief
executive of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry,
saw the poll as ‘a wake-up call’, and a need for the UK AR community
to be ‘more forthright about the fact that without animal research,
the bio-pharmaceutical sector cannot continue to innovate new treat-
ments’. However, Sir Mark Walport, former head of the Wellcome
Trust, denied that complacency among scientists had led to falling
62 Science and the politics of openness

public support. He blamed a continuing ‘environment of intimidation’,

which, at its most extreme, constituted ‘terrorism’ (cited in Campbell,
2012). This variation in responses illustrates the continuing tension
for the AR community in both seeking out support and trust from
the wider public through greater transparency, and also fearing danger-
ous or ‘unruly publics’ (de Saille, 2015) who may put scientists or
institutions in jeopardy as a result.

The Basel Declaration

The BD was the first AR transparency initiative to emerge in Europe.
It was launched in 2010 by the Basel Declaration Society, a member-
ship organisation supported by donations from the pharmaceutical
industry and other institutions affiliated to AR. The BD emerged
out of a life sciences conference in Basel entitled ‘Research at a
Crossroads’, held in November of the same year. This conference
involved about eighty life-science researchers from Germany, Sweden,
France, the UK and Switzerland. Sessions were focused around issues
associated with non-human primates, transgenic animals, and ethics
and communication with the wider public (Forschung für Leben,
2010).
The BD is a one-page document with extremely ambitious goals,
and is framed as the foundational ethical framework for animal research,
just as the Helsinki Declaration is for human medical research:
Like the Helsinki Declaration, which forever altered the ethical landscape
of human clinical research, the aim of the Basel Declaration is to bring
the scientific community together to further advance the implementation
of ethical principles … and to call for more trust, transparency and
communication on the sensitive topic of animals in research. (Basel
Declaration Society, 2011)

Both individuals and organisations are encouraged to sign up to the

BD. It is significant that scientists were prepared to be individual
signatories (rather than via an institution), because this demonstrated
a deeper, more personal commitment to the openness agenda of the
BD: ‘That’s why it’s good if it’s signed by individuals rather than universi-
ties … it’s a bit more commitment in a way. You do it as a person’
(Basel Declaration Society scientist, focus group, April 2015).
Assuaging fears of monstrousness 63

The Basel Declaration Society is an international grassroots organisa-

tion. By signing up to the BD,8 signatories agree to ten fundamental
principles (see Basel Declaration Society, 2011). These principles cover
a range of topics relating to areas such as respecting and protecting
animals, choosing research questions and experimental designs care-
fully, and acknowledging the importance of open communication
and engagement with the public.

The UK Concordat on Openness on Animal Research

The UKC was developed through a two-step process. In October 2012
a ‘Declaration on Openness on Animal Research’ was launched at a
widely covered media event, coordinated by Understanding Animal
Research, a membership organisation that promotes and supports
AR interests. At this event, over forty research institutions and funders
promised to adhere to the UKC that was to be developed over the
following year, followed by public consultation.9 The final version of
the UKC sets out requirements for universities, industry and related
organisations to be more open about the ways in which they use
animals in scientific, medical or veterinary research. Signatories are
required to report annually to Understanding Animal Research about
the progress of these commitments. Only organisations and institutions
(not individuals, as in the Swiss case) can sign up to the UKC, and
they are required to make the following four commitments: (1) to be
clear about when, how and why animals are used in research; (2) to
enhance communications with the media and the public about research
using animals; (3) to be proactive in providing opportunities for the
public to find out about research using animals; and (4) to report on
progress annually and share experiences (Understanding Animal
Research, 2014).
As stated earlier, the UKC was initiated as a direct response from
the AR community to concerns about the declining support for animal
laboratory research suggested in the results of the 2012 Ipsos MORI

8 In 2017, the total number of signatories to the BD (both individuals and organisations)
was 4,621 (Basel Declaration Society, 2017).
9 In 2017, the number of signatories to the UKC was 116 organisations (Understanding
Animal Research, 2017).
64 Science and the politics of openness

poll. The press release for the 2012 Declaration highlights the expecta-
tion that public confidence in AR will be boosted through openness
about both the procedural aspects of AR and promotion of the benefits
of AR:
Confidence in our research rests on the scientific community embracing
an open approach and taking part in an ongoing conversation about
why and how animals are used in research and the benefits of this.
(Understanding Animal Research, 2012).

Key aims in the UKC and the BD

There are three key aims that cut across the UK and Swiss animal-
research openness initiatives. These aims highlight the hoped-for
benefits from greater transparency of AR, but also signal the continued
tensions which attach to science–society relations in this arena.

Facilitating a more informed public dialogue

Both initiatives seek to provide the public with the opportunity to be
more informed about AR. The BD frames dialogue with the public
on animal welfare in research as involving transparency and ‘fact-based
communications’ (Basel Declaration Society, 2011). It is also anticipated
that providing more information will benefit both supporters and
critics of AR. For example, a report from a meeting organised by
Understanding Animal Research and the Basel Declaration Society
in 2012 states:
These [findings from the meeting] corroborate the notion that transpar-
ency and open dialogue increase understanding of both the needs of
scientists and the concerns of critics in a mutually beneficial way.
(McGrath et al., 2015: 2430; emphasis added)

Both the BD and the UKC seek to provide more information to the
public in order to counter misinformation, with the ultimate goal of
achieving greater public support. However, both initiatives explicitly
distance the provision of such information from a straightforwardly
educational approach, and encourage ‘two-way inclusive discourse’
(Basel Declaration Society, 2015) and allow ‘people to come to their
own position on this issue’ (Understanding Animal Research, 2014:
5). This first aim of improving dialogue is therefore framed around
Assuaging fears of monstrousness 65

society and the provision of information to members of the public.

While benefits for AR are anticipated from a better informed public,
both initiatives are careful to emphasise that transparency and openness
are important values in their own right. In contrast, the second aim
is framed around science and the benefits that can come from greater
openness between animal researchers themselves.

Building solidarity and support between animal researchers

The troubled history between AR and society outlined earlier has
contributed to a sense of vulnerability for many people working in
animal research. Both the BD and the UKC initiatives anticipate benefits
not only to the public through the provision of more information and
cooperation, but also to the AR community. The BD, in particular,
has a mandate to build and support an open international AR
community.
Underlying the push for improved solidarity is a presumption that
greater transparency will not completely eliminate controversy or the
potential for future conflict with critics of AR. This was highlighted
in a Nature article that covered the announcement of the BD. Stefan
Treue, director of the German Primate Center in Göttingen, comments:
‘The animal issue is never going to go away. … We need solidarity
among all researchers’ (cited in Abbott, 2010: 742). Solidarity is
envisaged in different ways. Firstly, it involves the provision of support
in response to direct action against the AR community. An example
of this occurred in 2013 after an AR facility at the University of Milan
was occupied by an animal-rights group, resulting in damage and the
release of animals in the unit (Abbott, 2013). The Basel Declaration
Society organised a ‘Call for Solidarity’ and collected 5,700 signatures
from BD signatories, which were then presented at a rally in support
of AR in Milan (Basel Declaration Society, 2013a).
A more complex and challenging feature of solidarity is the sharing
of research data between researchers. Both the UKC and the BD
encourage researchers to follow the ARRIVE guidelines,10 which aim

10 The Animal Research: Reporting of in vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) guidelines were

developed by the UK National Centre for Replacement, Refinement and Reduction
of Animals in Research in 2010. See: https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/arrive-animal-
research-reporting-vivo-experiments.
66 Science and the politics of openness

to improve and maximise information published on AR and as a

consequence, minimise unnecessary and repetitive studies (McGrath
et al., 2015). A position statement on the importance of open access
(see chapter 2) and sharing research results was also developed following
a workshop organised in London by the Basel Declaration Society
and Understanding Animal Research in 2013. This statement does
acknowledge, however, the challenges of increased data sharing
because of potential proprietary interests in the results of AR experi-
ments (see Basel Declaration Society, 2013b), which is a tension
acknowledged in the open-science agenda more broadly (see
chapter 5, and Levin et al., 2016).
This second aim of the UKC and the BD – to build solidarity between
the AR community and to encourage the greater sharing of information
– reveals there are always limits placed on what, and with whom,
information about AR is shared. In this light, the third aim, of building
trust, has increased importance.

Building trust in animal research and scientists

The final key aim identified here relates to building trust in animal
research and science–society relations. In the Swiss context this goal
was explicitly articulated by several scientists during a focus group
meeting. One participant commented that through education and
dialogue it was possible to ‘to take away the fears that are there, to
explain what is going on – and then the trust can be built up and
everything works much better’ (Basel Declaration Society scientist,
focus group, April 2015; emphasis added). However, another scientist
argued that the complexity of AR was impossible to fully explain
to the public and therefore trust needed to precede openness: ‘If
people don’t trust you, you can explain as much as you like; they
will not buy it’ (Basel Declaration Society scientist, focus group, April
2015).
In the UK, linking transparency to trust and confidence in animal
research is also unequivocally referenced in the UKC, where signatories
are asked to recognise that in order to be seen as trustworthy they
are under an obligation to be ‘be open, transparent, and accountable’
in relation to all AR activities (Understanding Animal Research, 2014).
Another example in the UK reveals how a concern that falling public
Assuaging fears of monstrousness 67

trust in the AR regulatory system might impact on support for animal

laboratory research funding. One of the signatories to the UKC, the
Association of Medical Research Charities, explains that trust in AR
governance is vital for funders, ‘as they need the public’s trust to
continue funding work to fight diseases and find better treatments’
(Nebhrajani, 2014).
The three aims outlined above illustrate how the UKC and BD seek
to renegotiate society–science relations and AR under the aegis of
greater transparency, but there are some ongoing difficulties and
challenges to this agenda.

Challenges to renegotiating trust through more openness

in AR
Yeates and Reed (2015: 504) argue that while transparency in AR
sounds ‘apodictically good’, the value of openness initiatives must
always depend on how, and with whom, information is actually shared.
Signatories to the UKC are required to make specific information
about their use of animals publicly available. One area where this has
led to quite significant changes is the provision of information on
institutional websites. A survey carried out by the author in June 2013
of ten UK university websites showed that most only had generic
statements about experimentation on animals, giving very little specific
information about what AR was carried out within the institution.
Only two websites had details about the animal species used in research
or any information about procedures. In contrast, a survey of websites
of ten universities that were listed as signatories to the UKC in March
2016 revealed that all now provided details of the number and types
of animal species used each year in the institution.
University College London (UCL), among other universities, has
publicised this new approach to openness on its institutional website.
In a 2014 Times Higher Education article, a senior academic explains
UCL’s commitment to transparency and openness and the UKC (see
Else, 2014). In the same article, however, a spokesperson for the British
Union for the Abolition of Vivisection welcomed greater transparency
but feared that the new website was merely a public-relations exercise
that sought to ‘sanitise the reality of what life in a laboratory is like
for animals in experiments’ (Bailey, cited in Else, 2014). This comment
68 Science and the politics of openness

suggests that on its own the provision of more information to wider

society is not enough, and increased transparency does not necessarily
lead to more trust. Philosopher Onora O’Neill (2002) has observed
that transparency and openness initiatives can actually have a detri-
mental impact on trust because of fears that the information provided
is being cherry-picked. O’Neill also highlights the centrality of con-
fidence in the individuals and institutions that provide information,
and that, without this, transparency and openness will not be enough
on their own to build trust.
A further missing component in these discussions about trust and
transparency is that scientists are rarely encouraged to speak about
their own values and how they intersect with their research on animals.
Therefore, these values remain hidden, or at least the moral and ethical
ambiguities inherent to AR are almost never part of the information
made available. This tendency to disassociate the personal views of
animal experimenters from their work was highlighted in a 1995
report on AR scientists in the USA, which suggested that the use of
dispassionate language tended to reinforce an image of scientists as
cold, unethical and uncaring (Rowan et al., 1995). Over two decades
later there is still very limited space allowed for AR scientists to reflect
upon or discuss how their values and ethical decisions relating to
their research fit into the wider socio-political and economic landscape
(see McLeod and Hartley, 2017). In terms of building trust in the
relationship between science and society in connection to animal
research, therefore, there needs to be more openness about how values
and ethics are incorporated into animal-research decision making by
scientists, and how they are included in the AR regulatory framework.
Of course, this is challenging, given the history of conflict on AR and
the potential of making scientists more vulnerable if personal details
about their values are made more accessible. This observation leads
to the importance of research to understand the challenges and
experiences of scientists and institutions who are being asked to embrace
transparency initiatives such as the BD and the UKC. Historical studies
suggest that AR scientists who feel stigmatised or threatened are less
likely to be comfortable with being open about their research (Arluke,
1991; Birke et al., 2007). Participants in this current research who are
actively promoting and driving forward the openness agendas in the
UKC and the BD have expressed a degree of frustration that some
Assuaging fears of monstrousness 69

AR scientists still require convincing that it is safe for them to be

more open about their research.

Conclusion
A historical relationship of mistrust has shaped the relationship between
science and society on the topic of AR, and both sides believe that
monstrousness exists on the other. Rudolf Wittkower, a historian
writing on the cultural history of monsters, explained that ‘monsters
– composite beings, half-human, half-animal – play a part in the
thought and imagery of all people at all times’ (cited in Gilmore, 2003:
11). Animal research crosses this composite boundary, as animals
become experimental subjects for the benefit of humans (primarily),
and it is easy to understand why research involving animals elicits
such cultural and social discomfiture.
The UKC and the BD both emerged out of an increased concern
from the animal-research and biomedical communities that the societal
mandate for conducting AR was declining. The three key aims of
these initiatives discussed in this chapter suggest: (1) there is a genuine
commitment to providing more information and opportunities for
meaningful public dialogue; (2) the promotion of solidarity within
the AR community could lead to more open access to data (although
this is complicated by commercial interests); and (3) in both the UK
and Swiss contexts, openness and trust are being discursively con-
structed as interlinking motifs.
However, it is important to recognise that transparency initiatives
such as the UKC and the BD are unlikely to be enough on their own
to build greater trust between the AR community and wider society.
There also needs to be evidence of the trustworthiness of the AR
regulatory system and the accountability processes that govern it
(Dodds, 2013) as well as more opportunities for animal-research
scientists (safely) to reflect upon, and make more transparent, the
value-based decision making that is an inextricable part of their work,
in order to then have a more productive conversation with wider
society. The biggest challenge to opening up AR remains how to provide
these opportunities and spaces where there can truly be inclusive,
co-productive and safe conversations that move beyond caricatures
of monstrous scientists or publics (see also chapter 8).
70 Science and the politics of openness

Acknowledgements
The author gratefully acknowledges the following funders for support:
the Fondation Brocher, Geneva, for a two-month residential scholarship
in March–April 2015, where I was able to draft this paper; and the
Leverhulme Trust, as part of the research programme Making Science
Public: Challenges and Opportunities (RP2011-SP-013). Special thanks
also to the editors, especially Sarah Hartley, for helpful comments on
this chapter.

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4
What counts as evidence in adjudicating
asylum claims? Locating the monsters
in the machine: an investigation of
faith-based claims
Roda Madziva, Vivien Lowndes

Since around 2007, evidence-based policy (EBP) has emerged as a

buzzword intended to signal the end of conviction-driven, ideological
politics and heralding the aspirations for policymaking to be anchored
in ‘evidence and to deliver what works unsullied by ideology or values
considerations’ (Botterill and Hindmoor, 2012: 367; Clarence, 2002).
The political impetus and preoccupation with activities associated
with the idea of EBP are widespread. The belief that rational evi-
dence will strengthen the basis for policymaking has been widely
welcomed in many policy areas, including in contested spheres such as
immigration.
As well as being an issue of profound contemporary relevance,
immigration is a highly politicised field and the focus of moral and
ideological contestation. Thus, evidence, assumed to speak for itself
(Wesselink et al., 2014), has been called upon as a neutral arbiter in
resolving perceived immigration problems and as one way of transcend-
ing ideological and humanistic conflicts (Spencer, 2011). Writing in
the context of the various immigration policy crises, Boswell (2009)
has shown how policymakers have often sought to find solutions to
perceived problems of trust and legitimacy by turning to evidence in
the form of expert knowledge. In this way, the role envisaged for
evidence illustrates the trend towards openness and transparency as
a way of generating renewed trust and legitimacy. Indeed, in political
rhetoric, successive UK governments have routinely expressed a
commitment to opening up immigration debates to allow policy and
decisions to be influenced by reliable evidence rather than emotion
76 Science and the politics of openness

and prejudice in order to increase transparency and build public trust

in relation to immigration issues (Green, 2010).
However, more generally, the presentation of evidence as rational and
neutral has raised important questions of how evidence is identified,
mobilised and adjudicated in the policy process (Lowndes, 2016).
Among other things, critics have shown that the perception that
evidence is neutral overlooks the significance of the context in which
evidence is produced. As Wesselink et al. (2014: 342) argue: ‘what is
policy-relevant evidence is determined by context. EBP’s rhetoric looks
for neutral, context-free and universally applicable evidence [which]
fits badly with this reality.’ Closely related to this is the observation
that evidence must ultimately be interpreted, a process that many
maintain involves persuasion and argument (Clarence, 2002; Kisby,
2011; Majone, 1989). As argued by Majone (1989) evidence exists only
in the context of an argument; thus, it differs from data (raw material)
or information (categorised data). Moreover, the way that evidence
is interpreted is subject to individuals’ understanding of the social
world and what they consider to be important (Clarence, 2002: 5).
For instance, the assumptions of the policymaker or civil servant
working in a policy context may determine what is understood as
constituting evidence, the selection or prioritising of one form or
indeed a specific piece of evidence over another and the interpretation
of that evidence in the development of an argument (Kisby, 2011:
123). Thus, decisions often reflect not only beliefs about what works
but judgements about what is feasible as well as elements of ideological
faith, conventional wisdom and habit (Botterill and Hindmoor, 2012:
369). The presentation of evidence as neutral may serve to obscure
the real political judgements and serendipities involved in contested
policy areas like asylum. However, insights can be drawn from Pearce
and Raman’s (2014: 390) work on the new randomised controlled
trials that interrogates the ways in which appeals to evidence are made
as a way of opening up the limits of expertise. These authors have
suggested what good evidence would look like, emphasising the need
for evidence to fulfil at least three key principles; namely, attentiveness
to plurality, diversity and institutions.
This chapter presents a critical analysis of the ways in which evidence
is identified and mobilised in the asylum process. It looks at how
Evidence in adjudicating asylum claims 77

evidence is actively constructed, embodying processes of meaning

making that are underpinned by particular sets of power relations. The
chapter draws on research from an extreme case – the adjudication of
faith-based asylum claims – the characteristics of which enable us to
locate the monsters in the machine more readily. In the spirit of this
book we make use of the monster metaphor throughout the chapter
to highlight issues of potential discrimination, prejudice and bias. We
also identify a number of other issues inherent in the adjudication
of faith-based claims and highlight the challenges to evidence-based
approaches to the determination of refugee status. To better understand
the limits of claims to openness and transparency via EBP, we have
researched the experience of Christian asylum seekers, analysing key
informants’ narratives and Home Office assessment processes and
policy documents.
We begin with a brief description of the research upon which
this chapter is based. We then present a discussion of the lived
experiences of Pakistani Christians seeking asylum, in three sec-
tions. We start with the context of the experience of reception,
followed by the problems of evidencing the Christian faith and then
the challenges of evidencing persecution, before we turn to our
conclusions.

Research design and methodology

This chapter is based on qualitative research conducted between
June and December 2015. Data were collected from forty research
participants through interviews, focus groups and informal conversa-
tions as well as individual case reviews. The sample includes fifteen
Pakistani Christians (five refugees and ten asylum seekers – five women
and ten men), with the other twenty-five participants consisting of
migrant support organisations; churches; Pakistani Christian com-
munity leaders; and professionals such as legal advisors, immigration
judges, and those working in interpretation and translation. Snowball
sampling and existing contacts facilitated our research access to
these participants. The research aimed to gain an understanding
of Christian asylum seekers’ experiences of seeking asylum in
the UK.
78 Science and the politics of openness

The research encounters were audio recorded and transcribed before

the analysis, using thematic and conversational techniques. While the
study has delivered depth, the findings cannot be taken to be representa-
tive of the experience of Pakistani Christians in the UK or indeed of
Christian refugees from Muslim-majority countries more generally.
Our intention was to study the experience of the particular individuals
we spoke to and to draw ‘analytical generalisations’ (Yin, 2003) – that
is, propositions that could then form the basis of research with a
wider sample and in a variety of locations.

Pakistani Christian asylum seekers’ arrival and

UK policy context
Although there is a long history of migration from Pakistan to the
UK, the population of Pakistani nationals seeking asylum in the UK
became significant towards the end of the 1990s in response to the
socio-political and religious repressions prevalent in their country of
origin. The continual deterioration in Pakistan’s human rights situation,
particularly in the context of the country’s infamous blasphemy laws,
which foster the persecution of minority groups such as Christians,
has seen the country ranked the sixth highest asylum-producing nation
by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
in 2014. Concurrently, the UK was rated among the top destinations
for Pakistani asylum seekers (UNHCR, 2013). Correspondingly, more
recent asylum statistics (Home Office, 2015a) have shown that Pakistani
nationals constituted the second largest group (registering 2,302 cases,
after Eritrea, with 2,583) of all asylum applications lodged in the UK
in the year ending June 2015. However, in the absence of information
on how many of these applications were lodged on the grounds of
their Christian faith, Pakistani asylum seekers are regarded as a
homogenous group.
We argue that the presentation of Pakistani asylum seekers as a
homogenous ethnic group has the danger of masking other individu-
alised identities such as religion or faith, which may in turn obscure
the context of the reception experience.
The socio-political atmosphere of the UK is characterised by public
and political discourses on growing asylum and immigration flows,
ethnic and faith diversity, and their supposed link to community
Evidence in adjudicating asylum claims 79

tensions and even terrorism (Joppke and Torpey, 2013). Particularly

with regard to faith, as a presumed secular society the UK presents
us with a paradox. On the one hand, successive governments have
continued to show a public policy interest in faith communities that
are often portrayed as providing moral leadership, social networks
and access to hard-to-reach groups. Yet on the other hand, faith has
become an unsettling aspect of multiculturalism, not only in the UK,
but in Europe as a whole, especially in the terrorist attacks that came
after September 11, 2001 (Dinham et al., 2009). More specifically, in
the UK the disturbances in Bradford, Burnley and Oldham in 2001
and the subsequent 7/7 bombings in London in 2005 have led to
public criticism of the concept of multiculturalism for its overly tolerant
approaches to cultural difference, leading to a growth in diversity,
segregated societies and the promotion of bad faith (extremism), often
associated with Muslim identities (Lentin, 2011). Indeed, issues of
the perceived and real problems of the integration of Muslims, and
questions about accommodating Islam as a religion, are at the heart
of current public policy debates, especially as the current migration
crisis continues to unfold, and as Muslim identities become increasingly
framed by global events (Statham and Tillie, 2016).
Moreover, the rhetoric of the perceived failure of multiculturalism,
especially by political leaders across Europe (e.g. Cameron, 2011) has
been juxtaposed with the claim to racelessness (Lentin, 2011). In the
context of the claim that society in the UK is now a post-racial one,
intolerance towards particular groups of immigrants has come to be
justified on the basis of their cultural or religious incompatibility
rather than their race (Statham and Tillie, 2016). Thus the political
claim is that that culture or religion, rather than race, is to blame for
the perceived negative aspects of diversity. When presented in this
way, diversity becomes then a happy sign, a sign that racism has been
overcome (Ahmed, 2007: 164).
Thus, in both political and public discourse, especially in the UK,
it is increasingly claimed that it is no longer racist to talk about
immigration control and that people can now have a sensible debate
about immigration, where the notion of sensible involves making use
of statistical evidence. Pointing out the limits to openness and transpar-
ency, Anderson argues that ‘the claim to racelessness is not paralleled
by a claim that immigration policies are not designed to keep out
80 Science and the politics of openness

certain nationalities’ (Anderson, 2013: 42), which has the danger of

both promoting and concealing discriminatory practices towards
particular nationalities.
Immigration controls and border inspections have given rise to
perceptions that ‘some bodies more than others are recognisable as
[dangerous], as bodies that are out of place … because of some trace
of a dubious origin’ (Ahmed, 2007: 162). Before an actual claim to
asylum can be lodged, applicants must undergo an initial screening
process involving checklists on their country of origin, routes of travel,
their documentation of identity, and their fit in complex ethnic or
religious categories.
The Pakistani Christians who participated in our research experienced
their arrival and seeking asylum in the UK as putatively Islamophobic.
Those we spoke to believed that the Home Office operates under the
assumption that all migrants from Muslim-majority countries, by virtue
of their place of origin, are Muslims. Thus the conflation of nationality
and religion has led Pakistani Christian asylum seekers to believe that
they are often treated as suspects – a conflation that brings Pakistani
Muslims and Pakistani Christians together as one othered entity. Writing
of her personal experience at the borders of New York City as a British
citizen with a Muslim background, Ahmed (2007: 163) claims that ‘for
the body recognised as could be Muslim, which translates into could
be terrorist … the experience begins with discomfort’.
We encountered similar experiences among the Pakistani Christians
we interviewed, including a male asylum seeker who explained:

As a Christian asylum seeker from a Muslim majority country you face

many obstacles in putting forward your case. The major obstacle is the
place where you come from and the way you look – these are things
that you can’t change. Because of the way we look immigration officials
don’t trust us. … They don’t tell you openly that they are suspicious of
you … but through their actions and body language, you can tell that
you are a suspect. The problem is you can’t easily separate Christians
from Muslims as we all look the same. … I am a Christian, but when
people see me they just conclude that I am a Muslim. So they think I
have come to bomb their country.

Participants expressed deep concern about the equation of Pakistanis

with Muslims, and in turn the equation of Muslims with terrorists
Evidence in adjudicating asylum claims 81

(Ahmed, 2007), showing how this multilayered stereotyping inevitably

functioned to obscure their own distinctive identity as Christians
from a Muslim-majority country. In the sections that follow we
delve into the role of evidence in the adjudication of asylum
claims.

The adjudication of asylum claims: the policy context

The UK is signatory to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of
Refugees and its subsequent Protocol of 1967, as ratified in 1954 and
1968, respectively. According to Article 1A(2) of the 1951 Convention,
an applicant for asylum must have a well-founded fear of persecution;
the fear must be based on past persecution or the risk of future persecu-
tion on one or more of the specific grounds of race, religion, nationality,
membership of a particular social group, or political opinion. The
nature of evidence that can be provided to support such fears is a key
element in the actual process of determining whether to provide
asylum, as will be discussed below.
In line with the UNHCR (2004) instructions on religious persecution,
the UK Home Office guidelines state that:
persecution for reasons of religion may take various forms; for example,
prohibition of membership of a religious community, prohibition of
worship in private or public, prohibition of religious instruction, require-
ment to adhere to a religious dress code, or serious measures of dis-
crimination imposed on persons because they practise their religion or
belong to a particular religious community.

However, the Home Office goes further to note that:

the simple holding of beliefs which are not tolerated in the country of
origin will normally not be enough to substantiate a claim to refugee
status. … The issues to be decided are whether the claimant genuinely
adheres to the religion to which he or she professes to belong, how that
individual observes those beliefs in the private and public spheres, and
whether that would place him/her at risk of persecution. (Home Office,
2015b: 28)

These expectations raise the question of the competence of immigration

officials in religious matters, or the extent to which they are qualified
to assess the genuineness of an individual’s beliefs and the manner
82 Science and the politics of openness

in which they are practised in different socio-political and religious

contexts. We will return to this point later.
In the asylum process, after getting through the initial screening
process, applicants still need to undergo a substantive interview in
which they are interviewed by an immigration caseworker. The burden
of proof lies with the applicant. This means that applicants claiming
refugee status on grounds of their Christian faith are expected to
establish and demonstrate their well-founded fear of persecution on
the basis of their Christian identity. This involves providing a personal
testimony and supporting evidence to prove that they are Christians
and that they were persecuted on account of their Christian identity.
Meanwhile, the UNHCR guidelines on burden and standard of proof
in refugee claims (1998, para. 2) stress that, while the burden of proof
lies with the claimant, decision makers are also obligated to have an
objective understanding of the situation prevalent in the country of
origin. It is further suggested that the actual determination of refugee
status need not be certain, but must be sufficiently likely to be true.
Thus, determining whether a claimant qualifies for international
protection demands that decision makers judge whether they believe
the applicant’s evidence, or how much weight should be given to that
evidence against their own understandings and interpretations of it
(Thomas, 2006).
To assess the credibility of an asylum claim, immigration officials are
required to consider three key criteria. The first is internal consistency,
meaning that the claimant’s oral testimony, written statements and
any personal documents relating to the material facts of the claim
should be coherent and reasonably consistent (Home Office, 2015b: 7).
Secondly, external consistency is required, meaning that the claimant’s
testimony is expected to be consistent with the country-of-origin
information or expert evidence. As stated by the Home Office (2015b:
15), ‘The greater the correlation between aspects of the account and
external evidence, the greater the weight caseworkers should attrib-
ute to those aspects.’ The third criterion is plausibility, which is an
assessment of the apparent likelihood or truthfulness of a claim ‘in
the context of the general country information and/or the claimant’s
own evidence about what happened to him or her’ (Home Office,
2015b: 17).
Evidence in adjudicating asylum claims 83

We argue that for external evidence to be effectively used to support

personal experience, it needs to properly reflect knowledge and expertise
about the practical situation on the ground in the country of origin.
In the Pakistani Christians’ context, the reliability of the external
evidence that the Home Office depends upon can be questioned. The
Home Office’s latest Country Information and Guidance document
(February 2015) acknowledges the fact that Christians in Pakistan
are generally discriminated against, distinguishing between Christian-
born individuals and Christian converts, and between evangelical and
non-evangelical Christians. Christian converts and evangelical
Christians are perceived to be more at risk than Christian-born
individuals. The same document goes on to state that ‘in general the
[Pakistani] government is willing and able to provide protection against
such attacks’ (Home Office, 2015c).
Are these distinctions between Christian-born and Christian converts
and between evangelical and non-evangelical Christians useful and
fair, in terms of understanding the kind of persecutions that Pakistani
Christians face in their everyday lives? What sources and forms of
knowledge does the Home Office rely upon? We focus on these issues
in the sections below.

Evidencing Christian faith: challenges and pitfalls

From the perspective of Pakistani Christians seeking protection in
the UK, proving one’s faith can be a challenging exercise if the examina-
tion of it is based on biblical or doctrinal questions, which often do
not seem to reflect the reality of individuals’ complex identifications,
denominations or practical situations in the Pakistani context. Our
respondents explained how they were not only expected to know and
recite certain biblical events but also to speak in certain ways that
conform to Western notions of Christianity. Overall, the challenges
lie in the Home Office’s attempt to define people’s faith technically,
while at the same time assuming it must be coherent and have Western
or European reference points. As one male asylum seeker told us:
In my interview, I was asked questions like … How do you celebrate
Christmas? How do you celebrate Easter? … and many other questions.
84 Science and the politics of openness

I have now learnt that Christmas is a big event in this country not only
for Christians but for everyone. It’s regarded as a family day, no public
transport because everyone is celebrating Christmas with their family.
But this is not how Christmas is celebrated everywhere. In Pakistan
some Christians celebrate Christmas while hiding because they don’t
want their neighbour to know that they are Christian. So when they
ask you and you give a different answer from what they expect they say
you are not a Christian.

A senior legal advisor with extensive experience of working with

asylum seekers from Muslim-majority countries added that:
the question ‘How do you celebrate Christmas?’ – claimants often find
that very hard, because in their country of origin, Christmas is about
a particular religion. But, after living here for some years, they have
seen that ‘Oh, Christmas is a big issue in this country.’ They are even
surprised by the fact that even Muslims in this country tend to give
each other presents at Christmas.

The above examples show the existence of ideological perceptions

about how the Christian faith ought to be manifested, which suggests
that decisions to grant asylum may often be based upon a set of tacit
assumptions that are not backed by evidence. In line with Pearce and
Raman’s (2014: 390) call for plurality, diversity and the involvement
of hybrid institutions in the management of the inherent complexity
of evidence, some of our participants expressed the need to open up
the UK asylum system, especially by drawing knowledge and expertise
from a cross-section of sources, including religious institutions. As a
female vicar from the Church of England puts it:
I think it is vital for the Home Office to consider working hand in hand
with diverse churches, when it comes to faith-based claims. More notice
needs to be taken of the pastors, the vicars and all those overseeing
peoples’ Christian journeys … These should be respected as experts in
their own right.
Such an inclusive approach could in turn help the Home Office to
generate a balanced judgement of the Christian faith and the ways in
which it is lived and experienced in different contexts.
Another criticism in our interviews was that, in the absence of
diverse sources of evidence, the quiz-like questioning style in the
assessment of the Christian faith may serve to encourage the very
Evidence in adjudicating asylum claims 85

fraudulent claims that the UK Border Agency (UKBA) authorities

fear. In the words of a legal advisor:
Those questions favour Muslims who are recent [Christian] converts
or faking to be converts because they approach the Bible like they’ve
approached the Quran when they were little. They learn it off by heart
as much as they can; it’s all very fact-related.

Decision makers may seek evidence to support their own pre-existing

assumptions and their very choice of evidence may be ‘in itself an
activity inherently lacking in neutrality’ (Clarence, 2002: 5). In this
way, the judges are susceptible to making incorrect decisions in two
ways – either by rejecting genuine claimants or by granting refugee
status to fake ones (Thomas, 2006).

Evidencing religious persecution: unveiling the monsters

hiding in the machine
Existing research has shown that the UK Home Office’s decision making
on asylum claims suffers from a systematic and institutionalised culture
of disbelief,1 which operates alongside a parallel ‘culture of denial’
(Souter, 2011: 52). In our research it was common for participants to
explain spontaneously why they felt they were not believed by the
UKBA. However, we argue that the challenges to the credibility of
the evidence offered in religious-belief cases, especially those involving
accusations of blasphemy, seem to be more complex than in other
refugee cases, given the uniqueness of individual cases and the need
to understand the context in which they occur (see Kagan, 2010).
We observed that, for the Pakistani Christians in our study, one
key area in which monsters could be hiding is in the current Home
Office documents for the Pakistani country-of-origin information,
particularly the distinction that is made between evangelical and
non-evangelical Christians. In our research, a pattern emerged that
refugee status was not granted on the grounds of religion unless it
could be proved that an applicant had a religious profile in Pakistan.
Yet participants’ accounts of how they experienced persecution

1 The tendency of those evaluating applications is to start with the assumption that
the applicant is not telling the truth (Home Affairs Committee, 2013: 11).
86 Science and the politics of openness

consistently revealed a stark contrast between the country-of-origin

information and the actual situation on the ground in Pakistan, where
Christians, regardless of their religious profile, face persecution in a
country where there is limited state protection. In one of our interviews
a woman asylum seeker who had been refused asylum described how
practising her Christian faith in a Muslim school made her a victim
of blasphemy accusations. As she explains:
I was a teacher at a Muslim school. One day I was fasting because it
was Christian Lent start date on 5th March. At break time, I was sitting
in the staff room and one Muslim lady teacher … offered me food and
forced me to eat, saying, ‘Take and eat.’ I then said, ‘No, I am fasting.’
I had a big Christian magazine I was reading and she asked to see my
magazine. She took the magazine and the conversation ended there
because break period was over. The following day she went to the head
teacher and report that I was teaching Christianity. On the Friday, this
teacher’s father came in school and said to me, ‘You gave the magazine
to my daughter … I am giving you the chance to accept Islam.’ In few
days I found him waiting on the gate … he was with a group of men
… One man punched me on the eye … people gathered there, and the
men were telling the people that she’s preaching Christianity in the
school.

Following the first incident, the woman and her family relocated to
another place where, as she claimed, she suffered further attacks. She
noted that the subsequent incident occurred in front of a local police
station, but the police did not take any action. Instead, they blamed
her for causing problems in the school and proceeded to file a blas-
phemy case against her on the instructions of her accusers. While it
is clear from the claimant’s account that she suffered persecution
merely by virtue of her practising her Christian faith, as expressed
through fasting, her asylum case was ultimately dismissed by the
Home Office. In her rejection letter, among other things, the Home
Office noted that:
your previous history shows you can in general live as a Christian born
without problems in Pakistan … as you don’t seem to have any religious
profile … Your alleged fear on return is based on threats of persecution
from non-state agents and you have not demonstrated they will be able
to have any influence over the state … You claim to have reported both
incidents to police stations … but that these complaints were not fully
Evidence in adjudicating asylum claims 87

investigated. However the evidence you have provided does not dem-
onstrate that you have made efforts to pursue these complaints or take
any action regarding the police’s failure to investigate … Given that you
are a Catholic Christian … it is noted … that there is a strong Catholic
community in [city] … it is considered that the size and diversity [of
the population] will allow you to relocate with anonymity, it is reasonable
to conclude that you will be able to continue practising your religion
freely and quietly.

Taken together, the above excerpts show how immigration officials

and asylum claimants subscribe to radically different narratives about
the nature, extent and even the existence of persecution in Pakistan.
One issue is the Home Office’s seeming misconceptions on the safety
of Pakistanis who are Christian born in a socio-political environment
where Christians in general are routinely targeted and abused solely
on account of their faith. As one senior legal advisor with experience
of dealing with Christians from the Muslim-majority countries
commented:

In terms of the Home Office’s point that it’s been going okay for so long
for Christian born in Pakistan, this is not true for most of the Christians.
It’s the same thing as swimming in a dangerous stretch of sea every day.
You can do it safe for three months, and on three months and one day
you drown. … So the fact that someone has been able to practise their
Christian faith in an anti-Christian society doesn’t mean they are immune
to persecution.

We add that what makes EBP useful also makes it limited: it can
become detached from the social and political contexts in which
persecution occurs, as in this case.
In some cases the sorts of evidence that claimants presented were
considered to be low in the hierarchy of evidence. This was mainly
the case with documentary evidence such as the first information
report (FIR). These are police reports of crimes against the person
now claiming asylum. While many of our participants tended to rely
on such documents as evidence for their persecution, the Home Office
invariably dismissed them as fake. On the whole, on reviewing the
rejection letters we found a pattern whereby the Home Office would
increasingly refer to expert evidence to paint a broad picture of
Pakistanis as fraudulent and opportunistic cheats, and hence potentially
88 Science and the politics of openness

bogus claimants. In rejection letters, the Home Office routinely stated

that:
during a presentation at the Ninth European Country of Origin Informa-
tion Seminar held in Dublin, Ireland, on 26 and 27 May 2004, an
Islamabad-based representative of the … UNHCR … stated that there
is a high level of corruption in Pakistan and that it is possible to obtain
many types of fraudulent documents or documents that are fraudulently
authenticated by a bona fide stamp or authority.

As Boswell (2009) argues, decision makers often use expert evidence

to make their judgements appear neutral as well as to make a justifiable
claim to transparency and public acceptance. Our research shows it
is possible that an institutional emphasis is emerging in which Pakistanis
are regarded as frauds. Such an emphasis may lead to mutual suspicion
and prejudice. In this way, asylum adjudication may boil down to
assessing the credibility of Pakistanis as a group rather than focusing
on individual cases.
The Pakistani Christians we worked with were wary of what they
saw as the application of double standards by the Home Office. As
one Pakistani pastor put it:
What puzzles me is, in one context, the Home Office claims that these
state agencies are genuine when people say the police did not help me
because they are corrupt, but when it comes to evidence, they say the
authorities in Pakistan are corrupt. I see this as having double standards.

Perceived bias in relation to immigration interlocutors’

personal religious identities
Here we emphasise that the Home Office needs to expand its notion
of what counts as evidence, and suggest that this can be achieved by
drawing on the knowledge and experience of cultural and religious
difference, particularly when dealing with cases involving religiously
motivated persecution. As our findings suggest, given the Home Office’s
limited inclusivity and openness, asylum claimants often lack the
confidence and belief that their experiences are taken seriously and
listened to by immigration authorities.
For example, the Pakistani Christian asylum seekers we interviewed
noted that they often encountered immigration interlocutors from a
Evidence in adjudicating asylum claims 89

Pakistani Muslim heritage. This reflects the UK’s diverse religious groups,
but some speculate that the Home Office could be deliberately allocating
cases involving Pakistani Christians to caseworkers of a Pakistani heritage,
presumably for linguistic reasons and assumptions of shared cultural
understandings. However, owing to their negative experiences in their
country of origin, the Christians we interviewed reported that they
often lost the confidence and courage to give evidence of their persecution
verbally and defend their asylum cases when faced with individuals
whom they perceived to be from the perpetrator group, Pakistani
Muslims. Participants routinely drew our attention to their refusal letters,
which in most cases included Muslim names as signatories. Often they
linked negative asylum decisions to the religious identities of the
immigration officials who handled their cases. Such concerns were
raised in the context of the Home Office’s refusal to accept claimants’
requests for non-Muslim caseworkers, on the basis that the system
does not keep a database of its employees’ religious beliefs.
Claims of religious prejudice and bias were also made about other
interlocutors such as interpreters, whom the Home Office regards as
mere conduits through which immigration officials and asylum seekers
achieve meaningful discourse (see Gib and Good, 2014, for a detailed
discussion). The participants alleged that interpreters of similar national
heritage but from the Muslim majority were ignorant of appropriate
language to describe Christian experiences, and even undermined or
manipulated accounts in a discriminatory fashion.
The need for religious diversity, especially in relation to Home
Office interlocutors, was succinctly articulated by the Pakistani pastor
we cited earlier, as follows:

In the same way the Home Office is using Muslim Urdu speakers, they
should also consider using Urdu speakers who are Christians … or they
should at least invite a Christian country expert such as a Pakistani
pastor to come and sit there … because the Christian language is not
familiar to Muslims. Here in the UK, religion is not given any value.
The difference is that in Pakistan, that is an Islamic country, life is about
religion … so refugees are so particular as they believe that these Home
Office interlocutors are Muslims first, then UKBA workers second.

We suggest that opening up the asylum system through the involvement

of, for example, interpreters and experts with knowledge and
90 Science and the politics of openness

understanding of the Christian faith and the manner in which it is

practised and experienced in Pakistan would help to generate confidence
and trust among Christian asylum seekers, perhaps even in cases
where a claim is unsuccessful.

Conclusion
Concerns about diversity, community cohesion and the related public
fear in the UK of infiltration from Muslim extremists shape both
contemporary political discourse and the current restrictive border-
control mechanisms. As a result, the Pakistani Christians seeking
asylum in the UK may be caught between a rock and a hard place.
Initially, the reception experience of Pakistani Christians challenges
the neutrality of immigration controls that, in practice, appear to be
designed to target immigrants of particular ethnic backgrounds for
increased scrutiny. In this context, Pakistani Christians can be subject
to misdirected Islamophobia within the immigration and asylum
system, given the assumption that the Islamic religion is a core identity
of all Pakistani immigrants. Indeed, as Jubany (2011) argues, the
tendency to lump together individuals from a particular country/
region into a single group seems to be a subculture of the British
asylum system as informed by the meta-message of disbelief. This
points to the limits to openness and transparency within the UK’s
supposedly evidence-based immigration policy.
At the same time, in the adjudication of faith-based claims, Pakistani
Christians often found themselves confronted with complex obstacles
in their endeavour to provide successful evidence of their asylum
claims. We have thus sought to make visible the monsters that could
be hiding in the UK’s evidence-based approaches to determining
refugee status, which point to the limited plurality and diversity in
the sources and forms of evidence on which the Home Office draws.
Our research has analysed the challenges faced by Pakistani Chris-
tians in establishing their Christian identity, and their associated
experience of persecution. Our data show that in the absence of good
evidence, immigration officials often treat the Christian faith as a
mere religious observance (judged from a Western perspective) as
opposed to being a core component of one’s identity (hence the need
for faith to be assessed in the context in which it is practised)
Evidence in adjudicating asylum claims 91

(Nettleship, 2015), requiring officials to be better informed and better

trained.
We have also problematised the external evidence or country-of-
origin information published by the Home Office, which forms the
basis of decisions on Pakistani Christians’ claims to asylum. This
evidence appears to underestimate the extent and forms of persecution
experienced by Christians in Pakistan. For these Christians, both in
Pakistan and in many other Muslim-majority countries, faith not
only informs their identity but shapes all aspects of their private and
public life. This reflects both the way in which Christians themselves
experience their faith and also how they are regarded and treated by
non-Christians (as employers, neighbours, the police and the judiciary).
Finally, we have drawn attention to what appears to be a lack of
religious diversity in the immigration interlocutors (though in a
supposedly religiously neutral asylum system) and its impact upon
the ability of Pakistani Christians to defend their claims verbally. Our
participants routinely made claims of religious discrimination and
bias in a context where their asylum cases are frequently handled and
facilitated by caseworkers and interpreters of Pakistani Muslim heritage.
We see this chapter as filling a significant gap, not only in terms of
evidence, but also in current research and public debates on asylum
seekers from Muslim-majority countries.

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Part II

Responsibility
5
Responsibility

Barbara Prainsack, Sabina Leonelli

Openness has become fashionable. Governments, software and even

humans are furnished with the adjective ‘open’. This is not a quiet and
modest adjective, but entails a demanding cluster of requirements.
To be open means to be transparent, responsible, accountable and
inclusive. In other words: to be open is to be good.1
What does this mean for science? If we understand openness as
the commitment to make the tools and processes of science replicable
and open to scrutiny, then science has had a particularly close relation-
ship with openness from its earliest beginnings. It is true that science
has been, and still is, to a large extent an elite activity. But the idea
that people other than those involved in the creation of a scientific
finding need to be able to scrutinise claims in order to find possible
errors and to corroborate or falsify hypotheses and claims is intrinsic
to the very concept of science. It is the requirement of transparency,
intelligibility (if only to peers) and openness to scrutiny that distin-
guishes science from other instances of skilful practice or from an
informed debate. Openness about how we arrive at conclusions on
the basis of evidence is what enables the type of empirical self-corrective
knowledge creation that science has (often rightly) claimed to be.
Why is it, then, that openness – in science, but also in other domains
of life – has become such a buzzword in the twenty-first century? There

1 Dave Eggers’s 2013 novel The Circle is a stark illustration of this, particularly since
it was meant as science fiction and yet seems to describe the cult of transparency
as a solution to social problems.
98 Science and the politics of openness

are several answers to this question. One answer lies in our political
economy. The shift from familial to corporate capitalism (Fraser,
2015) and the financialisation of capitalism have together solidified
the dominance of commercial interests over politics. Corporate actors
have easy access to national power centres, to the extent that they
co-regulate important national policies (Gamble, 2014). As a result,
not only governments but also citizens have lost control over important
policy domains such as housing, work and energy (Wagenaar, 2016).
Social inequalities have been reified; even most left-wing progressive
movements no longer see them as something that needs to be abolished
but instead as something to be managed. Within this political economy,
openness – particularly when interpreted as an appeal to transparency
as means to unmask inequalities and corruption – assumes the role
that gallantry had in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: while
seemingly easing the relationship between women and men, but not
also between the rich and the poor, it can also be associated with a
system that reinforces underlying inequalities and benefits one group
at the expense of the other.
Making science open bears the connotation of democracy and
equality, a bit as has been the case with the internet. There has been
an assumption for some time that, because everybody in principle has
equal access to web-based tools, the internet will make societies more
democratic. As is well known by now, the supposed openness and
accessibility of the internet has indeed given voice to some people who
would not have been heard otherwise, but it has also given powerful
actors even more power (Taylor, 2014). It has become clear in many
contexts that fostering transparency does not always foster meaning
making and intelligibility. Sometimes it may instead draw attention
away from all the obstacles to equality and democracy that stem from
the dominant global and socio-political order.
Another answer is rooted in the development and proliferation of
digital tools and instruments to produce data. Once data are available
in digital form, three key questions arise, either explicitly or tacitly:
who owns them, who should have access to them and who should be
allowed to use them. This is true for any digital data set – including
our postings on social media, billing data held by health insurance
companies or geolocation information collected by mobile phone
companies. Scientific data, however, are under particular pressure to
Responsibility 99

be available, intelligible and usable to a wide range of users, because of

the expectation that knowledge production (particularly that sponsored
by public money) should benefit society at large and be accessible by
citizens at all times and in all available formats. There is an emerging
consensus that, wherever ethically and legally possible, research data
should not only be open to any interested scientist but also to the general
public as the funders and stakeholders of science. At the same time, the
expertise required to make data open in the sense of intelligible and
reusable is often disregarded, with several open-data initiatives targeting
the general public but providing few tools for them to meaningfully
engage with the data and extract information from them.
There are other answers to the question why the notion of openness
has assumed so much cultural importance, which we have discussed
elsewhere (e.g. Leonelli, 2016; Levin and Leonelli, 2016; Prainsack,
forthcoming). What the examples that we have given here show is that
open science is a political project to an even greater extent than it is
a technological one. The chapters in this part illustrate the range of
these political aspects and how they may intersect and converge with
scientific, technological and organisational concerns in the running
of large research initiatives. In the remainder of this introduction
we will discuss some of the themes and tensions that the chapters
highlight and bring them in dialogue with the political and epistemic
characteristics of the open-science movement.

Centralisation and epistemic diversity

Whenever they try to disseminate information and resources, including
data, models, specimens, software and papers, beyond their immediate
work circles, researchers encounter issues of standardisation (Bowker
and Star, 1999). There is a strong and often unresolvable tension between
attempting to preserve the diversity of practices that constitutes the
epistemic richness of research and its outputs, and setting up common
venues and formats where outputs can be shared, discussed and
reused (Leonelli, 2016). Such difficulties become particularly jarring
when attempting to manage and distribute information, and foster
participation in massive multiheaded institutions and projects, where
a strongly centralised structure is combined with multiple approaches
and types of practice.
100 Science and the politics of openness

Chapter 6 by Eleanor Hadley Kershaw highlights this beautifully by

discussing Future Earth, one of the most complex bodies of individuals,
resources, tools, approaches, groups, institutions and data ever assembled
to confront a broad and all-encompassing set of environmental and
social challenges across the globe as a whole. The ambitious scope and
remit set for Future Earth by its governing council (comprising the
International Council for Science (ICSU), the Belmont Forum and
other international partners) is reminiscent of the open-science goals
of bringing together all potential stakeholders and sharing knowledge
and tools widely for the greater good. This is justified, since addressing
global challenges arguably requires as inclusive and pluralistic an
approach as possible, and thus seeks to combine efforts by experts in
all fields and methods, capitalising on the variety of existing skills and
knowledge. At the same time, this huge scope has resulted in an
organisation that has little coherence or cohesion. Attempts to unify
or even just coordinate approaches can and often do fail, as the multiplic-
ity of challenges and approaches involved (which go well beyond
disciplines, since interdisciplinary perspectives and innovative methods
are typically very useful to such an endeavour) defy easy standardisation
and harmonisation across participants. The inability to resolve the
tensions outlined by Hadley Kershaw, particularly the one between
the will to harmonise and cooperate and the importance of respecting
and preserving diversity, risk making Future Earth a monstrous
enterprise that nobody understands in its entirety, and in which opera-
tions are disjointed and out of synch with one another. At the same
time, as argued by Hadley Kershaw, such tensions and differences in
interpretation could be seen as productive openings for negotiation.
In sum, this case in turn raises questions about the relation between
openness and pluralism in approaches (and, particularly, disciplines),
given the various ways in which researchers working in different fields
and locations understand the notion of openness, the challenges and
opportunities that it can bring, and the ways in which it can be
instantiated (Levin et al., 2016; Tenopir et al., 2015).

Inclusiveness and social justice

Another type of pluralism, which is a motor for openness but also a
potential obstacle to sharing and exchanging data, is geographical
Responsibility 101

and cultural. Chapter 7 by Alison Mohr on energy transitions research

brings the power differentials and diversity of location and research
environment between the North and the South into sharp relief, thus
highlighting the challenges of social justice and spatial positioning
that underlie attempts to apply the notion of openness across national
boundaries. Mohr emphasises how translating Northern ideas into
global South contexts involves deep structural changes to the latter,
which are difficult to implement and whose systemic implications are
hard to predict and manage. And, indeed, the situation that she
describes parallels attempts to construct digital infrastructures for
open-science projects that benefit the developing world. Whether
such infrastructures target citizen scientists or professional researchers,
they are often devised and developed by individuals based in high-
income countries, which makes it difficult for prospective users in
low-income countries to share the same assumptions and conditions
for entry. Open science can certainly serve to enhance social justice
by fostering better exchange of data, better quality control of the
information data exchanged, and cooperation in the ways in which
research is organised (e.g. by helping researchers interested in exploring
the same phenomenon to find each other and network). Open-science
initiatives can also enhance the social, cultural and economic effects
of research outputs on the various publics who, directly or indirectly,
engage with them or are affected by them (e.g. how participants think
about the impact of their work, what are their publics, what and whom
they address). However, to reach these goals, openness advocates need
to take account of the staggering differences between research environ-
ments in various parts of the world, which include not only available
funding and resources, but also the wider infrastructure and institu-
tionalisation of scientific work (Bezuidenhout et al., 2016). Many
open-science projects, no matter how well intentioned, do not treat
their prospective participants as equals and tend to impose their own
vision of what it means to do research and share information without
taking account (and in many cases, without being fully aware of) the
conditions under which some of their publics and users work. As
Chris Kelty (2008) has argued in his study of the development of the
open-source movement, an effective way to engage in open research
is to create one’s own public through deep engagement and the distribu-
tion of stakes and responsibilities, so as to reflexively identify and
102 Science and the politics of openness

take into account existing inequalities – an approach that some

citizen-science initiatives are already successfully using.

Transparency
Both Hadley Kershaw and Mohr address the scale of nested international
structures, disciplines and institutions at global and local levels. Within
such systems it is not clear that making knowledge open, in the sense
of making everything accessible (for instance via online dissemination),
enhances the transparency of the efforts at hand in a meaningful way.
In many cases, understanding a given intervention or claim requires
expertise and familiarity with the issues. Furthermore, the sheer quantity
and scale of information that can be made available can baffle and
confuse readers, rather than providing them with useful information
(Floridi, 2014). Too often is the offer of unlimited information
accompanied by interpretative moves left unacknowledged, such as
with WikiLeaks (Rappert, 2015). In many instances people who make
data accessible to others are not even aware of the assumptions and
interpretations that have become part of the data sets, if only by ordering
and classifying them (Bowker and Star, 1999). In sum, obtaining
transparency is not merely a matter of making information available
but rather a matter of explicating one’s own assumptions, providing
critical tools to unravel complex claims or situations, and engaging
with them critically.

Responsible Innovation
In the 1960s and 1970s several organisations and initiatives in Europe
and in North America sought to ‘radicalise’ science (Bell, 2013; Rose
and Rose, 1976, 1979). Fuelled by the experience of how science had
put itself in the service of imperialistic and martial interests, culminating
in the atrocities of World War II, initiatives associated with the radical-
science movement challenged the perception that science is something
neutral, something independent of economic and political interests.
The radical-science movement was not an attempt by people to tame
or even govern science from the outside. On the contrary, it was
driven by professional scientists. Organisations such as Scientists and
Engineers for Political and Social Action in the USA and the British
Society for Social Responsibility in Science in the UK argued that
Responsibility 103

science should be seen and analysed as an integral part of a particular

social and political order. Responsible science thus meant that profes-
sional scientists and publics alike reflected critically on the questions
that science asked, the methods it used and the resources it obtained.
For many national and international organisations today, responsibil-
ity in science has a very different meaning. Politics has largely been
sucked out of it. Responsibility has mostly become synonymous with
complying with ethical codes. Also, most of the ‘radical’ scientists of
today, including citizen scientists and those who are self-proclaimed
proponents of ‘forbidden’ research (e.g. MIT Media Lab, 2016), are
no longer asking the big question of what kind of society we want
(see also Delfanti, 2013). While some of them – among them, for
example, do-it-yourself biologists – do challenge the norms and goals of
institutionalised science, which they see as compromised by commercial
interests, many of them help to make science ‘better’ within the epistemic
commitments and rationale of institutionalised professional science
(see Irwin, 2015; Prainsack and Riesch, 2016). They often fill the void
that public actors have left, for example, by crowd-funding scientific
research or by undertaking tasks that would be too onerous or too
difficult for professional scientists to do (Del Savio et al., 2016; Prainsack,
2014). Here, responsibility no longer means a collective responsibility
to ensure that science contributes to making our societies more just
and more dignified for everybody to live in. Instead, it increasingly
connotes a duty for individual scientists – professional scientists or
citizen scientists – to be useful to existing systems.
In its worst instantiation – and unfortunately this is the case for
the EU’s pet concept of responsible research and innovation (RRI)
– responsibility boils down to the duty to create a societal impact,
which in turn is seen as an incentive – or even a societal need – to
partner with industry. In its less depressing instantiations, contemporary
interpretations of responsibility in science include the duty to think
carefully about its societal impacts and to increase inclusiveness (e.g.
Kreissl et al., 2015). Viewed in this context, Stevienna de Saille and
Paul Martin’s approach in chapter 8 to analyse RRI using the notion
of the monster is both intriguing and useful. Drawing upon monster
theory (e.g. Smits, 2006) these authors argue that an entity’s monstrosity
is not so much determined by the extent to which it is seen as infringing
supposedly natural principles, as it is shaped by its inhabiting mutually
exclusive categories (see pp. 152–153). To de Saille and Martin, RRI
104 Science and the politics of openness

represents both the fear of monsters and the fear of what they call
the ‘monstrous regiment’ (see p. 150). According to the authors, this
is because RRI can be seen as serving two mutually exclusive goals.
The first is to generate private wealth while socialising public risk,
and the second is to involve publics and give them the chance to
‘destroy the new market’ (see p. 156). While this is an original way
of analysing RRI, it may not be the only way in which RRI can be
seen in the current political and economic landscape. Following scholars
such as Slavoj Žižek (2006) and Philip Mirowski (2014), what sets
the current situation apart from previous eras is that the goals of
economic growth, wealth creation and creating public benefits are
seeing as entirely compatible.2 This has become possible because our
societies have naturalised social inequalities and injustice. RRI could
be seen as one of the tools that help to manage such inequalities.

Conclusion
Openness is not more important today than it has been in earlier
decades. But the wide variety of goals and uses to which this notion is
now routinely subjected has generated a complex nexus of expectations
and associations. Many of these expectations fail to materialise in
reality, or they do so only for a highly selected public and in ways
that only partly reflect the intended aims. That the various meanings
and functions of openness are often flattened in scientific and public
discourse is unhelpful here, as it suggests that questions about the
success or value of openness can be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
Some of the tensions and challenges pertaining to open science that
are addressed in this part – and in this volume more broadly – cannot
be resolved very easily; in fact, some of them may not be soluble at all,
because they reflect the fact that openness can be interpreted in many
different ways, and yet each interpretation can work to the benefit or
at the expense of others. The lesson to draw from this is that, rather
than treating openness as a term that describes the value system or
political commitments of an institution or practice, we must take a

2 The current boom of concepts such as effective altruism (effectivealtruism.org) and

practices such as social-impact investing (e.g. Bugg-Levine and Emerson, 2011) are
but two examples of this.
Responsibility 105

deeper look at the values, goals and purposes that openness supports
and realises in concrete instances. The contributions by Mohr, Hadley
Kershaw, and de Saille and Martin all do this in different ways and
with different results, once again illustrating the breadth and partly
contradictory nature of practices and institutions of openness.

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6
Leviathan and the hybrid network: Future
Earth, co-production and the experimental
life of a global institution
Eleanor Hadley Kershaw

In the opening words of A Sociology of Monsters, John Law caricatures

a middle-class white male, middle-aged, non-disabled person’s perspec-
tive on the history of sociology: ‘We founded ourselves on class; then,
at a much later date we learned a little about ethnicity; more recently
we discovered gender; and more recently still we learned something
… about age and disability’ (Law, 1991: 1). Thus, the hypothetical
sociologist’s gradual realisation that ‘ “his” sociology had never spoken
for “us”: that all along the sociological “we” was a Leviathan that had
achieved its (sense of) order by usurping or silencing the other voices’
(Law, 1991: 1). In acknowledging the struggles – the ‘pain’ – of sociol-
ogy’s gradually expanding and more inclusive scope, Law signals the
(potential) monstrosity of discipline and exclusivity in the formation
and perpetuation of academic knowledge and communities.
Whether or not one subscribes to this view of sociology as monstrous,
science and technology studies (STS) is replete with monsters. From
Haraway’s cyborg (1991) to Latour’s appeal for us to love and care for
our technologies rather than abandon them as Frankenstein did his
creation (Latour, 2011), the central preoccupations of this field concern
the (blurred) categories of and relations between nature; culture; the
human, non-human or more-than-human; the scientific; technological;
social; material; epistemic and the political: the construction, main-
tenance and disturbance of our ‘natural’ and ‘social’ orders and kinds.
Whether leviathan in the sense of biblical sea monster, monolithic
and powerful organisation, or Hobbes’s body politic ruled by the
sovereign head of state – or whether ambiguous hybrid – the monster
108 Science and the politics of openness

is a useful metaphor and heuristic for exploring and describing disrup-

tions to order and control; the unusual, unfamiliar or potentially
threatening; and our anticipation, fears and hopes.
With this in mind, might disciplines, research communities and
knowledge domains be usefully characterised as leviathans, giant
structures composed of many individuals governed by one singular
centralised agency policing their boundaries? Or are they best seen
as hybrid networks, configurations or assemblages of the scientific
and the political, the material and the epistemic, the social and the
natural? Or perhaps it is more productive to consider our epistemic
apparatus not as a monster itself, but as facing monsters in the
process of its continuous (re)formulation, (re)definition and (re)
structuring.
This chapter explores efforts to bring about transformations in global
environmental change (GEC) research institutions, communities and
cultures. In particular, it focuses on the reconfiguration of several
existing international GEC research programmes into one initiative:
Future Earth (henceforth FE), an international research initiative on
GEC and sustainability that was launched in 2012 and became fully
operational in 2015. This reorganisation is accompanied (and in part
motivated) by ambitions for a ‘new type of science’ (FE, 2014: 2) and
‘a new “social contract” between science and society’ (FE, 2013: 11).
To achieve these aims, FE is unique in explicitly adopting co-design
and co-production of knowledge as a strategic agenda for the govern-
ance, coordination and production of research from global to local
levels.
Here, co-design and co-production (and transdisciplinarity) can
be understood as the opening up of science (or research more broadly)
and its governance to the participation of a wider range of stakeholders,
with the goal of transforming the ways it is done and used, as well as
its efficacy and impact. However, we do not yet know how this
transformation might be enacted in practice in a concrete programme.
Given this, what are constructive ways of understanding this initiative
and others like it? Are there monsters lurking in the uncharted ter-
ritories of the deliberate co-production of new research at a global
scale? And what is FE – a powerful leviathanesque organisation, a
hybrid network, a combination of the two or something else entirely?
This chapter, written in early 2016, explores the answers to these
Leviathan and the hybrid network 109

questions at a particular moment in FE’s development, drawing on

data from a qualitative case study of FE conducted between 2013 and
2015. FE has since evolved (and will continue to evolve for its duration),
but may still face many of the questions and tensions considered here.
The following section provides background on transformations in
research systems and cultures, changing science–society relations, and
a brief introduction to the concepts of co-design, co-production and
transdisciplinarity.

Changing research systems, cultures and

science–society relations
Since the 1980s and 1990s, scholars of research policy and STS have
explored changes in research systems, institutions, philosophies, cultures
and practices. The various conceptualisations of transformations in
the dynamics between research and society include post-normal science
(Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1993), mode 2 knowledge production (Gibbons
et al., 1994) and post-academic science (Ziman, 2000), amongst many
others. While such concepts are diverse, they all describe, theorise or
advocate a shift from the disciplinary organisation of research within
the academy towards a greater recognition of socio-economic priorities
and involvement of broader communities – particularly non-academic
actors – in the governance and production of research, whether at a
local, national, regional or global scale (Hessels and Van Lente, 2008).
These ideas and accounts are not uncontested, but some of them have
also taken on a performative role, both suggesting that a new organisa-
tion of knowledge production should take place (or is taking place)
and simultaneously participating in its realisation (Godin, 1998).
Alongside the emergence of these ideas there have been increasing
calls within national and international research (funding) communities
for multi-, inter- and transdisciplinarity; public and stakeholder
engagement; and RRI – often to address grand societal challenges
such as global environmental change, health or sustainability (Felt
and Wynne, 2007). In this context, co-design and co-production have
been advocated as research and/or governance approaches – for
example, by UK research councils and academics (Campbell and
Vanderhoven, 2016), as well as in wider public policy contexts (Durose
and Richardson, 2015).
110 Science and the politics of openness

However, while these initiatives aim to move beyond the traditional

disciplinary organisation of research and open up research and policy
processes to a wider range of actors, the concepts underpinning them
retain a high degree of interpretive flexibility (Ribeiro et al., 2016),
sometimes serving as ‘buzzwords’ that mobilise people and resources
(Bensaud Vincent, 2014), or as ‘boundary objects’ that enable diverse
parties with different perspectives to work together (Star and Griesemer,
1989). In particular, co-production and related concepts such as
co-design and transdisciplinarity have various meanings in different
theory and practice contexts, including STS, public policy, environ-
mental and sustainability research, health, community and development
studies, and the arts and humanities. In general, these terms refer to
the participation or collaboration of non-academic actors in research
(whether defining questions, gathering or analysing data, or engagement
in other aspects of the research process) (e.g. Pohl et al., 2010), or
the involvement of communities and/or other non-governmental actors
in policy processes or public service provision (Bovaird, 2007). Co-
production is also employed as an analytical idiom by Sheila Jasanoff
and other scholars in STS to signify the co-constitution of science
(knowledge) and social (political) order (Jasanoff, 2004).
While the language of STS and cognate fields (e.g. ‘participation’,
‘engagement’, ‘co-production’) is adopted in research governance,
practice and broader policy contexts, the motivations for using these
approaches in these contexts do not always follow the original logics
espoused by scholars, and implementing the concepts can be challenging
(Irwin, 2006; Pohl et al., 2010; Stirling, 2008). The reasons for proposing
and adopting these approaches to reconfiguring epistemic practices,
knowledge domains, and science–society relations are at least as diverse
as the range of interpretations of the concepts themselves. STS scholars
continue to argue for social agency, for opening up or democratising
science and governance, and ensuring accountability of science/
scientists and policy makers to broader society. But they also suggest
that, despite the proliferation of the language of STS, deficit and linear
models persist that assume one-way relationships between experts
and other stakeholders, and between knowledge and socially beneficial
outcomes via policy, failing to acknowledge the uncertainties and
limits of knowledge and governance (Jasanoff, 2003; Stirling, 2008;
and see chapter 12).
Leviathan and the hybrid network 111

In the case of the co-production of research, even within STS there

are varying rationales for advocating co-production practices, driven
by different logics (Lövbrand, 2011, following Barry et al., 2008). One
rationale is underpinned by a ‘logic of ontology’ that hopes to challenge
the broad questions of collective purpose and ontological assumptions
inherent in particular world views or issue framings. Another is a
‘logic of accountability’ that calls for the alignment of research portfolios
with societal need. In the context of a research project on EU climate
policy, these different rationales seemed incompatible. Broadly speaking,
policy makers in the co-production exercise wanted knowledge that
would be ‘useful’ within a predefined framework, while social scientists
wanted to challenge the policy framework.
Other initiatives to implement or study co-production have tended
to focus on the intentional pursuit of co-production at local, national
or regional levels and in individual projects and organisations (e.g.
Robinson and Tansey, 2006), or the broader (often much less explicit)
processes of the co-constitution of science and social order in national
and international contexts (e.g. Beck and Forsyth, 2015). However,
only a few studies have examined the adoption of co-design and
co-production as principles for the governance and production of
new research at a global scale (Lahsen, 2016; van der Hel, 2016). This
chapter addresses that gap by exploring how co-production is under-
stood – and how it relates to broader questions of institutional identity
and function – in the case of FE.

Future Earth background

FE, a major international research initiative on global environmental
change (GEC) for sustainability, was officially launched by the Science
and Technology Alliance for Global Sustainability in June 2012, during
the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20).1 Its unique
ambition is to provide a global framework and international coordina-
tion of new research on GEC and sustainability (as opposed to the

1 The Alliance (formed in 2010) comprises the International Council for Science (ICSU);
the International Social Science Council; the Belmont Forum of global change research
funders; the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO); the United Nations Environment Programme; the United Nations
University; and the World Meteorological Organization (see www.stalliance.org/).
112 Science and the politics of openness

large-scale synthesis of existing research in assessments undertaken

by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the
Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
(IPBES)). It aims to become ‘a major international research platform
providing the knowledge and support to accelerate our transformations
to a sustainable world’ and ‘a platform for international engagement
to ensure that knowledge is generated in partnership with society and
users of science’, merging several existing international GEC research
programmes (FE, n.d. a).
These programmes aimed to coordinate and promote international
interdisciplinary research on GEC, set research agendas, and make
links between research and policy (FE, 2013: 13). Between 2006 and
2009 the International Council for Science (ICSU) reviewed some of
the programmes, concluding that there was a ‘need to implement a
single strategic framework for Earth system research in the near future’
because the research landscape was ‘complex, confusing, and often
[led] to inefficient use of human, institutional, and financial resources’
(ICSU, 2009: 2). In 2009 ICSU and the other co-sponsors began a
visioning process to rethink the future of the programmes (which
converged with the development of the ‘Belmont Challenge’, a funders’
vision for GEC research (Belmont Forum, 2011)), and later established
a transition team to design a new ten-year initiative to succeed them.
FE was launched in June 2012, and became fully operational in 2015
through the change from an interim to a permanent secretariat. Key
features planned for the fully operational phase of FE included:
• an emphasis on integrated research across disciplines spanning
natural and social science, the humanities, and engineering
• the co-design and co-production of research with stakeholder
groups including funders, policymakers, civil society and
business
• the initiative’s global scope, encompassing all regions, and
bottom-up input from the research community and other
stakeholders
• the accelerated delivery of solutions-oriented, policy-relevant
research (FE, 2013; ICSU, n.d.).
The co-design and co-production of relevant knowledge in particular
are billed as ‘one of the most innovative aspects’ of the initiative (FE,
Leviathan and the hybrid network 113

n.d. b). FE thus exemplifies calls for transformations in research systems

and knowledge-making communities towards engagement with non-
academic stakeholders. But what do co-design and co-production
mean in FE, and why have they been adopted as core features of the
initiative? And how can we make sense of this type of programme?
Jasanoff and Wynne (1998: 58–59) note that two potential avenues
for development were mooted for one of FE’s precursors, the Inter-
national Geosphere–Biosphere Programme (IGBP), in the mid-1990s
(Barron, 1994). Firstly, the ‘rich tapestry’ model, in which diverse
(sometimes pre-existing) national and individual contributions or
initiatives would have been grouped under the broad umbrella of the
IGBP. Here, IGBP’s role would have been to facilitate communication
and collaboration, but its identity, visibility and ability to attract funding
may have been weakened. The second model was that of the ‘flagship’,
where effort would have been focused on ‘task-oriented activity’ (such
as major field experiments or modelling activities) with closer integra-
tion, greater harmonisation and stricter dirigisme, reinforcing IGBP’s
status as an autonomous international programme at the cost of its
inclusivity and diversity. In terms of the metaphorical monsters
described at the start of this chapter, these models respectively align
with the notion of a knowledge community as a hybrid science–society
network, and as a monstrous leviathan.
FE faces similar dilemmas in relation to its structure and role.
Might it become – or is it best viewed as – a loose hybrid network of
the scientific–political, the material–epistemic and the social–natural,
in which there may always be ambiguity around what type of organisa-
tion it is? Or is it better viewed as a leviathan, a giant monolithic
structure composed of many individuals governed by one centralised
agency aiming to coordinate, prescribe, direct, harmonise and stand-
ardise knowledge production, potentially to the detriment or exclusion
of some voices? Or is it both – or neither? And what role might co-
design and co-production play in these various scenarios?

Emerging tensions and ambiguities

Drawing on a qualitative case study of FE conducted between 2013
and 2015, this section firstly explores the diverse designations and
roles imagined for FE, noting that ambiguities between them – and
114 Science and the politics of openness

in the ambitious remit of FE – were seen as potentially problematic

by some FE and external actors. Six specific tensions and ambiguities
arise from these diverse visions and are likely to proliferate as FE is
extended and replicated at different scales and in different contexts.
Ambiguities in co-design and co-production in FE are then identified,
starting with the predominant rationale for this approach (co-
production for utility) before detailing two further views (co-production
for democratisation, and co-production as a threat). The necessity
of resolving these ambiguities is questioned, and their relation to
the flagship/leviathan and rich-tapestry/hybrid-network models is
discussed.
During the study, FE was still very much an organisation in the
making; many aspects of its design and implementation were still
ambiguous and yet to be determined. Data collection for this study
was concluded before the transition from the interim to the permanent
secretariat in 2015. FE has since evolved and will continue to evolve
for its duration.

Visions of Future Earth and the negotiation of ambiguities

During the period of study, visions of FE – of what it is supposed to
be and what roles and functions it is supposed to have – were diverse,
ambitious and, sometimes, ambiguous. In official and internal docu-
ments and webpages (produced between 2010 and early 2015), as well
as in interviews and focus groups conducted as part of this study,2
FE has been conceptualised in a range of ways. Some of these visions
evoke a leviathanesque ‘flagship’, for example: ‘a consolidated and
comprehensive effort, a flagship initiative on Earth System Research
for Global Sustainability’ (ICSU, 2011); ‘the global research platform
providing the knowledge and support to accelerate our transformations
to a sustainable world’ (FE, n.d. a).3 Others are more suggestive of
the ‘rich tapestry’ of a hybrid network, for example: ‘at its core a

2 Interview and focus group participants comprised members of the Future Earth
Science Committee, Interim Engagement Committee, Interim Secretariat, Alliance/
Governing Council, and other actors involved in or aware of FE’s development and
implementation.
3 This has since been changed on the website to ‘a major international research platform’
– perhaps as an acknowledgement that there may be other such platforms.
Leviathan and the hybrid network 115

“federation” of projects and other initiatives related to Global Envi-

ronmental Change’ (FE, n.d. c); an umbrella, tent, arena, network,
and hub (e.g. interviews 7 and 8;4 FE, n.d. d). Others still might fall
into either, both or neither category, for example: ‘first and foremost
a community’ (FE, n.d. e); part of a global innovation system (interview
9); amongst others.
Across the data, FE’s imagined roles and functions are as diverse
as its definitions and designations. They include (but are not limited
to): integrating the existing GEC programmes; creating interdisciplinary,
integrated, authoritative knowledge on the key challenges of GEC
and sustainability (including climate change, biodiversity loss, and
socio-economic change); informing policy, decision making and action
in the UN system (such as the Sustainable Development Goals, the
IPCC and the Framework Convention on Climate Change) and at
other levels; raising, redirecting and coordinating research funds,
activity and capacity; bringing about a change in the culture or practice
of scientific research; involving existing and new communities of
researchers, particularly from the social sciences, and engaging
stakeholders; bringing together GEC and sustainability research
communities and refocusing GEC research on sustainability challenges;
all at local, national, regional, and/or international levels.
This wide-ranging diversity in defining what FE is and what its
remit entails is acknowledged in passing in two early Q&A posts on
the FE blog. In posing questions to the Chair of the FE Science Com-
mittee and to the Interim Director of FE, ICSU communications staff
noted respectively that ‘Future Earth seems to mean different things
to different people’ (Mengel, 2013) and ‘Future Earth may seem like
all things to all people’ (Young, 2013). These statements reflect the
roots of FE’s plural definitions and purposes: on the one hand, many
people have been involved (and have a stake) in its development,
giving rise to a broad range of visions and interpretations; and on the
other, the ambitions for its remit and scope are extremely broad even
within single narratives of the initiative, incorporating a wide range
of actors, knowledges, practices, phenomena, and scales.

4 In an effort to maintain anonymity, interview numbers (one per interview) have

been attributed at random and do not reflect the order in which the interviews were
conducted.
116 Science and the politics of openness

Although diverse understandings of what FE is and might do

emerged from the interviews, there were varying degrees of awareness
of and concern about these differences, with some interviewees retaining
a strong sense of FE’s purpose (from their perspective), and others
viewing a lack of clarity around its identity, objectives and activities
as potentially problematic. In mid-May 2014, one Interim Engagement
Committee member argued for more specificity about FE’s intended
achievements, stating that ‘Future Earth needs to really, really improve
the definition of who and what it is and what its exact purpose is; I
still think it’s a bit too vague’ (interview 10).
Lack of clarity or focus in FE’s mandate has also been flagged as
problematic by external stakeholders. In late May 2014, Ian Thornton,
deputy director of the UK Collaborative on Development Sciences,
blogged about FE, having attended an ICSU workshop. He suggests
that despite considerable awareness of FE among UK stakeholders,
there is confusion about ‘what Future Earth will do, its value-add,
and whether UK funders should engage more closely’ (Thornton,
2014). He attributes this confusion to the challenges inherent in
articulating what coordination of research can achieve, particularly
in the context of an evolving organisational mandate, arguing that
FE should pare back its goals and clarify what the secretariat will do:
‘Is it mainly coordination? Or, evidence synthesis and policy influence?
Or being a hub for debate?’ (Thornton, 2014). Indeed, during the
period of study, FE documents and actors suggested that the initiative
(if not specifically the secretariat) is intended to take all three roles
identified by Thornton, and more.
Overall, the analysis of the data suggests (at least) six linked points
of tension or dilemmas between different visions and ambitions for
FE, at times echoing the leviathan and hybrid-network models. Firstly,
related to Thornton’s point above, there is a potential conflict between
visions of FE as a hub or arena for debate, dialogue and deliberation,
and that of FE as a platform to deliver solutions-oriented, policy-
relevant knowledge and innovation outputs. The ability to achieve
both within the same institutional and conceptual framework has
been questioned by scholars outside the initiative (Lövbrand et al.,
2015).
This is closely linked to the second and third tensions. The second
is between consensus and plurality, or between the desire to integrate
Leviathan and the hybrid network 117

knowledge (and also to create an integrated, authoritative, singular

organisation, programme, or brand) and the inevitable multiplicity
of a multi-scalar, multidisciplinary, multi-stakeholder international
initiative and its forms of knowledge (Klenk and Meehan, 2015). The
third tension is between the ambition to bring about new ways of
doing science while also promoting and ensuring continued authority
for existing ways. Here we might loosely align debate and plurality
with the hybrid-network model, and solutions and singularity with
leviathan (with caution, as STS has alerted us to the reductionism of
binaries), but the new versus existing ways do not align as neatly with
the models. Perhaps a hybrid network is more amenable to innovation
or novelty, and the (authority of the) status quo more easily maintained
and elevated by a leviathan.
One participant discussed FE’s role as a forum for debate, highlight-
ing tensions between new and old:
To me, what’s exciting about Future Earth is that it is pioneering a new
approach to thinking about and doing science, which is integrated,
interdisciplinary, co-produced, and it also should be a forum for
encouraging debate and encouraging this approach but in a critically
reflective way. […] But I do think it faces real tensions because at the
same time it’s trying to give more prominence to some fairly standard
ways of doing science.
The participant then identified a challenge:
But the threat is that integrating everything becomes a kind of lowest
common denominator and you lose, as it were, the cutting edge nature
of that science – and I think both can happen there but I think we need
to work very actively with those tensions and be aware of them and
push on both fronts. (Interview 7)
The tension between singularity and multiplicity is perhaps heightened
by the authority-building and fundraising aspirations for the initiative,
particularly for those imagining its place in the UN system. One
participant suggested that FE is ‘not trying to be totalising’, but that
the ambition is to be ‘the main place’ and ‘the natural platform’ with
which the UN, the European Commission and other international
organisations wish to partner (interview 8).
Relating to authority building, there is a fourth tension between
FE’s ambition to be inclusive (of both existing and new research and
118 Science and the politics of openness

stakeholder communities) versus upholding standards and setting

limits on what counts as FE knowledge or approaches. On the one
hand, interviewees spoke about working towards making FE ‘a growing
tangible concern that people understand and that they want to be part
of ’ (interview 8), and opening up FE not only to the core projects of
the existing GEC programmes but also to other science communities,
including ‘the mass of environmental social science across the world
that by definition until now has been excluded from this dominant
global environmental change community’ (interview 7). However,
they also spoke about the need to ‘regulate the arena’ (e.g. through
peer review, critique and allowing the most robust claims to survive),
whether because scholars and/or stakeholders are not ‘fully aligned’
with FE, or ‘committed enough to the codes’, or might ‘clutter up
the arena with false claims or with unfounded claims’ (interview
8). Processes for affiliation with FE and ways of including other
communities were being discussed and designed by the committees
during the period these interviews were conducted, with varying ideas
about the appropriate level of bureaucracy, who should be included
and how.
Linked to this ambiguity around openness to participation or
affiliation, there is a fifth tension between the directive action of
establishing an initiative from the top (global and centralised) level
down and the ambition to be responsive to the needs of society and
to include bottom-up input from the scientific community. One
participant argued that FE is ‘a directive programme’ and is not intended
to do ‘purely responsive science’, that it needs to set ‘broad strategic
directions through the [strategic research agenda] process’, but that
there should be ‘wide engagement’ in putting those agendas together,
and the research community should be given ‘wide freedoms’ to design
research to meet them, without it being ‘a completely blue skies
programme’ (interview 3).
The dilemmas between strategy/directiveness versus responsiveness,
and between blue-sky research versus useful research, link to a sixth
tension, which itself links back to new versus existing ways. This is
the tension between a utilitarian focus on demand-driven science
and the more traditional curiosity-driven model. Again, we might
loosely align inclusivity and responsiveness with the hybrid-network
Leviathan and the hybrid network 119

model, and setting standards and strategy or direction with that of

the leviathan. But, similar to the tension between new versus existing
modes of science, utility versus demand and curiosity versus supply
do not map neatly onto the models.
While thinking in terms of dilemmas might suggest mutual exclusiv-
ity, these tensions are not necessarily dichotomous. However, they
are issues that those involved in FE were negotiating and navigating
at the time of this study, and will probably continue to face as the
initiative further develops. While this type of ambiguity can perhaps
be expected in the early stages of a new initiative as its identity and
remit are still in flux, it could be argued that some stabilisation may
occur through the social order of recognised practices, structures and
identities, particularly as the multiple roles and functions imagined
for FE inform design decisions made about its governance, operations
and activities.
For example, certain aspects may find some sort of stability in FE’s
organisational structure or its infrastructural architecture. In March
2016 the headline of the ‘Get Involved’ page on the FE website was
changed from ‘Future Earth is first and foremost a community’ to
‘Future Earth is first and foremost an open network committed to
global sustainability.’ This change was implemented in conjunction
with the launch of the FE ‘Open Network’, an online networking tool
to which anyone can sign up: (potentially) a concrete mechanism of
openness and bottom-up input.5 (Of course, the extent to which such
mechanisms will be used or will enable collaboration on equal footing
remains to be seen.)
Despite these points of stabilisation, as FE further develops and is
rolled out and taken up at regional and national levels (whether through
its regional hubs or centres and national committees, and/or by other
initiatives affiliating, or in multiple other possible ways), the same
and further ambiguities are bound to emerge. As the FE network
extends and becomes more complex, the FE model is also extended,
adapted and interpreted in a diverse range of contexts.

5 These developments were at least partly driven by personnel changes between the
interim and permanent secretariat in 2015, and the associated shifts in perspectives
and approaches.
120 Science and the politics of openness

Ambiguities in co-design and co-production

In addition to the tensions and ambiguities that emerge when thinking
through and talking about FE’s identity and functions, there is ambiguity
around the concepts and roles of co-design, co-production and
transdisciplinarity in FE. This ambiguity has also been regarded as
problematic by some. As noted by science writer Jon Turney in an
FE blog post (Turney, 2014), the Design Report (FE, 2013) and the
‘Impact’ section of the website (FE, n.d. b) perhaps prompt more
questions than provide answers about these concepts. On the one
hand, it is suggested that co-design and co-production require ‘an
active involvement of researchers and stakeholders during the entire
research process’ (FE, 2013: 22), but on the other, it seems that less
active involvement of stakeholders may be preferred at some stages:
Co-design and co-production of knowledge include various steps where
both researchers and other stakeholders are involved but to different
extents and with different responsibilities […] Whilst researchers are
responsible for the scientific methodologies, the definition of the research
questions and the dissemination of results are done jointly. […] It is
also recognised that the focus for this way of working should be on
where the research and stakeholder community feel that it will bring
the greatest benefits. (FE, 2013: 23)

The website and Design Report do not address how to reconcile continu-
ous engagement with the described division of responsibilities, nor
how it should be decided where co-design and co-production bring
the greatest benefits (and to whom). There are additional uncertainties
on the roles of participants and stakeholders in co-design and co-
production, the scale at which these endeavours should happen, and
the anticipated outputs and outcomes, stemming in part from the
differing rationales for undertaking such processes (and more broadly
from differing imaginaries of science, society and the relationship
between them) (Hadley Kershaw, forthcoming).
The predominant vision of co-design, co-production and transdis-
ciplinarity in FE (in the documents and among many of the key actors)
is that collaboration between researchers and stakeholders will ensure
that the ‘right’ research questions are asked and therefore relevant or
useful knowledge (and solutions) will be produced, and will be more
likely to have impact as users have been involved in its production.
Leviathan and the hybrid network 121

This utilitarian view corresponds to the logic of accountability as

discussed on p. 111: redirecting research portfolios towards societal
need (Lövbrand, 2011: 227), with an additional emphasis on impact
of research. This type of rationale has been criticised for its normative
assumption that co-produced and transdisciplinary research leads
unproblematically to beneficial social solutions (Polk, 2014), and for
restricting plurality, deliberation and social-science involvement
(Lövbrand et al., 2015).
However, the interviews and focus groups conducted for this
research revealed a broader range of understandings of co-design and
co-production in FE. Some participants saw them as deliberative or
reflexive processes in which multiple perspectives, commitments and
knowledges are brought together, discussed and socially constructed:

I would see the sort of co-construction agenda as about people, all these
people, whether they’re users, whether they’re different scientists from
different disciplines, coming to a situation bringing their own social
commitments and drivers and understandings and assumptions about
the world, and bringing those together and reflecting on them reflexively,
realising that everybody’s got a set of partial perspectives so those need
to be deliberated on and debated out throughout the process, throughout
the design, throughout the doing, throughout the communication.
(Interview 7)

This view is more closely linked to visions of FE as an arena for

deliberation, rather than as a platform for solutions, aligning with
the logic of ontology described by Lövbrand (2011; following Barry
et al., 2008) in which dominant frameworks and world views can be
challenged, and ontological questions – including questions of common
purpose – asked. That is not to say that participants voicing these
opinions were not interested in finding solutions, having impact or
‘making a difference’. However, this was more closely associated with
extending agency and the rights of knowledge production or governance
to non-academic actors, valuing their perspectives and knowledge,
and democratising expertise:

[Co-production] is to recognise that scientific knowledge or scientists

are not the only people who hold relevant knowledge. That knowledge
of practitioners, decision-makers, local communities, et cetera, is valid
knowledge. […] That is why I like to call them knowledge partners,
122 Science and the politics of openness

because they are not just providers of additional data, they are not
witnesses, they are active knowledge partners, their knowledge counts.
(Interview 5)

A third view of co-design and co-production was also apparent:

they were perceived by some as a threat. Many participants referred
to the ideal of objective, pure science; either expressing concern about
how to preserve it or noting that others in FE feel that it is challenged
by co-design and/or co-production. Some of the most significant
contestation arose around adherence or otherwise to this ideal, as
well as around the notions of scientific independence and academic
freedom. One participant suggested that the involvement of private-
sector organisations (e.g. oil companies) in research could be dangerous,
considering the elimination of conflicts of interest to be ‘the hallmark
of science’:
For me, in the middle [of the research process] there should be a complete
separation, I do not believe that stakeholders should ever be involved
in the process of generating data, interpreting data or peer reviewing
data. That, to me, provides egregious conflicts of interests that … will
ruin the integrity of science for society, in my opinion. (Interview 2)

However, this participant was not totally against the co-design of

research questions and priorities, as long as there was still support
for curiosity-driven science beyond FE. Other participants felt that
perceived risks of bias or conflict of interest associated with involving
societal stakeholders were legitimate but manageable concerns. For
example, one participant suggested that accountability could be built
into the research process by stipulating that projects address questions
of inequality when co-designing and/or co-producing with business
or other powerful actors (focus group 2); another proposed that political
co-option could be avoided by ensuring that the academic peer-review
process would be undertaken by rigorous and sceptical ‘top-rate’
scientists (interview 8).
Some committee members noted that the ambiguity between these
different understandings of co-design and co-production (and the
different levels of commitment to requiring them as mandatory elements
of any affiliated project) was potentially problematic. Several participants
suggested that it would be necessary to develop common understand-
ings of these concepts and common ground rules, principles, processes
Leviathan and the hybrid network 123

and practices in order to implement them and guard against conflict

of interest and other threats. Others still stressed that there would
probably always be multiple interpretations of these terms.
This latter view seems to strongly correlate with the hybrid-network/
rich-tapestry model of FE, and raises the question of whether FE’s
institutional structure and accreditation/affiliation processes will be
open and flexible enough to enable such multiple meanings and
practices. Defined rules and shared understandings (temporary stabilisa-
tion) might be needed to avoid some of the tensions identified (such
as conflict of interest, and ensuring that marginalised groups are
considered when deciding with whom to co-produce) or to actually
get something done (at least in a particular way, whether towards
utility, democratisation, both or neither). However, any such rules or
understandings may need to be settled and resettled as the initiative
evolves – what one participant called an iterative ‘learning process’
(focus group 2).
So, where do these many differences, ambiguities and tensions leave
us? Is FE best viewed as a leviathan, or a hybrid, or something else?

Living with ambiguity

The argument for FE as a leviathan might consider its emphasis on
a new ‘social contract’ for science and society; the (potential) boundary
building around what constitutes FE activities and knowledge; the
singular nomenclature of ‘Future Earth’ (as opposed to, for example,
‘Earth’s Futures’, or other plural alternatives); and the centralised, global
coordination of the initiative. The argument for FE as a hybrid network
might consider it as a boundary organisation (e.g. Miller, 2001) in its
work to span science and politics; the (albeit initially imperfect (Padma,
2014)) regional distribution of the global secretariat hubs, regional
centres, national committees and international projects, and the
diversity of its global committee members; and its efforts towards
inclusivity, such as the recent launch of the Open Network. Centralised
documents and processes can be blunt instruments as they condense
a broad range of views towards consensus or settlement, but perhaps
it is unfair to look only at those instances of crystallisation in FE’s
development, when many other actors, knowledges, practices and
phenomena operate within and around what some label ‘Future Earth’.
124 Science and the politics of openness

For now it seems that there is something of both models in FE,

depending on which lens is chosen, and perhaps it will continue to
be an ambiguous double hybrid. However, analytically, it may be more
useful to see FE as a continuously evolving network, assemblage or
configuration – and part of bigger, broader networks – than as a
rational, bounded entity (Pallett and Chilvers, 2015). It is then easier
to take into account its multilayered development and iterations across
different contexts, shaped by and shaping different actors, objects,
cultures and practices; perhaps this view also opens up the possibility
of taking a place within and/or shaping this initiative ourselves.
While FE faces many of the well-documented challenges of co-design,
co-production and transdisciplinarity – and more, owing to the scale
of its ambition – the various ambiguities that emerge in thinking,
talking about and practicing FE, and what co-design and co-production
might mean within it, are not necessarily problematic. They are
inevitable and even necessary. They could keep FE, and especially
co-production, alive.
Ambiguity can be seen as flexibility and openness, making space
for conversation and the negotiation of meaning (Nerlich and Clarke,
2001). This is particularly the case when FE is imagined as an ongoing
experiment, which may never reach a conclusion about how this type
of work ‘should’ be done – indeed, in which such conclusions would
be undesirable as they would close down the potential to adapt to
new circumstances, contexts and actors. FE is part of broader systems,
networks and ‘ecologies of participation’, rather than a dislocated,
self-contained institution or event to be evaluated for its successes
and failures against rigid pre-given standards or norms (Chilvers and
Kearnes, 2016; Irwin, 2006). The notion that FE is stepping into the
unknown and ‘feeling the way’, and that co-production is something
that can only be worked out in practice (at ‘field level’) in specific
projects and contexts, has been acknowledged by various FE actors,
whether seeing co-production as a ‘messy social experiment’ (Turney,
2014), or thinking about a White Paper on engagement as ‘a testable
hypothesis’ (interview 9).
From this perspective, FE should be treated with care and analytical
generosity. Although its challenges and limitations should be acknowl-
edged, it is also constructive to recognise that, during this study at
least, FE had already introduced changes in comparison with the
Leviathan and the hybrid network 125

existing GEC programmes. Simply starting conversations about why

and how to co-produce research has the potential to introduce
unfamiliar questions and perhaps reflexivity to existing projects, and
institutional developments – such as the introduction of an engagement
committee in addition to the standard scientific committee, and
thematic rather than disciplinary organisation of research communities
– have the potential to effect further change to well-established social
and epistemic orders:
I mean, one really good thing is even having discussions about [power
relations], because in somewhere like the IGBP Science Committee I
can assure you the notion of talking about power would never have
come up [laughs]. (Interview 9)

Perhaps it is productive to ask how FE can maintain experimentality

while also putting policy and structures in place. How can it – and
similar programmes – achieve a balance between bringing itself into
being and allowing space for development, new and multiple perspec-
tives, and bottom-up initiative? (How) can intangible processes and
outcomes of research be valued in a culture of solutions orientation,
policy relevance, and increasing quantification and audit (Strathern,
2000)? How can tensions between openness and closure be negotiated?
Other scholars have suggested that humility, institutional reflexivity
and organisational learning are key to ensuring ongoing space for
plurality, flexibility, diversity and capacity building (Beck et al., 2014;
Felt and Wynne, 2007; Jasanoff, 2003; Pallett and Chilvers, 2015).
There are indications that FE aspires to achieve this type of practice,
whether through a reflexive form of co-production, through monitoring
and evaluating its own processes and outcomes, or in acknowledging
that FE is an ongoing learning process. Future research could (carefully
and generously) explore to what extent – and how – FE is managing
to achieve this within and beyond its ever-expanding and complex
structure and networks.

Acknowledgements
Many thanks are due to Future Earth and all of the research participants
who generously gave their time and input. Sincere thanks as well to
Brigitte Nerlich and Sujatha Raman for their invaluable guidance,
126 Science and the politics of openness

support and feedback on this chapter and the broader PhD project,
and to Brigitte for the chapter title, after Shapin and Schaffer (1985).

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7
‘Opening up’ energy transitions research
for development
Alison Mohr

The term ‘energy transition’ has gained increasing traction internation-

ally in research and policy communities seeking tools and concepts
to study and explain the transformation to more sustainable energy
systems. A significant limitation of the energy transitions literature
is that much of it relates to the experiences of industrialised countries
in the global North attempting to transition to sustainable energy
futures. Yet there is also an urgent need to understand the potential
nature of emergent transitions in the industrialising countries of the
global South where energy is inextricably linked to development, but
also where decarbonising the energy system may not be the core or
most pressing objective. This prompts the question of how well transi-
tions concepts and frameworks, shaped largely by the experience of
research based in industrialised countries, translate when applied in
developing contexts. In this respect, transitions are relatively unchar-
tered territories that hide numerous monsters, not least in the contested
nature of the term itself. Understandings and expectations of energy
transitions may differ across the North–South divide; thus, how
transition is framed and by whom will have material implications for
livelihoods, raising the spectre of social justice and other monsters
in energy transitions research for development.
This chapter is concerned with opening up research, specifically
the case of global-North-led research on sustainable energy transitions
in the global South, to examine underlying assumptions, blind spots
and gaps, but also to identify alternative ways of doing transitions
research that are more responsive to the public and social priorities
132 Science and the politics of openness

of the transitioning communities. Alternative or competing priorities

for transitions research are best detected through a process of co-design;
in this case the co-design of community energy systems on the basis
of bottom-up iterative public and community engagement, as one of
these alternative ways of doing transitions research. Making transitions
research ‘open’ from the bottom up presupposes the embedding of
democratic values such as inclusiveness and social justice.
I will explore how attempts to open up transitions research through
a process of co-design can facilitate or impede values of inclusiveness
and social justice by drawing on the experience of the ongoing Solar
Nano-Grids (SONG) project, which aims to explore ways of co-
designing small-scale off-grid energy systems in rural Kenya and
Bangladesh through community engagement. The SONG project
emerged as a response to the perceived shortcomings in these countries
of solar-home-systems (SHS) installations that provide individual
households only with electricity for lighting and small appliances.
While households undoubtedly gain developmental benefits from
access to SHS, the degree to which they address the poverty of
household members and their ability to generate an income is far less
clear. In response, SONG systems aim to provide additional collective
community benefits by the provision of excess energy for small-scale
economic activities using, for example, posho (maize meal) mills and
egg incubators.
SONG is an expressly transdisciplinary project that brings together
social scientists, engineers and not-for-profit renewable-energy
organisations engaged in the co-design of all aspects of the energy-
transitions research, from community engagement and implementation
through to monitoring and evaluation. The role of social science in
SONG is distinct in a number of ways. By research, I mean social
science as well as engineering research. Many of the chapters in this
book are about research understood as ‘scientific research’, which social
scientists are critically investigating from the outside, or post hoc (of
which ELSI, research on ethical, legal and social implications, that
arose as an extramural research programme to the Human Genome
project, is a prime example). In SONG, social scientists are engaged
in problem solving, not just problematising from afar, and are actively
involved in the design, implementation and redesign of socio-technical
systems.
‘Opening up’ research for development 133

SONG’s approach to energy transitions research is novel in that it

is taking transitions theory, and in particular the concept of niche
experimentation, and applying it in practice to community niches in
Kenya and Bangladesh to facilitate energy transitions. But the applica-
tion of transitions concepts and tools in developing contexts is not
without its practical challenges. What are the limits of research
frameworks for energy transitions when they are transferred from
the global North to the global South? How does co-design of energy-
transitions research actually work in practice? Who and what does it
need to take into account?
The chapter proceeds with a brief introduction to the transitions
literature through the lens of its principal theoretical frameworks. It
outlines key concepts and identifies notable limitations, including the
limited but emerging application of transitions research in developing
contexts. Taking the position that the absent or naive conceptualisations
of the dominant frameworks stem from the neglect of issues of distribu-
tive and procedural justice, the remaining sections show how the
co-design of the SONG project was fundamental to addressing these
justice deficits. The chapter concludes by reflecting on implications
for energy transitions research arising from applying justice principles
in practice.

Limitations of transitions research frameworks

and concepts
The term ‘transition’ emerged from a body of literature on socio-
technical transitions (Geels, 2005; Geels and Schot, 2007) that refers to
system-wide changes involving the complex reconfigurations of tech-
nology, policy, markets, material infrastructure, scientific knowledge,
and social and cultural practices over time towards more sustainable
systems, in areas such as energy (Newell and Mulvaney, 2013). Systems-
level innovations occur through ‘the interplay of dynamics at multiple
levels’ (Geels, 2005: 368). A micro-level niche is nested within and
interacts with a patchwork of meso-level regimes and macro-level
landscape developments to form a socio-technical system. The core
notion of this multi-level perspective framework is that the increasing
traction of niche innovations from below and pressure exerted from
above by changes in external factors at the landscape level serve to
134 Science and the politics of openness

destabilise the extant socio-technical regime, thus creating opportunities

for niche innovations to become systemically embedded.
Of particular relevance to the focus of this chapter on the community
niche as an innovation space for the development of off-grid energy
systems is strategic niche management, a subcategory of the multi-level
perspective. A niche refers to a protected space or ‘incubation room’
(Geels and Schot, 2007) at the micro level, where ‘radical innovations’
(Geels, 2011) are nurtured away from the normal pressures of market
forces and technical performance to enable essential learning to take
place (Smith et al., 2014). The niche performs an important function
in propagating transformative innovations and providing a footing for
their future establishment in the dominant socio-technical regime.
A key aspect of the strategic-niche management framework is that it
directs attention to the co-evolution of stakeholders’ visions of particular
innovation-enabled futures, the learning gained from experiment-
ing in everyday settings and the societal embedding of new socio-
technical practices relevant to that particular innovation (Ockwell and
Byrne, 2015).
The design and implementation of socio-technical transitions
projects, however, have too often been narrowly framed as linear,
top-down processes driven by the techno-economic priorities of
implementers that limit the ability to provide just and equitable solu-
tions responsive to the priorities of the communities in transition.
This has led to an increasing recognition of the need to address the
justice deficits of transitions processes. The following paragraphs
identify two prominent deficits in the socio-technical transitions
literature – a lack of consideration of the politics of framing and of
socio-spatial relations and dynamics – that must be attended to if
transitions are to evolve beyond their apolitical and technocratic origins
to become more socially just (Goldthau and Sovacool, 2012).

Politics of framing
The act of transitioning from one socio-technical system to another
is inherently political, yet existing analyses do not adequately address
the politics of transitions (Lehtonen and Kern, 2009; Meadowcroft,
2009; Smith and Stirling, 2007). Alongside theories about the multi-level
dynamics of system innovations, socio-technical transitions research
‘Opening up’ research for development 135

has developed prescriptive formulations for the management of

transitions towards more sustainable ends. Such forms of transitions
management have traditionally been led by policy and stakeholder
elites, who have been criticised for their tendency toward techno-
economic determinism and their lack of critical reflexivity regarding
who participates in, and the politics of, transitions by management
(Lawhon and Murphy, 2011). Reflexive questions such as ‘Whose
transitions?’ and ‘A transition from what to where?’ aim to reveal the
politics of whose priorities should steer the transitions agenda.
In any particular energy transition, the matter of who gets to define
what transition means will have a direct bearing over the outcomes
of the transition. Is it a transition from traditional to modern sources
of energy, or from centralised to distributed energy systems and
governance (or vice versa), or from no or low access to energy to
secure and reliable access? For energy-impoverished rural communities
in developing countries a transition may not be about renewable energy
but rather the more fundamental issue of access to energy, whatever
its source. A key point is that it depends on who is allowed to define
the agenda. So the issue of whether a particular transition should aim
to mitigate energy poverty, broadly speaking, or to increase access to
energy, or even to reduce carbon emissions, is essentially an issue of
the politics of framing and the radically different political understand-
ings and actions that underpin these claims. How a transition is framed,
and by whom, may have material implications for those whose liveli-
hoods will be improved or impoverished.
In an attempt to open up the politics of transitions, Stirling (2014)
draws a stark distinction between singular linear transitions driven
by technological innovation and progressive transformations involving
social as well as technological innovations shaped by a plurality of
values and visions. Stirling argues persuasively that truly transformative
and sustainable systemic change emerges out of the collective, bottom-
up, socio-culturally embedded energy knowledge and practices of
those in transition.

Socio-spatial relations and dynamics

The socio-technical transitions literature is also notable for a relative
absence of reflection about the specific spatial contexts and conditions
136 Science and the politics of openness

in which empirical case studies are situated, not least from a comparative
perspective. Coenen et al. (2012: 969) claim that socio-technical
transitions processes are characterised by ‘missing or naïve concep-
tualisations of space’, and that such ‘analyses have overlooked where
transitions take place, and the socio-spatial relations and dynamics
within which transitions evolve’. A lack of sensitivity to specific socio-
spatial dynamics of transitions means that the intrinsic diversity arising
from the variety of local, social, cultural and institutional conditions,
and stakeholder priorities and resources across those spaces has not
been adequately acknowledged or taken into consideration. Coenen
et al. make the point that transitions researchers would do well to
take a closer look at the spatial unevenness and inequalities of transition
processes whether it be from the perspective of global research and
policy networks or of local community niches.
Recently, transitions scholars have begun to address the lack of
attention to the role of space (see Raven et al., 2012; Smith et al.,
2010) by paying particular attention to the places in which niches are
created, their organisation and scale of production, and how these
places are shaped by relations between and among key stakeholders.
Attention to space and scale is vital, given their potential importance
when analysing energy transitions that span local and global contexts,
such as the creation of global networks in which poorer parts of the
global South provide resources for the energy ambitions of the richer
North (van der Horst and Vermeylen, 2011), or where, in a globalised
market for limited resources, they face the adverse knock-on effects
of global-North investments in energy production (Raman and Mohr,
2013). Geels (2010), too, recognises the theoretical limitations of the
existing literature for dealing with the additional complexities of
emergent or future sustainability transitions, including the uncertainty
involved in anticipating their potential impacts across time and space.
In this chapter, the off-grid nature of SONG systems necessitates
a specific local perspective of the socio-spatial dynamics of community-
energy-transitions niches rather than the local global perspective of
niche development trajectories used by Geels and Raven (2006) in
the multi-level perspective to describe how local niche experiments
can be scaled up as cumulative local outcomes reveal generic lessons
and rules for widespread adoption. While recognising that the local
is always situated in broader networks that operate at different scales
‘Opening up’ research for development 137

and that a purely local-scale transition analysis risks ignoring the fact
that localised activities and resources are subject to external pressures,
a broad local–global perspective is beyond the scope of this current
chapter.

Bridging the justice divide in North–South

energy transitions research
The socio-technical transitions approach has in recent years begun
to be applied in developing countries. A special edition of Environmental
Science and Policy introduced by Berkhout et al. (2010) applied these
ideas to developing Asia, to see what they revealed about the wider
impacts of socio-technical innovations developed via niche experiments.
A similar case study on technology innovation and transfer focuses
on China (Wang and Watson 2010). Work on energy transitions in
sub-Saharan Africa is limited, but researchers from the University of
Sussex have published a number of studies focusing on SHS in Kenya.
Byrne (2011) has shown how attempts to replicate the success of a
Kenyan SHS initiative in neighbouring Tanzania failed as insufficient
attention was paid to the specificities of the local context. A subsequent
related study by Byrne et al. (2014) further demonstrates that context
matters, as innovation processes are shaped as much by political,
social and environmental forces as by powerful economic and insti-
tutional interests. Being aware of context is therefore critical for the
replication of transitions initiatives across neighbouring territorial
borders. Moreover, given its limited application in developing countries,
it is reasonable to question the relevance of the literature framed by
research agendas in the global North to the direct insertion of the
findings into global South contexts. Assumptions underpinning global
North research agendas, including those about universal access to
electricity, the nature and pace of change between energy systems,
and the priorities for systemic change, might not directly translate in
developing contexts.
The absence of attention to the political and socio-spatial dimensions
within the dominant frameworks for conceptualising sustainable-energy
transitions may stem from a neglect of issues of distributive and
procedural justice. Eames and Hunt (2013: 47) reason that ‘Given the
fundamental role that energy and energy technologies play in
138 Science and the politics of openness

restructuring socio-economic and socio-ecological relations it is perhaps

surprising that greater attention has not previously been paid to
exploring the equity and justice implications of energy systems transi-
tions.’ When researchers from the global North intervene in sustainable-
energy transitions for socio-economic development and improving
livelihoods in energy-impoverished rural communities in the global
South, questions of equity and justice take on a more critical edge.
But is providing universal access to clean, affordable and reliable energy
enough to resolve injustices in energy systems transitions? Pulido
(1996) suggests that changes to power relations, cultural practices
and systems of meaning are also required, beyond mere (socio-)
economic restructuring and redistribution. This hints at the inadequacy
of principles of distributive justice by themselves to acknowledge and
address the range of valid issues of justice. A contemporary of Pulido,
Lake (1996) agrees that it is impossible to have thorough distributive
justice without justice in the procedures for producing that
distribution.
In North–South collaborations it is imperative, therefore, that the
key justice deficits of the dominant theoretical frameworks in relation
to both the distributive and procedural dimensions of transitions
research and practice should be addressed. Drawing on Schlosberg’s
(2007) work on defining what environmental justice means, this chapter
proceeds with the argument that the theory and practice of justice
necessarily include distributive justice (to address socio-spatial inequali-
ties), but must also embrace notions of justice based in a recognition
of differences and broad participation in the politics of transitions in
the form of procedural opportunities. Accordingly, distributive justice
refers to how the spatio-temporal distribution of risks and benefits
is felt across social groups and communities and within and across
generations, while procedural justice relates to who is granted both
access to and participation in decision-making processes, as well as
whose and what knowledge, interests and values are afforded recogni-
tion in such processes (Schlosberg, 2007).
Drawing on the specific case of SONG systems implementation for
socio-economic development and livelihoods enhancement in two
community niches – Lemolo B and Echareria – in Nakuru County,
Kenya, the sections below detail instances where principles of distribu-
tive and procedural justice were applied in practice to inform the
‘Opening up’ research for development 139

co-design of energy transitions in these communities. It is important

to note, as observed by Lake (1996), that principles of distributive
and procedural justice are mutually interdependent.

The co-design of just energy transitions in Kenya

Distributively just transitions
Fundamentally, a just transition requires attention to how the socio-
spatial organisation of community niches affects community cohesion
and the capacity of individuals to decide on a common energy future.
To this end, the SONG project aimed to alleviate existing socio-spatial
inequalities and prevent new ones, driven by factors such as age,
gender, ethnicity and income, through an inclusive process of
co-design.
The highly dispersed nature of the dwellings in the two villages
selected by the Kenyan partner necessitated a redesign of the nano-grid
systems to enable the distribution of power by portable batteries rather
than lines, to accommodate the long distances between the solar array
and central charging hub and individual dwellings. Redesigning the
system this way meant that access was not limited to just those few
households in a required radius, but also meant that the siting of the
solar array was determined more by what would be a suitably secure
and accessible location for the whole community than by who would
benefit most from having the array sited nearby. Such decisions are
highly political, even within a relatively small community niche. In
the case of Echareria, the village consists of three spatially, socio-
economically and tribally disparate settlements of internally displaced
people. The settlements correspond to waves of intercommunal conflict
linked to electoral violence. The first settlement was established in
1992, and households were given large blocks of land at the bottom
of a hill, while the second and third settlements were established in
2001 and 2007–2008, respectively, and located progressively up the
hill on decreasingly smaller blocks of land. The SONG project team,
sensitive to the socio-economic and cultural asymmetries in the
community, was therefore mindful not to create or exacerbate any
tensions between these different groups by ensuring that physical and
financial access to the system was as equitable as possible.
140 Science and the politics of openness

Women and children tend to be disproportionately affected by

adverse health and environmental impacts caused by toxic smoke
and fumes from ‘unclean’ energy as energy-related air pollution
occurs mainly in and around households, particularly in develop-
ing countries. The major energy sources in both communities were
kerosene for lighting and wood for cooking and heating. Replacing
kerosene with solar electricity for lighting will improve air quality
and help to reduce eye and respiratory infections, which are listed
among the top ten diseases at the health clinic located nearest to
Lemolo B. While electric cookers are beyond the load capacity of
the SONG system, the women and children of the two communities
stand to benefit from the transition to solar electricity in other ways,
including improved educational achievement of children relative to
those from non-electrified households; enhanced livelihood oppor-
tunities for women, leading to their improved economic status and
self-reliance; and increased leisure time. Such claims support the point
of Smith et al. (2010) that sustainable-energy transitions are more
about distributed social mobilisation than technological innovation.
Attention to differences across the full spectrum of intragenerational
relationships to energy in the community niche is therefore important
so that any concerns about distributive justice might be investigated
within this ‘ “[micro]geography” of beneficiaries and risk-bearers’
(Eames and Hunt, 2013: 58).
Finally, the anticipated human and environmental harms to future
generations caused by anthropogenic climate change are widely
acknowledged and debated in the climate justice literature (Okereke,
2010). Yet the intergenerational injustices, or opportunities, arising
from sustainable-energy transitions are less well studied but equally
deserving of attention, particularly as today’s youth and subsequent
generations will bear the consequences of transitions already underway.
The aspirations of youth and future generations in terms of the role
of energy in socio-economic development and livelihoods enhancement
are likely to differ substantially from those held by their parents or
village elders. This justice dilemma highlights the difficulty of taking
future generations into account in current transitions, while also raising
questions about what are the best research processes to use to deliver
procedural justice.
‘Opening up’ research for development 141

Newell and Mulvaney (2013) make the related point that, to avoid
reproducing or exacerbating existing intra- and intergenerational
environmental inequalities in terms of exposure to ill health and
localised degradation linked to global environmental threats, as
discussed above, transitions also need to be environmentally just.

Procedurally just transitions

If communities provide a direct source of information on the effects
of transitions on their social relations, cultural practices and livelihoods
(and vice versa), how can transitions research be procedurally just if
participation is contingent solely on the basis of having socio-technical
expertise? Drawing parallels with Scharpf ’s (1999) thesis that demo-
cratic legitimacy refers to both the inputs and the outputs of a political
system and that the two dimensions are mutually reinforcing, it can
be assumed that the absence of attention to principles of justice in
transitions would limit the public value of such processes. Thus, for
any profound and lasting system change to occur, it is vital for
households and communities to become co-designers and co-producers
of their own energy transformation. By making little or no provision
for communities to become informed about and included in the process
of transitions research, implementation and governance, transformative
change is impeded. Merely implementing transitions research agendas
in the interest of the public good is not enough; the extent to which
the justice dimensions of transitions research are recognised and
attended to will have a direct bearing on its effectiveness in terms of
creating public value for the communities involved.
A major limitation of previous SHS implementation in Kenya by
development agencies and researchers has been a lack of routine
engagement with project communities about their socio-economic
priorities and aspirations, and the role of energy in achieving these.
Where this has been the case, the public value of transitions research
was not co-produced, rather it was imposed in a top-down fashion
and the views of those who were to use the services were not adequately
taken into account. Legitimate public value requires service providers
to be more responsive to the needs of service users. The SONG project
aimed to remedy this oversight by using the communities’ views and
142 Science and the politics of openness

values to inform the goals of the research and the design of the solar-
energy systems. To this end, the project team recognised the need for
more direct and innovative opportunities for the two communities
to participate in the script of community energy services and technolo-
gies. Transitioning communities should not only receive the energy
services they need, but also play a role as co-designers in the shaping
and delivery of those services.
This challenge is influencing the way the SONG project is approach-
ing the design and implementation of the SONG systems, with an
emphasis on mutual learning and iterative development and deploy-
ment. To engage the transitioning communities in the co-design of
their own energy futures, the project team embarked upon an in-depth
community-engagement process with the twin aims of assessing the
energy needs and aspirations at the level of the household, and assessing
the socio-economic priorities and aspirations of the wider community.
We adopted a mixed-methods approach to inform the design and
development of SONG systems tailored to the particular contexts of
each of the communities, including: a physical survey to map the
spatial distribution of households, existing services, natural resources
and proximity to external services; a household survey to identify the
socio-demographic make-up of each and their livelihoods, the range,
cost, and purpose of fuels and appliances currently used and expenditure
on each; and semi-structured interviews with county- and national-level
stakeholders to understand the broader socio-political barriers to and
opportunities for electricity access for rural communities. The combined
findings and continuity of contact helped us to gain a comprehensive
understanding of the local niche contexts and to identify key issues
for in-depth exploration in subsequent focus groups.
When considering how to structure our focus groups we were
mindful of the potential distributive intra- and intergenerational
injustices in each of our communities, as discussed above. But intra- and
intergenerational justices also have a procedural dimension. We
accordingly organised our focus groups into three broadly representative
social groups – elders, women and youth – with the assumption that
each broad category would have a different relationship to energy
provision and use and therefore differing expectations of transition
based on (among other things) their status, gender and age. For
clarification, the gender balance among the elders was heavily biased
‘Opening up’ research for development 143

towards men, while the gender split among the youth, defined in
Kenya as between the ages of 18 and 30, was only slightly biased
towards men.
A transition to a sustainable future and the deep structural changes
that it entails places responsibility on communities to work coopera-
tively and inclusively to make decisions. However, this expectation
may place a burden on communities if they lack cohesion. As Fuller
and Bulkeley (2013: 68) note, ‘area-based communities do not imme-
diately imply the ready existence of a “community”, there may be
multiple overlapping communities of interest’. The notion of a com-
munity is a relatively recent and somewhat artificial construct in the
case of Echareria, which consists of sequential settlements of internally
displaced people from different tribal groups and with decreasing
socio-economic means. Thus, enacting a sustainable-energy transition
in this community niche not only raises critical issues of distributive
justice in terms of the ways in which risks and benefits are allocated,
but equally critical issues of procedural justice, depending on whether
the transition can address more fundamental issues of inequality in
terms of members’ recognition and participation in community decision
making. Including the knowledge, interests and values of participants
from all three settlements was vital to achieving a balanced set of
views in the household survey and focus groups.
Issues of distributive and procedural justice in North–South
energy transitions collaborations do not cease to be important upon
the physical implementation of the transformative technology. Pulido
(1996) claims that injustices cannot be resolved solely through (socio-)
economic restructuring or redistribution, but also require changes to
existing social relations, cultural practices and systems of meanings.
This still holds if energy transitions are to be truly transformative. In
Kenya, the SONG team witnessed first-hand the continuing control
and maintenance of one mini-grid system by its project implementers,
who are based in the global North. This approach to governing is the
antithesis of a just transition. The SONG project has taken the opposite
route. It has worked with existing leaders and governance structures
to facilitate the setting up of broadly inclusive and formally constituted
village energy committees (VECs) in each of the communities. The
role of the VECs is in part to ensure the project has a social value to
the community as a whole by running a number of small enterprises
144 Science and the politics of openness

such as egg incubators or posho mills, where the income is used to

further expand the range of community services, to support individual
entrepreneurialism or to extend to poorer members of the community
access to energy services. The VECs will also have the responsibility
to implement maintenance and repair training programmes for local
youth for the better management of the systems over their lifetime.

Conclusions
This chapter was concerned with opening up global-North-led research
on sustainable-energy transitions in global South contexts to examine
the underlying assumptions, blind spots and limitations, in an attempt
to identify alternative ways of doing transitions research that are more
responsive to the priorities of the transitioning communities. As an
example of one of these alternative ways of doing transitions research,
the SONG project aims to generate sustainable-energy solutions and
transformative change in two Kenyan communities through the co-
design of socio-technical systems on the basis of bottom-up iterative
community engagement and the integration of social-science and
engineering research. The SONG project’s ambition is novel in that
it has taken the theoretical concept of niche experimentation and
applied it in practice to establish community innovation niches to
facilitate energy transitions.
A review of the socio-technical transitions literature, predominantly
focused on the experiences of industrialised countries in the global
North, identified a number of conceptual limitations that can be broadly
construed as a neglect of issues of distributive and procedural justice
that limit the ability of transitions research and its implementation
to provide just and equitable solutions for transitioning communities
in the global South. Addressing two prominent justice deficits among
these – a lack of consideration of the politics of framing and of the
socio-spatial relations and dynamics – was considered fundamental
to achieving socially just energy transitions in the specific contexts
of the community niches in Kenya. The co-design of the SONG project
can thus be seen as a response to the limitations and justice deficits
of the dominant transitions frameworks.
Attention to the principles of distributive justice related to socio-
spatial relations and dynamics in the two community niches was
‘Opening up’ research for development 145

important to ensure that inequalities driven by age, gender, ethnic-

ity and income were alleviated and not exacerbated by the SONG
project. Issues of intra- and intergenerational justice, while absent
in transition frameworks, were nonetheless important in the SONG
project for drawing attention to the vital roles of gender and age in
co-designing socio-technical systems that are responsive to different
intra- and intergenerational priorities and aspirations, while promoting
the equitable distribution of potential benefits and risks across space
and time.
The lens of procedural justice spotlighted the heightened politics of
transitions in the global South, and reminded the SONG project team
of the need for opportunities that are both inclusive and interactive
so that community members can participate in the script of their
own community energy services, be co-designers in the shaping and
delivery of those services, and thus be the co-producers of their own
energy transitions. The case of Echareria has shown the need to take
into account the political issue of community non-cohesion, to prevent
the reproduction or exacerbation of any tensions between different
social groups and to enhance the community’s capacity to decide on a
common energy future. If energy transitions for development are to be
truly transformative and just, then they must incorporate opportunities
for the community to develop local governance processes and capac-
ity building that are respectful of existing hierarchical governance
structures, but extend participation beyond them, to ensure the effective
and inclusive management of transitions to sustainable energy futures.
In conclusion, this chapter began with the premise that making
transitions research ‘open’ from the bottom up presupposes the
embedding of democratic values such as inclusiveness and social
justice. In practice, however, translating Northern concepts and
assumptions into global-South contexts highlighted the challenges of
social justice and spatial positioning that underlie attempts to co-design
transitions research that spans distinct geographical and socio-cultural
boundaries.

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8
Monstrous regiment versus Monsters Inc.:
competing imaginaries of science and
social order in responsible (research
and) innovation
Stevienna de Saille, Paul Martin

All monsters are undead. Maybe they keep coming back because they
still have something to say or show us about our world and ourselves.
Maybe that is the scariest part. (Beal, 2014: 10)

As new technological domains emerge, so too do promises and warnings

about the future they will bring. However, as technology has grown
ever more complex, predicting either benefits or risks has become
increasingly difficult, particularly where a high level of control over
natural processes is concerned. This can lead to uneasiness on the
part of both the public and policymakers that scientific information
alone cannot counter (Douglas, 2015). Moreover, in a time of rapidly
increasing political and economic uncertainty, the difficulty of separat-
ing science from politics, and business interests from both, only
exacerbates the public’s concern that necessary precautions may be
discarded in the rush to open up new markets and find new sources
of economic growth.
Powerful corporations do indeed succeed in shaping regulations
to their needs, at times with great cost to public health or the environ-
ment. But potentially useful technologies can also be blocked by a
public that does not trust those who create and regulate technology
to hear its concerns. For some technologies these tensions have resulted
in an intractable, decades-long debate in which each side imagines
the other as monstrous and rampaging out of control. In this chapter
we want to open up these ideas, to examine how the concept of
‘monsters’ functions in entrenched controversy, and ask whether this
Monstrous regiment versus Monsters Inc. 149

can be addressed through evolving frameworks for responsible (research

and) innovation (RI).1
Since the 1980s it has been suggested that greater understanding of
science (and, later, greater engagement with science) would help provide
the context necessary for the public to feel confident of the benefits of
a new technology, as well as mitigating fear of its risks. Historically,
however, these imperatives to engage the public as a means of gaining
legitimacy for new technological fields have been accompanied by a
growing fear of those who wish to engage with science on their own
terms (Hess, 2014; Marris, 2014; Welsh and Wynne, 2013), in particular
through direct protest. While considering RI as a more responsible way
of ‘embedding’ innovation in society (von Schomberg, 2014: 39), it is
therefore also necessary to consider the ways in which it represents
a socio-technical imaginary in which progress is achieved through
enlightened governance of the entire research and innovation system,
in order to keep under control both potential technological monsters
and a potentially unruly public response.
According to anthropologist Martijntje Smits (2006), monsters
embody inseparable but directly opposing characteristics that make
them both horrifying and fascinating at the same time. Because the
simultaneous fear and attraction they evoke can never be reconciled,
monsters are more than mere creatures of the imagination; they are
deeply rooted in the binaries of modernism – body versus mind,
nature versus technology, superstition versus science. When we speak
of monsters in the socio-technical imaginary in this sense, we are
referring not to the ‘imaginary’ as non-existent, but to a concrete,
collectively embraced, politically actionable future in which technology
is expected to bring about certain positive, culturally intelligible
improvements to the human condition (Jasanoff, 2015; Jasanoff and
Kim, 2009). These are generally (although not only) framed as large-
scale scientific projects that embody national economic aspirations
– for example, building a civil nuclear industry or setting out a strategy
for world leadership in a new scientific field. As socio-technical
imaginaries are also rooted in the modernist project of social progress

1 We use RI here to refer generically to discussions around responsible innovation,

and RRI to refer specifically to its recent formulation by the European Commission
as part of Horizon 2020, its funding programme for research and innovation.
150 Science and the politics of openness

through science, arguments for and against these projects also tend
to be framed through binary opposition, so that science, rationality
and control wind up juxtaposed against culture, emotion and messy
nature. Monsters, therefore, can be thought of as signifiers of disorienta-
tion in imaginaries of progress, markers for that which cannot easily
be assigned to one side of the binary or the other, perhaps cannot
even be properly categorised at all because they too are unknown,
like the warnings placed over the uncharted portion of an incomplete
map. To illustrate these points more clearly in the discussion that
follows, we will draw upon both the Frankenstein story, as one of the
original monsters in the socio-technical imaginary of progress through
science, and more recent metaphors from popular culture, to discuss
genetically modified organisms (GMOs), one of the most intractable
technological controversies of our time.
While those involved in creating GMOs, particularly multinational
corporations such as Monsanto, have been characterised as a kind of
‘Monsters Inc.’, likewise the biotechnology sector has sometimes
appeared to view the public as a kind of monstrous regiment, an army
of dissent intent on thwarting the aspirations of a field that seeks only
to improve upon nature to feed the world (Riley-Smith, 2014). We
draw the metaphor from the highly successful animated Pixar film
Monsters, Inc., released by Disney in 2001 (Docter et al., 2001). The
film turns on the idea that the monsters hiding in our childhood
closets have a reason for terrifying us every night: power for their
city, Monstropolis, is derived from human children’s screams. Unfor-
tunately, modern children are not as fearful as they once were, and a
scream shortage is now threatening the economic security of Monsters
Inc., the factory which produces the ‘clean energy’ that powers the
city. The conceit of the story is that the monsters are really just like
us – worried about jobs, family and social status – and it is human
children who are monstrous, radioactively toxic creatures who must
be contained behind their closet doors lest they contaminate the normal
world. When a human child (Boo) sneaks into the factory on the
back of her ‘scarer’ (Sulley), her discovery throws the whole city into
a panic. In solving the problem of getting Boo safely back to her
world, Sulley has to reconcile his fear of human children with the
realisation that, as a top scarer, he is the monster in Boo’s eyes. This
Monstrous regiment versus Monsters Inc. 151

reconciliation ultimately leads the monsters to discover that children’s

laughter is a more powerful energy source than screams.
Ultimately, as a children’s film, Monsters, Inc., validates cooperation
and understanding as leading to better ways of producing what is
necessary for society to prosper. However, as Tranter and Sharpe (2008:
305) point out, it is also a parable about fear, both of running out of
the energy upon which society depends, and – in the character of the
CEO Waternoose, who is plotting to kidnap human children and
torture them to produce more efficient screams – of how far some
corporations may go to secure a profit. The film’s references to clean
energy and a running joke about the vicious scrubbing to which
human-contaminated monsters are subjected draw heavily on cultural
knowledge about the civil nuclear industry, where clean energy cannot
be separated from the deadly toxicity of the materials used and the
waste produced, even were accidents never to occur. Boo, therefore,
functions as both a caution against excessive fear (she is not actually
toxic), but also as a reminder that technology can have undesirable
social costs.
Unlike Monsters Inc., the term ‘monstrous regiment’ is several
centuries old. It originates with a sixteenth-century Protestant reformer
who coined the phrase to argue against the passage of the Scottish
Crown to a woman, the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots (Knox, 2011
[1558]). ‘Regiment’ in this time meant rule, not army. The monstrosity
in this case was allowing a woman to assume a role that God had
reserved for men. Terry Pratchett (2003) later used the term more
literally in a satiric novel about a Balkans-like country engaged in an
endless war no-one seemed to understand, fought by an army of
women secretly disguised as men (the actual men having all been
captured or run away). We use the term both to characterise the
illusion of an army which does not actually exist and, ‘monstrous
regiment’ being inherently a gendered term, the practice of ascribing
stereotypically ‘feminine’ negative traits – such as being irrational,
emotional and illogical – to those who attempt to oppose regimes of
power such as science, technology, politics and the market, which are
still very much the province of the male.
Beginning with an exploration of metaphors as carriers of meaning,
we will then use the metaphors of Monsters Inc. and the monstrous
152 Science and the politics of openness

regiment to consider how certain actors and technologies become

constructed as monstrous, and how this contributes to the continued
intractability of some technological debates. We end by asking what
‘monster theory’ (Smits, 2006) can offer towards a better understanding
of competing social imaginaries in RI.

Monsters in the imaginary (rather than imaginary monsters)

Metaphors function as condensed, culturally intelligible stories, or
‘scripts’ (Shank, 1990, quoted in Turney, 2000: 6) that guide meaning
making towards a prespecified conclusion. Perhaps their most visible
use in controversy is through symbolic action by social movements,
in order to illustrate an issue that has been left unspoken (Melucci,
1985). For example, anti-genetic modification (anti-GM) protesters
often wear hazmat suits to illustrate the toxicity of pesticides used
with GM crops. In particular, metaphors are able to carry meaning
from one context to another (Hellsten, 2006), transferring or extending
the original script to make a clear statement about how to read
something new.
Inasmuch as monsters can be defined as an irreconcilable hybrid
of two opposing cultural categories simultaneously eliciting both fear
and wonder (Smits, 2006), they do not spring purely from wild
imagination. Rather, as Smits argues, monsters require grounding in
a culturally specific context to give them concrete existence. The script
for Frankenstein is generally interpreted as a reflection of the uneasiness
with which Mary Shelley and her circle of friends viewed the pace of
change from agrarian society to industrial modernity, and it is still
considered a cautionary tale about the capacity of technology to do
ill as well as good (Botting, 2003; Latour, 2012; Turney, 2000). As
Turney explains:
It is frightening because it depicts a human enterprise which is out of
control, and which turns on its creator … [but] the myth is never a
straightforward anti-science story … the Frankenstein script, in its most
salient forms, incorporates an ambivalence about science, method and
motive, which is never resolved. (Turney, 2000: 5)

This ambivalence is also apparent in the public’s tendency to amalgamate

the scientist, Victor Frankenstein, with the flat-headed monster of
Monstrous regiment versus Monsters Inc. 153

Hollywood films. As Smits (2006) argues, the creature’s monstrosity

is not merely the result of being a crime against nature, as other
commentators suggest, but rather the internal chaos caused by the
contradictions of being simultaneously alive and dead, benign and
lethal, natural and technological. The maker of the creature is equally
reviled and persecuted as a man seeking the power of granting life,
which is supposed to belong only to God, but whose horrified abandon-
ment of his creation sets a series of violent events in motion. In other
words, both the creature and the scientist embody key binaries of
modern progress which can never be reconciled by calling upon either
values or science (Smits, 2006: 499). For Shelley, the context was the
development of electricity and the industrial revolution. Cultural
theorists have similarly argued that the surge in the prevalence of
monstrous characters and topics in popular media post-9/11 signifies
that the monster figure may have now ‘transcended its status as
metaphor’ to become ‘a necessary condition of our existence in the
21st century’ as both technology and social relations become ever
more complex (Levina and Bui, 2013). Zombies, for example, which
were once slow undead shufflers, are now victims of a virus capable
of super-fast motion and driven by super-rage,2 perhaps reflecting a
shift in the locus of public fear from the supernatural to the technologi-
cal, and from mindless violence to directed fury. As in Shelley’s work,
therefore, monsters continue to reflect unease not only with technology
per se but with the increasing pace and direction of change. Similarly,
historical uprisings against the introduction of new technologies, in
particular the Luddites smashing the first mechanised looms as a
threat to their jobs and way of life as traditional weavers, are still
featured in the techno-scientific imaginaries of modernity as ignorant,
superstitious mobs standing in the way of inevitable progress (see,
for example, Wood, 1999). They are the pitchfork-wielding villagers
of the Hollywood version of the Frankenstein story, whose rejection
sets the creature on its rampage, so that the cultural resonance of the
monstrous regiment is always anti-progress and anti-science.
These two inherently irreconcilable scripts, that of technology as
simultaneously the saviour of humanity and a kind of monster factory,

2 As depicted in a new generation of films such as 28 Days Later (20th Century Fox,
2002) and World War Z (Paramount Pictures, 2013).
154 Science and the politics of openness

and the public as simultaneously the eager beneficiary and the irrational
(yet organised) saboteur of technological progress (Marris, 2014;
Nowotny, 2014; Welsh and Wynne, 2013) are extremely powerful in
the debates on GMOs. But is it possible to use the values that RI
supposedly embodies to directly grapple with – rather than seek to
bury – the contradictions that are inherent in GM itself?

Monsters and the imaginary of RI

The socio-technical imaginary of RI – in which research and innovation,
guided by the continual involvement of a technologically literate public,
result in goods and services that answer society’s needs – has been
the most recent attempt to answer unease about the risk and pace of
change. While there is no agreed definition of RI, in general it is
understood as a means of involving the public in an iterative and
mutually reflexive process of shaping innovation, from upstream
research, all the way downstream to its eventual introduction to the
market and beyond (Owen et al., 2013; von Schomberg, 2013). However,
it is also in the interests of multinational corporations and growth-eager
governments to shape public engagement in ways that tend to dismiss,
defuse and disinvite engagement from the dissenting public (de Saille,
2015) before opposition can grow strong enough to interfere with the
commercialisation process; in effect producing a good public for the
product rather than a product for the public good (Thorpe and Gregory,
2010). This has also been an irreconcilable contradiction in the
development of RI.
Lurking deep within the imaginary of RI is the monster of recom-
binant DNA (rDNA), born in the early 1970s to both fanfare and fear,
not least amongst the scientists, who were worried that public reaction
to it might curtail their research. If, in this story, rDNA was an infant
monster, the lullaby that sang it to sleep was the 1975 Asilomar
Conference on Recombinant DNA, at which genetic scientists,
accompanied by lawyers, journalists and government officials, agreed
on a set of restrictions within which they could continue their work
(Berg, 2008). Acknowledging that there was particular concern about
rDNA’s potential siblings – viral cloning and bacterial pathogens –
scientists set about reassuring the public that the process of recombining
DNA to create organisms not found in nature would only ever be
Monstrous regiment versus Monsters Inc. 155

used for good, not harm, and that these could be contained within
the lab until mature enough to be safely released.
By the early 1980s the field of agricultural GM was slowly being
made ‘business-friendly’ through deregulation (Stavrianakis, 2012:
159), and in 1994, with the introduction of the Flavr Savr tomato to
the US market, rDNA’s children finally began to leave the lab and
seek their fortune in the world. The Flavr Savr was engineered by
Calgene to turn off the genes responsible for softening. Ordinary
tomatoes must be picked and shipped while they are hard and still
green, and are then chemically ripened with ethylene gas, but these
could remain firm while they matured on the vine. This improved
flavour so much that despite being almost twice the price of ordinary
tomatoes they met with good public demand.3 Ultimately though,
Calgene was staffed by scientists, not farmers, who did not know how
to get the tomatoes from the fields to the market in numbers large
enough to make the business profitable.4 In 1997 the company and
its patents were acquired by Monsanto, which promptly discontinued
production of the Flavr Savr, as it had its own tomato under develop-
ment. A paste made from GM tomatoes was launched on the UK
market in 1996 but withdrawn in 1998 when sales fell sharply after
a media broadcast claimed that while the modified gene itself was
not a risk, adverse health effects could still ensue from the GM process
(Bruening and Lyons, 2000).
According to most of the tellers of this tale, this is when the European
public, having until then been largely content with Asilomar’s assurance
that science could be trusted to raise the monster with care, suddenly
panicked and grabbed their torches and pitchforks with the intention
of driving GMOs from their shores. Organic farmers’ associations,
in particular, were increasingly concerned about pollen contamination
from adjacent GM fields, as this could cause them to lose their certifica-
tion and thus their entire business. In 1998 a leading organic farmer
in the UK sued for a judicial review of the legality of a maize test site
adjacent to his own organic maize. He eventually won the case on

3 One Calgene scientist interviewed twenty years later remembers they were so popular
in her hometown of Davis, California, that greengrocers had to ration them (for a
video report, see Winerip, 2013).
4 Again, for a video report see Winerip (2013).
156 Science and the politics of openness

appeal, but when the GM crop was not ordered to be removed, his
supporters invaded the field and destroyed the plants before their
pollen could be released (Reed, 2002). In 2000 a trial jury accepted
that the destruction was done ‘in order to prevent greater harm’, setting
a precedent which has meant that for most similar instances since
then, crop destruction has gone unpunished (Tait, 2009). Activists
have subsequently destroyed more than eighty fields and test sites in
Europe alone (Kuntz, 2012), have staged numerous protests across
the world, and have made both carefully documented and wildly
inaccurate claims about health and environmental risks, soil depletion,
threats to bee and butterfly populations, predatory corporate practices,
and social upheaval caused by adoption of GMOs.
The monstrous regiment, therefore, has certainly engaged in
behaviour that is reminiscent of pitchforks and torches. In a more
recent example, Ecover, a company known for its natural products,
unexpectedly ran into strong resistance when it announced that for
reasons of sustainability it planned to replace the palm oil in its laundry
detergent with an oil derived from genetically modified algae (Strom,
2014). Although initially stating that the company that supplied the
algal oil was using synthetic biology to produce it, when protest ensued,
some representatives subsequently tried to argue that synthetic biology
meant creating a new organism from scratch, whereas they were only
harnessing the algae’s ‘natural’ fermentation process (Domen and
Develter, 2014). Ecover, in fact, had been using enzymes created from
GM bacteria for some time (see Asveld and Stemerding, 2016, for a
full account), but it is possible that consumers were not aware of this
before. Neither argument was likely to defuse resistance to the product
among Ecover’s deep green customers, who could not reconcile the
idea of scientifically altering an organism to produce something it
did not normally produce with the term ‘natural’ (Thomas, 2014). A
boycott was called, after which Ecover withdrew the product and
announced a period of public consultation. As of the end of 2016,
any further plans to use algal oil appear to have been shelved.
In terms of the socio-technical imaginary of public engagement in
innovation through RI, it could be said that this is how RI could and
should function, in that the incident created an open public debate
and the company responded to concern about a pathway of innovation
and changed its trajectory accordingly. However, few on either side
Monstrous regiment versus Monsters Inc. 157

would claim to be satisfied with the outcome, particularly as the

laudably responsible goal of replacing palm oil with a more sustainable
alternative remains unrealised. Ecover’s experience suggests that the
difficulties of innovating responsibly are far more complex than simply
‘engaging’ the public, and that even a company with an ethical reputa-
tion could suddenly find itself seen as Monsters Inc. if it tried to
smooth away the irreconcilable tensions between the natural and the
technical that are inherent in genetic engineering.
However, focusing on the irreconcilable tensions of the technology
itself should not obscure acknowledgement of fear and fascination
also arising from the context within which a new technology will be
received. Monsanto, for example, has been extremely successful at
commercialising GM crops as the solution to feeding a growing world
population. But it has also been called ‘Monster Monsanto’ because
of its historic production of Agent Orange, a defoliant used to destroy
North Vietnamese agriculture during the Vietnam War, which has
had long-term health effects on both US soldiers (and their descendants)
and the Vietnamese population (see, for example, Ragonesi, 2004).
Although Monsanto stopped producing Agent Orange for the military
in 1969, its website states that it is still ‘responsible’ for the compound
(Monsanto, 2017), whose broad herbicidal function is similar to its
signature product, Roundup, which kills all plants except the seeds
engineered to withstand it. Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate,
has been the subject of intense scientific debate about long-term
toxicity,5 while Monsanto was also a major producer of polychlorinated
biphenyls (PCBs) and dioxin, and has been sued repeatedly (and
occasionally even successfully6) for contamination of dozens of sites
in the USA alone. Therefore, beyond the ethical questions which have
often surrounded Monsanto’s particular model of generating profit

5 The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)
has issued a report reclassifying glyphosate as ‘probably’ carcinogenic (IARC, 2016),
causing some member states to refuse to renew its licence for sale in the European
Union. The European Food Standards Agency (EFSA) subsequently issued its own
report finding it not carcinogenic if used as recommended (EFSA, 2015). As of this
writing, the licence has been temporarily renewed while a third agency reports
(European Commission, 2016).
6 As one high-profile example, a long-standing lawsuit over clean-up in Anniston,
Alabama, was finally settled for $700 million (Associated Press, 2003).
158 Science and the politics of openness

through the stringent enforcement of patents (Barlett and Steele, 2008)

or by successfully lobbying the US Congress for laws that protect it
from being sued in the public interest (Godoy, 2013), the company’s
reputation as a food producer continues to be inseparable from its
historic reputation and present market leadership as a producer of
poison. Moreover, from the point of view of the public, the way in
which Monsanto has pursued the commercialisation of GM can make
all industrial actors in the field look like Monsters Inc., as well as
making any application of GM, however useful, seem monstrous – as
with the term Frankenstein, the creator has been conflated with its
creation over time.
At the same time, the failure to commercialise Golden Rice, which
has been hailed as a ‘humanitarian’ GM crop aimed at delivering
vitamin A to areas which are traditionally malnourished, has been
blamed on the ‘wicked’ monstrous regiment of anti-GMO activists
destroying test fields (Riley-Smith, 2014), with some GM proponents
even circulating images of starving children, captioned ‘Thank you,
Greenpeace, for saving us from Golden Rice’ (Everding, 2016). Embark-
ing on a campaign of public ‘education’ about GM in the 1980s, the
chairman of Monsanto similarly said that:

the only thing that will stand in the way of our achieving the full potential
of our next golden era is that we will be thwarted by a public that doesn’t
understand science or technology and that doesn’t trust us to use science
wisely and with appropriate regard for the concerns of the public we
serve. (Richardson, 1985, quoted in Kleinman and Kloppenburg, 1991)

The above statement resonates with the argument, common in the

1980s and 1990s, that the public was resistant to new technology
because there was a ‘deficit’ of scientific understanding. Trust in the
company and understanding of the science are conflated, so that better
science communication is assumed to produce trust in the company’s
agenda, and when this does not happen, it is the public’s ignorance
that continues to be blamed. Yet some scientists working on the rice
have insisted that the problems are scientific, not political, and in the
meantime the Philippines has reduced vitamin A deficiency by methods
which do not include GMOs (Everding, 2016).
These examples suggest competing imaginaries of social order, one
in which progress through technology is inevitable and desirable, no
Monstrous regiment versus Monsters Inc. 159

matter the cost, and the other in which technology is not always
benign, nor even always necessary for social progress. As technology
becomes ever more complex, finding means through which we might
be able to explore both the fascination and the fear becomes ever
more crucial, not least to the imaginary of RI.

Monster theory, or bringing the monsters into the open

To return to our metaphors, from the point of view of Monsters Inc.,
the human world (the public) is both potentially toxic and necessary
to produce the energy (of market acceptance) upon which successful
innovation depends. In this imaginary the public does not understand
either science or the importance of Monsters Inc. as a driver of the
economy, and so is standing in the way of progress and growth. This
imaginary, however, can also perceive ‘the public’ as more singular
and unified than it actually is. In the case of rDNA’s great-grandchild,
synthetic biology, Marris (2014) suggests there is now a kind of
synbiophobia-phobia, in which an exaggerated fear of a potential
public backlash informs the drive towards RI. Marris argues that the
continued assumption that resistance is a product of ignorance has
meant that, in fact, the ‘inclusive engagement’ elements of RI have
remained mired in precisely the kind of top-down ‘we talk, you listen’
form of scientific communication that RI was meant to overcome.
Science-studies scholars have long criticised such endeavours, sug-
gesting instead that the public is not a single entity, but is made up
of many publics with many different sets of values that come into
play. These publics need to have opportunities for meaningful engage-
ment with scientific topics, which includes the right to introduce
questions about the social impact of technological change, rather than
simply being furnished with more scientific information.
In Options for Strengthening Responsible Research and Innovation,
the European Commission (2013: 14) agrees that the €300 million
spent on safety research has not been adequate to resolve society’s
concerns, and laments the lack of a European market for GMOs. In
this and other key policy documents, RRI is constructed as a way to
resolve these concerns at an early stage, so as to accelerate the pace
of innovation without incurring the kind of intractable distrust and
resistance which has been the case with GMOs. However, key
160 Science and the politics of openness

assumptions linking innovation to growth, and both to social progress,

remain unquestioned, as does the linkage between upstream informa-
tion and downstream trust. As a tool for shaping avenues to facilitate
meaningful engagement, it is possible that RI’s drive towards openness
is more likely to produce an artificial closure at the earliest stages of
the development process, thus re-entrenching old positions, rather
than ameliorating them, as it is how technology acts in the world – what
Frankenstein’s creature does after exiting the lab, more than the fact
of his existence – that matters most in terms of generating trust.
Braidotti (1996: 135) suggests that ‘to signify potentially contradictory
meanings is precisely what the monster is supposed to do’. In other
words, it is perhaps not the intractability of polarised positions that
is the problem, but the reluctance to honestly acknowledge that the
contradictions cannot be prised apart. Scarers on the factory floor do
not see themselves as monsters, but rather as the responsible producers
of a necessary commodity. Likewise, human children are still needed
for the energy they provide, but this can be produced in a better way
once it becomes apparent that they are not as monstrous as the residents
of Monstropolis fear.
In an earlier definition of the term, Law (1991) even goes so far as
to suggest that ‘socio-technical’ is a monster in and of itself, as the
social and the technical are generally seen as occupying mutually
exclusive disciplinary realms. This suggests that ‘society’ exists in
permanent opposition to science, and indeed much of the polarisation
in the GM debate is due to a framing that relegates social and ethical
concerns to the irrational, set in opposition to rational concerns that
are usually framed as economic.7 In this way, by not continuing to
acknowledge both the fear and the fascination as legitimate responses,
corporations engaged in biotechnology are perceived as untrustworthy
and not interested in what the consumer might really want to purchase
(such as better-tasting tomatoes), but rather only in advancing the
interests of industrial agriculture and their own profits (Holland, 2016).
Latour (2012) argues that the dominion and mastery that signify
progress do not bring freedom from nature, but rather an ever-
deepening attachment to that which is being dominated and mastered.

7 See, for example, arguments that the ‘green blob’ of environmentalists are acting
against national economic interests (Riley-Smith, 2014).
Monstrous regiment versus Monsters Inc. 161

He argues that ‘we use the monster as an all-purpose modifier to denote

technological crimes against nature’ because, like Victor Frankenstein,
we are unable to either love our technological creations or accept
that it is our own actions that turn good creations bad. Plastics, for
example, were initially hailed as a wonder (Smits, 2006). They became
monstrous only when it became apparent that they continued to retain
their cultural shaping (such as bags and bottles) after they became
waste, causing great damage out of context by, for example, clogging
up waterways and strangling birds. In other words, RI suggests that we
must not, like Victor Frankenstein, run away from the technological
monsters we have created; we must love and socialise and remain
always responsible to our monsters so we may live with them in peace.
But loving and taming our monsters may first require that we are able
to acknowledge that ‘monsters’ is exactly what they are.

Conclusions
RI claims that greater public involvement at the research stage will
shape innovation towards social benefit, but it has less capacity to
control what happens when the monsters leave the lab and begin to
interact with the world. As we cannot separate trust in science from
trust in the adequate regulation of its marketable technologies, attempts
to provide more scientific information about monsters which have
not yet left the lab often produces no difference in acceptability and
may, in fact, provoke more distrust as the inbuilt tensions between
claimed social benefit and real-world actions, and between corporate
risk management and corporate profit, become clear.
For Smits (2006), taming the monster – what she calls the cultural
domestication of a new technology – is a process of mutual shaping,
so that the technology opens a new space in the existing social order
even as the social order tames the technology to fit it. Indeed, not all
monsters are necessarily the stuff of nightmares – mermaids and satyrs,
for example, while embodying contradictions, are not nearly as unset-
tling as Frankenstein’s creature or the fast zombie. Considering
controversial technologies through Smits’s monster theory may reveal
some of the simultaneous contradictions inherent not only in the
innovation itself, but in the entire shaping of the innovation system
towards the production of economic growth even at great social cost.
162 Science and the politics of openness

Whether the monster enables desirable or undesirable outcomes

– whether it becomes Sully or Waternoose – will require something
more than controlled forms of public engagement to provide a context
in which it can be adequately socialised. RI should not be aimed at
resolving differences, but rather seeking new forms of openness that
can accept contradictions and explore the social and the technical as
intertwined. Instead of leading to intractable polarisation, bringing
the monsters out of the shadows through RI may help point to more
useful ways of dealing directly with their potential to turn on their
creators, thus attempting to productively address larger concerns about
the overall pace and trajectory of technological change. We have
suggested that the socio-technical imaginary of RI still contains a fear
of both Monsters Inc. and the pitchfork-wielding monstrous regiment,
the truth and exaggeration of which must be brought into the open,
as part of the landscape in which innovation occurs. Taming, rather
than hiding, the monster could be key to realising RI’s goal of creating
a new socio-technical imaginary of governance which enables truly
socially beneficial research and innovation to emerge.

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Part III

Expertise
9
Expertise

Mark B. Brown

The complex relations among publicity, legitimacy and expertise have

long been central to modern science. From the 1660s onward, Robert
Boyle and the natural philosophers at the Royal Society legitimated
their work in part by portraying it as a distinctly public form of
knowledge production. Employing a rhetoric of transparency, they
wrote meticulous lab reports in a modest style and performed their
experiments in public. They produced expert knowledge both in public
and through the public. But their public was largely restricted to elite
gentlemen, and they deemed ordinary citizens unqualified and
untrustworthy (Golinksi, 2005; Shapin, 1994). Moreover, the founding
of the Royal Society coincided not with a democratic revolution, but
with the 1660 Restoration of King Charles II.
Today, modern science and democracy are often portrayed as twins,
but public acceptance of the former actually preceded the latter by at
least a century (depending on how one defines each). Until the
nineteenth century, most commentators saw ‘democracy’ as an unstable
and unwise form of government, preferably restricted to the popular
branch of systems of ‘mixed government’ that combined democratic,
aristocratic and monarchical elements (Wood, 1992). Liberal elites
worried about the corrupting influence of the unwashed masses and
the ‘tyranny of the majority’. As John Stuart Mill noted in 1859, ‘The
“people” who exercise the power are not always the same people with
those over whom it is exercised’ (Mill, 1978 [1859]: 4). The recent
increase of xenophobic right-wing populism in both Europe and the
United States lends new urgency to such concerns, including questions
170 Science and the politics of openness

regarding the publicity and legitimacy of expert knowledge. What

aspects of science should be made public and to whom? Will public
scrutiny of expertise increase or decrease its legitimacy?
The chapters in this part explore such questions in the context of
specific areas of scientific and political controversy: risk governance,
biosecurity, climate change, animal research and fisheries management.
Democratic citizens have often seen scientific experts as uniquely
qualified to speak for the public and the public interest. Many have
assumed that science is intrinsically supportive of a wide range of
public goods: economic growth, technological progress, national
security, cultural enlightenment, informed decision making and, more
generally, the public interest itself. But the notion that science has
intrinsic value no longer seems widely accepted, and so governments
have sought to increase the perceived public value of science by directly
involving members of the public in science policy. But public engage-
ment can be messy and unpredictable, and so public officials and
other elites typically try to constrain it in various ways.
The first two chapters in this part examine government attempts
to engage publics in risk governance. As the authors point out, public
officials have usually seen risk assessment as a value-free ‘scientific’
stage of knowledge production, and hence as an unlikely venue for
public involvement. In contrast, they have understood risk management
as a value-laden policy stage, and hence as appropriate for participation
by non-experts. In the cases examined here, however, government
initiatives to engage the public had the effect of expanding the range
of issues and types of participants in only some respects, while restrict-
ing them in others.
Chapter 10, by Sarah Hartley and Adam Kokotovich, challenges
the standard view of risk governance by disaggregating the risk-
assessment stage into different components. The authors argue that
public involvement is necessary whenever regulators make choices
about values, and they identify a need for value-laden choices in three
components of risk assessment: risk-assessment guidelines, the process
of conducting risk assessments and the use of scientific studies within
risk assessment. This framework allows them to reveal significant
implications of the much-discussed 1983 and 1996 reports on risk by
the US National Research Council. The first report, the famous ‘Red
Book’, distinguished sharply between risk assessment and risk
Expertise 171

management, and it did not advocate public involvement in risk

assessment. The 1996 report, in contrast, called for involving stakehold-
ers in an ‘analytic-deliberative model’. From a public engagement
perspective, the second report has widely been seen as an improvement.
But Hartley and Kokotovich argue that the 1983 report actually more
fully departs from the traditional image of value-free science by
highlighting the role of policy ‘judgments’ in risk assessment. The
1996 report, in contrast, asserts a distinction between value-free expert
analysis and value-laden public deliberation. Although the 1996 report
expanded opportunities for public engagement, it returned to an
outdated view of science as value-free. It thus created new opportunities
for public deliberation, while simultaneously constraining its allowable
topics. Hartley and Kokotovich then turn to the Codex, an organisation
that sets international food-safety standards. They show how regulators
failed to address the implicit values in risk assessment, leading to a
highly constrained role for public involvement. Overall they show
that, as regulatory science has become increasingly open to public
involvement, risk-governance procedures have reduced their acknowl-
edgement of values in risk assessment. They conclude by making a
nuanced case for public involvement in value-based decisions with
regard to specific aspects of risk assessment.
In chapter 11, Judith Tsouvalis examines the UK’s emergency
response to a deadly fungal disease affecting ash trees, known as
Chalara or ash dieback, which gradually spread across Europe during
the 1990s and early 2000s. When it reached the UK in 2012, scientists
knew little about the disease, and some of what they knew turned
out to be wrong. Its arrival thus created an urgent need for government
action in the face of scientific uncertainty, leading to an opening of
scientific and public discussion through open-source platforms for
sharing data and various kinds of citizen science. Tsouvalis shows
that these efforts, despite using the language of public engagement,
were framed technocratically as narrow matters of ‘biosecurity’. A
sense of national urgency was fuelled by apocalyptic media images
of natural and economic catastrophe. The Government convened an
expert task force to provide recommendations for managing the disease,
but it only involved community stakeholders once the work was largely
complete. The result was a series of narrowly tailored recommendations
for risk management and border control. There was no genuine opening
172 Science and the politics of openness

of public discussion to address larger issues such as global trade,

which, as the task force members themselves recognised, was a key
cause of the Chalara outbreak, as well as other plant disease
epidemics.
The other two chapters in this part show how controversies over
expertise may generate new publics and new views of the public interest.
These chapters echo recent work in democratic theory on political
representation, which examines how representative claims partly
constitute the same publics they represent (Disch, 2015; Saward, 2010).
This work does not suggest that representatives create their constituen-
cies out of thin air. When someone makes a claim to represent a
constituency, the pre-existing features of the audience – well-established
opinions and interests, as well as social and economic conditions –
constrain the range of plausible representations and the audience’s
ability to respond. But what counts as ‘representation’ in any particular
case and the boundaries and identity of the represented are partly
determined by the process of representation itself. In a similar vein,
these chapters show that those claiming to draw on expertise to
represent a particular public or view of the public interest can easily
get more than they bargained for, evoking oppositional constituencies
beyond their intended audience.
In chapter 13, Warren Pearce and Brigitte Nerlich examine the
famous 2006 climate change documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, by
former US Vice President Al Gore. Climate change is a notoriously
difficult issue around which to mobilise publics, because it is a long-term
problem that seems much less pressing than most people’s everyday
concerns. And as a global phenomenon, climate change is invisible
to the human senses. Climate change has various local impacts, but
the extent to which any particular impact is related to climate change
can only be discerned with climate science. Gore’s film addressed
these challenges by combining personal stories from his life with
scenes of him presenting a slide show and talking to audiences about
climate science. In some respects, Pearce and Nerlich argue, An
Inconvenient Truth goes beyond a traditional ‘deficit model’ of science
communication, which sees the key barrier to political action in the
public’s deficit of scientific knowledge. By making climate change into
a personal matter for both himself and the audience, Gore recognised
that knowledge alone is not enough. In this respect, they note, the
Expertise 173

film echoes John Dewey’s argument that science education requires

aesthetic modes of communication, because ‘ideas are effective not
as bare ideas but as they have imaginative content and emotional
appeal’ (Dewey, 1988:169). By presenting himself performing his
slideshow in front of various audiences, Gore sought to ‘create a public
that in turn would continue the performance’. In this respect, Gore’s
film was successful in ‘making the impersonal personal and the invisible
visible’ (p. 223). At the same time, however, Pearce and Nerlich show
that the film embraces a linear model of science education, which
assumes that scientific knowledge precedes and compels political
action. In this respect, Gore’s film promoted a ‘hegemonic’ representa-
tion of climate change, closely linked to his own status as a prominent
politician of the US Democratic Party. The film thus became a focal
point for an ‘inconvenient public’ of critics who developed a ‘polemic’
counter-representation of climate change as either a complete hoax
or, at best, an entirely natural phenomenon. Paradoxically, by seeking
to make climate change meaningful, the film also politicised the issue
in a partisan sense, linking climate change to ‘a narrow range of policy
options that were anathema to US conservatives’ (p. 224). In the future,
Pearce and Nerlich argue, climate policy advocates should be more
open to engaging with ‘uninvited’ and ‘inconvenient’ publics, as well
as a wider range of policy options.
Finally, in chapter 13, Sujatha Raman, Pru Hobson-West, Mimi
Lam and Kate Millar show how the public interest can be constructed
through science controversies. The ‘Science Matters’ speech by UK
Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2002 suggested that scientists and ordinary
citizens could work together to pursue the public interest. But Blair
also suggested that science inherently promotes a substantive public
interest in technological progress, thereby reducing public engagement
to a means for promoting this pre-given interest. In contrast, the
authors argue that the public interest cannot be known ‘in advance
of concrete efforts’ to engage actual citizens (p. 233). They also note
that research on science controversies typically focuses on procedural
questions of inclusion and exclusion, which can result in the analysis
unwittingly reproducing a ‘fragmented, individualised version of the
public’ (p. 240), as well as a neglect of substantive questions of the
public interest. Raman and colleagues go beyond a procedural and
individualised approach by exploring struggles between dominant
174 Science and the politics of openness

and subordinate advocacy networks over the meaning of the public

interest, focusing on cases involving animal research in the UK and
fisheries in Canada. In the case of animal research, public officials
portrayed those opposed to such research as opponents of the public
interest. They presented opinion polls supportive of animal research
as a more authentic representation of the public. In most respects,
proponents of animal research have so far maintained the upper hand.
In the fisheries case, in contrast, a Canadian First Nation community
won a victory against the Government. The Haida Nation opposed
the Government’s fisheries policy because the policy threatened not
only its culture and traditional values, but also the local ecology and
the larger public interest. In a court case the judge concluded that
the Haida Nation, rather than the Government, had the stronger claim
to the public interest. With these cases the authors show that public
engagement often does more than just ‘open up’ science to public
scrutiny. It may also lead to ‘renegotiating the substantive question
of what is in the public interest’ (p. 246).
As these four chapters indicate, the relation of scientific expertise,
the public interest and democratic legitimacy is today highly contested.
In some respects, this should not be surprising, because democratic
legitimacy involves an irresolvable tension between majority rule
and public justification. It requires that the general public accept the
majority of the people as standing for the entire people (Rosanvallon,
2011). Popular elections once offered a relatively effective means of
securing such acceptance, but democracies have not been able to rely
solely on elections as a source of legitimacy since the late nineteenth
century. With the adoption of universal voting rights, citizens increas-
ingly questioned the notion that majority rule alone could guarantee
governmental virtue and competence. A potential remedy appeared in
the rise of bureaucratic expertise and the administrative state, which
promised a substantive form of legitimacy to complement procedural
legitimacy through popular elections. But since at least the 1980s,
both elections and expertise have faced widespread public scepti-
cism. Many people do not trust experts to remain objective, and ‘the
people’ are fragmented into a plethora of ever-shifting interest and
identity groups. In the United States, for example, millions of citizens
questioned the basic legitimacy of elected presidents George W. Bush
and Barack Obama, driven by concerns about substantive competence
Expertise 175

and group identity, respectively. This widespread epistemic scepticism

and social fragmentation has led to a ‘radical pluralisation of the forms
of legitimacy’ (Rosanvallon, 2011: 8). Government commissions, expert
committees and lay deliberative bodies all seek to shore up the faltering
legitimacy of democratic governments. The emergence of multiple
forms of legitimacy means that no single expert recommendation or
political institution, and especially no populist demagogue, should be
taken as the authentic voice of the people. Just as technocracy reduces
democracy to the truth claims of science, populism reduces it to a
monolithic representation of the will of the people.
Avoiding technocracy without fostering populism is a key challenge
of our time. To what extent should lay citizens become involved in
shaping expert recommendations? What are the most promising means
of communicating expert knowledge to diverse constituencies? How
can we best involve experts in political contests over the meaning and
content of the public interest? The chapters in this part do not seek
definitive answers to these questions, but they offer valuable resources
for thinking about them.

References
Dewey, J. (1988). Freedom and culture. In The Later Works, vol. 13, 1938–1939,
ed. by J. A. Boydston (pp. 63–188). Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL:
Southern Illinois University Press.
Disch, L. (2015). The ‘constructivist turn’ in democratic representation: A
normative dead end? Constellations, 22(4), 487–499.
Golinski, J. (2005). Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History
of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mill, J. S. (1978 [1859]). On Liberty, ed. by E. Rapaport (originally published
1859). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
Rosanvallon, P. (2011). Democratic Legitimacy: Impartiality, Reflexivity, Proxim-
ity, trans. by A. Goldhammer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Saward, M. (2010). The Representative Claim. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shapin, S. (1994). A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth
Century England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wood, G. S. (1992). Democracy and the American Revolution. In J. Dunn
(ed.), Democracy: The Unfinished Journey, 508 BC to AD 1993 (pp. 95–105).
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
10
Disentangling risk assessment: new roles for
experts and publics
Sarah Hartley, Adam Kokotovich

Risk assessment is an important stage of risk governance, alongside

risk characterisation, risk evaluation and risk management. A burgeon-
ing literature on public involvement in risk governance and science-
based policymaking more broadly has developed in response to tensions
in governing environmental risk, particularly the environmental risks
posed by emerging technologies (Irwin, 2014; Levidow, 2007; Renn
and Schweizer, 2009; Rothstein, 2013; Wynne, 2006). However, there
is relatively little investigation of public involvement in the specific
stage of risk assessment, despite increased demands for such involve-
ment (Borrás et al., 2007; Hartley, 2016; Millstone, 2009; Shepherd,
2008). European and North American regulatory agencies have a
statutory obligation to involve the public in risk governance, and in
recent years many have opened up the traditionally scientific domain
of risk assessment to public input through online consultations. In
addition, international bodies have created opportunities to engage
a broader range of experts and stakeholders. However, there is evidence
that regulatory agencies and international organisations are not meeting
their statutory obligations, falling short of their own guidelines in
practice (Dreyer and Renn, 2014; Hartley, 2016; Herwig, 2014).
We argue that public involvement in risk assessment is not reaching
its full potential owing to a considerable lack of clarity in the literature
and in practice about which publics should be involved in risk assess-
ment and at what point they should be involved. Much of the risk-
governance literature examining public involvement fails to disentangle
adequately the process of risk assessment when examining questions
Disentangling risk assessment 177

about who to involve, when to involve them, and why. Risk assessment
is not a single stage of risk governance that can simply be made
participatory; rather, it is a process with different components that
need to be considered individually when determining how and why
to open risk assessment to publics. Furthermore, for the potential of
public involvement to be fully realised, a particular understanding of
risk assessment is necessary – one that is detailed and that recognises
inherent value judgements. Conflating the different aspects of risk
assessment and the different types of participation makes opening
risk assessment to publics seem unreasonable and risks the legitimacy
of regulatory agencies.
We draw on the theoretical, prescriptive and empirical literature to
disentangle risk assessment for governing human health and environ-
mental risks of emerging technologies. This disentanglement begins
with an examination of values in risk assessment and restates the case
for public involvement when value choices are to be made. First, we
argue that effective and legitimate public involvement is dependent
upon the degree to which value judgements are acknowledged in the
different components of risk assessment. Second, we explore variations
in the prescription literatures of the National Research Council (NRC)
in the USA, and the international organisation the Codex Alimentarius
Commission (CAC, or ‘Codex’). Third, we examine the way in which
risk assessment is disentangled in practice through the case study
of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). Finally, we draw on
these findings to reassemble public involvement in risk assessment,
making clear who should be involved, where and, importantly, why.

Disentangling values and risk assessment: the need for

public involvement
Risk governance involves a number of stages, and a plethora of different
models exist. The delineation of the various stages depends upon the
degree to which the ‘scientific’ stage can be separated from the ‘policy’
stage. In general terms, these models do separate the scientific stage
(risk assessment) from the policy stage (risk management). However,
there is considerable evidence to suggest these stages are not separated
in practice (Millstone, 2009). Much of the risk-governance literature
that addresses public involvement fails to disentangle risk assessment
178 Science and the politics of openness

from risk management adequately; for example, Renn and Schweizer

(2009) suggest there is a default assumption that public involvement
should occur in risk management. Kaliarnta et al. (2014) examine
stakeholder involvement in risk governance but focus on questions
concerning who should participate and why, how much they should
participate, and what the participation should address, but they do
not tease apart the stages of assessment and management to ask where
public involvement should take place.
Where the literature has distinguished the stages of risk governance
to examine where public involvement might be best utilised, risk
assessment remains an epistemic stage that is seen as insulated from
values – with consequences for how public involvement is envisioned
in risk assessment. For example, Dreyer and Renn (2014) lay out four
stages in risk governance –framing (design discourse), appraisal
(epistemic discourse), evaluation (reflective discourse) and management
(practical discourse). While they argue that publics can make a
contribution to the epistemic discourse, this discourse does not involve
the discussion of value choices, which are dealt with in the evaluation
and management stages. Therefore, publics, who are often asked to
comment on published risk-assessment documents in online consulta-
tions, are restricted in terms of the types of input they are able to
provide during consultation. Consequently, the value choices inherent
in risk assessment are not open to public scrutiny and publics are
able to comment only on the scientific aspects of risk assessment, and
only on scientific terms.
A key aspect of whether and how to involve publics in risk assessment
is based on how we understand the role of values within risk assessment.
First, and at the broadest level, choosing to use risk assessment to
inform decision making is itself a value-based decision. To frame an
issue in terms of risk and risk assessment will privilege certain actors
and marginalise other possible ways of understanding that issue
(Jasanoff, 1999). Second, if risk assessment itself is understood as an
objective scientific process external to value judgements, there is little
role for public involvement other than, perhaps, for expert stakeholders
to ensure the science is completed correctly (Jasanoff, 1987). Once
the role of values in risk assessment is acknowledged and reflected
upon, the need for public involvement is strengthened.
There is an extensive body of literature that demonstrates the
relevance of values throughout the risk-assessment process (Kokotovich,
Disentangling risk assessment 179

2014; Meghani, 2009). Challenging the notion that values can be

confined to risk management, this scholarship explores how normative
values influence all aspects of risk assessment. This work shows that
such judgements have consequences and thus need to be taken seriously,
including by opening them to reflection and public involvement. Here
we identify and review the value-based nature of three key components
of risk assessment: the guidelines that shape risk assessment, the
conduct of risk assessment and the science used in risk assessment.

Risk-assessment guidelines
Guidelines establish the steps to follow when conducting a risk assess-
ment and provide assistance both to applicants preparing risk assess-
ments and to risk assessors conducting them. Thus, they incorporate
value judgements about the scope of future risk assessments, including
what falls inside the scope of risk assessment; what counts as evidence,
how much evidence is needed and how it should be interpreted; and
how uncertainty should be addressed. There is a growing realisation
of the importance of guidelines. Kokotovich (2014), for example,
studied two competing sets of guidelines for assessing the risks to
non-target organisms from insect-resistant genetically modified plants,
and found their divergent foundational value judgements resulted in
recommending different processes for risk assessment, and different
potential outcomes. These judgements involved the adequacy of
substantial equivalence testing and what species needed to be tested,
together with the (un)importance of assessing indirect effects, and
they resulted in the guidelines calling for different kinds of scientific
studies to be completed to inform the risk assessment. Millstone et
al. (2008) show that differences in guidelines account for transatlantic
trade conflicts such as those that arose over beef hormones, recombinant
bovine somatotrophin and genetically modified maize.

Conducting risk assessment: problem formulation, analysis

and risk characterisation
Conducting risk assessment is a process that includes problem formula-
tion, exposure and effects analysis, and the characterisation of risk.
Many of the decisions in risk assessment that are acknowledged as
value based and that have been opened to public involvement occur
180 Science and the politics of openness

in the formulation of the problem (Environmental Protection Agency,

1998; Nelson et al., 2007). Problem formulation is the initial step of
the risk assessment that determines the assessment endpoints, the
conceptual model linking the stressors to the assessment endpoints,
and an analysis plan. This step is widely seen as the place where values
most explicitly enter the risk-assessment process. Authors such as
Thompson (2003) and Jensen et al. (2003) have revealed how decisions
taken in problem formulation, such as identifying the specific hazard
to be assessed and determining the time and spatial scale, are value
based. These decisions alter the scope of the risk assessment in ways
that can influence the ultimate characterisation of the risk. Problem
formulation is where values and public involvement are often acknowl-
edged and allowed, and this is also where they are classically confined.
Similar to the distinction between risk assessment and risk management
within the classical notion of risk governance, problem formulation
sets up a dichotomy between science and values. In this understanding,
values exist in the formulation of the problem, while the scientific
analysis phase remains free from values. Problem formulation does,
however, stand apart from the rest of risk assessment owing to the
type of value judgements that need to be made. Many of these judge-
ments involve explicit value-based, non-technical judgements that do
not require technical expertise from contributors.
While the discussion of values in conducting risk assessment
normally begins and ends with problem formulation, the analysis and
risk-characterisation steps also contain value judgements. For example,
identifying and synthesising relevant scientific studies and addressing
uncertainty all involve value judgements that can influence the overall
assessment of risk (Meyer, 2011; Winickoff et al., 2005). The differences
in how these value judgements are addressed contribute to the reason
why different regulatory bodies can arrive at differing assessments of
risk (Wickson and Wynne, 2012). The value judgements in these steps
require a greater degree of technical expertise than those at the stage
of problem formulation.

Scientific studies used in risk assessments

This component of risk assessment is rarely considered distinctly.
However, the scientific studies used in a risk assessment are also
Disentangling risk assessment 181

influenced by value judgements and therefore should not escape scrutiny

(Elliott, 2012; Holifield, 2009). Scientific studies influence the ultimate
characterisation of risk, yet they themselves can be influenced by the
different parts of a risk assessment. Both the development of risk-
assessment guidelines and the conducting of a risk assessment involve
value choices over what scientific studies are relevant (Kokotovich,
2014). Risk-assessment guidelines can influence how scientific studies
are completed by, for example, calling for the use of surrogate species
or local species in laboratory testing (Hilbeck et al., 2011). There can
also be value judgements in the design and conduct of scientific studies
that go beyond those stipulated in risk-assessment guidelines and the
conduct of a risk assessment. Scientific studies used in a risk assessment
depend on the often subtle value judgements that inform them (Elliott,
2012; Holifield, 2009). Elliot calls attention to the notion of ‘selective
ignorance’, or the ‘wide range of often subtle research choices or “value
judgements” that lead to the collection of some forms of knowledge
rather than others’ (2012: 331), claiming these judgements will influence
what knowledge is available to inform decision making or, in our
case, risk assessment.
The existence of value judgements in these three components of
risk assessment draws attention to the actors making those value
judgements. Who is making them and who should do so? The recogni-
tion of these value choices has fuelled the call for democratic account-
ability and public involvement in risk assessment, which has traditionally
been seen as an expert domain (Hartley, 2016).

Prescribing the treatment of values and publics

in risk assessment
In reviewing key examples of the existing prescriptive risk-assessment
literature, specifically documents from the NRC and Codex, we show
how values are acknowledged and public involvement is proposed by
the organisations that prescribe risk assessment (NRC, 1983; Stern
and Fineberg, 1996). In comparing the 1983 and 1996 NRC reports,
we argue that it is the 1983 report that acknowledges the role of values
in risk assessment in a more detailed, nuanced and potentially produc-
tive way. This is true even though it calls for a separation of risk
assessment and risk management, and the 1996 report calls for broader
182 Science and the politics of openness

public involvement in risk governance and for an integration of

assessment and management.
The NRC is part of the National Academies of Science, a private,
non-profit, self-perpetuating society of distinguished scholars engaged
in scientific and engineering research. It advises the US Federal
Government on scientific and technical matters and has published
several prominent reports on risk assessment (NRC, 1983, 2009; Stern
and Fineberg, 1996). These NRC reports have influenced regulatory
risk assessment in the USA and internationally (Suter, 2008), and
they show how values and the role of public involvement are acknowl-
edged in risk assessment.
Risk Assessment in the Federal Government: Managing the Process
was one of the first major reports on risk assessment. This report has
become known as the ‘Red Book’ because of its red cover. It supported
the clear separation of risk assessment from risk management to help
establish the credibility of risk assessment (NRC, 1983), but, at the
same time, recognised the value judgements that are entangled in risk
assessment. For example, the NRC states:

If risk assessment as practiced by the regulatory agencies were pure

science, perhaps an organizational separation [between risk assessment
and risk management] could effectively sharpen the distinction between
science and policy in risk assessment and regulatory decision-making.
However, many of the analytic choices made throughout the risk assess-
ment process require individual judgments that are based on both
scientific and policy considerations. (NRC, 1983: 143)

The NRC refers to value judgements as policy judgements, and

introduces the concept of risk-assessment policy to refer to them in
conducting risk assessments. The value judgements inherent in risk
assessment are seen as being different in character from the value
judgements that exist in risk-management decisions. Making a clear
distinction between the types of value choices present in risk assessment
and risk management, the NRC describes how to distinguish between
scientific and value judgements in risk assessment, which it notes is
a difficult task. It recommends the development of guidelines, which
it defines as ‘the principles followed by risk assessors in interpreting
and reaching judgments based on scientific data’ (NRC, 1983: 51).
These guidelines help the risk assessor in conducting future risk
Disentangling risk assessment 183

assessments and are similar to the risk-assessment guidelines that we

describe above. However, there is no mention of the scientific studies
used in a risk assessment or the values-based nature of the research.
In this 1983 report the NRC argues that value judgements in risk
assessment are best made by risk assessors and there is no suggested
role for public involvement, even though the report recognises the
implications of such judgements. However, the NRC recommends
the involvement of experts from a wide range of scientific disciplines
in the development of guidelines. Overall, then, this report provides
an understanding of risk assessment in which the role of values in
risk assessment is acknowledged. These judgements are to be addressed
by expert risk assessors who will follow risk-assessment guidelines
that have been developed by a broad range of experts in advance of
an individual risk assessment.
In 1996 the NRC published the report Understanding Risk: Inform-
ing Decisions in a Democratic Society, which proposes an analytic–
deliberative approach to risk governance, one where ‘deliberation frames
analysis [and] analysis informs deliberation’ throughout the entire
risk-governance process (Stern and Fineberg, 1996: 6). In contrast to
its 1983 report, the NRC extends its thinking about the role of values
in risk governance and the way in which they should be dealt with. It
proposes broad involvement in risk governance by experts, decision
makers, and interested and affected parties. Yet the distinction between
analysis and deliberation makes clear the separation between analysis,
an epistemic stage that is the domain of experts, and deliberation, which
can be opened up to non-experts. Analysis uses rigorous, replicable
methods developed by experts to arrive at answers to factual questions.
Deliberation includes value-based decisions with a focus on how issues
are framed and what questions need to be answered. It uses processes
such as discussion, reflection and persuasion to communicate, raise
and collectively consider issues, increase understanding and arrive at
substantive decisions (Stern and Fineberg, 1996: 20).
Interested and affected parties can influence what analysis is called
for, but they play less of a role in actually influencing that science and
the risk-assessment process. Their direct involvement may be possible
when they have specialised or local knowledge that can help inform
the analysis. While they are not brought explicitly into the analysis,
they are seen as having a role in at least checking it:
184 Science and the politics of openness

Participation is important to help ask the right questions of the science,

check the plausibility of assumptions, and ensure that any synthesis is
both balanced and informative. The more likely it is that the science
will be criticized on the basis of its underlying assumptions or alleged
omissions, the more important participation is likely to be in a risk
decision process. (Stern and Fineberg, 1996: 132)
This approach points to the values-based nature of such judgements,
while not explicitly calling for participation in the development of
risk-assessment guidelines or in the conduct of a risk assessment
where the assumptions and synthesis are determined. Overall, this
report takes a bird’s-eye view of risk governance without the nuanced
attempt to disentangle the process of risk assessment that the 1983
report contained. Rather, it proposes the conceptual separation of the
analytical stage of governance from its deliberative stage. Therefore,
risk assessment has become a single stage in an approach to risk
governance which is free of values and the domain of expert risk
assessors. Public involvement is confined to risk management.
Codex is an international organisation established in 1963 by the
Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization
(WHO) to develop harmonised science-based international food
standards and risk-assessment procedures in order to protect consumer
health and ensure fair international trade (Büthe and Harris, 2011).
It is a heavily expert-led organisation and exclusively science based,
although this reliance on science and scientific experts to the exclusion
of non-scientific factors, alternative experts and mechanisms for public
involvement has been strongly criticised (Foster, 2008; Herwig, 2014;
Peel, 2010).
Codex constitutes the next phase of thinking about risk assessment,
developing the concept of ‘risk-assessment policy’ which is similar to
the risk-assessment guidelines that we described above. According to
Codex, risk-assessment policy establishes the risk-assessment frame-
work, and is defined as ‘documented guidelines on the choice of options
and associated judgments for their application at appropriate decision
points in the risk assessment such that the scientific integrity of the
process in maintained’ (CAC, 2013: 114). These judgements include
decisions about the scope of future risk assessments, the type and
amount of evidence needed, the interpretation of the evidence, and
the treatment of uncertainty. The concept departs from the NRC’s
Disentangling risk assessment 185

reports by stipulating that it is the responsibility of risk managers,

not risk assessors, to develop a risk-assessment policy in consultation
with all interested parties (CAC, 2013). In 2007, Codex committed
its 186 members (including the EU and the USA) to develop explicit
risk-assessment policies through the formal adoption of the Working
Principles for Risk Analysis for Food Safety for Application by Govern-
ments (CAC, 2007).
Similar to the NRC in its 1996 report, Codex acknowledges the
value judgements in risk-assessment guidelines, yet it maintains the
clear distinction between risk assessment and risk management.
Risk-assessment guidelines have been carved off from risk assessment
and placed under the risk-management phase of risk governance.
However, the more nuanced discussion about value judgements in
risk assessment present in the NRC’s 1983 report has been pushed
aside in favour of a clear and convenient separation between facts
and values. Risk assessment is now seen to be an exclusively science-
based and objective exercise to be conducted by risk assessors (Herwig,
2014). Risk management is the stage of risk governance where values
are acknowledged and where the public should be involved. Next, we
explore these prescriptions and the tensions that arise in the practical
application of guidelines through a case study.

The treatment of values and publics in risk assessment

in practice
The EFSA provides a useful case study to examine the way in which
risk assessors disentangle risk assessment and involve the public in
practice. The EFSA gives independent scientific advice to the European
Commission (EC) on matters related to food safety, and has responsibil-
ity for risk assessment. Risk assessment is defined in the EFSA’s founding
regulation as ‘a scientifically based process consisting of four steps:
hazard identification, hazard characterization, exposure assessment
and risk characterization’ (EC, 2002: 11). The EFSA develops guidance
documents, which are risk-assessment guidelines establishing the
principles, procedures and approaches in risk assessment as well as
specifying data requirements and the handling of uncertainty (Hartley,
2016; Vos and Wendler, 2006). Applicants conduct risk assessment
in line with the EFSA’s guidance documents and then the EFSA reviews
186 Science and the politics of openness

the applications and publishes a scientific opinion (the output of an

individual risk assessment). It is then the task of the EC and member
states (risk managers) to make the decision on whether to approve
the product or process under scrutiny.
The EFSA relies heavily on independent external scientific experts
in the development of its scientific outputs. These experts sit on standing
panels and are called upon to sit on ad hoc working groups. In addition,
the EFSA has a statutory obligation to engage with publics (EC, 2002:
Article 42). To meet this obligation, the EFSA holds public consultations
on its scientific outputs, particularly its guidance documents and
scientific opinions. Public involvement is guided by an internal policy.
The EFSA’s approach to public consultations on scientific outputs
defines publics as ‘the non-institutional stakeholders, which include
academics, NGOs, industry and all other potentially interested and
affected parties’ (EFSA, n.d.: 3). The EFSA’s motivation for public
consultation in risk assessment is driven by the goals of both transpar-
ency and scientific excellence. Public consultations open up the EFSA’s
processes and decisions to public scrutiny and they also allow external
input from publics to enhance the scientific quality of the risk assess-
ment by ensuring clarity and completeness (EFSA, n.d.: 3). The EFSA’s
policy on consultations allows it to launch a public consultation at
three stages: (1) at the start, to define the scope and major principles;
(2) at a preliminary stage, to seek information, data, views and sources
available on a specific topic; and (3) at the end, to ensure the clarity,
completeness and soundness of the draft scientific output (EFSA, n.d.).
However, the EFSA has yet to hold a consultation at the first stage to
define the scope of a risk assessment. In practice, publics are typically
given two months to comment on a draft scientific output (developed
by experts) through the EFSA’s website (Hartley, 2016).
The EFSA does not acknowledge that value judgements are made
in the development of its guidance documents or scientific opinions
(Klintman and Kronsell, 2010). Independent experts on the EFSA’s
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) panel have made it clear
that they do not acknowledge or engage in the matter of implicit
values, instead insisting that the EFSA’s risk assessment is a scientific
process and value judgements occur at the risk-management stage of
risk governance and are the responsibility of the EC and member
states (Perry et al., 2012; Wickson and Wynne, 2012). Further, the
Disentangling risk assessment 187

EFSA officials and scientific panels do not recognise that guidance

documents are risk-assessment policies, as defined by Codex, or that
it is the EC’s responsibility to develop them (Hartley, 2016). Guidance
documents are treated as scientific outputs free of value judgements.
However, despite the legal distinction between risk assessment and
risk management and the EFSA’s insistence that risk assessment is
value free, in practice the distinction is blurred (Tai, 2010).
The institutional denial of value judgements in risk assessment has
significant implications for the EFSA’s public consultations. First, it
means that the EFSA’s public consultations are ‘science based’ and
publics are allowed only to provide comments related to the science
of risk assessment. For example, when the EFSA consulted the public
in the development of its guidance documents on the environmental
risk assessment of genetically modified animals in 2013, it informed
potential participants: ‘The EFSA GMO Panel considered all scientifi-
cally relevant comments from the public when finalising the present
document. [It] did not consider issues related to risk management
(e.g. traceability, labelling, coexistence). Ethical and socio-economic
issues are also outside the remit of the EFSA GMO Panel’ (EFSA,
2013: 6). However, guidance documents are risk-assessment policies
and the EU’s commitment to Codex rules requires the EC to develop
them. Hartley (2016) has described these guidance documents as
policies masquerading as science.
The second implication of the institutional denial of values in risk
assessment is that it reinforces the authority of experts, and publics have
minimal opportunity for influence through the consultation. Hartley
(2016) argues that the public consultations have a minimal impact on the
EFSA’s scientific outputs owing to the expert-led nature of the process
and the unjustified restrictions placed on public involvement. Gaskell
et al. (2007) characterise the EFSA’s public consultation approach as a
‘sound science’ type of public dialogue, where the EFSA listens to the
public only in terms of its own expert definition of the problem and
the possible solutions. Although the EFSA makes public the results
of the consultation exercises and its response, which shows how the
results of the consultation exercise are used, publics’ views are heard
only in so far as publics talk in terms of the EFSA’s scientific remit.
Overall, the EFSA has responsibility for developing risk-assessment
guidelines, conducting risk assessment and determining the scientific
188 Science and the politics of openness

studies used in a risk assessment in the EU’s broader risk-governance

framework. Each of these components of risk assessment is seen to
be epistemic and is conducted by the EFSA’s independent experts.
Publics are involved as a means to improve the quality of the science
and to make the process of risk assessment transparent. However, in
practice, the institutional denial of values in risk assessment means
that it is independent experts who determine the values-based decisions,
and these experts are not democratically accountable. Public involve-
ment is restricted to matters of science and the value judgements
made by experts are hidden from public scrutiny.

New roles for public involvement in risk assessment

The academic literature presents compelling evidence of the existence
of values in risk assessment and makes a convincing case that risk
assessment has different component parts and should not be considered
a homogeneous stage in risk governance. The prescriptive literature
of the NRC and Codex demonstrate the difficulty in disentangling
risk assessment in practice, showing that since the late 1980s there
has been a growing reluctance to take a nuanced approach to addressing
values used in risk assessment. Ironically, this closing down of values
has been happening at the same time that risk assessment has been
opened up to publics. At present, there is no harmonised approach
to acknowledging or handling values in risk assessment, or to thinking
about how risk assessment should be disentangled. The case of the
EFSA reveals that the values in risk assessment are denied in practice
and that the different component parts (risk-assessment guidelines,
conducting of risk assessment and scientific studies used within a
risk assessment) are seen as a single stage of risk governance. This
practice of risk assessment has serious implications for public
involvement.
The lack of clarity about which publics should be involved in risk
assessment and at what point they should be involved means that
public engagement in risk assessment is not reaching its full potential.
To address this lack of clarity, we have disentangled risk assessment
into three components: (1) risk-assessment guidelines, (2) conducting
risk assessment and (3) scientific studies used in a risk assessment.
Table 10.1 outlines these risk-assessment components. The types of
Disentangling risk assessment 189

Table 10.1 A framework for public involvement in risk assessment

Risk-assessment components Task at hand Type of public
to be involved

Risk-assessment guidelines Establishing the Broad range of

risk-assessment alternative
framework experts and
publics
Conducting Problem Defining the scope Broad range of
risk formulation of and plan for a alternative
assessment risk assessment experts and
publics
Analysis and Exposure and effects Alternative
characterisation analysis, including experts
of risk selecting and
synthesising
relevant studies
Scientific studies for risk Designing and Alternative
assessment conducting experts
scientific studies
which are drawn
upon during risk
assessments

publics to engage with risk assessment will depend upon the component
of risk assessment.
We make a practical distinction for the purposes of this argument
between alternative experts and general publics, recognising that this
distinction may be a false distinction at times. Alternative experts
need to be sought out by risk assessors for their expert knowledge,
which expands the existing range of expertise. These experts will be
able to address the epistemic questions raised in risk assessment and
may come from a broader range of academic disciplines, including
the natural, engineering and social sciences. Alternative experts may
also come from sector-specific policy communities outside the academy
such as civil society, policymakers and government risk assessors.
Alternative experts may be brought into existing committees, working
groups and panels and work alongside risk assessors. On their part,
190 Science and the politics of openness

general publics will be self-selected in open and transparent engagement

mechanisms in order to allow stakeholder groups and individuals
access to information and provide them with the opportunity to
contribute to values-based questions. General publics cannot be
restricted to answering epistemic questions.
Mirroring developments in the public-engagement literature, there
is increasing recognition in the risk-assessment literature of the role
of public involvement in contributing substantively to risk assessment
and providing transparency (Klintman and Kronsell, 2010). Indeed,
the EFSA makes it clear that its public consultations are designed to
satisfy both these goals. Therefore, the goal of public involvement in
risk assessment is democratic and epistemic legitimacy. However,
because the judgements in risk assessment are both science- and
values-based in nature, epistemic legitimacy requires democratic
legitimacy. There is a need, then, to involve the appropriate publics
in the specific component being addressed. Because of the types of
value judgements that exist in the development of risk-assessment
guidelines and in the problem-formulation stage of risk assessment,
including those that do not involve technical expertise, public involve-
ment needs to include both alternative experts and publics more
broadly. During the analysis and characterisation of risk and for
scientific studies, it is important to open up to alternative experts
who hold enough expertise to reflect substantively on the relevant
values-based questions.

Conclusion
Peel (2010) suggests one of the crucial issues facing risk assessment
and governance is related to the way in which facts and values are
addressed: ‘[It is] not whether science or values should triumph, but
rather how scientific and non-scientific inputs might be blended in
risk assessment in different settings to ensure a broadly acceptable
balance of credibility and legitimacy concerns’ (Peel, 2010: 10). We
argue that in order to satisfy epistemic and democratic legitimacy,
the different features of risk assessment must be disentangled to lay
bare the various component parts, and that different publics need to
be involved depending on the types of questions asked in each
component.
Disentangling risk assessment 191

This chapter highlights the tensions between evidence, prescription

and practice in risk assessment which complicate efforts to involve
publics. However, public involvement in risk assessment presents a
significant opportunity to debate the value judgements that exist in
the various components of risk assessment. Indeed, it is precisely
these implicit value judgements that present the strongest argument
for public involvement (Finardi et al., 2012). In contrast, denying that
values exist in risk assessment, relying on a narrow range of expertise
and limiting public input to epistemic matters imposes a certain set
of values made by a narrow range of experts that are insulated from
public scrutiny and debate. This institutional denial of the implicit
values in risk assessment results in public frustration and lack of trust
in regulatory authorities (Hartley, 2016; Wynne, 2006).

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11
Monstrous materialities: ash dieback and
plant biosecurity in Britain
Judith Tsouvalis

The aim of the edited volume Science and the politics of openness is
to raise awareness of the double-sided controversial nature of initiatives
aimed at improving relations between science, policymaking, politics
and publics. Efforts have been made to strengthen public trust in
expert knowledge. These include dialogues organised between scientists
and concerned publics on contentious, ethically complex issues, inviting
specific publics to help decide the trajectories of controversial scientific
and technological innovations and opening up the questions of the
role of science in politics and vice versa to closer scrutiny. All this
has been much debated in the UK and elsewhere since around the
turn of the millennium (House of Lords, 2000; Stilgoe et al., 2006;
Wilsdon and Doubleday, 2013). These ‘monstrous’ sides of relations
between science, policymaking, politics and publics – aspects that
are unexpected, uncertain, unknown, uncomfortable, preferably ignored
and often downplayed– also entail material ones, and these can exert
a strong influence over how these relations evolve (Latour, 2004, 2013;
Raman and Tutton, 2010; Tsouvalis, 2016; Tsouvalis and Waterton,
2015). This chapter begins with a discussion of the monstrous material-
ity of Chalara ash dieback (Chalara), a deadly fungal tree disease that
has decimated the ash population across Europe since the early 1990s.
On 7 March 2012, Chalara was officially declared present in England,
following the routine inspection of a nursery in Buckinghamshire.
The ash saplings infected with the disease were found in a consignment
of plants imported from the Netherlands. Plant disease outbreaks are
on the increase worldwide and many are linked to international trade.
196 Science and the politics of openness

Countless pathogens, insects and animals circulate through the global

trade network as travel companions in plants, soil, logs, packaging
materials, nursery stock, fruit and seeds (Brasier, 2008: 793–794,
796–797). They pay no heed to political or geographical boundaries,
and with changing climate conditions their border crossings are
increasingly common and successful. Unfortunately for native, locally
adapted plant communities, this is bad news. Generally suffering few
ill effects from the life forms they have co-evolved with, they often
succumb to encounters with new ones. Chalara first broke out in
Poland and Latvia in the early 1990s, having arrived there on infected
ash saplings imported from East Asia (Drenkhan et al., 2014; Han et
al., 2014; Zhao et al., 2012). The disease reached Germany in 2002,
Denmark in 2003, Belgium in 2010 and northern France in 2012.
Given this rapid geographical spread west, it is surprising that the
British Government did nothing to try to prevent its arrival in Britain.
Part of the reason for this was that scientific knowledge about the
cause of the disease was scant and that an error had occurred in its
taxonomy. The latter played a brief but important role in allowing
Chalara slip through the net of legislation then in place to prevent
the trade-related spread of infectious diseases in the EU. It allowed
the pathogen to spread freely through mainland Europe and eventually
take a foothold in Britain (Freer-Smith et al., 2013: 23). This is the
monstrous side of Chalara, a disease that remained terra incognita in
science for many years, and this is its story.
More than a decade after arriving in Eastern Europe, in 2006 Chalara
fraxinea was named as the pathogen responsible for the disease
(Kowalski, 2006). Three years later, however, new research suggested
that Chalara was only a stage – the asexual form, or anamorph – in
the life cycle of a fungus called Hymenoscyphus albidus, known to
science since 1851 and indigenous across Europe and the UK. Histori-
cally considered a harmless saprophytic ascomycete, H. albidus, which
thrives on ash leaves and plays an important role in the nutrient cycle,
suddenly assumed the sinister role of the ash-tree killer.
In 2010 molecular studies overturned this verdict, showing that
the disease was actually caused during the asexual phase of a newly
identified fungus, Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus. Identical to H. albidus
in appearance, it is distinguishable from it only by molecular analysis
(Queloz et al., 2010). This case of mistaken identity had serious
Monstrous materialities 197

consequences for Britain, as it prevented the British Government from

acting on the advice the Forestry Commission (FC) had received from
the Horticultural Trade Association in 2009: to impose an import
ban on all ash and ash-related products. When asked why during a
House of Lords’ debate on Chalara in 2012, the Government’s reply
was that it had ‘no reason to believe that this [the discovery of Chalara
in the Buckinghamshire nursery] was anything other than an isolated
incident’ (quoted in Downing, 2012: 10). Probing deeper, however,
we find that the FC assumed it was ‘dealing with a pathogen already
present in the UK and this precluded the UK from initiating an
emergency response under the EU Plant Health Directive and World
Trade Organization phytosanitary rules and using import restrictions
as a means of control’ (Downing, 2012: 10).
The head of Plant Health at the FC thus responded to the Horti-
cultural Association’s letter that ‘our hands are tied’ (Downing, 2012:
10). The Forest Research branch of the FC could only issue a pest risk
alert to the forestry and horticultural sectors to make them aware of
the symptoms of ash dieback. It could not, however, request a full
pest risk analysis (PRA). A PRA is a protective measure that all EU
member states can apply for under Council Directive 2000/29/EC.
Its aim is to prevent the introduction into the EU of organisms harmful
to plants or plant products and to stop them spreading in the EU.
Chalara’s monstrous side – a side only molecular analysis could uncover
– illustrates the complex linkages that exist between materiality, policy,
legal instruments, human knowledge and understanding, and countless
other factors in the emergence of relations between science, politics
and publics. After it was declared that H. albidus was not the cause
of Chalara, an import ban of ash and ash-related products came into
effect in Britain on 29 October 2012. By that time, of course, the horse
had bolted.

Opening up the science of ash dieback

Knowledge about Chalara was scarce and the public response to the
disease in England was exceptionally strong and emotional. As a result,
the year 2012 saw an unprecedented opening up of the science of
Chalara to scientists internationally and concerned publics locally.
This response also needs to be situated in the context of years of
198 Science and the politics of openness

funding cuts in the area of plant pathology in the UK, which had led
to a steep decline in expertise in this field. In a report published in
2009, the Royal Society had urged universities and funding bodies to
collaborate in order to revive the teaching of subjects like agronomy,
plant physiology, pathology, general botany, soil science, environmental
microbiology, weed science and entomology. This was no mean feat,
as an audit of plant pathology undergraduate teaching and training
commissioned three years later by the British Society for Plant Pathology
(2012) revealed. It found that many plant pathology research institutes
and industrial research and development departments had been closed;
plant pathologists were ageing; retiring higher education institute plant
pathologists were rarely replaced; fewer than half the 103 higher
education institutes that offered biology, agriculture, horticulture or
forestry courses at BSc level still taught plant pathology, and only half
of these offered practical classes. The British Society for Plant Pathology
wondered whether higher education institutes would be able to retain
their capacity to teach plant pathology in five to ten years’ time, given
that ‘new departmental appointments and RAE/REF assessments are
driven in part by the Impact Factor (IF) of scientific publications. The
highly specialised nature of much plant pathology research means
that many publications are of low IF’ (British Society for Plant Pathol-
ogy, 2012: 2). A key recommendation of the Tree Health and Plant
Biosecurity Expert Taskforce (THPBET) set up in November 2012
following the ash dieback outbreak was that ‘key skills shortages’ in
this field needed to be urgently addressed. To combat Chalara, desperate
measures were therefore in order. For example, in December 2012,
the open-source platform OpenAshDieBack (oadb.tsl.ac.uk) was
launched. It had been designed by scientists from the John Innes
Centre in Norwich, and invited scientists from around the world to
share scientific data on Chalara. This unconventional step of rapidly
generating and releasing genomic sequence data was premised on the
understanding that ‘to foster open science and make it possible for
experts around the world to access the data and analyse it immediately
[would] speed up the process of discovery’ (MacLean, 2016).
Another effort to open up and speed up the science of Chalara was
the Facebook-based crowdsourcing game Fraxinus, developed by the
Sainsbury Laboratory in Cambridge. Fraxinus presents players with
real reference DNA sequences from the ash tree genome and asks
Monstrous materialities 199

them to match up multiple DNA sequence reads from other samples

with the aim of identifying regions of the genome that display char-
acteristics such as resistance. These could then be used to breed new,
disease-resistant ash tree varieties. Fraxinus and OpenAshDieBack
both require mass participation, and between August and December
2013, 51,057 people played the Fraxinus game.
Opening up in the context of biosecurity, the conceptual framework
within which plant health risks are currently approached, is closely
connected to activities like surveillance, monitoring and control, and
here citizen science came to play a particularly significant role. The
Living Ash Project, funded by the Department for Environment, Food
and Rural Affairs (Defra), is one example of an initiative where the
public can get involved in monitoring Chalara. Another is the smart-
phone app AshTag, developed by the Adapt Low Carbon Group at
the University of East Anglia and launched in October 2012. Initially,
AshTag enabled concerned members of the public to record infected
trees and submit photos of them to experts for assessment. These data
were then used to map the spread of the disease across the UK. Since
2016 AshTag has been collecting data on healthy trees in the hope of
identifying disease-resistant ones. Citizen scientists also help monitor
tree diseases through the Open Air Laboratories network. All three
initiatives are focused on monitoring, surveillance and, ultimately,
disease control. Did these novel and exciting ways of opening up the
monstrous materiality of Chalara in science correspond to an equal
opening up of the Pandora’s box of free trade and its role in the perpetu-
ation of plant disease epidemics to broader political scrutiny and
public debate? Did it correspond to an opening up of policymaking
in this field?

‘Biosecurity’: turning a complex socio-political problem into

a techno-scientific challenge
This section attempts to answer these questions. It draws on findings
from an in-depth qualitative study (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005; Silver-
man, 2005) conducted in 2014 of the Government’s response to ash
dieback. The study was funded by the Leverhulme Trust under its
Making Science Public programme. Sixteen in-depth, semi-structured
interviews were carried out, nine with members of the THPBET and
200 Science and the politics of openness

seven with civil servants and experts otherwise involved in supporting

and advising the Government on plant biosecurity. The interview
schedule covered a broad range of topics, including questions about
the interface between science, politics, policymaking and the public,
and about how the THPBET worked, made its recommendations,
and addressed and resolved conflicting views. Data on these and related
issues were also collected from secondary data sources, including
newspapers, government documents, non-governmental organisation
(NGO) reports, legal documents, social media, TV documentaries
and academic literature.
As indicated earlier, when ash dieback was first discovered the
British Government had no contingency plan in place to deal with
plant disease epidemics. Scientists knew very little about the disease
and plant diseases rarely made it into the headlines of the national
press. Although the Government had been reminded by the Foresight
Project on Infectious Disease in 2006 that ‘diseases in plants and
animals act as barriers to economic development and also threaten
ecosystems’ (Foresight, 2006: iv), and urged by the Independent Panel
on Forestry in 2012 to ‘speed up delivery of the Tree Health and Plant
Biosecurity Action Plan by additional investment in research on tree
and woodland diseases, resilience and biosecurity controls’ (Independ-
ent Panel on Forestry, 2012: 34), little had as yet been done to enact
these recommendations. At the European level, in response to the
steep rise in tree and plant diseases in the EU, the European Com-
mission (EC) had commissioned an evaluation of the EU’s plant health
regime in 2009.
The key instrument of this quarantine legislative system dating
from 1977 is Council Directive 2000/29/EC. It is meant to guard
against all pests and diseases, but in practice only targets the most
dangerous ones, of which 250 are listed in its annexes. The plant
health regime encompasses measures like plant inspections at produc-
tion sites, during the growing season and post-harvest; producer
registration; and issuing plant passports. It forms part of international
regulatory frameworks, including the International Plant Protection
Convention of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United
Nations, and the World Trade Organization Sanitary and Phytosanitary
(Plant Health) Agreement. Their prime objective is to foster free trade:
in ‘essence, Biosecurity balances enthusiasm for international trade
Monstrous materialities 201

with the need to protect against risks’ (Manzella and Vapnek 2007:
vii; emphasis in the original).
The EC considers the EU plant health regime as ‘indispensable for
protecting the health, economy and competitiveness of the EU plant
production sector as well as for maintaining the Union’s open trade
policy’ (EC, 2013). It describes it as ‘unique in that it is an open regime:
movements of plants and plant products into and within the Union
are allowed’ (EC, 2013:1). The 2009–2010 review, however, found this
unique regime was thoroughly inadequate in preventing plant disease
epidemics and advised that it be modernised through more focus on
prevention, better risk targeting (prioritisation) and more solidarity (EC,
2010). In 2013 the EC warned that ‘the existing regulatory framework is
… unable to stop the increased influx of dangerous new pests caused by
the globalization of trade’, and predicted that ‘high volumes of imports
from other continents … imply a high probability of future outbreaks
of foreign pests’ (EC, 2013: 1). Only a modernised regime, it concluded,
could ‘effectively address the plant health impacts of globalisation
[and] mitigate the plant health impacts of climate change’. Proposals
for improving the EU plant health regulations have since been made
and are currently under discussion by the European Parliament and
Council. It is doubtful, however, that they will bring about greater
plant biosecurity as long as the plant health regime remains tied to the
objective of fostering free trade, which is considered by some as the
greatest threat to plant health (Brasier, 2005, 2008). On the contrary,
plant disease epidemics are likely to increase in number.
At this point, we need to take a closer look at the framing of tree
and plant pests and diseases as a ‘biosecurity’ risk. In Britain, the
term ‘biosecurity’ first entered politics in a House of Commons debate
on the foot and mouth disease outbreak in 2001. It is thought that
because concerns over affairs of state and national security loom large
at this level, biosecurity discourse became littered with references to
‘border controls’ and ‘surveillance’ (Donaldson, 2008: 1552), and as
a result the protection of the ‘native’ from the ‘non-native’, ‘alien’, and
‘invasive’ (Nerlich et al., 2009). Studies of the effects of the discourse
of biosecurity have found it to be highly restrictive, preventing alterna-
tive definitions and understandings of disease epidemics from emerging
(Hinchliffe and Ward, 2014; Vogel, 2008). They have also found that
tensions between biosecurity governance and neo-liberal international
202 Science and the politics of openness

trade priorities remain ill understood (Meyerson and Reaser, 2012),

that the dominant biosecurity metaphor of security and the fears that
underpin it direct resource allocation towards the fortification of
boundaries (Nerlich et al., 2009), and that in some countries biosecurity
politics are in the process of engineering a new kind of social identity:
‘biosecure citizenship’ (Barker, 2010).
From a theoretical standpoint, biosecurity discourse can be under-
stood as forming part of the broader trend in Western societies of
being risk-averse and overanxious about health, safety and security.
Beck’s (1992) Risk Society thesis, Foucault’s (2004, 2007) biopolitics
and Latour’s (2003) version of Beck’s thesis using actor-network theory
have all served here as explanatory sources. The conclusion drawn
by Defra from the final report of the THPBET exemplifies some of
these arguments. In prose littered with military metaphors, Defra
urges the UK to be ‘better prepared in understanding the risks of
what pests and diseases are likely to arrive, when, where and how
they might invade, how severe the impact is likely to be and what
options are available for interception, eradication, mitigation or
adaptation’ (Defra, 2013: 2).
Framing plant diseases in this way has far-reaching consequences
for policy and democracy. As Duckett et al. (2015) have shown, risk-
based policy is based on a positivist epistemology that favours objective,
scientific and technical risk assessment rather than an opening up of
complex issues to public and political scrutiny and debate. This can
lead to a form of post-politics which is exacerbated by consensual
policymaking ‘in which the stakeholders … are known in advance
and where disruption or dissent is reduced to debates over the
institutional modalities of governing, the accountancy calculus of risk,
and the technologies of expert administration or management’
(Swyngedouw, 2011: 268). While risk-based approaches can constitute
a valuable source of knowledge alongside other knowledges and
approaches, they cannot, on their own, solve the monstrous aspects
of the increasingly tricky and complex problems we face (Chilvers
and Kearnes, 2016; Grove-White et al., 2006). This was the conclusion
drawn by members of the THPBET on the process in which they
were involved in addressing Chalara.
Public concern over Chalara was great. Apocalyptic imaginaries of
a landscape devoid of ash trees and bleak economic forecasts of the
Monstrous materialities 203

consequences of the disease flooded the pages of national newspapers

and social media sites. This response took Defra by surprise, and it
duly commissioned a study of the THPBET by a social scientist to
better understand it (Pidgeon and Barnett, 2013). The study concluded
that Defra was dealing with a case of the ‘social amplification of risk’,
where numerous, often lingering, anxieties culminate to find expression
in response to a particular event. The Government reacted to to this
response by convening a national emergency (Cabinet Office Briefing
Rooms – COBR) meeting in London in November 2012, with the
aim of showing people ‘how seriously the Government is taking the
threat of this disease’ (Defra, 2012a). It also commissioned the FC to
carry out a rapid, large-scale survey to establish the extent and spread
of the disease, as the National Forest Inventory of 2009–2012 had
recorded 103 diseased ash trees among the 15,000 inspected, none of
which were infected with Chalara (House of Lords, 2012: 10). Finally,
it set up the THPBET.
This taskforce was entirely composed of ‘Chief Scientific Advisors
and eminent Government and academic experts’ (Beddington, quoted
in House of Commons Library, 2012: 1). Its remit was to comment
and advise on Defra’s scientific evidence and approach to Chalara
and ‘the current threats from pests and pathogens’. It was also tasked
with making ‘recommendations about how those threats to trees could
be addressed’ (Defra, 2012a: 7). The names of the taskforce participants
are listed in its Final Report (Defra, 2013: 49). Of its fourteen members,
eleven held professorships at the time and all fourteen were educated
to PhD level. Ten were natural scientists, four were social scientists,
and of these, two were economists. The taskforce was supported by
a public sector officials advisory group, whose members were drawn
from Defra and the Defra network organisations. External referees
were invited to comment on the reports, as were a broad range of
stakeholders. The terms of reference for the taskforce were determined
before it first convened. The language in which they are formulated
is indicative of the risk-based approach adopted, containing references
to ‘best available evidence’, an ‘assessment of risk status’, ‘appropriate
risk assessment tools’, a ‘rapid evidence assessment’, a ‘risk mitigation
framework’, ‘contingency planning’, and ‘emergency response arrange-
ments’. Stakeholders and the public played no role in framing the
problem of ash dieback at this stage, nor did they have a say in who
204 Science and the politics of openness

ought to address a challenge of such magnitude. Many stakeholders

were concerned about this, as the empirical study conducted by the
author and described at the beginning of this section found:

Conservation organisations in particular were quite critical that it [the

taskforce] was set up without any sort of conversation with them about
membership. … They would have liked to have had an opportunity to
have suggested how the Terms of Reference [were] framed. … They
were … invited [to] sit on the Stakeholder Advisory Panel … after the
Terms of Reference and membership had been made. (Respondent 11)

The deadlines for the publication of the two reports to be produced

were determined from the outset. The interim report was due by
the end of November 2012 (two weeks after the first meeting of the
taskforce) and a final report by the spring of 2013 (Defra, 2012b).
These tight deadlines – indicative of the perceived emergency of
Chalara – greatly impacted on the speed with which the taskforce
had to work. The taskforce itself was set up within days of the COBR
meeting and was purposely kept small. The names of most of its
members were proposed by Defra. Those able to participate at such
short notice had to be available for meetings immediately and be
committed to working to tight deadlines. Apart from several two-day
meetings, telephone conferences and email exchanges took place and
participants were assigned to expert groups that tackled specific issues.
They had to review and comment on vast numbers of documents. Senior
plant health officials were actively involved in meetings and the chief
scientific advisor, the chairman of the taskforce, the Secretary of State
and Minister Lord De Mauley met on a regular basis to discuss any
progress made.
This tight timeframe and the predefined terms of reference of the
THPBET, together with the fact that the taskforce was primarily
composed of experts with existing links to the government department
they now advised, are characteristic of the technocratic post-political
approach to risk-based problem solving and policymaking described
by Duckett et al. (2015) and Swyngedouw (2011) above. Their combined
effects were explored during interviews. The findings suggest that
they impacted negatively both on the degree of stakeholder and public
involvement and on the degree to which disagreement and conflict
could emerge and be addressed during the THPBET meetings.
Monstrous materialities 205

Concerning stakeholder and public participation, one interviewee

observed that the taskforce was not a public forum in the sense that
there were no public meetings and no public dialogue took place.
Although ‘additional people [from local authorities, trade associations,
environmental interest groups and others] who were not members
of the taskforce … were brought into meetings and provided written
evidence’ (respondent 5), they were invited only to comment on
materials already produced by the taskforce:
There were several meetings convened, each one had a very specific
agenda that was marginally directed towards arriving at a useful set of
recommendations that could be justified on the basis of the scientific
background. … There was also a later phase where … there was an
attempt – prior to submission of these recommendations – to basically
get input from various UK Stakeholder groups. (Respondent 8)

Following the first two-day meeting of the taskforce in November

2012, an interim report containing eight recommendations was
published (Defra, 2012). Reviewers for the report were chosen on the
basis of their ability ‘to constructively contribute to the objectives of
the taskforce’, and a broad range of stakeholders were invited to
comment on it (respondent 6). Significantly, this respondent points
out that the ‘Interim Report came out first and then they [the taskforce]
used that to refine what they thought their recommendations should
be and they talked to stakeholders’. The stakeholders could therefore
only refine conclusions already drawn by the experts and formulated
as recommendations in their first report. Even then, there was little
room to accommodate their views:
We were trying to make our recommendations based on science. So we
weren’t really trying to make them fit with the views of stakeholders at
all. … There was much less stakeholder input into the expert report
because it was not meant to be an exercise which drew its information
from stakeholders. It was meant to be an exercise that drew its information
from … the best understandings of … both natural science and social
science. (Respondent 9)

Time, bureaucratic procedures, scientific knowledge, and the Govern-

ment’s framing of tree and plant health as a problem of biosecurity
all impacted on the issues the taskforce could address and the rec-
ommendations it finally made. Taskforce meetings generally lasted
206 Science and the politics of openness

under an hour. This made ‘a deeper engagement and the development

of conversations’ impossible (respondent 15). However, it proved a
powerful strategy for keeping conflict at bay: ‘there is a risk … that
if views were polarised they could be very polarised by the end of
three hours’ (respondent 15).
Unsurprisingly, most interviewees reiterated the view that there
had been little disagreement and conflict between taskforce members
during meetings. Some respondents, however, were unhappy about
this and thought that ‘there had been things that had not been included
in the reports’ and that ‘other recommendations could have been
made’ (respondent 11). This respondent felt that general agreement
was at least in ‘part to do with the way the discussions were framed’
and ‘there was certainly the impression that controversial issues were
avoided’.
The taskforce’s recommendations reflect this. They include the
development of a prioritised UK plant health risk register; the appoint-
ment of a chief plant health officer responsible for the UK plant health
risk register and for providing strategic and tactical leadership for
managing risks; the development and implementation of procedures
for preparedness and contingency planning to predict, monitor and
control the spread of pests and pathogens; and the revision, simplifica-
tion and strengthening of governance and legislation. They also include
the recommendation that epidemiological intelligence from the EU
and other regions needs to be better used, and EU regulations for
tree health and plant biosecurity improved. Biosecurity at the border
and in the UK needs to be strengthened, capabilities and communica-
tions improved through the development of a modern, user-friendly
system providing quick and intelligent access to information about
tree health and plant biosecurity and key skills shortages addressed
(Defra, 2013: 5).
Many taskforce members described these risk-orientated recom-
mendations as limiting. They were, one observed, ‘quite technical and
cathedral and as a result less controversial’. It had been easy, the
respondent explained, to reach agreement on the need for the appoint-
ment of a new chief plant health officer and the creation of a risk
register (respondent 11). Another saw them as ‘rather sort of
bureaucratic-type recommendations’ (respondent 2). Some taskforce
members had expressed concern during meetings about the
Monstrous materialities 207

‘risk-orientated approach’ to biosecurity, saying they would have

preferred a ‘pathways approach’.
However, they knew that such a paradigm change would have proved
controversial with the nursery trade, as it would have opened up room
for a critical appraisal of the role of trade and the single market in
the spread of plant disease, the checking of plants for disease prior
to them being moved, consumer behaviour, and the biosecurity
implications of the work of professionals such as landscape architects.
Unfortunately, debating such issues was beyond the remit of the
THPBET. It could therefore not address key drivers of plant disease
epidemics, including the effects of trade, even though taskforce
members ‘were all of the view that it would be much better if the UK
could impose trade restrictions for plant health reasons’ (respondent
4). Indeed, the respondent went on, ‘We [the taskforce] ought to say,
if you really want to tackle this you need to ban import on plants,
which would be politically not useful at all. … we found it more
difficult to see impossibilities in the human world than in the natural
world. … and where you see impossibilities affects how you make
recommendations.’ Echoing this view, another respondent lamented
that ‘you can make as many recommendations as you like, but the
science can’t sort those issues out’ (respondent 14).

Conclusion: the many monsters of plant biosecurity

The risk-based approach to ash dieback adopted by the Government
in 2012 in response to Chalara transformed a highly contentious
socio-economic, political and material problem of monstrous and
messy proportions into a neatly defined techno-scientific challenge.
As a result, trade-related plant disease outbreaks continue to be an
issue where ‘debate is not only seriously lacking but may also be
suppressed through non-recognition or even avoidance of the issues’
(Brasier, 2005: 54, 2008; Daszak et al., 2000). Such issues, as observed
by the THPBET member interviewed above, cannot be sorted out by
science.
Although ash dieback catapulted plant health to the top of the
Government’s agenda in 2012, many of its monsters remain lurking
in the dark. The science of plant pathology was opened up in novel
and exciting ways both to scientists and to the public after the strong
208 Science and the politics of openness

public reaction to Chalara, which led to the long-overdue allocation

of resources in this area. However, interpreting these efforts as a
democratisation of science or as ‘making science public’ would be a
mistake. Rather, they formed part of the dominant risk-based approach
to plant biosecurity endorsed by the Government and were primarily
directed at surveillance, monitoring and plant disease control and at
the changing of the very nature (the genetic makeup) of the life forms
affected by Chalara, ash trees. The risk-based approach adopted also
meant that the THPBET was structured and designed in ways that
make it a perfect example of consensual post-political policymaking.
A deeper engagement with the complex economic, socio-cultural,
material and political drivers behind tree and plant disease epidemics
was impossible. This raises serious questions about the role scientists,
social scientists and humanities scholars are often made to play in
policymaking, especially in the case of emergencies. Concerning plant
health, for example, there are plenty of studies that document the
detrimental effects of trade and certain horticultural practices, such
as the overuse of herbicides and pesticides in nurseries, the importation
of live trees, or the practice of exporting seeds and importing saplings
to save labour costs, on plant health. If their findings were more
powerfully articulated and taken seriously by government institutions,
this would inevitably put the spotlight on politically more delicate
and challenging issues, and it is these issues that urgently need address-
ing in this field. To simply exploit scientific ‘evidence’ for the purpose
of upholding neo-liberal trade arrangements or finding ever more
life-transforming technologies to counteract their costs is not only
irresponsible, it is also deeply unethical.

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12
An Inconvenient Truth: a social
representation of scientific expertise
Warren Pearce, Brigitte Nerlich

On 30 June 2006 An Inconvenient Truth (AIT) (Guggenheim, 2006),

a climate-change documentary presented and written by leading US
Democrat politician Al Gore, was released. The film contains a heady
mix of expert scientific evidence, personal stories and normative
political statements. An ‘oral history’, based on interviews with those
involved in the creation of the film and celebrating this anniversary,
proclaimed: ‘Somehow, a film starring a failed presidential candidate
and his traveling slideshow triggered a seismic shift in public under-
standing of climate change’ (Armstrong et al., 2016).
It is likely that AIT has contributed as much as anything or anyone
to making climate-change expertise public. In particular, it brought
climate-science expertise, which had steadily accumulated in the
preceding decades, into the public realm in a new way: combining
scientific data with personal stories and calls for political action. In
combining these elements, AIT made climate change public by offering
a particular social representation of climate change. While primarily
appealing to a public that was already interested in, and attentive to,
climate change, AIT also helped to broaden that audience. The film’s
intended audience was what one may call its ‘convenient’ public. On
the other hand, the film’s very success in speaking to such a public also
triggered contestation from what one may call an ‘inconvenient’ public;
that is, from an audience that disputed the film’s social representation of
climate-change expertise – in some cases the film and/or its producer
were framed as ‘monstrous’. The film thus became a successful meme
and what some saw as a dangerous monster at the same time.
An Inconvenient Truth 213

In this chapter we discuss AIT as an example of taking climate-change

expertise out of the pages of science journals and into the public sphere.
We draw on the ideas of John Dewey (1938, 1989) and their elucidation
by Mark Brown (2009, and see chapter 9) to show how the notion of
expertise is the key to understanding the film’s motivation, successes
and critics. While the purpose of the documentary was to persuade its
audience of the consensual truth imparted by climate-science experts,
its effect was to become a lightning rod for disagreeing with, criticising
and debating with that expertise. Overall, AIT created a dominant
representation of climate change, based on expertise that became a
touchstone for consent and dissent, action and reaction. This position
was enhanced by the joint award of the 2007 Nobel Peace prize to
Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
In the following we shall first provide some background to the
film’s emergence, highlighting its echoes of Dewey’s argument that
expert knowledge should be integrated in society (Brown, 2009: 150).
We use the concept of social representation (Moscovici, 1988) to show
how Gore combined scientific content with a personal and political
context in order to provide a meaningful representation of climate-
change expertise. We highlight how AIT sought to create its own
public for scientific expertise, returning climate-science expertise to
society as one of the many tools with which citizens make sense of
the world and solve problems (Brown, 2009: 160–161). We then show
how the very elements that helped AIT to establish a dominant social
representation of climate change also contributed to the creation of
a counter-representation and counterpublic that questioned how AIT
represented climate-science expertise. With AIT’s success in bringing
social context to scientific content came inevitable contestation. We
conclude with some tentative lessons for science communicators from
the AIT story.

Background
AIT had a huge cultural and political impact following its release in
2006, winning a host of awards, including the 2007 Academy Award
for Best Documentary (IMDb, 2015), helping Gore win a share of a
Nobel Peace prize with the IPCC and providing an anchor for intense,
prolonged debates about climate change.
214 Science and the politics of openness

The documentary was timely, which helped it to embed itself in

global culture and shape both dominant or hegemonic and counter-
hegemonic polemical social representations of climate change. A
dominant or hegemonic social representation is one that is a coercive
and widely shared construction of climate change, while a polemic
one is defined as ‘one which is generated in the course of social conflict,
and characterised by antagonistic relations between groups’ (Jaspal
et al., 2014). In 2007 the IPCC released its Fourth Assessment Report,
which marked a step change in the public visibility of climate science.
These events represented a political and cultural reinforcement of the
emerging scientific consensus and were significant in establishing for
the first time a dominant, hegemonic representation of climate change
that called for significant personal and political action to address the
challenge. AIT did not disappear from cultural consciousness after
2007. Gore made sure that future campaigns such as Climate Reality
built on its success, seeking to train volunteers as ‘Climate Reality
Leaders … spreading the word about the truth of climate change and
the solutions we have today in over 100 countries, making a global
challenge a personal issue for citizens on every continent’ (Climate
Reality, n.d.; emphasis added).
This suggests that AIT was a highly successful project, both as a
cultural event in itself and as a way of bringing meaning to climate
change and momentum to climate-change mitigation. AIT’s combina-
tion of scientific ideas with personal stories and political activism
echoes Dewey’s call for ‘bare ideas’ to have ‘imaginative content and
emotional appeal’ in order to be effective (Dewey, 1989: 115). AIT
also takes seriously Dewey’s notion that scientific expertise is a social
product rather than the result of individual scientific brilliance and
that science communication marks the return of knowledge to its
rightful owners: the public (Brown, 2009: 150). Indeed, AIT takes this
one step further by seeking to empower its audience to gain the expertise
to go out and disseminate locally. Yet, while Dewey points to the seeds
of AIT’s success, he also shows how the successful communication of
scientific knowledge and its social consequences brings more public
scrutiny to bear on expertise (Brown, 2009: 159).
A decade later, AIT remains an important representation of climate-
change expertise. Gore’s name continues to be synonymous with public
discussions of climate change (Grundmann and Scott, 2014) and AIT
An Inconvenient Truth 215

continues to act as a salient reference point for climate-change critics

(e.g. Booker, 2015; Daily Mail Comment, 2015; Turnbull, 2011). In
the next section we describe the key elements of this representation.

Representing climate-change expertise

Climate science is an example of the scientific representation of nature
that responds to a problematic situation. Communicating this expert
knowledge is important as the problematic situation is bound up
with social conditions (Brown, 2009: 160). Yet Dewey understands
that if this expert knowledge is to gain purchase within societies, it
must be communicated aesthetically and imaginatively (Brown, 2009:
150). As discussed above, this provides a rationale for AIT but it also
shows that AIT is a social representation of a scientific representation
of nature (namely, the abstract concept of climate change). Hence,
concepts from social-representations theory help to show how AIT
represented climate-science expertise by objectifying climate change
through humans (personification) and non-humans (ontologisation)
(Jaspal et al., 2014). This constituted an attempt to establish a coher-
ent, hegemonic social representation of climate-science expertise
that would gain purchase with the AIT audience, inspiring them to
take various actions on climate change or to contest such actions
(Hollin and Pearce, 2015; Jacobsen, 2011; Jaspal et al., 2014; Nolan,
2010).
According to social-representations theory, a social representation
is ‘a system of values, ideas and practices’ about a given social object
(Moscovici, 1973: xiii), as well as ‘the elaborating of a social object
by the community for the purpose of behaving and communicat-
ing’ (Moscovici, 1963: 251). Such a representation provides a social
group with a shared social reality and common consciousness of a
particular social object. The primary function of a social representation
is to allow a social group to incorporate ‘something unfamiliar and
possibly troubling into their own network of categories (Moscovici,
1981: 193). Hegemonic social representations are shared by members
of a group; they are coercive and uniform. Polemic representations
are generated in the course of social conflict and are characterised
by antagonistic relations between groups (Jaspal and Nerlich, 2014:
124–125; Moscovici, 2000: 28).
216 Science and the politics of openness

Objectification is the process whereby unfamiliar and abstract objects

are transformed into concrete and objective common-sense realities.
Moscovici and Hewstone (1983) postulate three subprocesses associated
with objectification; namely, the personification of knowledge, figuration
and ontologisation. We focus here on the first and the last. The
personification of knowledge links the abstract object to a person or
a group, providing the object with a more concrete existence through
this association. Ontologisation refers to the process whereby physical
characteristics are attributed to a non-physical entity, essentially
‘materialising’ the immaterial.
We will show that while AIT helped to elevate the cultural significance
of climate change and contributed to forging and disseminating a
hegemonic representation of climate change, it also prompted the
emergence of a strengthened polemic-representation counterpublic
that placed AIT’s representation of climate-science knowledge under
intense scrutiny. By highlighting some scientific weaknesses in the
film and Gore’s role as the face of expertise, the counterpublic sought
to establish a counter-hegemonic or polemical social representation
of climate change. Here, the monsters lurking under the public face
of climate change came to life, most notoriously in an episode of
South Park where Gore was depicted warning of an implausible, unseen
monster called ManBearPig (Parker, 2006; Delingpole, 2010). Monstrous
representations continue to this day, with a Breitbart article confusingly
describing a new sequel to the film (Cohen and Shenk, 2017) as a
‘scientific monstrosity’ while referring to climate change as ‘a non-
science beast’ (Williams, 2017).
While scientific knowledge plays an important role in the film,
Gore evidently recognised, like Dewey, that public mobilisation requires
climate change to be made meaningful, not abstract, by manipulating
both cognitions and emotions (Beattie et al., 2011) so that ‘enough
people lock into the same narrative and connect the dots and feel the
danger facing their children’ (Bates and Goodell, 2007). The emergence
of scientific knowledge about climate change has given rise to ‘an
impersonal, apolitical, and universal imaginary of climate change’
that has taken over from ‘normative imaginations of human actors
engaging directly with nature’ (Jasanoff, 2010: 235). AIT attempts to
redress this balance by personalising and ontologising climate change.
Most obviously, it positions Gore – for better or worse – as the human
An Inconvenient Truth 217

face of the climate-change debate (Jaspal et al., 2014: 114). Yet it also
contains other attempts at personalisation. In a powerful early section,
Gore tells how his young son was almost killed in a car accident, and
of the painful days spent at his bedside waiting to see if he would
recover. The parallel is drawn between Gore’s son and the natural
world that we assume to be stable, showing that the things that we
take the most for granted can be taken away from us unexpectedly
(Murray and Heumann, 2007).
As well as this personalisation of climate or nature, the film seeks
to reintroduce the personal into the accumulation of scientific knowl-
edge. Knowledge is given credence not only using charts and numbers,
but by the scientists who produced them. Gore refers to palaeocli-
matologist Lonnie Thompson as ‘my friend’ when arguing that
Thompson’s research shows a striking correlation between atmospheric
carbon dioxide concentrations and temperature. Science may achieve
its heft through abstraction (Jasanoff, 2010: 234), but Gore reminds
his audience that scientific practice is irreducibly human, through his
account of his son’s accident.
AIT also seeks to mitigate abstraction through the ontologisation
of climate change by way of various non-human forms. The film begins
with a paean to the central role of nature in Gore’s early life, which
is subsequently referenced in the story of his son’s car accident. This
‘environmental nostalgia’ makes climate change real by presenting it
as an emotional threat to our own memories of living in nature (Murray
and Heumann, 2007). Glaciers are used as another material example
of what we might lose from climate change. However, this was not
without controversy. One supportive climate scientist’s review of AIT
argued that while the general point was well made, the particular
examples used in the film were poorly chosen, as they were probably
unrelated to temperature change (Steig, 2008). AIT ties climate change
to the threat of extreme weather, traumatically felt in the USA through
Hurricane Katrina just prior to the film’s release (Nerlich and Jaspal,
2014). While Katrina is mentioned prominently in the film, the
important role of engineering failures in the devastation it caused are
overlooked; a position described by Rayner as ‘using bad arguments
for good causes’ (2006: 6).
Criticisms of some of the specific examples used in AIT highlight
a broader tension underpinning the ontologisation of climate change;
218 Science and the politics of openness

that is, that local examples of climate-change-related events are likely

to be less scientifically certain than global representations of climate
(Hollin and Pearce, 2015). This is not to say that AIT is entirely
unsuccessful on this front; merely that scientific representations and
social representations may often come into conflict. Evaluating how
these are resolved depends on whether Gore’s role in AIT is ‘as a
politician, a lay expert, or a spokesperson for science’ (Hulme, 2009:
81), something that remains unclear during the film.
This section has outlined the social representation of climate-science
expertise in AIT. The next section demonstrates the integral role of
the audience in this representation, as Gore returns science to the
people (Brown, 2009: 160).

Emergence of a public
Empire magazine’s five-star review of AIT begins with an inauspicious
synopsis: ‘On the face of it, this is the least appealing film in history.
A failed politico … preaching to the world about global warming
with the aid of PowerPoint’ (O’Hara, 2015).
Presentation software such as PowerPoint or Keynote1 appears
to be a questionable medium through which to persuade an audi-
ence of the seriousness of climate change. Even at the time of AIT’s
release, such software was becoming notorious for homogeneous,
ready-made slide designs resulting in boring corporate presentations
(Reynolds, 2005; Tufte, 2003). While Gore’s professionally designed
slides avoid the template trap, one might wonder why he chose to
make such a presentation the focus of the film, rather than the front
line of climate change where the physical effects are beginning to be
noticed, as subsequent films have done (Orlowski, 2012). In short, AIT
foregrounded the presentation as that was the tool with which Gore’s
message would be propagated by his helpers, supporters and acolytes.
Gore makes clear his frustration with inaction on climate policy
from the US Congress and the then Bush administration, using this
as the basis for a ‘bottom-up’ approach to spreading his message ‘city
by city, street by street, house by house’. Gore explains that he has
been ‘trying to tell this story for a long time’ and that he is focused

1 Gore’s presentation was developed using Keynote (Reynolds, 2007).

An Inconvenient Truth 219

on ‘getting people to understand’ climate change. Clearly, this is not

public education as a good in itself; the intermingling of the positive
and the normative points towards the need for the climate-change
challenge to prompt particular actions.
AIT ends on an upbeat note, claiming that we already have the
technologies available to switch from fossil fuels, and that all that is
stopping us is a shortage of political will. The film ends by fading to
black, as the text ‘Are you ready to change the way you live your life?’
appears on the screen, followed by an intermingling of the film’s credits
with a mixture of tips on reducing personal environmental impacts
(e.g. switch to a hybrid car) and bringing about political change (e.g.
ask your senators what they are doing about climate change). Viewers
were also directed to a supporting website including more details
about the film and about climate science, and suggested actions for
the audience to undertake (‘An Inconvenient Truth > take action’, 2006).
Taken together, the film, website and accompanying book (Gore, 2006)
represented a multimedia take on a very traditional linear model of
science education, with the idea that presenting members of the public
with more scientific information will prompt them to take action.
While this is a clear aim of AIT, the film also operated at a more
sophisticated metalevel.
Gore is the film’s sole cast member, but his audience – his intended
public – plays an important supporting role throughout. The first
faces to appear in the film are those of the attendees at the various
presentations of Gore’s slideshow around the USA. AIT’s main presenta-
tion is staged in a way that ensures the audience’s faces are often in
view, brightly lit and seated in a horseshoe formation. These are not
just the faces of people listening to Gore’s story, but of those who may
retell it to their peers. Soon after the film’s release, Gore led a programme
of training for people who wanted ‘to tell their friends, families and
neighbours that human activities are altering global climate and that
each person can do something about it’ (Haag, 2007). The programme
continues today through the Climate Reality Leadership Corps that
encourages peer-to-peer communication and ‘spreading the word
about the truth of climate change’ (Climate Reality, n.d.).
In this way, AIT went beyond public education to instead aim
explicitly at the creation of a climate-change public. For a while Al
Gore became known as the high priest spreading an ‘environmental
220 Science and the politics of openness

gospel’ (Mr Americana, 2015; Nerlich and Koteyko, 2009), a title that
also contributed to conjuring up the counterpublic that the film did
not intend to create. Overall, then, it was not just the content of the
slideshow that was important, it was also the performance of the
slideshow that is a central part of the film. The film was intended not
only to persuade but to have a much stronger performative force: to
create a public that in turn would continue the performance. In Dewey’s
terms, scientific expertise is reinstated as ‘a refinement of commonsense
inquiry’ rather than ‘a foreign way of knowing to be imposed on the
common sense of an ignorant public’ (Brown, 2009: 160). However,
this overt focus on putting scientific expertise back into the hands of
society was turned back on AIT itself, as a counterpublic questioned
the film’s representation of climate-science expertise.

Emergence of a counterpublic
The evidence presented thus far suggests that AIT was extremely
successful, not just as a film in its own right but also in establishing
a powerful social representation of climate change, an idea that had
been somewhat nebulous up to that point. AIT was also successful
in creating a public actively engaged in reproducing the representa-
tion of climate change by training individuals to give presentations
based on AIT locally. However, individuals are not merely passive
recipients of representations; they actively contribute to the construc-
tion of new representations in response (Jaspal et al., 2014: 116).
Some of these individuals assumed a much more critical view of AIT
and Gore.
Scepticism about climate science predated the film’s release as an
important part of the ‘struggles over meaning and values in US climate
science and politics’ (Lahsen, 2008: 216). While such struggles were
continuing, US climate politics pre-AIT was broadly characterised by
a lack of federal-level progress on legislation to cut greenhouse gases.
Congress’s comprehensive rejection of the Kyoto Protocol was followed
by Gore’s loss to George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election,
with the subsequent Bush presidency being noted for a stalemate on
climate policy. The success of AIT towards the end of the Bush presi-
dency provided a window for reframing the US climate debate (Fletcher,
2009: 807). It also acted as a powerful rallying point for climate critics,
An Inconvenient Truth 221

both in the mainstream media and the blogosphere, who were opposed
to more stringent action on greenhouse gases.
A struggle ensued over the film’s accuracy, and as AIT gained greater
public visibility a counterpublic emerged that sought to destabilise
the apparently coherent meaning of climate change provided by AIT
and Gore’s newfound position as a public expert. This counterpublic
was mobilised through the emerging new media of blogs such as
Watts Up With That (Watts, 2006) and Climate Audit (McIntyre, 2006),
as well as syndicated columns in the mainstream media (Elsasser and
Dunlap, 2013). The movement challenged the links claimed between
climate change and material events (Hulme, 2010), and the credibility
of Gore himself (Elsasser and Dunlap, 2013).
It is unsurprising that Gore, as a prominent Democratic politician,
became a focus of much conservative commentary. A study of conserva-
tive op-eds found him to be by the far most discussed topic related
to climate change (Elsasser and Dunlap, 2013: 763). Within the sceptical
blogosphere, the three blogs found by Sharman (2014) to be the most
central – Watts Up With That, Jo Nova and Climate Audit – have all
had numerous posts on Al Gore and/or AIT. While Sharman notes
that these blogs are more likely than mainstream media op-eds to
focus on scientific issues, their criticisms of AIT and Gore were both
scientific (Edelman, 2007; McIntyre, 2007; Nova, 2009b) and personal
(McIntyre, 2008; Nova, 2009a; Watts, 2008). Crucially, these com-
mentators had a (small) number of similarly critical climate scientists
upon whose knowledge they could draw. Two of these scientists
published critiques of AIT as part of a series in GeoJournal (Legates,
2007; Spencer, 2007).
This network of critical actors was akin to a scientific counterpublic
attempting to challenge the hegemonic representation of climate change
sought by AIT. They were a relatively small number of scientists with
connections to other societal actors sharing a concern about the
interactions between science, power and politics (Hess, 2010: 631).
This is not to say that the counterpublic is any closer to the truth, or
freer from external biases, than the dominant public, only that AIT
and Gore provided important rallying points around which a coun-
terpublic could coalesce (Jaspal et al., 2014). The substance of this
counterpublic’s criticisms is already well documented in the literature
(Koteyko et al., 2013; Lahsen, 2013; Matthews, 2015).
222 Science and the politics of openness

One particular characteristic of these criticisms is focused on

here; the way in which critics sought to disassociate the notion of
climate-science expertise from the representation provided in AIT.
Jaspal et al. describe this as the challenging of science ‘by appealing to
its norms’ (2013: 383). They highlight a reader comment on climate-
change articles on the Daily Mail website that ‘distances Al Gore from
“science”, which is interesting in itself, as he is not actually a scientist’
(Jaspal et al., 2013: 395). Of course, Gore does not overtly claim to be
a scientist; however, as the linchpin of AIT Gore became a cornerstone
for the social representation of climate-science expertise. The reader
comment claims that ‘Gore stood to gain hundreds of millions of dollars’
if legislation were passed lowering carbon emissions (Jaspal et al.,
2013: 395).
It is indeed the case that two years before AIT Gore co-founded
an investment management partnership focused on sustainability
issues (Generation Investment Management, n.d.), and that one
newspaper report claimed that his ‘green-tech’ investments boosted
his net worth from $2 million to $100 million between 2002 and 2012
(Leonnig, 2012). Whether or not these figures are entirely accurate,
they highlight the importance of the social context that is given to
Dewey’s ‘bare ideas’, and in particular the contested boundary between
content and context (Brown, 2009: 159).
Brown (2009: 160) notes that the ‘social conflicts associated with
genetic engineering do not invalidate the theory of the double helix’.
Similarly, the financial interests of Al Gore highlighted in the Daily
Mail comment do not invalidate the fundamentals of atmospheric
physics. However, the comment highlights the fuzzy boundary between
content and context in the public sphere, and how a questionable
context can bring the content into question and destabilise representa-
tions of expertise. Citizens’ willingness to accept or challenge climate-
science expertise is to some degree dependent on their core values
(Kahan et al., 2011). One can’t please all the people all the time.
However, even assuming that Gore’s intentions in making AIT were
of the best, his financial interest in sustainability investments was not
necessarily a firm foundation for his emerging public status as a
climate-change expert.
While helping to raise the profile of climate change, AIT seems
also to have contributed to polarisation and strengthened the voices
An Inconvenient Truth 223

of what some may call an ‘inconvenient public’ keen on publicising

‘inconvenient knowledge’ related to Gore’s presentation of climate
science and his own role as the public face of climate change. The use
of the film to increase ‘public understanding’ of climate change was
thus at one and the same time a success and a failure, a miracle and
a monster.

Conclusion
In this chapter we have outlined the role of AIT in creating a strength-
ened social representation of climate change; making the impersonal
personal and the invisible visible. By many measures AIT was hugely
successful, winning numerous awards, earning Al Gore a share of the
Nobel Peace Prize and providing a springboard for a global campaign
of public education and activism. Drawing on the work of Brown, we
have shown how AIT’s focus on creating new audiences for climate-
science expertise echoes Dewey’s original call for science to be returned
to the people as ‘a refinement of commonsense inquiry’ and not to
remain an entirely unfamiliar way of knowing (Brown, 2009: 160).
The film also echoes Dewey in providing an aesthetic, emotional
communication of expertise, going beyond the persistent deficit model
in climate-change communications that assumes that the absence of
concern about climate change is the result of a lack of knowledge
(Nerlich et al., 2010; Pearce et al., 2015). In many ways AIT provides
a model for bringing scientific expertise into the public sphere.
However, mistakes were made. In particular, errors on scientific
content should have been avoided. As Hulme noted in his study of
Gore’s questionable comments on Mount Kilimanjaro’s glaciers,
returning scientific knowledge to the people ‘may destabilise knowledge
as much as it may legitimise it’ and public trust in provisions for
quality assurance in evidence are key (Hulme, 2010: 322). This goes
for social representations of climate-change expertise as much as it
does for scientific representations of nature appearing in the peer-
reviewed literature. Whether these mistakes had a significant bearing
on public attitudes towards AIT is beyond the scope of this chapter.
However, what we have shown is how social representations of expertise
inevitably bring context to content, and a boundary between the two
that is contested. In the case of AIT, Gore’s position as a Democrat
224 Science and the politics of openness

politician formed part of the film, perhaps making Republican-

supporting viewers less receptive to the film’s message. Counterpublics
may seek to bring in other contexts as a means of contesting social
representations. In the example above we show how Gore’s financial
interests were used as a means of discrediting the scientific content.
For scientists, this may seem anathema, but is the kind of issue that
requires attention when returning scientific expertise from academia
to the broader society.
In its mix of the scientific, personal and political, AIT is perhaps
best thought of as an ambitious, if flawed, experiment in science
communication and in making climate change meaningful. It did so,
whether consciously or not, by politicising climate change and
reintroducing the human into previously apolitical representations
of climate change (Jasanoff, 2010). While agreeing with the need for
politics, not science, to bear the load of dealing with climate change,
we note that one effect of AIT was to turn climate science into ‘Al
Gore’s science’, closely tied to a narrow range of policy options that
were anathema to US conservatives (Sarewitz, 2011). We also note
that if future engagement on climate change is to improve on the
experience of AIT, those taking part must be open to engaging with
publics that might be regarded as inconvenient just as much as with
invited and convenient ones. Such engagement can be rewarding or
frustrating to various degrees (Hawkins et al., 2014), something we
have both personally experienced with diverse publics on the Making
Science Public blog that we have edited throughout the duration of
the research programme. However, such engagement should continue
if there is to be any hope of social representations of scientific expertise
becoming a source of moderation rather than polarisation. We cannot,
and should not, seek to vanquish the monsters lurking under the
public face of science, but we might be able to do a better job of
taming them.

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13
‘Science Matters’ and the public interest:
the role of minority engagement
Sujatha Raman, Pru Hobson-West,
Mimi E. Lam, Kate Millar

Much has been written about how the public are imagined and
constituted in recent science–society developments. In this chapter
we explore the relatively neglected but related question of how the
relationship between science and the public interest is constituted.
The question is timely in the wake of Britain’s exit from the European
Union and the election of Donald Trump as US president. Both have
raised significant concerns about the future of public support for
science, and of policymaking supported by scientific facts (see Introduc-
tion). These have spurred public mobilisation and reflection by scientists
concerned about the implications for their profession (Economist,
2016), as well as for the public interest as a whole (Guardian, 2017).
But when members of the public mobilise around scientific research
or policy decisions involving science, how should we understand their
relationship to the public interest? This is our focus in this chapter.
At the height of concerns over science–society relations, the then
UK Prime Minister Tony Blair delivered a widely cited ‘Science Matters’
speech (Blair, 2002). This speech echoed wider criticism, which still
continues in Britain and elsewhere, of public protest against topics
such as genetically modified (GM) crop trials or animal experiments.
In mobilising to articulate what are minority positions vis-à-vis ‘public
opinion’ as a whole, such publics seem, at first, to represent a monstrous
departure from the social order and, in turn, the public interest.
Following the twin meanings of the figure of the monster (Haraway,
1992, and see Introduction), we will critically interrogate this assump-
tion and illustrate how minority groups are capable of engaging with
‘Science Matters’ 231

science in ways that allow alternative visions of the public interest to

become temporarily visible and potentially compelling.
The ‘Science Matters’ speech provides an opening for our argument,
which we develop in the context of two different cases of minority
engagement with science. We first consider the case of activists
campaigning against the use of animals in scientific research, who
are effectively characterised in Blair’s speech as opposed to the public
interest (as well as to science). Blair also contrasted the UK situation
with support for science elsewhere in the world, implying that how
science and publics relate to each other in other countries is relevant
for how the UK imagines these issues. We therefore also consider a
case in Canada, where a minority indigenous group engaged with
both science and a part of the state (the law) to overturn a policy
decision in fisheries management. This second case shows that science
and public engagements can sometimes constitute challenges to
dominant policies held to be against the public interest, as well as
constituting opposition to established ways of doing scientific research,
as in the animal activists’ case. Whether or not they succeed in
overturning the status quo, the engagements of minority groups should
be seen as central to periodic renegotiation of the social contract with
science, innovation and wider public policies (Guston, 2000) through
which the public interest is constituted.
Tony Blair issued a clarion call for ensuring that ‘Government,
scientists and the public are fully engaged together in establishing the
central role of science in building the world we want’ (Blair, 2002).
With this statement Blair essentially invoked the principle that matters
of importance to science and scientists are also matters of the wider
public interest, which he was authorised to pursue as head of govern-
ment. Yet, by signalling that the world ‘we’ want will not simply follow
from the work of either science or government, his speech identified
a key role for the public in this respect. Blair seemed to suggest that
only when all parties worked together would it be possible to achieve
the common goal of co-producing science and the public interest.
In effect, Blair’s ‘Science Matters’ speech opened up a space for
conceptualising engagement as a way of embedding the public interest
in science. But how should we conceive of the public interest in scientific
research in the first place? And what are the grounds on which the
public might be expected to engage with scientists and the state in
232 Science and the politics of openness

pursuit of such a shared interest? Blair’s account reflected more broadly

shared assumptions: first, the public already has an interest in science
in advance of its engagement in it, and second, members of the public
will engage mainly to support and secure this pre-given interest. The
first represents the substantive aspect of science/public engagement
(what is in the public interest), while the second captures the procedural
or processual aspect (how the public interest is to be determined).
The ‘Science Matters’ speech characterised the substance of the public
interest in science mainly in terms of the ability of research to offer
technological solutions to economic, health and environmental chal-
lenges. For Blair and like-minded others, a shared interest in these
solutions called for a process of engagement by a majority public to
limit the influence of minority critics. The potential of minority publics
to stimulate periodic renegotiation of what is taken to be the public
interest through their engagements with science is, however, missing
from this picture. To explore this potential, we situate our analysis in
the context of recent research in science–society relations.
Public engagement is a major theme in this research (e.g. Felt and
Fochler, 2010; Marris, 2015; Mohr and Raman, 2012; Welsh and Wynne,
2013), where it has been explored in relation to the inclusion and
exclusion of particular publics and perspectives, and imagined rep-
resentations of the public and public opinion. How engagement relates
to the pursuit of a shared public interest is often implicit in these
discussions, but only rarely is it explored in its own right (but see
Hess, 2011; Jasanoff, 2011; Wilsdon et al., 2005). In this chapter, we
seek to fill this gap.
Callon (1994) was one of the first to draw attention to the question
of how we might think about the relation between science and the
public good, though this was in a discussion framed by economics
rather than public engagement. Interest in a wider set of questions is
emerging, however, with Helga Nowotny, following Yaron Ezrahi,
recently calling for more sustained analysis of the relationship between
science and the public interest (Nowotny, 2014). For reasons of space
we bracket the different lineages of relevant overlapping terms; namely,
public value, the public good or the common good. We use ‘the public
interest’ to denote the dual meaning that, first, some matters involving
scientific research are, in principle, of interest to members of the public
‘Science Matters’ 233

and, second, that these matters affect what is in the best interests of
the collective (‘society’). The first meaning is captured in the Royal
Society’s (2006) report on science and the public interest, which
emphasises a need to communicate research results to the public to
help them understand how these impact on their lives and enable
them to participate in debates of the day. This is interrelated with the
second meaning, invoked by Nowotny (2014), of public or collective
interest, which is commonly defined as distinct from private interest
alone. This public interest may or may not extend to all aspects of
research, but we cannot know what it covers in advance of concrete
efforts to engage with publics or by publics already engaging with
science matters. Likewise, the nature of this interest is varied, but we
focus specifically on political interests in and about science. In addition
to government, scientists and a general public, as spotlighted by Blair
in his speech, we include other social actors and institutions in govern-
ance (Lam and Pitcher, 2012). These include organised civil-society
groups and communities as well as other parts of the state; notably,
the law. Following Mark Brown, the conception of politics we have
in mind for this inquiry is of ‘purposeful activities that aim for col-
lectively binding decisions in a context of power and conflict’ (Brown,
2015: 19). Importantly, this conception takes various modes of participa-
tion, including civil-society engagements in governance, as part of
the pursuit of collective decisions that underlie institutions of repre-
sentative democracy (see also Brown, 2009).
We begin by first developing a framework of five key principles
distilled from science–society debates, where the public interest question
has periodically emerged but lacked detailed scrutiny. We then illustrate
the strengths and gaps of this framework through the two case studies
of science and minority public engagement, one on animal research
in the UK and the second on fisheries policy in Canada. In science
and public engagement research these have been described in process-
based language; so, ‘unruly’ publics are said to be disinvited or otherwise
excluded from the collective (e.g. de Saille, 2015; Welsh and Wynne,
2013). While this might be true in particular contexts, such a framing
in terms of inclusion/exclusion unwittingly detracts from full considera-
tion of wider public-interest arguments that we raise here in our
examination of minority publics engaging with science.
234 Science and the politics of openness

Conceptions of science, the public interest and conditions

of engagement

How should we conceive of the public interest in science? In this

section we first examine reasons why a common response to this
question – namely, that science is intrinsically in the public interest
– is inadequate, and why more socially embedded notions of account-
ability and the usability of science might offer a more nuanced response.
We then examine limitations of the way accountability and usability
are commonly framed, which in turn underline the need to consider
how publics may engage with science. Finally, we ask: on what grounds
might public engagement be expected to happen? Our response explains
why engagement is a process not merely for opening up but also
potentially for renegotiating the substantive question of what is in
the public interest (see also chapter 1). For instance, renegotiating a
social contract for ethical fisheries has been promoted as a way of
managing and protecting fishery resources and other public goods
(Lam and Pauly, 2010). In practice, both engagement and renegotiation
may happen only rarely and cannot substitute for socially attuned
forms of expertise, as Jasanoff (2003) has argued. But the potential to
renegotiate remains crucial for times when established understandings
of the public interest are called into question (Barnett, 2007).
The idea that science is intrinsically in the public interest has reso-
nated in the different registers of economics, culture and politics. In
economic terms, this is underpinned by the classic definition of a
public good as non-rivalrous and non-excludable, and thus deliverable
only by a public body, not the market. Scientific knowledge, it is
argued, meets these requirements (Stiglitz, 1999). However, this abstract
notion of a good that can be used by people other than the producers
has been critiqued and qualified to clarify the actual conditions that
make it more or less possible to fulfil these requirements in practice.
For example, recognising the rise of partnerships with commerce,
Callon (1994) argued that science can still contribute to a public good
but only through the pursuit of diverse questions and approaches,
alliances with different networks, and the ability to share knowledge
and support new collectives. Judging by this criterion, Stengel et al.
(2009) conclude that UK plant science lacks the qualities of a public
good.
‘Science Matters’ 235

The cultural case for an intrinsic public interest in science is also

widely resonant, though the definition of scientific culture is more
elusive, resting typically on the capacity of individuals and society to
appropriate science (Godin and Gingras, 2000). This could encompass
both the appreciation of science as a cultural good and a more
instrumentalist economic understanding, though both may be linked
in practice. For example, the local authority in Nottingham aims to
develop the city as a place of scientific culture through its STEMCity
initiative, which links education, community engagement and local
economic development, and which has become a springboard for an
ambitious responsible research and innovation project (Nucleus
Nottingham, 2016). But whether made in isolation or in conjunction,
both cultural and economic arguments for science in the public interest
ultimately rest on expectations of the wider engagement in and use
of science.
The limitations of taking the public interest to reside intrinsically
within science become especially evident in the context of political
arguments for supporting research. Whether the state should support
specific lines of research or research in general is obviously a political
question with public implications and implicit value choices. Political
arguments for the intrinsic value of science are often mixed up with
economic, cultural and societal rationales, as in Blair’s ‘Science Matters’
speech. But such arguments should be seen as ‘the commencement
rather than the completion of public policy’ (Guston, 2000: 48; emphasis
added) and, more generally, an invitation to public discussion on
what kinds of research are worth supporting and why (Brown and
Guston, 2009). Precisely because they involve matters of public interest,
claims on behalf of, say, state-funded, private or do-it-yourself research
in synthetic biology should all be open to wider debate in the public
sphere.
Public support for scientific research in turn entails that a public
voice be heard. This has been recognised and promoted in policy
through codes such as the Universal Ethical Code developed in 2007
by the British Government Office for Science, and through initiatives
in public dialogue in emerging research and technological fields. The
ethical code refers to science’s need for a social licence to operate,
based on a continually renewed relationship of trust, resonating with
the language of good governance, such as openness and transparency,
236 Science and the politics of openness

briefly alluded to in ‘Science Matters’. While these terms signify a

concern with accountability in the sense of requiring research systems
to give an account and take note of public responses, research councils
have also emphasised a need to demonstrate the impact or use of
research in practice. ‘Science Matters’ was primarily a plea to the
public to engage with and support science rather than a plea for
scientific accountability, but it emphasised the use-value of research
in the form of technological benefits. Paralleling similar developments
in the USA (Guston, 2000), notions of the intrinsic public interest in
research have disappeared from the British social contract with science,
which is now firmly centred on demonstrating accountability and
usability through wider engagement with the public. But, in practice,
the terms of this engagement have been too narrowly circumscribed.
We thus set forward five key principles that we believe underpin
science–society engagement in the public interest.
First, engagement is not the same as endorsement. Public engagement
can indeed offer the possibility of enhanced public support for research,
as Blair envisioned and as political theorists Brown and Guston (2009)
argue. But this does not mean people will support a specific study
or technological configuration as a result of public discussion, as
‘Science Matters’ implied. Informed scrutiny has the potential to open
up substantive issues that may not have been anticipated in research
systems. Engagement can lead to many alternative outcomes for the
proposed research: enhanced public support, criticisms leading to
modifications, or outright rejection (which might still be accompanied
by the endorsement of other forms of research). All these outcomes
represent collective efforts to construct what is in the public interest.
Second, engagement can generate learning by different parties. Public
engagement can expand the scope of issues deemed relevant for discus-
sion beyond those originally imagined. This could cover matters of
governance on specific areas of research, but also ideological disagree-
ments about the nature, structure and value of these investments. For
example, de Saille (2015) found that the social-movement activists
she interviewed were more sceptical about how research is regulated
than about the research per se. Likewise, Marris (2015) argues that
governance issues, such as the lack of transparency about commercial
links, was a real concern for publics critical of synthetic biology
research, not commercialisation per se or fundamental ideological
‘Science Matters’ 237

objections (e.g. ‘tampering with nature’). Others highlight the gap

between research funded for commercial purposes versus its public
value (Moriarty, 2008; Wilsdon et al., 2005).
Third, engagement can open up alternative pathways for research
and innovation. In determining what should be supported in state-
funded research, one must consider the specific area of research (such
as its risks, benefits and value to specific parties) and opportunity
costs – that is, what other possibilities are foregone (Brown and Guston,
2009). If diversity is a criterion of science as a public good (Callon,
1994), then the market fails as a mechanism for achieving this good,
as it prioritises only what elites say we ought to want (Jones, 2013).
Public engagement, properly understood and devised, might stimulate
discussion not just of the merits of one research area, but the wider
question of what kinds of research and innovation are needed to fulfil
the public interest (Jones, 2013). For example, Hartley et al. (2016)
argue that to properly assess the merits of an emerging technology,
such as GM insects, due consideration must be given to alternative
research pathways to address societal challenges.
Fourth, engagement may involve the use of science to open up alterna-
tive policy pathways. Public engagement with science can take different
forms, ranging from the appreciation of scientific insights to employing
(say) climate science to make a case for radical political, economic
and social change, to opposing experiments using animals in research.
This means engagement does not only refer to efforts initiated by
research systems and policymakers – it can also emerge from below.
Nor does it signify just technological goods as a marker of public
interest. Publics may engage with what Jasanoff (2006: 24) calls ‘public
science’, i.e. ‘science that underwrites specific regulatory decisions,
science offered as legal evidence, science that clarifies the causes and
impacts of phenomena that are salient to society, and science that
self-consciously advances broad social goals, such as environmental
sustainability’. Public science may be used by governments or the law
in support of specific decisions but it may also be used by publics
appealing against or seeking to overturn such decisions to advance
their interpretation of the public interest.
Fifth, as a summary principle, engagement can help revivify what
is understood to be in the public interest. Public engagement is a process
for opening up and potentially renegotiating what is in the public
238 Science and the politics of openness

interest. In addition to efforts by policymakers to engage the public,

engagement might also include mobilisation from below by publics
seeking to engage on their own terms (de Saille, 2015), often providing
‘the basis for publicity for an alternative view of the public benefit’
(Hess, 2011: 630; emphasis added). Knowledge from some areas of
public science may be used to scrutinise or call to account other
research areas – for example, those on environmental sustainability.
Such engagements may emerge from ‘scientific counterpublics’ (Hess,
2011), who form alliances across different organisations and sectors
(including science, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), profes-
sional groups and sympathetic parts of the state) and claim to offer
a better account of the public interest than that assumed by dominant
actors. The example we consider below of the Haida Nation represents
one such diverse alliance. But engagement with science might also
come from smaller, less-networked groups who have yet to persuade
and mobilise a larger alliance of actors, but nonetheless have substantive
issues to raise, as we will explore in the animal experiments case.
Both our cases highlight the limitations of conceiving public engage-
ment solely as a procedural exercise for capturing the majority position,
as often painted by policy sponsors of dialogue activities (Mohr and
Raman, 2012). Studies of public-engagement exercises sometimes
unwittingly reproduce the process-oriented languages of inclusion of
public perspectives or the exclusion of uninvited or unruly publics,
making it harder to focus on engagement as a mechanism for negotiat-
ing and potentially renegotiating substantive issues around science
and the public interest. We explore these issues in our cases of animal-
research activism and indigenous communities, which, in opposing
different aspects of the dominant order, can be viewed as ‘monstrous’
in Blair’s ‘Science Matters’ terms, or as warnings of the limits of this
dominant order (Haraway, 1992).

Challenging animal research … and the ‘monstrous’ public

Animal research is a particularly illuminating case through which to
consider the limitations of the ‘Science Matters’ representation of
public engagement as a process for endorsing current research systems.
Animal research is a high-stakes issue, particularly in the UK (Hobson-
West, 2010). Some argue that using animals is not just a method of
‘Science Matters’ 239

science, it is the method of modern scientific inquiry (Rupke, 1987),

creating an animal–industrial complex (Twine, 2013). Social scientists
have framed animal research as dependent on a tacit social contract
between scientists, citizens and the state (Davies et al., 2016). We
show in this section that public engagement with animal research has
the potential to open up alternative understandings of what kinds of
research are in the public interest. Such alternatives have not yet been
successfully established. However, the capacity for research systems
and embedded notions of the public interest to change in the future
cannot be ruled out.
In the UK opinion polls are commissioned regularly by the Govern-
ment and receive significant media coverage (e.g. Department for
Business Innovation and Skills, 2014). Results of these polls have had
notable impacts on policy – for example, with funders supporting
initiatives to open up animal research (McLeod and Hobson-West,
2016), partly on the assumption that this is what polls show the public
want. Empirical research has also shown how different actors in the
debate – including researchers using animals and animal-rights charities
– claim to be aware of, and actually responsive to, public-opinion
polling (Hobson-West, 2010). For those conducting animal research,
claims that their actions are in line with public opinion represents a
kind of legitimisation strategy (Hobson-West, 2012), so that the polls
themselves become a route to a ‘social licence to research’ (Raman
and Mohr, 2014). But beyond national opinion polling, or critiques
thereof, how should we conceptualise different forms of publics in
the animal-research debate?
One way is to focus attention on how minority groups are sidelined,
silenced or undervalued in the sphere of animal-research policymaking.
One key minority perspective is that animal research should not
continue, either for ethical (cruelty to animals) or for scientific reasons
(the unreliability of knowledge and technologies generated through
animal research). This abolitionist view is sidelined in several ways,
including via the use of opinion-poll results. For example, in the press
release accompanying the 2014 Mori Poll (Department for Business
Innovation and Skills, 2014, no pagination), the Government stresses
that ‘a majority of the British public accept the use of animals in
scientific (medical) research “where there is no alternative” ’. It then
mentions the ‘myths’ that still exist, thereby implying that those who
240 Science and the politics of openness

are not in the majority are misled. The minority view is also more
implicitly sidelined in policy statements, for example, via the claim
from the UK Home Office (2015, no pagination) that ‘We respect the
fact that people have strong ethical objections to the use of animals
in scientific procedures. [But] we have legislated so experimentation
on animals is only permitted when there is no alternative research
technique and the expected benefits outweigh any possible adverse
effects.’
In these examples, opponents of animal research can be understood
as unruly publics (de Saille, 2015) who challenge the status quo. In
the UK the peculiar history of active (and sometimes violent) protest
against animal researchers means that labels of extremism abound,
including in law, where legislation to control animal-rights activities
was bound up with a government response to terrorism. This fits well
with Welsh and Wynne’s (2013) category of the ‘threatening public’,
where the threat is both literal, in the sense of violence, and metaphori-
cal, in that animal research and the life sciences are tied to economic
growth (Home Office et al., 2014). If animal research is constructed
as a key to medical progress, then an abolitionist agenda is enormously
radical. To return to this book’s metaphor, being seen as not on the
side of health or progress is monstrous – that is, almost inconceivable
– as an aberration of logic or civility.
However, one limitation with the focus on inclusion and exclusion
of publics is that it can unwittingly reproduce a fragmented, indi-
vidualised version of the public. An alternative analytical approach,
following Hess (2011), is to look for dominant and subordinate networks
and, crucially, to explore how those networks construct the concept
of the public interest. Applying this lens to animal research, we can
identify a dominant, currently stable network consisting of government
departments such as the Home Office, the pharmaceutical and research
industry, and, arguably, some powerful research charities, such as
those campaigning for more research into diseases like cancer. The
subordinate network comprises animal-rights groups, some religious
groups opposed to using animals, and scientists and funders involved
in using or searching for alternatives to animal research. In other
words, opposition to the use of animals in scientific research is no
longer seen simply as the vision of an aberrant public (as suggested
by Blair) but as a position embedded within a set of alliances.
‘Science Matters’ 241

Given the link made between animal research and medical and
health progress, one of the key discourses of the subordinate network
is that animal research is not in the public interest. This is achieved
in several ways, including by questioning the dominant narrative that
animal research is equal to medical progress. Critics point to examples
where results seen in animals have not transferred to success in human
trials, the fact that many diseases remain without cures and the relative
lack of research into unexplored areas of science, such as into alterna-
tives to use of animals (Hadwen Trust, n.d.). Others question what it
means socially, culturally and ethically to live in a society that tolerates
deliberately killing or harming some species. In short, as predicted
by Hess (2011), this scientific counter-culture is offering an alternative
vision of the public interest. This is very different to an analysis focusing
only on public consultation, where animal-rights groups might be
seen as representing or giving voice to certain groups of individuals,
or, as is implied by some of the names of campaign groups, such
as SPEAK (http://speakcampaigns.org/), giving voice to animals
themselves.
If counter-movements such as animal-research critics are indeed
articulating alternative visions of the public interest, then, rather than
being monstrous in the negative sense described by Blair, we could
perhaps see them in more positive terms, as calling attention to limits
of established ways of doing research. Following Haraway (1992),
what these counterpublics potentially demonstrate is that alternative
visions of medicine and science are possible, and that the established
order may one day be overturned through the formation of new
alliances that come to represent new scientific and social norms.

Challenging fisheries policy through a coalition of an

indigenous community, public science and the law
We now turn to the case of an indigenous community, the Haida
Nation, which is asserting and renegotiating the terms of its government-
to-government relationship, as established in numerous agreements
with the Canadian Federal Government, in the management of marine
resources in its traditional territories. Disputes over fishing rights
between British Columbia, First Nations, and the Department of
Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) reflect a history of legalised
242 Science and the politics of openness

colonial dispossession and loss of access by aboriginals to fish (Harris,

2009). We examine the ongoing herring fishery dispute between the
Haida Nation and the DFO to illustrate how public science can be
used and combined with alternative forms of knowledge, such as
traditional ecological knowledge (Berkes, 2012), in policy disputes.
As in the animal-research case, this example highlights the limits of
equating engagement with endorsing the object of engagement. But
unlike that case, it also shows that subordinate networks (Hess, 2011)
are capable of expanding their base – in this case, through a coalition
of the indigenous community, stakeholders, indigenous and ecosystem-
based science, and the law – to renegotiate what is understood to be
in the public interest.
Haida Gwaii (formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands) is
an archipelago on British Columbia’s northwest coast with a population
of approximately 5,000 residents, both Haida and non-Haida. The
islands are the ancestral and contemporary home of the Haida Nation,
which claims aboriginal rights and title to the archipelago. The Supreme
Court of Canada has recognised that the Haida Nation has a strong
prima facie case for the aboriginal title to Haida Gwaii, so the Federal
Government has a duty to consult the Haida people and accommodate
their interests (Haida Nation v British Columbia, [2004] SCC 73).
Herring has significant cultural value for the Haida and other British
Columbia Coastal First Nations, particularly as spawn on kelp, which
is a traditional source of food and trade for indigenous peoples along
British Columbia’s coast. As a forage fish, herring plays an important
provisioning role in the ecosystem, feeding predatory fish, birds and
marine mammals, as well as supporting commercial roe herring,
spawn-on-kelp, and food and bait fisheries in British Columbia. Herring
stocks in the Haida Gwaii major stock area declined to chronically
low levels in the 1990s and have yet to recover, resulting in closures
of the commercial roe herring fishery since 2003 and spawn-on-kelp
fishery since 2005 (Jones et al., 2017). However, in recent years, there
have been a number of disputes over the proposed reopening of the
commercial herring fisheries.
The inclusion and public consultation of First Nations’ communities
is prominent in fisheries management, but it is typically presented as
a right of these groups to present their own special interests (von der
Porten et al., 2016). This narrow characterisation of voice is part of an
‘Science Matters’ 243

equally limited understanding of public engagement as a process for

merely consulting different groups and acknowledging their distinct
perspectives. Again, drawing on Hess (2011), and as implied in Welsh
and Wynne (2013), we instead consider the possibility that minority
voices are capable also of articulating a wider public interest. Minority
communities often build specific claims for change, intervention or
the protection of nature based on a collective vision of shared values
and purpose. The Council of the Haida Nation (CHN) has articulated
traditional Haida values (CHN, 2007) that it believes are important for
planning marine use and managing fisheries (Jones et al., 2010). Haida
values of respect, balance, interconnectedness, reciprocity, seeking wise
counsel and responsibility have been compared to scientific principles
of ecosystem-based management (Jones et al., 2010). These community
values, if meaningfully taken into account in the engagement process,
may widen what constitutes the public interest (Lam, 2015). This
possibility was initially subverted by the DFO’s use of public science
to support its case for reopening the commercial herring fishery in
Haida Gwaii. However, transient alliances between the CHN and the
fishing industry in 2014 and the law in 2015 successfully challenged
the DFO’s construction of what was in the public interest.
In 2015, the DFO consulted the CHN and conducted preseason stock
assessments that provided the option for closing down the commercial
herring fishery around Haida Gwaii (Jones et al., 2017). Despite this,
the then Minister of Fisheries reopened the commercial roe herring
fishery, which led to a legal challenge from the CHN. Public engagement
had occurred and procedural requirements had been fulfilled, yet the
substantive arguments and claim presented in the consultation with
the Haida that their values had been infringed was overridden in the
final ministerial decision. The CHN filed an interlocutory injunction
to prevent the reopening of the herring fishery based on four key
points: (1) the herring stocks had not sufficiently recovered to support
the commercial fishery opening, disagreeing with the DFO’s scientific
assessment; (2) given the infringement of Haida rights and title, the DFO
had not adequately consulted and accommodated with the Haida Nation;
(3) the DFO had failed to develop an integrated herring management
framework with appropriate rebuilding strategies; and (4) reopening
the fishery contravenes existing negotiated management agreements
between the Crown and the Haida Nation.
244 Science and the politics of openness

The Federal Court ruled in favour of the Haida Nation (Haida

Nation v Canada (Fisheries and Oceans), [2015] FC 290). Judge Manson
challenged the Minister’s weighing of the scientific evidence and the
lack of meaningful consultation and accommodation with the Haida
Nation, given the significance of herring to the community’s culture
and traditions. While the Herring Industry Advisory Board supported
opening the fishery, the judge noted:
The [United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union] UFAWU, who are
an integral part of the commercial fishery, supports the Haida Nation’s
position, for the very reasons why this injunction is being granted:
i) the need for a better and independent science review of the
herring stocks;
ii) lack of inclusive decision-making;
iii) their own assessment of the state of the roe herring stocks;
iv) respect for local First Nations’ insights;
v) a willingness to build a collaborative understanding of the state
of the herring in the shared ecosystem. (Haida Nation v Canada
(Fisheries and Oceans), [2015] FC 290 at [59])

Judge Manson cited the potential for irreparable harm to the herring
and to the Haida Nation, as well as the balance of convenience, which
weighs the potential prejudice to all parties, including the Haida Nation,
the DFO, commercial fishers and the public interest. He concluded
that granting the injunction was ‘very much in the public interest’.
Thus, an alliance of indigenous-community, scientific, stakeholder
and legal actors effectively challenged the Canadian Government’s
approach, both to engagement and to the use of science in informing
policy decisions. Alternative sources of public science, different framings
of knowledge, the significance of uncertainty and the role of values
in informing a precautionary approach to resource management all
became visible and, at least temporarily, powerful.

Conclusion
The fisheries case illuminates how a minority community successfully
co-produced, with the law and scientific knowledge, an alternative
vision of policy in the public interest. By contrast, in the animal-research
‘Science Matters’ 245

case, activists opposed to the use of animals in scientific research have

not yet been successful in institutionalising an alternative vision of
the public interest, but this is not to say that such an alternative is
precluded in the future. Both cases call attention to thinking more
deeply about the grounds on which public engagement with science
contributes to the public interest.
Science–society scholars suggest that the potential to diversify
scientific practice and engage with diverse stakeholders is crucial for
science to achieve the public interest (Stengel et al., 2009). They
distinguish public value from commercial value, raise the importance
of diversifying forms of innovation and bring in matters of the govern-
ance of cutting-edge science. These are all important but they focus
mainly on processes for including publics, omitting the substantive
matter of what is understood to be in the public interest at any one
time. We have argued that insofar as public engagement is not simply
a process for endorsing current research and policy practices, we need
to pay more attention to its capacity to further the periodic scrutiny
and renegotiation of what kinds of research and wider public policies
receive support. In conclusion, we reflect on the potential of science–
public engagements to transform what is taken to be in the public
interest.
In his ‘Science Matters’ speech, Blair suggested that science is vital
to Britain’s continued future prosperity and that different parties need
to collaborate to oppose the small band of obstructionists who were
acting against the general public interest. Blair’s speech invoked the
legacy of Newton and Darwin and described science as ‘just knowledge’,
thus attempting to side-step the relationship between science and
commerce. Littered with references to nano-scale robots, biomedical
science, hydrogen power and what he called e-science (‘big data’ in
today’s parlance), his speech overwhelmingly focused on technological
outcomes from research producing new knowledge of how things
work and the capacity to transform these operations, all ultimately
linked to economic and financial benefits alone. He did not discuss,
for example, the scientific knowledge that was making visible previously
unforeseen hazards of industrial activity or drawing attention to the
limits of technological fixes to environmental challenges. Nonetheless,
Blair was appealing to a commonsensical view of scientific research
246 Science and the politics of openness

for the greater good recurrently invoked in public discourse – most

recently, by journalists urging an extension of the fourteen-day limit
on embryo research to ensure benefits from medical science (e.g.
Harris, 2016). In this equation of science and the public interest, the
public are represented primarily as beneficiaries.
Yet, in principle, Blair’s intervention opened up the possibility of
renegotiating how the public interest in science is imagined, articulated
and constructed through interaction among various different actors.
Rather than taking the public interest as already given, the reference
to engagement suggests that the interface between science and the
public interest can on occasion be opened up and politicised in the
sense of being ‘made into a part of politics’ (Brown, 2015: 18), at least
until a new settlement is achieved. The case of the Haida Nation’s role
in overturning a ministerial decision in Canadian fisheries policy by
an alliance with public science and the law suggests that such renegotia-
tions may be possible, but are likely to remain fragile unless they are
supported by wider coalitions. So far, action on animal rights does
not appear to have been able to similarly overturn dominant under-
standings of research in the public interest. However, our analysis
suggests that we cannot foreclose future changes to received understand-
ings, which are entirely possible through new and unexpected configura-
tions of activism, public science, the law and publics. Until then, it is
important to cultivate attention to apparently monstrous voices that
seem to be discordant with the dominant order but may transform
it in the future.
In conclusion, our two examples obviously do not negate the larger
challenge of limits to public expertise and capacity to engage and
scrutinise either science or policy, let alone articulate diverse perspec-
tives. This capacity is necessarily limited in complex societies (Jasanoff,
2003), where facts are the aggregation of multiple, often proprietary,
sources and complex institutional arrangements (Turner, 2015). In
this context, state resources must be devoted to building independent
and distributed systems of public expertise to engage and scrutinise,
especially, large-scale research and innovation systems of the kind
highlighted in Blair’s speech. Until these systems are developed and
their ability to elicit diverse perspectives is valued as much as research
and innovation itself, efforts to connect science and the public interest
are incomplete at best.
‘Science Matters’ 247

Acknowledgements
Thanks to Sarah Hartley and Russ Jones for helpful comments on
previous drafts.

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Part IV

Faith
14
Faith

Chris Toumey

I used to be younger. In 1987 I conducted an ethnography of the

creationist movement as my dissertation research. Wonderful it was
to be in the midst of the granddaddy of science and religion contro-
versies in the years when creationism packaged itself as scientific
creationism. That experience filled my head with ideas about relations
between science and religion.
A note to our European readers, including the British: yes, I realise
it is beyond strange that in a major Western nation a large proportion
of the population continues to challenge evolution on the basis of
religious belief. I cannot explain that here. I can only note that this
is an enduring feature of life in the USA. Creationism is not going to
go away anytime soon. Our conservatives here insist on celebrating
US exceptionalism, and then the exceptionalism they give us is hostility
to evolution. Oy vey.
Several years after I finished my work on creationism, when I wrote
my second book, Conjuring Science: Scientific Symbols and Cultural
Meanings in American Life (Toumey, 1996), I used a figure of speech
that I called ‘science in an Old Testament style’. The chosen people
knew that their God has some human attributes. After all, isn’t he an
old white guy with a long beard who is frequently angry at the disobedi-
ence of the people he favours? But they know him less by his personality
than by powerful mysterious signs like pillars of fire, burning bushes
and dreadful plagues. My point was that many non-scientists respect
and appreciate science, but for the most part they know science only
in terms of superficial symbols that can be just as mysterious, and
254 Science and the politics of openness

that can be manipulated to conjure a misleading image of scientific

authority.
Now, to extend my simile: in the New Testament, God makes himself
(or is it herself?) much less mysterious by arriving among us in human
form. Walking with us, talking with us, eating with us and dying with
us. If we are truly in an age when science is becoming more open
and more public than before, then let us say that we are approaching
science in a New Testament style and that we know that this is what
we aspire to nurture.
One more phase: when we poor humans knew the God of the New
Testament better than the one of the Old, there arose a new complica-
tion. A hierarchy of popes and bishops emerged to shape and dispense
our knowledge of God. Another improvement became necessary.
Martin Luther and others showed 500 years ago that each of us could
know God personally and directly without needing clerics and theo-
logians to manage our knowledge of God.
Is there an equivalent to the Protestant Reformation in non-scientists’
knowledge of science? Do we need experts, and if so how do we need
them, and how much do we need them?
After I finished my work on creationism I usually avoided those
issues. One reason why I originally enjoyed my work on societal and
cultural issues in nanotechnology was because I thought there were
no issues of origins and ontology in this area. There is no religious
denomination that I know of that argues that atoms and molecules
are unreal. But in 2007 Jamie Wetmore at Arizona State University
showed me that there were indeed some issues of religious reactions
to nanotechnology, and that they are important. I have circled back
to questions of the sacred and the profane in science and technology.
Nanotechnology is unlike evolution, for which I am grateful, but I
am back to where I should be when I examine new questions of
science and religion.
I have a reason for sharing those thoughts with you. It is an honour
for me to introduce the chapters in the theme of faith. As I do so, I
see our theme not as a stand-alone part separate from the previous
three themes, but as a question and a problem tightly intertwined
with the others. Issues of the sacred and the profane can also be issues
of openness, publics and experts. My figure of speech is a way to
appreciate the other three themes as matters of the sacred and the
Faith 255

profane; meanwhile, our explorations of science and religion benefit

from the insights in the other three themes. For example, you see that
I ask how similar is the process of knowing science to the three-
millennium process of knowing the Judeo-Christian God.
And so here we appreciate the two chapters in this part. First,
in chapter 15, we have a critique by Fern Elsdon-Baker of research
on creationism and evolution, and specifically of the assumptions
and methods that shape definitions and measurements of creationist
sentiment. The author shows us that large-scale survey research on
public attitudes about creationism and evolution fails to capture the
nuance and diversity of those attitudes. Creationism, especially, is
more interesting than what we see in those surveys. For example,
creationists frame their views as scientific (calling their programme
creation science or scientific creationism), as opposed to presenting
themselves as anti-scientific. This then raises a complicated question:
if creationists say that their programme is scientific, then what do
they think science is? Survey research does not capture any of these
interesting problems. In fact, the author’s extended critique steers us
to the conclusion that large-scale surveys are terribly problematic in
examining any issue that embodies nuance and complexity, not limited
to creationist thought. All this implies that a proper understanding
of creationist and evolutionary thought, especially among multiple
publics, is going to need the kind of thick description that comes more
from face-to-face ethnographic work than from large-scale surveys.
A parallel problem is a package of assumptions about the phenomena
to be measured. Elsdon-Baker tells the reader that researchers’ thinking
is secular to a fault; also, that they believe that they need to construct
a contrast between science and religion. This is a tricky problem.
True, scientific thinking is rightly grounded in secular values, and
science should not be expected to execute any religious agenda. But
it does not necessarily follow that science and religion are intrinsically
incompatible. One hopes that this fallacy is well known, and that
serious scholars recognise it, and that they frame their research
accordingly. One hopes, but the author shows that this fallacy unfor-
tunately remains pervasive in research on public attitudes about crea-
tionism and evolution.
The third theme that guides this chapter is the observation that
most of the work on creation versus evolution controversies has been
256 Science and the politics of openness

done in the USA. From this it might seem as if issues of creationism

and evolution in other nations are imports from the USA, ‘uncritically
consumed’ in local circumstances, as Elsdon-Baker puts it.
On the contrary, these controversies are just as much situated and
adapted in local circumstances as the US versions are situated in US
culture. The author points out that European values are far more
secular than US ones and that this has clear consequences for the way
that creationism flourishes, or fails to flourish, beyond the borders
of the USA. Evolution elsewhere is hardly ever considered the nexus
of all evil that American creationists believe it to be. This is not to
say that creationist and evolutionary thought are either reconciled or
synthesised in other nations, but neither are they amenable to a ‘clash
of civilisations’ approach.
Here the author corroborates the 2004 collection Cultures of Creation-
ism, edited by Coleman and Carlin. That work tells us that the Institute
for Creation Research (ICR, located in southern California) produces
and exports a particular vision of creationism. That vision is well
received in many places by conservative Christians, e.g. certain mis-
sionaries and their converts in Kenya and South Korea, but then the
host cultures adapt the ICR message to local circumstances. One might
say that these variations of creationist belief show that ICR’s message
undergoes a process of nuance and diversity, exactly as Elsdon-Baker
suggests (but which ICR probably did not intend).
Which be the monsters here? Creationists who threaten science?
Fictitious creationists who are fabricated to conform to secular preju-
dices? Or misguided research assumptions and methods that contain
structural fallacies which have the effect of suppressing the nuance
and diversity that are part of the reality of creationism?
Next comes chapter 16 by David A. Kirby and Amy C. Chambers,
on religious judgements about science in the movies of the twentieth-
century USA. Much has been written about science and religion, and
also about science and film, but this chapter nicely balances those
three elements. This is important because one’s religious values and
beliefs often shape one’s attitudes about science and technology.
We can ask whether Catholic and Protestant officials really under-
stood the science – or rather the movie science – that they judged,
and also whether they overestimated the power of film to shape viewers’
minds and morals. Whatever the case, this chapter shows us that
Faith 257

certain Christian leaders felt that they needed to control film content,
and later to merely evaluate it, especially cinematic depictions of
science. Topics of sexually transmitted diseases, birth control, eugenics,
evolution and psychiatry aroused their disapproval, which would then
lead to government bodies that would channel religious sentiment
into government censorship. It is a relief to me that Kirby and Chambers
do not try to measure movie science against realistic science. That
might have been tempting, but it would have distracted from the
strength of their chapter.
Which be the monsters here? Movie monsters? Monstrous offenses
to morality that come from movies about science? Or are they the
self-appointed gatekeepers of our morality who decided which stories
of science in the movies would meet their approval?

The chapters
The two chapters in this part enhance the theme of tensions between
experts and publics. Kirby and Chambers show us that self-appointed
experts intended to control the ways that movie-going publics think
about science and morality. I dare say that, in the long run, these
would-be experts discredited themselves by insisting on small-minded
interpretations of science and religion, and by imagining that they
controlled audience behaviour more than they really did. I like today’s
status quo in which religious authorities offer denominational guidance
and commentary, and in which their publics can accept or reject those
views. Note that this is very different from a programme of aspiring
to control what publics see and think about science and religion.
Elsdon-Baker’s chapter adds more to the question of experts and
publics. The experts who measure and describe creationism in terms
of large-scale survey research are unlike the censors in the final chapter,
but here we see that with the best of intentions experts can inadvertently
distort the descriptions of creationism and creationists which publics
encounter when survey research appears in mass media.
In much the same vein, we see that the themes of openness and
responsibility resonate in these two chapters. If openness is good,
then experts who are responsible to no-one else are contraindicated,
as a pharmacist might say. It is not always easy to say to whom one
is responsible, but here we appreciate that being responsible to no-one
258 Science and the politics of openness

is bad for openness, and this at a time when there are good reasons
to embrace openness in relations between science and religion. To
put it another way, in tune with my earlier comments, it is inadvisable
to underestimate the virtue and the influence of the Protestant Reforma-
tion. If we are moving in the direction of relations between faith and
science that approximate the themes of the Protestant Reformation
– including the theme of expecting experts to justify the need for
their expertise – then it is good for experts to be responsible for
explaining and justifying their values and methods.
The theme of transparency runs parallel to the theme of responsibility.
Imagine how different it might have been if the experts presented in
these two chapters had been required to explain in detail to their
publics how they made their decisions.
I thank the editors for inviting me to introduce the chapters in this
part, and also the authors for raising the issues they put before us.
My role in this volume reminds me that there will never be anything
simple about issues of science and religion. True, there are some
simplistic opinions, but none of them do justice to these topics. There
have been times when I wanted to walk away from those issues because
they required more wisdom or more time for reading, research and
writing than I possess. Good on you, Elsdon-Baker, Kirby, Chambers
and the editors, for insisting that we must not turn away from difficult
issues of science and religion.

References
Coleman, S., and Carlin, L. (2004). Cultures of Creationism. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Toumey, C. (1996). Conjuring Science: Scientific Symbols and Cultural Meanings
in American Life. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
15
Re-examining ‘creationist’ monsters in the
uncharted waters of social studies of science
and religion
Fern Elsdon-Baker

The subject of a clash between scientific and religious world views is

often repeated as a very real ‘fact’ in scholarly, policy and public
discourse – with creationists being painted as the ultimate unenlight-
ened monsters that threaten scientific, and by extension societal,
progress. There is, so we are told, a real and inevitable clash between
world views – one that within extreme iterations can only be negotiated
by an outright rejection of either science or religion.
We have become so accustomed to this framing of the relationship
between evolutionary science and religion that it is now a commonly
accepted norm within media or scholarly representation of evolutionary
theory. Routinely, these accounts of anti-evolutionary stances tend to
be reductionist and rarely look beyond polarised epistemic extremes.
As Toumey notes:

It is common for enemies of creationism to dismiss it as a simple exercise

in Biblical inerrancy. Human evolution faces opposition supposedly
because it contradicts Genesis 1:27, and evolutionary chronology is
thought to attract enmity because it cannot be reconciled with a period
of six literal 24-hour days. (Toumey, 1993: 296–297)

The frequently repeated account in public-space discourse is then that

Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of Species caused significant
public and theological backlash, and there has been an ongoing battle
between rational scientific champions and creationist dragons ever
since. The New Atheists are portrayed as only the latest incarnation
of those who are brave enough to take up the champion’s banner.
260 Science and the politics of openness

However, there is currently a significant gap in research, either

historically or contemporarily, into publics’ perceptions of the relation-
ship between science and religion. It is important to note here I am
purposely using the term ‘publics’, not the public. This is in recognition
of the fact that there are multiple ways in which we can think about
the ‘public’ or indeed that members of such ‘publics’ may identify
themselves within different contexts. There is also an increasing recogni-
tion that the boundaries between expert, scientist or public can be,
and have historically been, fuzzy. Indeed, an expert in one subfield
of scientific research is a ‘public’ to another distinct subfield of research,
even in some cases within the same discipline. We are all – however
ensconced we may be in an ivory tower, media organisation or system
of governance – in differing contexts, at one time or another, a member
of the public.
This broader conceptualisation of publics is often missing from
research in this field, which tends to focus more narrowly on certain
communities. What little systematic social scientific work that has been
done has tended to focus on the US debates concerning ‘creationism’.
Often, the more sophisticated research that has been undertaken has
focused on distinct faith communities or those working within elite
scientific institutions. Therefore, beyond the polar extremes of these
debates we have no real idea of how the supposed clash between world
views plays out in the day-to-day lived experience of wider publics,
or the role of wider identity politics, or indeed geopolitics, in relation
to the role of religion and science in society. Moreover, we have no
real understanding of whether this is an issue that has any salience
or meaningful consequences for publics at all.
In the interests of reflexivity and as it is integral to the argument
within this chapter, I want to stress that I am myself a lifelong
atheist, from an atheist and scientific family, and have for a number
of years worked within science communication – specifically com-
municating evolutionary biology. Indeed, in 2009 I directed the
Darwin Now project for the British Council, a multi-million-pound
project that ran educational, public-engagement and academic
activities related to the Darwin anniversaries in up to fifty countries
worldwide. It is this experience of working to engage publics with
evolutionary science across a range of cultural contexts that led
me to examine in more detail what the social and cultural drivers
Re-examining ‘creationist’ monsters 261

behind the idea of a necessary clash between science and religion

might be.
There are a number of key assumptions at the core of this clash
narrative, the primary one being that science and religion are in some
form of intractable conflict, especially when it comes to evolutionary
science. This implicit assumption pervades the way in which much
of the debate or research surrounding creationism and evolution is
conducted. These implicit assumptions, and in some cases outright
prejudices, in the way that data are collected or research is framed,
indicate that epistemic assumptions within scholarly research may
contribute to an inflation of scale and threat in the public, policy and
media gaze of the phenomena we might refer to as creationism, both
in broader international context and in the USA (Elsdon-Baker, 2009,
2015; Hill, 2014a). This in turn means that by using reductionist
categories and making inflated assumptions about their salience to
individuals, we are in effect creating creationists in the way we collect
data (Elsdon-Baker, 2015). As Jonathan Hill observes with regard to
his 2013 National Study of Religion and Human Origins, a nationally
representative survey of 3,034 US adults:1
When we carefully define the various possible positions, and measure
the certainty with which they are held, both anti-evolution creationists
and atheistic evolutionists turn out to be very small proportions of the
total population. (Hill, 2014b, no pagination)

Unfortunately, some of the larger scale polling work that has been
undertaken concerning public perceptions of evolutionary science
and religion is as a result of the implicit assumptions implied by binary
measures potentially skewed. This is in part due to the nature of the
methodologies employed in large-scale polling or data collection. But
it is also in part due to a lack of reflexivity or critical engagement
with the individual researchers’ own, or traditional disciplinary,
assumptions; namely, that evolutionary science and religion are
inevitably in conflict. It is evident from the issues framing in some
of this research that there is a set of interlinked value judgements or
implicit biases that may be at play within facets of the research data

1 For further details of this survey see the publicly available report at: https://biologos.org/
uploads/projects/nsrho-report.pdf.
262 Science and the politics of openness

collection in this area of study. These assumptions and biases can be

characterised by the following statements:
• Anti-evolutionism is always creationism and creationism is
always anti-evolutionism.
• Creationism is a product of religious world views or theological
concerns and is inevitable within societies that are religious.
→ Therefore, anti-evolutionary stances are always driven by
strict adherence to religious world views, not by other social
or cultural factors.
• Creationism as a mainstream world view is a real-world phe-
nomenon that is on the rise and must be tackled.
• Creationism is a threat to evolutionary science or science more
broadly.
→ Therefore, evolutionary science is increasingly under threat
from creationism, which is driven by religious world views,
ergo (evolutionary) science is inevitably under threat from
religious world views or societies where they are predominant.
→ Ultimately, by extension, therefore, adherence to religious
world views will inevitably lead to a necessary rejection of
some or all facets of scientific world views, perspectives or
research.
Some or all of the above statements might seem to some to be clear
common sense or common knowledge. However, whilst we might
see some or all of these statements as given ‘facts’ and obvious parts
of the contemporary narrative surrounding the communication of
evolutionary science, it is important to note that these statements are
not based to any great degree on empirical data. Nor are they based
on any form of multilayered analysis that allows us to build a systematic
understanding of what might be happening at a public-space-discourse,
group or individual level. Furthermore, by ignoring these different
levels of analysis we are also ultimately making an implicit assumption
that for an individual to self-identify as a creationist is always to
self-identify as an anti-evolutionist. This might seem like a very
counter-intuitive statement. However, both in a categorical sense – that
is, in the way we collect survey or polling data – and also in the way
that people may themselves use the label ‘creationist’ as an identity
marker, there are indeed times when a creationist is not a ‘creationist’
Re-examining ‘creationist’ monsters 263

in the anti-evolutionist sense. A good example of this ambiguity over

language and identity is the Church of England’s website. In an essay
entitled ‘Good Religion Needs Good Science’ by the Rev. Dr Malcolm
Brown, he states that:
There is no reason to doubt that Christ still draws people towards truth
through the work of scientists as well as others, and many scientists are
motivated in their work by a perception of the deep beauty of the created
world. (Brown, n.d., no pagination)

The term ‘created world’ is here used in the context of accepting

Darwinian evolution as the process ‘by which humanity came to be’. It
is philosophically entirely plausible to accept evolution as a mechanism
by which a meta-causal deity ‘created’ humans and all other life forms.
Indeed, it is not unheard of, in my experience, for those who accept
all facets of evolutionary theory and a ‘God of first cause’ to refer to
themselves as creationists.
However, this ambiguity or complexity is not often reflected in the
more binary examples of research data collection. Nor is it considered
in the ways in which researchers or science communicators, who are
often working within more ‘secular’ social-science settings or intellectual
traditions, approach the entire issue.
Such implicit biases or value judgements concern me when think-
ing about how we might collect data that provides us with a clearer
account of what the social and cultural drivers are for rejecting
evolutionary theory. I will expand on this point by focusing, firstly,
on the implications of the geographical focus and gaps in research
data and methodological concerns in this field of study, and, sec-
ondly, on the philosophical issues relating to the researchers’ own
cultural, disciplinary and institutional context within the field of
study itself.

Geography and anti-evolutionism

Beyond pockets of research undertaken in the USA there is a very
significant lacuna in research of any kind that explores public percep-
tions or attitudes towards evolutionary science, let alone scholarly
research that examines how broader publics perceive the relationship
between their personal belief (or non-belief) and their attitudes towards
264 Science and the politics of openness

evolution (Elsdon-Baker, 2015). The problem with this US focus in terms

of both data and researchers is twofold. Firstly, there is a tendency to
assume this subject has been fully researched by US-based researchers,
which leads in places to rather naive extrapolations or generalisations
from US research into public perceptions onto other culturally distinct
publics. This is perhaps most notably problematic in parts of Europe
where religion plays a very different role in public-space discourse.
Here, non-religious, atheistic or indeed anti-religious narratives are
far more prevalent and more likely to be the dominant narratives in
these debates, which will, in turn, impact on the social or cultural
factors at play. It also assumes that creationism is a US export that is
uncritically consumed and rebroadcast by creationists from different
belief systems worldwide. This entirely ignores the possibility that
there may be a distinct set of localised social and cultural drivers
relating to the rejection of facets of evolutionary science, so that what
we may be observing are multiple types of creationism and ways of
being a creationist.
Additionally, in some of the scholarly discussion to date there is an
almost alarmist agenda or tone. This is becoming increasingly evident
in discussions of creationism outside the USA, where there is a very
significant lack of comprehensive data. This, in part, is an understand-
able response of those within broad science, technology, engineering
and mathematics studies fields to a perception of an increase in creation-
ist discourses outside US contexts (see Blancke et al. (2013) for a good
example and comprehensive overview of this concern in Europe).
While I am not denying that creationist or intelligent-design narratives
and groups do exist in Europe and internationally, we need to be very
wary – especially when we have little empirical data – of inflating the
levels of acceptance, salience or influence of such positions. As Blancke
et al. (2013) show, there have been some quite vocal incursions of
advocates of creationism (or its fellow traveller, intelligent design)
into policy discussions within European contexts. As is often the way
in public debate or online forums, it is often those who shout the
loudest who gain the most attention, but it would be folly for the
academy to assume that being vocal or having access to a privileged
platform means that such individuals are acting in a way that is
representative of broader publics’ actual perspectives.
Re-examining ‘creationist’ monsters 265

Such a significant lack of information about what publics really think

with regard to evolution, faith and belief carries the risk that both of
the counter-oppositional sides of the polarised narratives within these
debates – ‘creationists’ and ‘hard-line atheistic evolutionists’ – can
make claims that cannot be countered or refuted in any way. This kind
of abstract debate might seem to be of limited importance outside
US educational-policy arenas. But into this research vacuum steps
speculation, implicit bias and, in some cases, outright prejudice.
Within a broader geopolitical context, the notion of the ‘threat of
creationism’ is being tied to more pernicious clash-of-civilisation narra-
tives. In the UK, for example, there are some recent cases whereby this
this kind of implicit bias might be implemented within UK educational
policy.2 This is particularly evident in relation to concepts of British
values and the purported, yet to date empirically unfounded, threat of
Islamic versions of creationism (Elsdon-Baker, 2015; Hameed, 2014).

Data, methods and rejection of evolution

All too often, given the gap in data, scholars are reliant on the few
quantitative surveys that have been undertaken (e.g. Blanke et al.,
2013; Gallup, n.d.; Hameed, 2008; Miller et al., 2006; Newport, 2014;
Pew Research Center, 2013). Given the nature of the commissioning
processes involved and the way in which this kind of polling is
conducted, this kind of research builds in from the outset a framing
of research questions that may contribute to an inflation of the numbers
of people we might classify as creationist, which further serves to
exacerbate the public and scholarly discourse on the inevitability of
the clash between evolution on the one hand and creationism on the
other (see Elsdon-Baker (2015) for a more thorough analysis of issues
framing in quantitative research in this field). A core component of
such surveys or studies tends to be the development of measures that

2 For an interesting example of this in relation to Nicky Morgan, then Education

Secretary, see the article by Matthew Holehouse in the Telegraph, 7 August 2014:
‘Toddlers at Risk of Extremism, Warns Education Secretary’ (www.telegraph.co.uk/
news/politics/11020356/Toddlers-at-risk-of-extremism-warns-Education-
Secretary.html), where the teaching of creationism in nurseries is linked to ‘extremism’
as part of a counter-terrorist response to the Trojan horse affair.
266 Science and the politics of openness

seek to ascertain levels of rejection of evolution or acceptance of

creationism. These are very much based on models that have been in
use in the USA for the past few decades, and are evident in the Gallup
polls that have been conducted since 1982, which ask:

Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the

origin and development of human beings:
1. ‘Human beings have developed over millions of years from less
advanced forms of life, but God guided this process’.
2. ‘Human beings have developed over millions of years from less
advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process’.
3. ‘God created human beings pretty much in their present form at
one time within the last 10,000 years or so’. (Gallup, n.d.)
The respondents who chose option 3, the ‘creationist’ option, have
stayed relatively consistently at 40%–47% between 1982 and 2014
(Newport, 2014). However, as Hill (2014a) has shown, a systematic
and conscious affiliation with creationism is more limited. When
asked, only 8% of survey respondents agreed with all aspects of the
conventional young-earth-creationist world view, involving the creation
of earth in seven twenty-four-hour days and a historical Adam and
Eve. A large proportion (37%) of those classified as creationists in
Gallup’s terms also do not see correct belief about evolution as ‘very’
or ‘extremely’ important.
While this kind of polling is indicative of broader trends, it cannot
on its own give us an understanding of how salient these matters
are to individuals in their day-to-day lives, or how other complex
factors, including cultural identity, might play a role in how people
respond to these questions. However, this kind of large-scale public-
attitudes measure is relatively commonplace within research to date
into public perceptions of science. Given the history, agendas and
development of science communication or public understanding of
science as an academic field of research (Bauer et al., 2007), and
also significantly as a practice, in recent decades it is unsurprising
that there has been little engagement with the growing body of work
in the sociology of religion that seeks to understand groups’ lived
experience of beliefs, or approaches that might seek to understand
belief systems as a form of cultural identity or a form of belief and
belonging.
Re-examining ‘creationist’ monsters 267

Public understanding and anti-evolutionism

So, while there has been an emphasis in scholarly approaches on
the perceived rise in creationism and creationist discourses, or in
bluntly measuring numbers of creationists, contextual research has
been lacking. Such research would need to explore the salience of
creationism across populations or cultural contexts, the real lived
experience of such a phenomenon, and general levels of understanding
of what key terms in polling or surveying research (e.g. evolution,
ancestor, creator or god) might mean to the respondents. Furthermore,
negligible research has been done outside the USA to examine creation-
ist discourses themselves, or the impact and level of influence these
creationist groups or discourses might have on the general population.
Additionally, alongside such studies there is a need for more analysis
of what ‘creationist’ public-space discourses might be responding to,
for example, in terms of secular humanist discourses or the perceived
(and real) atheistic framing of evolution and broader cultural-identity
issues (Hameed, 2014; Toumey, 1993). These approaches would give us
a much clearer idea of what is being rejected when individuals reject
evolution in large-scale surveys or quantitative research. In order to
do this effectively, we need to move away from simplistic models that
assume that the only reasons one might reject evolution are due to
a literalist religious stance, or that the debate is purely about a clash
between epistemic world views (Elsdon-Baker, 2016; Evans and Evans,
2008; Toumey, 1993).

New approaches and their limits

Therefore, in order to really understand public perceptions of the
relationship between religious or spiritual belief and science, or indeed
perceptions of evolution per se, we should try to remove any form of
value judgment when evaluating the relationship between creation-
ist and evolution. As Wylie and Nelson similarly observe in their
review of the impact of gendered contextual and epistemic values on
scientific research: ‘Typically, these effects arise and persist because
scientists are unaware of the values informing the research traditions in
which they are educated and in which they work’ (Wylie and Nelson,
2007: 78).
268 Science and the politics of openness

However, drawing on the positive impact of feminist approaches in a

range of fields including anthropology, biological sciences, archaeology
and the history of science, it is clear that we do not have to retreat
into relativism if we accept and recognise the epistemic contexts
within which we work. As Wylie and Nelson (2007) further highlight,
the enterprise of science itself has a shifting and changing agenda.
This is both an opportunity and a concern, in terms of the highly
politicised social-scientific study of religion, the critical reappraisal
of the secularisation thesis, and the increasingly geopolitical or trans-
national understanding of science and religion debates within society.
Particularly in light of feminist, or indeed postcolonial, approaches
to science studies, which have not only sought to avoid disappearing
gender or race, but have also provided a new lens through which to
increase our understanding of certain fields.
And yet the problems for the social-scientific study of religion and
science are manifold. Firstly, there is the real potential for a strong
conflation between the perceived need for science communication,
science education or scientific-practice-based research to draw a
distinct demarcation between ‘science’ and ‘non-science’, and the way
that researchers in these or related fields may tackle the boundaries
between public perceptions of ‘science’ and ‘religion’. Such concerns
might lead to an obfuscation of the more fluid and complex ways
that we define, practice or engage with that nebulous entity we call
science. Furthermore, it also fundamentally disregards the possibility
that ‘science’ can act as a cultural identity as well as a methodological
framework for understanding the world around us.
Secondly, not only is there a case to be made that there is a disap-
pearing of the epistemic facets of religious belief from the study of
religion, but also there is an added issue relating to the development of
the social-scientific study of religion as a ‘secular’ discourse or approach
(Evans and Evans, 2008). This is largely due to the values-based contexts
which in places, both historically and within the academy today, have
at least defined social- or natural-scientific research in contradistinc-
tion to ‘religious’ world views, or at worst have framed science as
openly anti-religious. In the latter polarising binary narrative, to be
a scientist (in this case a social scientist) you must be non-religious.
This is then further compounded by subtle and nuanced differences in
Re-examining ‘creationist’ monsters 269

terms of the context, disciplinary history, practice and methodologies

between different cultural contexts in how religion (and science and
religion) is studied academically, which is in evidence even between
purportedly similar anglophone contexts, e.g. researchers based in
the UK and the USA.
By identifying the ways in which an open-minded and reflexive
examination of scholarly research in the social and cultural study
of science and religion, as both a subject for empirical enquiry and
a methodological commitment, we can potentially open up new
innovative lines of enquiry. To achieve this the submerged biases
within existing research need to be examined. If we expand Wylie
and Nelson’s argument beyond the gender biases, which have become
increasingly more evident in the academy, to the possibility that there
are secular or Western epistemic biases too, we will have to confront
the agendas of science as a programme, a cultural identity and a
geopolitical world view in order to create space for new, more fruitful
avenues of empirical research which enable us to better understand the
role of religious (or spiritual) belief in society and public perceptions
of its relationship with science.
Furthermore, if we were to take a step back from some of the
value judgements I outlined at the beginning of this chapter, we
might be able to revisit the entire discussion of what public percep-
tions of evolutionary science are, and what might actually be acting
as the cultural or social drivers that lead individuals or groups to
adopt anti-evolutionary stances or to voice concerns or doubts over
evolutionary science per se. Thus, if we move from simply focusing
on ‘anti-evolutionism’ as a ‘religious’ reaction to evolutionary theory
and start to unpick what might be wider moral and ethical, historical,
cultural, or societal concerns, we will start to develop a more nuanced
picture of what exactly is driving anti-evolutionary, and by extension
broader, anti-science stances within certain groups or communities.
This is especially pertinent for understanding public responses across
international contexts where differences in colonial experience and
legacy, or the current geopolitical framing of world views or cultural,
religious or ethnic identities will undoubtedly influence the ways in
which people form attitudes or perceptions of evolutionary science
or indeed ‘Western science’ itself.
270 Science and the politics of openness

Moral values and anti-evolutionism

We therefore need to more carefully examine what exactly the moral
concerns might be that lead to a rejection of, or lack of trust in,
evolutionary science. Both historically and contemporarily there have,
to say the least, been some highly socially objectionable misappropria-
tions of evolutionary science, the most obvious being the ‘scientific
racism’ and eugenics movement, which saw enforced sterilisations in a
number of countries worldwide. This may seem like a mere historical
concern that relates only to the interwar period and the atrocities of
Nazi Germany. However, eugenical programmes were adopted by a
number of countries across North and Latin America, Europe, and
Asia (Broberg and Rolls-Hansen, 2005; Stepan, 1991; Stone, 2001).
It should also not be forgotten that the last of these laws in the USA
was not repealed until as late as 1979, and in Alberta, Canada, they
were not repealed until 1972.
This is within living memory for many publics, individuals or com-
munities. These programmes were not always aimed at those who
were seen as ‘mentally unfit’, but there were also within a number of
contexts (including in the US) programmes of enforced sterilisation
that targeted indigenous, migrant or ethnic-minority populations. This
can still leave a lasting legacy today, either in the current discourses,
or perceptions, concerning ethnicity and genetic screening (for a good
example of this in California, see Stern (2005)). More worryingly,
forced sterilisation is still a contemporary issue for some ethnic groups,
leading the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2014 to release an
interagency statement seeking to tackle: ‘forced, coercive or otherwise
involuntary sterilisation’, and noting that:

in some countries, people belonging to certain population groups,

including people living with HIV, persons with disabilities, indigenous
peoples and ethnic minorities, and transgender and intersex persons,
continue to be sterilized without their full, free and informed consent.
(WHO, 2014: 1)

The linking of Darwinism, eugenics and creationism does indeed

form a part of creationist anti-evolutionary literature. This is perhaps
unsurprising given the fact that it was Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis
Galton who first coined the term eugenics, even though he did not
Re-examining ‘creationist’ monsters 271

do so until a year after Darwin’s death in 1882 (it is, however, worth
noting that Darwin and Galton strongly disagreed on mechanisms
of inheritance). There are even attempts on websites such as creation.
com to link Richard Dawkins and New Atheist discourses with earlier
eugenically inspired approaches.3 However, while there is evidence
of concerns over eugenics in creationism literature and discourse,
insufficient historical research has been undertaken to examine the
possible links between the development of anti-sterilisation discourses
and creationist discourses in North America or elsewhere. As Dack
(2011) notes in his analysis of the Alberta eugenics movement and
Sexual Sterilization Act:

[A] number of pamphlets and books were published in Canada during

the mid-1930s, mostly by religious organizations in Ontario and Quebec,
which were widely circulated in Alberta and spoke out against the
province’s sterilization law. (Dack, 2011: 102)

If we take the case of enforced sterilisation in 1930s Alberta, Canada,

as an example, we can begin to see how the impact of these laws and
subsequent programmes could possibly be linked to the development
of creationist anti-evolution discourses. There is, of course, a need
here for further and systematic historical study.
Even within well-studied contexts such as North America, then, not
enough research has been done that allows historical insights into the
impact of social factors such as sterilisation laws and ‘scientific racism’
on consolidating public anti-evolutionary stances. What research has
been done has tended (for sound methodological reasons) to focus
solely on explicitly creationist discourses and does not tend to explore
those on the periphery of those debates or who do not explicitly endorse
a strong creationist stance. However, concerns over sterilisation and
eugenics are cited in creationist literature as part of a whole package
of moral issues that are linked to evolutionary theory (Numbers, 1993;
Toumey, 1993). Within broader international contexts, there has been
a long legacy of evolutionary theory being perceived as being entwined
with racial stereotyping and reductionist anthropological approaches.
This is, again, not just a historically situated concern, but has been

3 See http://creation.com/dawkins-and-eugenics.
272 Science and the politics of openness

prevalent in more recent highly problematic articulations of alleged

‘racial’ differences.
A classic example of this is the publication of The Bell Curve: Intel-
ligence and Class Structure in American Life by Richard Herrnstein
and Charles Murray in 1994, which controversially discussed racial
differences in intelligence due to both genetic and environmental
factors, with people of African descent being seen as inherently less
intelligent than those of Caucasian or Asian descent. This is a view
that was heavily echoed in the public scandal caused by the Nobel-
Prize-winning geneticist James Watson in 2007.4
These more recent examples can only add to longer-term concerns
within some groups or communities that facets of ‘evolutionary science’
or ‘genetics’ are inherently racist or sexist. More recently we have
also seen this in the linking by Richard Dawkins in his rhetoric over
‘Islamic creationism’ with broader Islamophobic narratives (Hameed,
2014). Taking into account the issue of race and ethnicity alongside the
broader issues of perceived links between ‘evolution’ and ‘secularisation’
will no doubt play an important role in any research that seeks to
unpick increasingly complex and geopoliticised debates on Muslim
perceptions of evolution. As Hameed (2014) states:
The rejection of evolution may be becoming another contested marker
for Muslim minorities [in Europe] in schools. In fact, one can see why
evolution may be the target: for many, evolution is one of the prime
reasons for the secularization of Europe. Furthermore, it is often pitted
against religion in popular press and many conflate evolutionary biology
with racism associated with Eugenics and social Darwinism. (Hameed,
2014: 393)

There is no causal relationship between adopting an evolutionary-

science paradigm for research and some of the atrocities conducted
under the banner of eugenics, social Darwinism or public policies
of enforced sterilisation that have affected potentially hundreds of
thousands of people due to their race, ethnicity, gender or mental
health status. However, in public perceptions of evolutionary science
these societal issues clearly do (rightly) count, and will most likely

4 See www.independent.co.uk/news/science/fury-at-dna-pioneers-theory-africans-are-
less-intelligent-than-westerners-394898.html.
Re-examining ‘creationist’ monsters 273

for some individuals, groups or communities play a role in the way

in which people might perceive evolutionary science today.
This broader linking of moral or societal concerns and a mishmash
of identity issues relating to secularism with evolutionary science is
stressed in the work of Evans and Evans (2008) and builds on the work
of Toumey (1993), who, when discussing the linking of evolution-
ary theory to secular humanism within US creationist discourses,
argued that:

The key to understanding the intellectual structure of creationist thought

is to see that it is part of a larger body of thought, that is, fundamentalist
moral theory. This latter body of theory addresses a broad range of
issues and worries about modern American culture and social change.
As a result, creationist commentaries on both creation and evolution
often refer, directly or indirectly, to the moral meanings that make those
issues and worries so urgent to creationists and other fundamentalists.
Much of the existential content of creationist thought is a broad cultural
discontent, featuring fear of anarchy, revulsion for abortion, disdain for
promiscuity, and endless other issues, to which evolution is then
appended. (Toumey, 1993: 297)

As Evans and Evans suggest, there may be factors beyond epistemologi-

cal concerns at play, stating that ‘public debates between religion and
science are no longer about truth, but rather about values’ (Evans and
Evans, 2008: 100).
The influence of these kinds of social and cultural narratives upon
the views held by broader populations globally about evolution or the
relationship between science and religion has been understudied, as
has the wider link between being anti-evolution and anti-science, or
the levels of trust in science among individuals or groups who reject
Darwinian evolution.
Unfortunately, due to the primary, and in some cases sole, focus
of social scientists on a kind of literalist or religious fundamentalist
creationism as the only show in town when it comes to reasons for
rejecting evolution, these wider, more nuanced and, on occasion,
entirely credible social concerns over the perceived application of
evolutionary science in society or public policy are often lost. Added
to this is the compounding factor that the individuals, groups or
communities most likely to be impacted on by such discourses are
274 Science and the politics of openness

often the least likely to have a voice in public science or education

policy. Moreover, they are seldom seen as an important or primary
audience for science communication initiatives. Lumping together
these important – yet often complex and nuanced – moral, social,
political and geopolitical concerns with what are caricatured as extreme
fundamentalist religious positions inhibits us from building a better
understanding of what might be at play when people say they reject
evolution. Little or no data have been systematically collected across
publics to discern how these factors may or may not impact on the
ways in which people negotiate, accept or reject evolutionary science.

Future research directions

What is needed, then, is a more internationally focused programme of
research into these kinds of social and cultural narratives that moves us
away from a less reflexive or reductionist approach towards a contextual
whole-systems approach which incorporates both quantitative and
qualitative data collection. Indeed, I am currently directing one such
programme of research with sociologists, social scientists, historians,
social psychologists and myself as the token philosopher. We expect that
this type of research will go some way towards allowing a multilayered
analysis of the different social and cultural drivers for the rejection
of evolutionary science across a spectrum of publics at the level of
individuals, groups, communities and societies. Far from arguing that
quantitative research plays no role in this more systematic approach,
I am arguing that we need to recognise that the kind of survey work
discussed above should not be used solely to give us one-off snapshots.
Instead, it is important to examine in more depth the issues framing
within question design, together with the cross-correlation between
survey items, and to resist using simple measures to draw comparative
conclusions across cultural contexts. This kind of survey research, when
used in conjunction with more in-depth historical, social psychological
and qualitative data, can provide us with an opportunity to understand
trends within the broader societal narratives. Given the contextual
and translation issues inherent in international research, we should be
careful to view this as part of a package of cultural- or country-specific
case studies, as opposed to some kind of pseudo-comparative league
table, as has been in evidence in some of the literature in this field.
Re-examining ‘creationist’ monsters 275

As Bauer (2008: 124) notes in his review of survey research and the
public understanding of science, ‘The abuse of survey data is clearly
possible and documented … But the misuse of an instrument does
not exhaust its potential.’
There is therefore a clear need to develop a more systematic field
of humanities and social-science research (incorporating expertise
from the currently predominately distinct study of both ‘science’ and
‘religion’) that seeks to explore these questions and to ask: ‘Is public-
space religion always public-space science’s ultimate “other”?’ This is
not only important in terms of our own research practice, but could
enable a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between
science and religion that provides space for a productive dialogue
and avenues for public engagement across a range of issues relating
to the role of science in society both nationally and internationally.
To return to the theme of this book: if we go looking for monsters
real or imagined, we will often find them, as is the case with creationists.
However, sometimes we should be aware that these are monsters only
because we choose to see them that way. Furthermore, in terms of
truly critically engaging with our own disciplinary norms, hegemonies
and implicit biases (or indeed prejudices), it may well be that the
monster we fear the most is the one we will find if we look too closely
in the mirror.

Acknowledgements
With thanks to Stephen Jones, Alex Smith and Chris Toumey for their
input and feedback.

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16
Playing God: religious influences on the
depictions of science in mainstream movies
David A. Kirby, Amy C. Chambers

Research on public attitudes towards science has revealed that individu-

als’ personal values and belief system are crucial factors in determining
how they respond to new developments in science, technology and
medicine, such as nanotechnology (Brossard et al., 2009; Nisbet and
Scheufele, 2009; Scheufele et al., 2009; Toumey, 2011). Few cultural
institutions have more influence on personal values and belief systems
than religion, and few cultural products have as much impact on
public perceptions of science as the mass media.
In popular works and in many scholarly texts the interface between
science and religion has traditionally been depicted as one of unbridge-
able conflict (Evans and Evans, 2008). This divide has a long pedigree
in British Gothic literature. It takes early form in Mary Shelley’s 1818
novel Frankenstein (Shelley 1998), where a scientist plays God and
creates a grotesque creature, rendering himself monstrous in the
making of what the outside world deems a monster. In Bram Stoker’s
Dracula (2003 [1897]), the fearless vampire hunters must turn to
ancient religious rites to defeat a monster that has descended upon
an unsuspecting and technologically advanced London on the cusp
of a new century. A distrust of scientists, who have turned away from
morality and religion to dabble disastrously in questions of creation,
runs through classic science fiction stories of biological horror and
hybridity, like H. G. Wells’s The Island of Dr Moreau (1996 [1896])
and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr
Hyde (2000 [1886]), respectively.
Playing God 279

Despite the cultural resonance of this conflict narrative, though,

scholars have raised doubts in recent years about its historical and
contemporary basis (Ferngren, 2002). Nonetheless, the relationship
between science and religion remains a topic of concern for the scientific
community as well for various religious communities. One of the
spaces where these concerns play out is in the stories we tell about
science in the mass media, which occasionally identify metaphorical
monsters in the double sense of the word – to warn and to show – as
outlined by Nerlich et al. in the Introduction to this volume.
In our research we find that religious communities, primarily Western
mainstream Christians, have often attempted to influence the way
stories about science have appeared on cinema screens because they
believed that movies were a powerful force in determining our percep-
tions of the world. These religious groups were concerned about the
ways that movies portrayed science’s role in society and science’s place
as a knowledge producer, and tried to control how the stories were
told and how audiences interpreted them. By examining the negotiations
between religious groups and the entertainment industry, we reveal
how the culturally powerful medium of cinema has historically served
as an arena where science, religion and morality come into conflict.
In this chapter we will explore the ways that filmmakers have
converted the sciences into cinematic products and how religious
groups have altered, responded to and appropriated these scripts by
formal and informal censorship, negotiations with filmmakers during
production and distribution, and reviews written as guidance for
religious audiences. This topic is far too large to be adequately covered
in a single chapter. We can only provide a historical overview that
focuses on Christian responses in the USA. This focus is justified by
the fact that the USA has historically been the world’s predominant
producer of entertainment media and religious responses to movies
have primarily emanated from Christian communities. The Christian
community is not a monolithic entity, however.
This chapter will cover the diverse responses to science in movies
among Christian groups, including differing responses from Catholics
and Protestants. Through this exploration we provide some insights
into what religiously minded people considered to be morally offensive,
indecent, threatening or ‘monstrous’ about science and scientific ways
of thinking. Religious responses to movie narratives show us the kinds
280 Science and the politics of openness

of stories moral reformers did, and did not, want told about science
as a social, political and cultural force.

1900–1933: origins of film censorship and movies as

social propaganda
Religious anxieties about the moral impact of movies on the public
began with the proliferation of nickelodeons in the 1900s. A number of
reform organisations with religious orientations, such as the Women’s
Christian Temperance Union and the Federation of Churches,
complained about the perceived immoral content of early movies.
These groups worried that ‘obscene’ messages in films were degrading
the morals of lower class and immigrant populations (Grieveson,
2004). Pressure from religious groups led to the creation of local
censorship boards in municipalities and states across the USA in
the 1910s. But the presence of local censors did not mollify religious
protestors, who continually pushed for a government-administrated
national censor board. Fearing this, the film industry established an
autonomous self-censorship organisation called the National Board
of Censorship in 1909 (renamed the National Board of Review in
1915). Although mainstream film producers agreed to submit their
scripts to this board for approval, it proved to be ineffective, leading
religious reformers to call for the creation of a federally run censorship
board. Hollywood’s response was to bring in Postmaster General Will
H. Hays, who was also a Presbyterian deacon, in 1922 to head a new
self-censorship organisation called the Motion Picture Producers and
Distributors of America, which became popularly known as the ‘Hays
Office’ (Black, 1996).
Religious groups’ (and thus censors’) concerns about the persuasive
power of the cinema were in line with the thinking of contemporary
social-science researchers about the influence of media messages on
attitudes and behaviour, especially after witnessing the effectiveness
of strategic propaganda during World War I. Activist groups of all
types considered movies an ideal tool for social propaganda. These
activists included public health officials, medical researchers and
progressive reformers who used movies in campaigns to dissemi-
nate scientific discoveries about public health and to promote faith
in scientific solutions to what were referred to as ‘social diseases’
Playing God 281

such as syphilis, as well as other science-related social issues like

eugenics and birth control (Parry, 2013; Pernick, 1996; Schaefer,
1999).
The producers of medical propaganda films believed that they were
contributing to the moral good by persuading people to change their
behaviour, but these films proved to be highly controversial. Initially,
the difficulty for censors was that these films were all related to sexual
reproduction and sex was the one subject that every censor board
agreed was inappropriate for mainstream movies. But censors also
considered that stories featuring modern medical science were emotion-
ally upsetting and aesthetically unpleasant. Ultimately, responses to
films dealing with venereal disease (VD), reproductive technologies
and eugenics shaped subsequent national censorship policies by
broadening censors’ views on what aspects of a film were censorable
beyond just sexual content.
Damaged Goods (1914) was the first motion picture to tackle the
issue of VD, a term used until the 1990s, when it was replaced by the
phrase ‘sexually transmitted diseases’. The box office success of this
sexually provocative morality tale resulted in the production of a host
of other ‘sex hygiene’ films in the late 1910s, such as The Spreading
Evil (1918) and The Scarlet Trail (1918). Despite their significant sexual
content there was very little official censorship of these films because
they endorsed morality and abstinence as the weapons for fighting
VD (Schaefer, 1999). After World War I, however, censors’ policies
on VD films shifted dramatically when two government-produced
educational films, Fit to Fight (1918) and The End of the Road (1918),
were released to wider audiences. They differed from earlier films by
focusing on the use of prophylactics as a method for reducing the
spread of VD, which led to widespread condemnation by Catholic
groups (Parry, 2013). In addition, one of the very first studies into
the effect of the cinema on audiences concluded that VD films could
be harmful to mixed-gender audiences and should not be shown
indiscriminately (Grieveson, 2004). These studies, combined with the
Catholic protests, forced censorship groups to re-evaluate the entertain-
ment value of VD films and their appropriateness for public consump-
tion. Ultimately, VD films spurred censors’ construction of a distinction
between entertainment and educational films. This distinction played
a crucial role in later censorship policies and it led to the physical
282 Science and the politics of openness

segregation of the places where these two types of film could be shown
(Pernick, 1996).
The inclusion of prophylactics in VD films was a major issue for
religious groups because they were concerned with any cinematic
narrative depicting birth-control technologies. Contraceptives were
illegal in the USA before 1918, but a large number of activists were
working to repeal these laws. Movies became a battleground upon
which both sides of the birth-control controversy tried to sway public
opinion, with advocate Margaret Sanger’s Birth Control (1917) compet-
ing with anti-birth-control films such as The House Without Children
(1919). Unlike VD films, which escaped early censorship, birth-control
films were heavily censored and often banned outright by state censor
boards. In some cases birth-control proponents tried to get around
religiously based censorship by promoting birth control as a better
alternative to abortion, but this tactic was unsuccessful (Parry, 2013).
Religious organisations were not the only cultural group supporting
censors’ efforts to restrain public access to films featuring controversial
medical topics like birth control. Medical scientists also strongly
opposed activists’ use of film. Birth control was a subject best left to
scientific experts because its filmic depiction might undermine
confidence in the medical professions by empowering the public to
challenge medical authority. In this case, scientists joined religious
reformers in endorsing the distinction censors made between entertain-
ment and educational films (Ostherr, 2013).
Eugenics was one of the most controversial medical topics during
this time and the subject appeared in a large number of propagandistic
fictional films produced between 1910 and the mid-1920s, including
the pro-eugenics Heredity (1915) and the anti-eugenics The Regeneration
of Margaret (1916). Eugenics was a particularly thorny subject because
it often led to overt discussions of birth control, sterilisation and
euthanasia. In addition, religious groups considered these stories
immoral because they portrayed human reproduction as an outcome
of scientific tinkering rather than as the spiritual expression of
matrimonial love. But censors targeted eugenics films not just for
their sexual morality but also because they were intellectually demand-
ing, emotionally upsetting and aesthetically unpleasant (Pernick, 1996).
Many religious film viewers and censors believed that the images of
Playing God 283

deformed bodies were too distressing for most viewers and could
even cause birth defects in pregnant women.
The desire to eliminate ‘unpleasant’ medical subjects provoked
censors to go beyond merely policing sexual morality to enforce
visual standards for movies. In this way eugenics and other medical
films played a central role in the emergence of what Martin Pernick
(2007: 30) refers to as ‘aesthetic censorship’. Many of the informal
censorship policies that had arisen in direct response to medical films
were formalised by the later adoption of the Motion Picture Produc-
tion Code. This meant that films that dealt with VD, birth control
and eugenics had virtually disappeared from commercial theatres
by 1930.
Although the Hays Office took a strong position on medical films,
it ultimately proved to be as ineffective as the National Board of Review.
Hays believed that the only way studios would abide by his office’s
recommendations was if they agreed to adhere to a formal set of
guidelines as to what was censorable. In 1930 studio heads agreed to
abide by a code of standards called the Motion Picture Production
Code that had been written by two prominent Catholics (Leff and
Simmons, 2001). Martin Quigley was editor of the trade paper Motion
Picture Herald; Father Daniel A. Lord was a Jesuit priest. (We will use
the term Production Code to refer to the Motion Picture Production
Code of 1930.) The Hays Office, however, could not force studios to
accept their suggestions. This meant that, despite their agreement to
abide by the Production Code, studios still frequently ignored its
recommendations (Olasky, 1985). The director of the Hays Office at
this time, Colonel Jason Joy, took a particularly lax approach to the
Production Code, which he viewed as a flexible set of guidelines rather
than a hard and fast set of rules. Because of Joy’s lenient approach,
the period between 1930 and 1934 is referred to as the pre-Code era.
There were no specific policies addressing science in the Production
Code, although the document did include language explicitly addressing
previous issues related to eugenics, VD and birth control. Other aspects
of medical science became censorable because they fell under the
heading of ‘repellent subjects’. The Hays Office warned studios about
the potentially ‘gruesome’ nature of film sequences involving surgical
operations (Lederer, 1998).
284 Science and the politics of openness

Science did run afoul of local censor boards’ religious sensibilities

during this period. The rise of the horror film caused a number of
censorship problems, including concerns about the monstrous nature
of modern science. Censors were concerned about the stories frighten-
ing audiences and the gruesomeness of monsters. But one of the
primary issues was the blasphemous nature of plots in several films
involving scientists usurping God’s role as creator, including Frank-
enstein (1931), which several state boards banned for this reason.
Censor boards also removed specific dialogue in which the scientists
claimed to be ‘playing God’ in films such as Frankenstein, The Invisible
Man (1933) and Island of Lost Souls (1932). The fact that the Hays
Office did not remove these lines at the script stage indicates how
lenient Joy’s interpretation of the Code was before 1934.

1934–1966: controlling stories about science in the age

of censorship
From the perspective of religious protestors, the Hays Office’s failure
to rigorously enforce the Production Code meant that movies were
just as morally problematic as they were before its adoption. In response,
Will Hays created the Production Code Administration (PCA) as a
way to curtail calls by religious groups for a government censorship
organisation (Black, 1996). This pressure also led the Catholic Church
to form its own censorship organisation, the Catholic Legion of
Decency, in 1933 (Walsh, 1996). (The organisation changed its name
to the National Legion of Decency in 1935, but we will refer to it only
as the Legion of Decency.) Tough-minded Catholic Joseph Breen took
over as director of the PCA in 1934. Breen had the power he needed
to force studios to alter their scripts to conform to the Production
Code’s standards, or he would withhold the PCA’s seal of approval
(Leff and Simmons, 2001). The Production Code consisted of twelve
major categories: crimes against the law, sex, vulgarity, obscenity,
profanity, costume, dances, religion, locations, national feelings, film
titles and repellent subjects. As such, the PCA and the Legion of
Decency exerted significant influence over the types of stories studios
could tell about science.
The intersection between science and sex continued to be a problem
for censors. The censors’ ban on VD films, for example, nearly prevented
Playing God 285

Warner Brothers from producing Dr Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet (1940) about

the scientist who discovered the first cure for syphilis (Lederer and
Parascandola, 1998). Negotiations with the PCA ultimately led to a film
that celebrates the scientist without any references to his science (Kirby,
2014). The PCA also routinely censored scripts that used science in
conjunction with criminal activity, such as the deployment of scientific
progress as a justification for criminal activity in The Amazing Dr
Clitterhouse (1938), or the use of scientific methods to commit the
‘perfect’ crime in Before I Hang (1940).1 But broad notions of blasphemy
and indecency allowed the PCA to censor science under almost any
of the twelve categories. A scientist manipulating the soul in Captive
Wild Woman (1943) violated the category of religion, while the PCA
removed a lab experiment performed on a former church altar in the
unproduced 1951 script ‘Green Light’ under the category of locations.
The PCA considered certain scientific fields to be particularly
problematic under the Production Code. Stories involving evolution
were a constant issue for the PCA, especially after the controversial
Scopes Trial in July 1925. Island of Lost Souls may have made it through
the Hays Office unscathed during Jason Joy’s directorship in 1931,
but the inflexible PCA removed every evolutionary element when
Paramount rereleased the film in 1941. The PCA also forced filmmakers
to alter scripts for films such as Dr Renault’s Secret (1942) because
they believed discussions of Darwin and evolution would offend
religious individuals.
While the PCA altered films before production, the Legion of Decency
classified films after their completion. The Legion’s film classification
system to guide Catholic viewers about which films were suitable and
which were questionable used three levels: A – morally acceptable,
B – morally objectionable in part and C – condemned.2 The Legion’s
judgement could seriously impact on a film’s box office potential, so
filmmakers were anxious to avoid a B or C classification (Black, 1996).
Few films received C classifications for their scientific content, and

1 All information in this chapter concerning the PCA’s censorship activities comes
from the individual film files in the PCA files at the Margaret Herrick Library,
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles, CA.
2 All information in this chapter on the Legion of Decency’s censorship activities
comes from the individual film files in the Legion of Decency files at the Catholic
University of America, Washington, DC.
286 Science and the politics of openness

those that did were either VD films such as Damaged Goods (1937),
or films concerning reproduction like Men in White (1934).
Many films were given B classifications during this period because
of the theological implications of their scientific depictions. For example,
the Legion censured films that used scientific explanations to support
the notion of transmigration of souls, as in The Man with Two Lives
(1942) and I’ve Lived Before (1956). They also disliked film narratives
that portrayed scientific progress as a more powerful progressive force
than religion, as was the case with Madame Curie (1943). Like the
PCA, the Legion took issue with films featuring psychiatry and evolu-
tion, but their responses to these depictions evolved over time along
with Catholic policies. Before 1950 any depictions of evolution
automatically led to a B classification. But the Legion embraced films
with overt evolutionary themes like Inherit the Wind (1960) after Pope
Pius XII acknowledged the Church’s acceptance of biological evolution
in his encyclical of 1950, Humani generis.
Fear of not obtaining the PCA’s seal of approval or of receiving a
B or C classification from the Legion of Decency led studios to appease
these groups by altering their scripts or editing their final films. But
filmmakers also took a number of other actions in order to get their
scripts through the PCA or to avoid a B or C classification. The PCA
often instructed filmmakers to consult the Catholic Church’s Hollywood
representative, Father John Devlin. Father Devlin’s suggestions changed
the scientific content of several films, including Red Planet Mars (1952),
whose story originally involved a scientist perpetrating a religious
hoax. Even before receiving formal feedback, studios would often
consult the Legion of Decency or other religious groups as a means
of proactively placating censors and smoothing the approval process,
as was the case for the biopic Freud (1962), where the Legion provided
advice on how to make this scientific story palatable to religious
audiences. In the case of The Beginning or the End (1947), the filmmakers
consulted extensively with Cardinal Francis Spellman, which led to
overt religious overtones in a film about the development of the atomic
bomb (Gilbert, 1997: 52). This means that modifications to cinematic
stories about science often came not through censorship itself, but
through the actions of filmmakers who were anticipating censure.
Despite the power of the PCA and the Legion of Decency, many
religious organisations did not support the idea of movie censorship,
Playing God 287

even in the 1940s when the PCA and the Legion of Decency were at
their most powerful. The Protestant Motion Picture Council (PMPC),
for example, felt that censorship was morally reprehensible. Instead,
they provided faith-based reviews in the Christian Herald that guided
viewers but allowed the public to make their own decision about a
film (Linnell, 2006).3 The PMPC’s reviews were not exclusively about
morally problematic science in cinema. Reviews also covered stories
about science that they found inspirational or that they believed
reflected their value system. Unlike the PCA and Legion of Decency,
the PMPC celebrated films about psychiatry, including giving a Picture
of the Month award to Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945). They
also embraced films featuring brave scientists undertaking expeditions
in the pursuit of scientific progress, such as Scott of the Antarctic
(1948), which they also named Picture of the Month. Ultimately, the
PMPC preferred stories in which the goals of science aligned with
the goals of religion by improving the human condition, as in Sister
Kenny (1946).
Unlike the PCA and the Legion of Decency, the PMPC trusted
audiences to make the ‘correct’ interpretations about science in
cinema. Proponents of censorship like the PCA, however, felt that it
was a better strategy to modify movie plots in order to tell what they
considered more appropriate narratives about science. These differ-
ences in approach reflected differing attitudes to morality between
Catholics and Protestants in the 1940s and 1950s. The Catholic Church
dictated its conceptions of morality to its followers, who were then
expected to adhere to these judgements. Protestants offered guidance
but wanted people to make their own choices about morality (Curran,
2008).
The threat of censorship during this period forced filmmakers to
make decisions about which science to include or remove, based on
reasons that had nothing to do with artistic merit, as they anticipated
censure. The censors’ sense of moral certainty did not require them
to even understand the science upon which they were passing judge-
ment. Ultimately, the PCA and the Legion of Decency began to lose
their influence in the 1960s owing to broader cultural changes, including

3 All information in this chapter on the PMPC comes from the individual film reviews
in the Christian Herald.
288 Science and the politics of openness

the rise of television, an increasingly permissive social stance towards

sexual matters and a more socially progressive attitude in the Catholic
Church (Leff and Simmons, 2001). The PCA became less worried
about the theological implications of science and refocused their efforts
on retaining some influence over the growing depiction of graphic
sex and violence. But concerns among religious groups about scientific
content in films remained after the end of official censorship. Without
the power to censor movies, however, these groups had to find other
ways to influence the way that audiences interpreted cinematic stories
about science.

1967–1992: new Hollywood and new science require

new approaches
The Classification and Rating Administration (CARA) replaced the
PCA in 1968. CARA advised and negotiated with studios over proposed
movie content in order for a film to get its desired rating, but it did
not censor content. Hoping the new system would increase audiences
owing to the production of more ambitious films with uninhibited
themes, the industry received the introduction of ratings warmly
(Wyatt, 2000). Filmmakers, freed from the prohibition or restriction
of material that they had endured under the religiously constrictive
Production Code, created an adventurous and vibrant cinema (Neale,
2005). Science played an important role in this period, as immediate
post-censorship Hollywood movies positioned controversial science
and scientific ideas at the core of their narratives. The shift from
censorship to ratings influenced the ways religious groups responded
to the film industry.
Film reviews became one of the primary Christian strategies for
dealing with Hollywood’s perceived onscreen depravity. The Catholic
church dissolved the Legion of Decency in December of 1965 and
established a new movie oversight organisation named the National
Catholic Office for Motion Pictures (NCOMP). Like the PMPC in
the 1940s, the NCOMP decided to provide guidance at the point of
reception rather than attempting to censor material prior to release
(Gillis, 1999; Romanowski, 2012). The NCOMP’s bimonthly Catholic
Film Newsletter provided reviews through the lens of Catholic values,
including their assessment of scientific content. The NCOMP was
Playing God 289

particularly sensitive to the deification of science and scientists in the

films of the 1970s. They believed that films like The Andromeda Strain
(1971), Zardoz (1974) and The Terminal Man (1974) ‘worshipped’
science and technology and apparently attempted to demythologise
God.4 The NCOMP also found recurrent science versus religion narra-
tives to be problematic. For example, Catholic reviews were unhappy
that religion was framed as the antithesis to science in Planet of the
Apes (1968). Even films that depicted religion as morally right, such
as The Exorcist (1973) and A Clockwork Orange (1971), still placed
religion in opposition to science and this caused the NCOMP concern.
Another approach that religious groups took to controlling movie
content after the censorship era was the introduction of film awards.
Religious groups used film awards as way of praising the film industry
when it produced films that they felt aligned with their religious values,
and believed that these awards would encourage the production of
more films with appropriate moral principles. The NCOMP launched
annual film awards in 1965. Some of the earliest awards were given
to science-based movies. The organisation awarded the 1966 Film of
the Year to the controversial The War Game (1965), which was about
the impact of a nuclear war and atomic science policy in Britain. In
1969 the National Council of Churches and the NCOMP awarded
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) their Film of the Year
as part of a joint award programme. It also won the NCOMP’s Film
of Best Educational Value that year. Religious groups readily interpreted
Kubrick’s science-based film as a religiously valuable film because of
its dealings with supreme beings, whether metaphorical, alien or divine.
They hoped that these awards would encourage studios to produce
science-based films that allowed for discussions of the nature of the
divine and promoted a role for morality in scientific progress.
Filmmakers’ post-censorship freedom allowed them to tackle more
serious science-based topics. Humanity’s stewardship of the earth
became a prevalent theme; a concern also shared by religious com-
munities during this time. The growing environmental movement
inspired eco-films like Silent Running (1972), Omega Man (1971),

4 All information in this chapter on NCOMP’s activities comes from the individual
film files in the NCOMP files at the Catholic University of America, Washington,
DC.
290 Science and the politics of openness

and Soylent Green (1973). Protestant publications like the Christian

Century suggested that the church should be more active in the
environmental movement and that religious groups must rethink their
traditional attitudes to reproduction (Cobb, 1970). This attitude was
reflected in their reviews of eco-films that celebrated nature but warned
against humanity destroying creation (Kavanaugh, 1971). In the eco-
horror Soylent Green, where starving humans unknowingly eat processed
human remains, the church survives as a refuge for the masses and
attempts to treat those whom science has failed. This was a theme
that the NCOMP’s reviewers found ‘consoling’. Religion and faith
became frequent elements of science-based films throughout the latter
part of the twentieth century, appearing not only in opposition to
science, but also as its ally.
Religious communities may have lost their direct input into film
productions (via script and final approval) but there was still open
dialogue between filmmakers and religious communities. Although
this was an era of cinematic experimentation, many filmmakers
continued to court religious audiences. Audiences would be quick to
associate Charlton Heston of the biblical films of the 1950s with his
title role in late 1960s and early 1970s dystopian narratives. Reviews
of Planet of the Apes, Omega Man and Soylent Green pointed out that
it was Moses fighting apes, humanoids and evil corporations in these
cinematic futures.5 Heston’s casting allowed filmmakers to court
traditional and religious audiences. Studios also supported the produc-
tion of viewing guides, including those published by the Lutheran
Church. There was even a Lutheran Church Study Guide created for
the religiously controversial movie The Exorcist, which other Protestant
groups, such as the Methodist Church, asked to use after the film’s
release.6
Filmmakers in the 1960s and 1970s also continued to work directly
with religious organisations when their films dealt with sensitive topics.
For example, director William Friedkin was in constant correspondence
with the Roman Catholic Church in the USA throughout production

5 These film reviews can be found in the clippings files at the Margaret Herrick Library,
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles, CA.
6 See the Lutheran Study Guides Folder in the William Friedkin Papers at the Margaret
Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles, CA.
Playing God 291

of The Exorcist, discussing the technical correctness of the religious

rituals and the church’s attitudes towards scientific practice.7 Friedkin’s
consultation with the Church meant that, despite erroneous reports
of Catholic outrage in the popular press, the NCOMP’s response to
the film was mostly positive because they appreciated the film’s ‘salutary
reflections on religious belief and the limits of science’ (NCOMP,
1974).
Many science fiction films released between 1968 and 1977 were
dystopian and serious, drawing upon imagined science and futures that
would see the end of humanity. But the unexpected success of a 20th
Century Fox release in 1977 signalled a significant shift in the depiction
of science and the future. Star Wars ushered in a new genre, and the
era of science fantasy, as George Lucas termed it, began. Star Wars
rejected the scientific realism that had defined science-based movies
since 1968 by positioning itself firmly within the fantasy genre. The
movie was well received by religious groups as a ‘breath of fresh air’
that avoided the unsettling science that had defined the science fiction
of the 1960s and 1970s (Siska, 1977: 668). Comments from some of the
film’s producers backed up this religious reading. Star Wars producer
Gary Kurtz, for example, told the First Congregational Church in Los
Angeles that the film was a parable and that the spiritual nature of the
characters and the notion of the Force were intended as touchstones
for a predominately Christian audience (quoted in Dart, 1978). Other
science fantasy movies of the late 1970s and early 1980s, including
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
(1982) and Back to the Future (1985), offered religious groups little
to worry about with their blockbuster, family-friendly focus.

1993–2015: courting religious audiences with reconciliatory

narratives
Throughout the 1980s, religious groups continued to focus most of
their attention on Hollywood’s predilection for violence and sex rather
than scientific content. But with the release of Jurassic Park in 1993
the religious community took a renewed interest in cinematic science.
The film’s success resulted in a subsequent flood of science-themed

7 See the William Friedkin Papers.

292 Science and the politics of openness

films that has not diminished (Kirby, 2011). Film reviews continued
to be an important way for religious groups to respond to the science
in movies. The rise of the internet in the 1990s increased the number
of outlets for these reviews. But filmmakers were also beginning to
appreciate the growing economic power of the Christian community.
This awareness not only encouraged Hollywood filmmakers to court
religious audiences for their science-based movies, it also convinced
the Christian film industry that their own science-based movies could
find success in mainstream theatres.
The high profile of Jurassic Park and the prominence of its evolution-
ary themes led to an almost unprecedented response from conservative
Christians, who sought to blunt or reframe the film’s scientific messages.
Conservative Christian film reviews consistently deplored the film’s
overt discussions of dinosaur and bird evolution, with one reviewer
calling it an ‘unceasing barrage of evolutionist propaganda’ (Dickerson,
1993). Several conservative Christian groups even tried to counter
the film’s pro-evolutionary stance by producing booklets and pamphlets
explaining creationism and the ‘real’ origins of Jurassic Park’s dinosaurs
(see figure 16.1). But it was the emergence of the internet during this
period that led to an explosion of film reviews attacking the film’s

Figure 16.1 Pamphlet on the creationist origins of Jurassic Park’s dinosaurs

disseminated by the Southwest Radio Church.
Playing God 293

position on evolution. The lack of gatekeepers for this new medium

meant that anybody could disseminate their ideas online about the
blasphemous science of Jurassic Park. A large number of anti-Jurassic-
Park webpages sprang up soon after the film’s release, including one
hosted by Probe Ministries (Bohlin, 1995). Fundamentalist Christian
communities were not the only religious groups upset about the film’s
pro-evolution narrative. Some Orthodox Jews protested against the
use of Jurassic Park promotional material on milk cartons in Israel,
because they believed that ‘dinosaurs symbolise a heresy of creation’
(Goldman, 1993: 7).
Nowadays, while official censorship is no longer a threat, it is possible
to indirectly censor a movie through means other than directly changing
a script or banning a film. Movies can face a de facto ban if theatres are
unwilling to show the film or if the film is unable to find distribution.
This was the case for the 2009 film Creation, which was unable to
initially find a distributor in the USA because its sympathetic portrait of
Charles Darwin was considered to be ‘too controversial’ (Singh, 2009).
According to Christian commentators this was not censorship; it was
an example of market forces in action (Silvestru, 2009). From their
perspective, it was not because of its subject matter that conservative
Christian groups were keeping the film out of the USA. Rather, they
believed that distributors had decided for financial reasons that the film
would not be able to find an audience in a country in which only 39%
of the population believed in the theory of evolution (Newport, 2009).
In the end, Creation received a limited distribution through Newmarket
Films, a company that specialised in distributing controversial films,
including Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004).
The same economic concerns about potential Catholic protests that
fuelled the development of the PCA and the Legion of Decency back
in the 1930s also drove studios to consult the Catholic Church during
the production of two films in the late 2000s. The Golden Compass
(2007) and Angels and Demons (2009) were both based on controversial
books whose plots revolved around depictions of the Catholic Church
as an organisation that actively obstructs scientific progress. In order
to avoid Catholic boycotts of the film adaptations, the studios sub-
stantially reduced or removed any indication of an anti-science stance
on the part of the Church. In a move reminiscent of the Legion of
Decency, the studios also showed rough-print versions to Church
294 Science and the politics of openness

officials while indicating that they might be willing to edit out any
problematical elements (Pacatte, 2011). In spite of the studios’ attempts
to appease Catholic viewers, the films still ran into significant opposition
and boycotts from Catholic organisations.
Although some films during this period feature contestation nar-
ratives about science and religion, filmmakers have also crafted a
number of movies that function as reconciliation stories. Space
exploration films such as Contact (1997), Gravity (2013) and Interstellar
(2014) use a sense of wonder about the universe to introduce metaphysi-
cal ambiguities that can be understood as both scientifically and
religiously inspired. Several recent films include scientist characters
struggling with their faith in the face of scientific discoveries, such
as Knowing (2009) and Prometheus (2012). Despite sympathetic
portrayals of both science and faith, the Christian community’s
responses to these films were mixed. Christian commentators received
Knowing’s message of benevolent extra-terrestrials rekindling a scientist’s
religious faith warmly (DeMar, 2009). Interstellar’s almost spiritual
exploration of themes relating to love, death and sacrifice also resonated
with many Christian reviewers (McCracken, 2014). On the other hand,
while some Christians were pleased with the scientist’s religiosity in
Prometheus, most were disturbed by the notion of ancient alien creators
in the film. Despite the earlier award for the similarly themed 2001,
the Catholic News Service’s review of Prometheus found that the plotline
of alien-directed human evolution ‘renders “Prometheus” extremely
problematic for viewers of faith’ (McCarthy, 2012).
Reconciliation narratives were meant to appease religious audiences
who might have taken offence at these films’ clear reverence for science.
But some filmmakers have gone even further, by crafting science-heavy
films that are directly aimed at courting religious audiences. The box
office success of The Passion of the Christ provided a blueprint of how
to use grassroots marketing to attract the religious right (Russell,
2013). Two films in the mid-2010s, Noah (2014) and Exodus: Gods
and Kings (2014), used this blueprint to target religious audiences.
But the directors of both films consciously attempted to frame tradi-
tional religious narratives as scientifically viable in order to also appeal
to secular audiences (Bowman, 2016).
Ridley Scott looked to scientific rationales rather than miracles to
explain the parting of the Red Sea and the ten plagues of Egypt in
Playing God 295

Exodus (Vilkomerson, 2014), while Darren Aronofsky openly merged

religion with science in Noah (Chattaway, 2014). Although they were
adaptations of biblical stories, neither film managed to garner the
approval of religious audiences. Noah proved to be problematic for
religious audiences who rejected the science-based creation narrative
as well as Noah’s obsessive focus on contemporaneous environmental
concerns (Masters, 2014). In the cases of Noah and Exodus, religious
audiences rejected science’s intrusion into their stories of faith, while
the scientific explanations were not enough to attract secular audiences
to these biblical tales.
The recent proliferation of streaming services such as Netflix has
meant that Christian films have become available to significantly larger
audiences. Improved production values also mean that Christian films
are often indistinguishable from major Hollywood movies. Many of
the most successful mainstream Christian films have explored scientific
and medical themes, including October Baby (2011), God’s Not Dead
(2014) and Heaven Is For Real (2014) (Macauley, 2015). Since 1968,
religious organisations can no longer exert direct control over the
scientific content in mainstream Hollywood movies. The current
strategy for religious groups is to produce their own cinematic stories
about science, and they have experienced a modicum of success in
this outside their traditional Christian audience.

Conclusions
The created nature of movies makes them useful in understanding
society’s relationship with science because movies reveal the kinds of
stories people want to tell about science. Filmmakers have made specific
decisions to tell stories about science in particular ways. But our
research demonstrates that decisions about scientific depictions in
movies were not always left solely in the hands of filmmakers. Since
the beginnings of cinema, religious groups in America have tried to
influence the way that filmmakers used science to tell their cinematic
stories, or they have tried to influence the way audiences interpret
these stories about science. Religious organisations based their approach
on simplistic assumptions about the nature of movies and the nature
of communication. From their perspective, films told linear stories
using a heightened visual realism that conveyed easily understandable
296 Science and the politics of openness

narratives to a monolithic audience. From this simplistic viewpoint,

cinema seemed to be a powerful force in determining our perceptions
of the world. As such, they were concerned about the ways that movies
portrayed science’s role in society, science’s status as a knowledge
producer and science’s relationship to the spiritual.
In cinema’s early days, religious reformers believed that by controlling
the content of scripts and distribution of finished films they could
ensure that movies disseminated only morally or theologically appropri-
ate messages about science. For many religious groups, censorship
seemed to be a rational response to the dangers of cinema, especially
at a time when activists were using the medium to promote scientific
solutions to sexually based social issues such as VD, birth control and
eugenics. Anticipating censure or boycotts forced filmmakers to make
decisions about what science to include or remove, based on reasons
that had nothing to do with artistic merit. In the case of the Hays
Office, the PCA and the Catholic Legion of Decency, censorship
decisions were founded on beliefs rooted in mid-twentieth-century
American Christianity. These organisations’ sense of moral certainty
did not require their censors to understand the scientific topics upon
which they were passing judgement, including evolution, psychiatry
and atomic science.
When filmmakers were no longer under the threat of censorship,
they could address more serious science-based topics, including
environmental issues and biomedical ethics. This meant that religious
groups had to change their tactics to address the scientific messages
in films when direct censorship was no longer an option. Instead of
preventing immoral messages, they decided to encourage studios by
giving awards to films containing what they considered to be morally
and theologically appropriate messages about the uses of science.
Religious groups also began to provide their own movie reviews as a
way to influence audiences’ interpretations of scientific stories in films.
These reviews allowed them to call attention to themes they found
problematic. Reviews were also a means by which groups could celebrate
narratives about science that they found inspirational, such as films
promoting the spiritual nature of science. Mainstream filmmakers
subsequently realised that they could achieve greater box office successes
for their science-based films by incorporating scientific themes that
appealed to Christian audiences. Ultimately, the Christian film industry
Playing God 297

decided that the easiest and, for their purposes, perhaps best way to
control scientific themes in movies was by creating their own science-
based films.

Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust (100618).

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Afterword: monstrous markets –
neo-liberalism, populism and the demise of
the public university
John Holmwood, Jan Balon

There is a crisis in the idea of the university. It has emerged from the
application of neo-liberal policies which have reduced the public values
of the university to instrumental purposes. This poses a considerable
threat to liberal education (Brown, 2015, Collini, 2012; Ginsberg,
2011; Holmwood, 2011; Nussbaum, 2010). In the UK, government
ministers and policy advisers seek a ‘cultural’ change directing academic
research and student recruitment towards the market and in service
of a global knowledge economy. There are few dissenting voices among
those with institutional responsibility for the academy – namely, its
vice-chancellors and senior representatives. Vice-chancellors have not
spoken out to protect the university’s wider public values, and few
learned societies have either. Senior university personnel have mostly
been interested in maintaining funding, especially in the context of
the politics of austerity after the financial crisis of 2008 (Smith, 2011).
Learned societies and research councils have had similar concerns
about funding, and have been concerned to establish the utility of
research, especially in the context of the impact agenda. Dissent comes
mainly from some individual academics and from students. The latter
have experienced a dramatic rise in their costs alongside diminishing
labour market opportunities, notwithstanding an emphasis on their
private investment in human capital as a justification of the reduction
in the public funding of undergraduate education.
In part, this quiescence itself derives from a mode of governance
specific to neo-liberalism which operates through the co-production
of policy objectives. This involves consultation with those affected by
304 Science and the politics of openness

proposed policies and with interests in the outcome, generally called

the ‘stakeholders’. Consultation might appear to be an evidence-based
process with consensus as its aim, but, in truth, interests are frequently
not reconcilable and what the parties put forward is interest-based
evidence. In this context, government acts as mediator of such evidence,
which it collates and selects according to its own policy objectives
while managing alternative views. At the same time, stakeholders also
lobby government independently of the consultation process. In this
way, consultation operates in the interest of the most powerful
stakeholders and requires wider publics (who might bear the conse-
quences of the policies) to be represented by a ‘stakeholder’ or accept
the fiction that it is the government itself that represents their interests
(for example, as ‘taxpayers’, or as the guardian of the interests of students
as ‘consumers’).
In the case of recent university reforms in the UK – which have
shifted from direct public funding of undergraduate higher education
to what is primarily fee-based funding via a system of publicly supported
student loans – the government retains the ability to determine the
revenue received by universities and so can maintain compliance from
vice-chancellors and representative bodies, while opening the sector
to for-profit providers and allowing the title of ‘university’ to single-
subject, teaching-only entities. In this way, despite the UK government
proposing the most fundamental changes to higher education, this
has occurred with little active debate or challenge to the underlying
market logic that guides those changes. The university is under threat,
but all universities are busy ‘co-producing’ these changes and have
passed their voices into the dominant neo-liberal discourse.

The problem of populism

The place of the university within public culture is not separate from
the fate of public culture itself. To some extent, the crisis in the idea
of the university reflects a crisis of public culture, one that has become
most evident in the rise of the ‘far right’ and ‘populism’. The UK
referendum vote to leave the European Union (‘Brexit’) and the election
of Donald Trump as President of the United States are each widely
understood as involving a ‘populist’ rejection of ‘elites’ and ‘economic
globalisation’. It is significant that each has taken place in a country
Afterword 305

where neo-liberal public policy has been paramount. However, the

rise of authoritarian populist regimes elsewhere (for example, in Turkey
and India) and of far-right political parties having increasing political
influence (for example, the National Front in France, Sweden Demo-
crats, and the Freedom Party of Austria) indicates that ‘populism’ is
a more general issue. It has also been reported that Chinese President
Xi Jinping has called for intensified ideological control over universities
(Philips, 2016), including, presumably, the sixty-four ‘branch’ operations
of transnational higher-education institutions currently operating in
China, of which Nottingham University Ningbo is one (He, 2016).
Oxford Dictionaries (2016) has marked this new political mood
by announcing online that ‘post-truth’ was its ‘word of the year’,
‘denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential
in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief ’.
This followed a statement in a television interview by the then British
Minister for Justice and Vote Leave campaigner, Michael Gove, that
he thought that ‘the British Public have had enough of experts’. Where
does this leave the university? The trade magazine of the profession
in the UK, Times Higher Education, has suggested that the very intel-
lectual character of universities is anti-populist and, thus, that they
contribute to a polarisation of politics rather than being able to
moderate the effects of such a polarisation (Morgan, 2016). Indeed,
the report commented that ‘a THE poll before the vote found that
88.5 per cent of university staff intended to vote Remain and 9.5 per
cent Leave. That was just a shade out of line with the actual UK result,
which saw 48.1 per cent vote Remain and 51.9 per cent vote Leave’
(Morgan, 2016: n.p.).
The article also suggested that universities might ‘reposition
themselves as the voices of moderation. In other words, as the populists
head off to extremes, some believe that US universities should move
more towards the centre politically – or rightwards from where they
currently are – in an attempt to “depolarise” their relationship to wider
society’ (Morgan, 2016). If universities, including those in the UK,
do not do so, the article warned, ‘they will clearly need to tread very
carefully lest they portray themselves as part of the global elite resented
by populist supporters. Otherwise, they will only intensify the risks
to their funding, their culture and their educative missions’ (Morgan,
2016).
306 Science and the politics of openness

However, this is a poor understanding of populism and the problems

it poses for universities. As Müller (2016) has recently argued, it is
the very nature of populism to represent itself as speaking for the
‘people’, with pluralism seen as ‘bad faith’. There can be no ‘de-
polarisation’ where populism is identified as one of the polar positions,
since it admits no compromise. In this way, according to Müller,
populism is both a product of representative democracy and, at the
same time, a denial of democracy since it depends on ‘othering’ those
it opposes as reflecting the interests of deracinated cosmopolitan ‘elites’
and without a legitimate voice in ‘democratic’ debate.1
In both the USA and the UK, ‘populism’ is also a form of ‘nativism’
manifest in calls to ‘take back our country’, with its hostility both to
external powers that might limit the scope of action and to those
within the nation who are not seen as properly part of it. In both
cases, those who are not part of the ‘we’ are racialised minorities,
immigrants and what Enoch Powell in the UK context once chillingly
called the ‘immigrant descended’. In the UK, Dame Louise Casey
(2016), in a recent review into ‘Opportunity and Integration’, has
called for migrants to ‘swear an oath of allegiance’ on arrival into
the UK, while schools, under the Prevent agenda, are obliged to teach
‘British values’.
Danielle Allen (2004) has made a similar argument to Müller’s
about the problematic idea of popular sovereignty that is frequently
represented as a republican ideal. For example, incorporated in the
US Declaration of Independence and reproduced daily in US schools
is the Pledge of Allegiance to ‘one Nation indivisible with liberty and
justice for all’. The idea of ‘one Nation indivisible’ implicitly passes all
voices into one, but what would happen, Allen asks, were we to propose
instead an allegiance to the ‘whole Nation indivisible’? The whole nation
would be understood as a nation of parts – that is, as differentiated
– and an obligation towards indivisibility would be an obligation
towards difference and its recognition.
What does this mean for the nature and culture of the univer-
sity; that is, for the role of higher education in the public life of a

1 As newly appointed post-Brexit UK Prime Minister Theresa May put it (buying into
the populist mood), ‘if you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere’
(May, 2016).
Afterword 307

nation? We shall suggest that one aspect of this role must be the
facilitation of inclusive democratic public debate. Nor could this
be understood simply as providing the knowledge that might form
the evidence base for public policy where the latter is directed at
policymakers rather than at wider publics, as argued by the Campaign
for Social Science (2015). Morgan suggests that there is a risk that
universities will be perceived as aligned with a global elite and that
this might cost them their funding. However, part of the problem
is that universities have put their cultural and educative mission at
risk precisely because of their concern with funding, while ignoring
how the conditions of that funding have been tied to a change in
their mission.
In this afterword, we will draw on the work of John Dewey, especially
his The Public and Its Problems (1927), to suggest that populism is a
problem of ‘publics’ and the institutions in the public sphere that
support them. In brief, we shall argue that neo-liberalism represents
an attempt to replace publics with markets, a process that is facilitated
by the privatisation of public institutions, including that of the university
itself. This ‘hollowing out’ of the public sphere is precisely what creates
the space for populism. Neo-liberalism requires a strong interventionist
state on behalf of markets, but it also requires democratic legitimation.
This makes populism an ideology of justification (Boltanski and
Thévenot, 2006) supplementary to that of the market – one that is
mobilised against the public sphere, which has come to be characterised
as dominated by liberal elites, notwithstanding that the promotion
of the market itself operates to widen inequalities.

The neo-liberal knowledge regime

Changing inequalities are particularly significant for universities, but
this is something that has been relatively neglected. As Clark Kerr,
architect of the California ‘Master Plan’ (initiated at the same time as
the Robbins reforms in the UK in the 1960s), argued, the rise of mass
higher education and public funding would make the university
increasingly subject to political scrutiny (Committee on Higher
Education, 1963; Kerr, 2001 [1963]). The expansion of public higher
education was not a simple extension of arguments that had justified
public secondary education and its compulsory nature. The latter was
308 Science and the politics of openness

universal in character and, therefore, could be represented as a ‘social

right’ that secured a public benefit; namely, a common education for
citizens, a benefit recognised even by Milton Friedman (1962). Participa-
tion in public higher education was not intended to be universal,
merely to be expanded (in the UK case, closer to the level already
attained in the US). In this context, there was potentially the issue
that higher education secured a private benefit for those who graduated
from it, when compared with those that did not.
At the same time, no matter how much participation might be
widened, it would be likely to attract proportionally more of its
participants from socially advantaged backgrounds. However, at the
time, there was a general expectation of a shift from an industrial to
a post-industrial, knowledge-based, economy, where there would be
increased demand for educated labour and a general ‘adaptive upgrad-
ing’ of all jobs. Indeed, this was evident in the way in which a secular
trend in the reduction of inequalities was regarded as ‘institutionalised’
across most Western societies, even if the level of inequalities was
significantly greater in some (the US) than in others (Sweden, or the
UK up until the 1980s). In effect, this was endorsed as ‘fact’ by Kuznets
(1953) and his ‘curve’ demonstrating how declining income inequality
emerged alongside economic growth.
Public spending on higher education, then, could be justified in
terms of its wider benefits; even if an individual’s educational attain-
ments and preferences did not take him or her to university, there
would be a benefit from the greater integration of higher education
and the economy. The economic growth to which expanded higher
education and research would contribute was understood to be inclusive,
associated with what was perceived to be a secular decline in inequality.
This also included changes in what might be regarded as the ‘status
order’ of employment relations, as the terms of the labour contract
became more similar across manual and non-manual work, and rights
previously enjoyed by non-manual workers were extended to all
employees. This idea of inclusive economic growth was integral to
the idea of an emerging ‘knowledge society’ – as distinct from a
‘knowledge economy’ – and, in the telling phrase used by Clark Kerr
(2001 [1963]), what had emerged was a ‘multiversity’ meeting multiple
functions – direct economic functions, certainly, but also wider social
functions, including amelioration and democratisation. In other words,
Afterword 309

higher education was part of a wider ‘moral economy’ underpinned

by social rights (Holmwood and Bhambra, 2012).
It is precisely this ‘moral economy’ that is called into question by
neo-liberalism, and not simply in terms of seeking to deny the existence
of social rights. Wider neo-liberal policies have given rise to widening
inequalities and reductions in taxation, especially progressive taxation.
Moreover, the deregulation of labour markets has created new forms
of labour contract and a new polarisation between ‘good’ and ‘bad’
jobs (Brown et al., 2011; Kalleberg, 2011). The function of higher
education to support economic growth remains, but inclusive economic
growth is no longer a government objective. In this context, government
policies to reduce taxation put pressure on university funding, while
widening inequality increased calls for the beneficiaries of higher
education to pay. In the UK this was first introduced as a fee contribu-
tion by students alongside direct public funding in 1999, following
the Dearing Review of 1997, but became wholly fee based for arts,
humanities and social sciences in 2010 following the financial crisis
of 2008 and cuts to government spending under the mantra of
austerity.
The irony is that just as the argument that it is right that students
should pay fees because they are private beneficiaries was being put
forward, the opposite argument was made with regard to research.
The UK Government put forward an ‘impact’ agenda, where all publicly
funded research should be undertaken with specific ‘beneficiaries’ in
mind. Here, the argument was that publicly funded research should
show a direct benefit, but the beneficiary should not pay. In part, the
purpose of the impact agenda was to shorten the time from ‘idea to
income’ or the research-development cycle.
It might seem that this was a simple continuation of the perceived
function of research for economic growth that was described by Kerr
(2001 [1963]). However, the context is significantly different. First,
as we have suggested, economic growth that is publicly funded is no
longer inclusive in its benefits (see also Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2015). Second, the neo-liberal
policies directed towards wider corporate governance have emphasised
share-holder value, which has made companies more concerned with
profits in the short term. In consequence, private investment in research
and development has fallen, such that the UK has moved from having
310 Science and the politics of openness

one of the largest investments (as a proportion of GDP) among OECD

countries in the 1960s to now having one of the smallest (Jones, 2013).
Finally, the emphasis on delivering the benefits of research over a
shorter time has altered the balance between privately funded and
publicly funded research within the research–development ecosystem,
and undermined the longer-term and more fundamental benefits that
publicly funded research can achieve (see Mazzucato, 2011).
Of course, the UK Government’s impact agenda is wider than simple
commercial benefits, however pronounced the latter are within it. It
also includes impact on public policy and other aspects of social
well-being. What is common across commercial and non-commercial
impacts, however, is that impact has to be demonstrated with specific
beneficiaries and that the strong recommendation of research councils
is that this be done through ‘co-production’ of the research with them
(that is, including likely beneficiaries at all stages of the research,
including that of its design).
‘Co-production’ as a term derives from the work of Gibbons and
his colleagues (1994), involving a distinction between ‘mode 1’
knowledge directed at academic audiences and ‘mode 2’ knowledge
directed at non-academic audiences (see also chapter 6). The latter is
frequently interdisciplinary applied-problem-solving knowledge, and
the idea of co-production is used to capture the ‘larger process in
which discovery application and use are closely integrated’ (Gibbons
et al., 1994: 46). Gibbons and his colleagues did not anticipate that
mode 2 knowledge would supplant mode 1 knowledge, but it is clear
that the impact agenda promotes mode 2 knowledge.2 Nor did they
consider the wider environment in which co-production took place;
that is, from the perspective of its beneficiaries.
It is clear that the beneficiaries are commercial organisations,
government bodies (at national or local levels) or civil society actors
(non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and charities, etc.). We have
already suggested that neo-liberal public policy has the effect of hol-
lowing out the public sphere. This takes place in two ways. The first

2 The argument for mode 2 knowledge has been extended by Etzkowitz (2008), and
the idea of the ‘triple helix’ of interdependencies between government, industry and
university.
Afterword 311

is by the direct privatisation of public bodies, the second by recom-

mending that charitable bodies and NGOs be involved in the provision
of services. The latter also includes charities and other voluntary
associations operating together with for-profit organisations. The
emphasis on the co-production of research is part of a wider neo-liberal
project that includes the binding of the beneficiaries into government
policy by the fact that they are frequently dependent on government
for their own funding.3
Tying civil-society organisations to government objectives involves
a deformation of the public sphere that constitutes the context for the
rise of populism. It is something in which universities are directly
implicated. For example, the Academy of Social Sciences drew up
a report under the auspices of its Campaign for Social Science –
significantly, entitled The Business of People – to campaign for public
funding of social science, prior to the 2015 election. This was the
election that included a Conservative manifesto commitment to a
referendum on membership of the European Union. The report was
preceded by the widespread news coverage of Thomas Piketty’s Capital
in the Twenty-First Century (2014) with its depiction of widening social
inequality. Concerns about inequality were also raised in OECD reports.

3 This became particularly evident following new Cabinet Office rules to prevent
bodies in receipt of government funding from engaging in lobbying. This followed
intense lobbying from a neo-liberal think tank, the Institute for Economic Affairs,
against what it called ‘sock puppets’ (Snowdon, 2012). The action was directed against
charities like Save the Children, Action on Smoking and Health, and Alcohol Concern.
Universities were alarmed that they might be included and that the proposals were
antithetical to the impact agenda. Universities were subsequently declared exempt
and the proposals watered down. However, the implications for civil-society organisa-
tions and the vulnerability of their funding should they be perceived to be too
politically active in pursuing their remit is clear. This is explicitly recognised by a
report for the National Coalition of Independent Action: ‘The force of entering the
welfare market, increasingly as bid candy, has had disastrous consequences for
voluntary services and their ability to respond to community needs. The capitulation
by many in the voluntary sector, including its national and local leadership bodies,
to these government agendas has done much damage to the ability of voluntary
organisations to work with and represent the interests of individuals and communities
under pressure. Privatisation and co-option into the market is driving down the
conditions of staff working in voluntary services, diminishing their role in advocacy
and jeopardising the safety of people using such services’ (Waterson, 2014: 2).
312 Science and the politics of openness

Yet, structured social inequality is not mentioned at all in the report,

nor is race and ethnicity, nor any other research on social structure.
These profoundly affect the circumstances of people’s lives, yet all
the report has to say about them is of their derived consequences
in terms of people’s attitudes and behaviours and how those may
be a problem for policymakers and practitioners in attaining their
objectives. The report is overwhelmingly instrumental and designed
to appeal to the ‘Treasury, ministers, MPs and policy makers’ (Cam-
paign for Social Science, 2015: ‘Foreword’). Its focus on policymakers
and practitioners is unremitting: ‘Advancing and applying science
depends on profits, policies, markets, organisations and attitudes’
(2015: ‘Executive summary’). The attitudes of the public, on the other
hand, are presented as potential obstacles to policy objectives. For
example, it argues that ‘study of public values and attitudes is vital,
too, especially when innovation prompts uncertainties and concerns,
as with genetically modified crops or shale gas extraction’ (2015: 6).
And it warns that ‘without a better grasp of people, technological
advances may be frustrated, or blocked, and fail to realise their potential’
(2015: 5).
In short, a report on the value of the social sciences produced in
the context of a general election made no reference at all to problems
of inequality and no reference to their contribution to the facilita-
tion of democratic debate. Instead, it was directed entirely at what
populist rhetoric described as the ‘political establishment’ and its
‘experts’.

The problem of democratic knowledge

As we suggested earlier, one of the problems in current understandings
of the democratic significance of the university is that its role as an
institution in the public sphere is weakly expressed (see also Holmwood,
2016b). In addition, government is allowed to stand as representing
the ‘public’ and, in consequence, its policies constitute a working
definition of the public interest. It is precisely these understandings
that have been exposed by the rise of populism and are in need of
reformulation.
We have also suggested that an alternative formulation can be
found in the work of John Dewey, and especially his book on The
Afterword 313

Public and Its Problems (1927). Significantly, for our purposes, the
book was written in a similar context of an intense debate on the
nature of the relation between expertise and democracy. Dewey was
responding to the argument of Walter Lippmann (1925) that increased
social complexity undermines the possibility of democracy being able
to approximate the forms endorsed by standard liberal accounts of
representative democracy. The public, for Lippmann, was increasingly
ill equipped to make the sort of judgements attributed to them within
democratic theory.
In consequence, he argues that the public is a ‘phantom category’
(that is, something that functions only in theories of democracy and
has little real substance). For Lippmann, what Dewey came to call
the ‘eclipse of the public’ is a necessary consequence of the complexity
of modern societies that increasingly requires organised expertise of
various kinds. In consequence, ‘expert opinion’ would replace ‘public
opinion’ and democracy would necessarily be attenuated. Lippmann
anticipated that expert opinion would operate in conjunction with
the state and economic corporations and, in effect, would be ‘co-
produced’ by them. However, it is significant that Lippmann also
prefigured what would become another part of the neo-liberal solution;
namely, the shift of decisions from the political sphere to the economic
sphere, or from the state to the market.4
Dewey noted that the ‘eclipse of the public’ is prefigured in the
very idea of the market economy, in which decisions by (consumer)
sovereign individuals are perceived to be efficiently aggregated through
impersonal market exchanges. This is held to be in contrast to their
inefficient aggregation by collective political decision making through
the agency of the state. In other words, according to Dewey, the idea
of a political realm in which the public expresses its democratic will
is already severely compromised by the liberal distrust of ‘group’, or
collective, actions, and the idea that it is only the market that can
properly express the general interest.
Dewey proposed to rescue the public from its eclipse by market
and expert opinion alike by a radical refocusing of political philosophy,

4 He was a participant in the Colloque Walter Lippmann, which met in 1938 and was
named in his honour. It was the first to coin the term ‘neo-liberalism’ for its
position.
314 Science and the politics of openness

not as a theory of the state and its forms, but as a theory of the public
and of the relation of institutional forms to the public, with the
university as one crucial institutional form. He did so through an
account of the ‘social self ’, which he contrasted with the ‘liberal self ’,
as expressed in economics and political theory (in this way, also
indicating the normative assumptions in the liberal idea of instrumental
knowledge).
Dewey began from the argument that the individual is necessarily
a social being involved in ‘associative life’, and that this is true of what
are conventionally regarded as private actions as well as of public
actions.5 For Dewey, individuals form associations, but they are also
formed by associations. At the same time, the multiplicity of associations
and their interconnected actions have consequences. In all of this,
Dewey’s idea of a ‘public’, and of the several natures of ‘publics’, is
crucial. It contains a strong idea of democracy associated with participa-
tion and dialogue, but does not deny that there will be functionally
differentiated publics, whose articulation will be at issue. The key to
his definition of a public is contained in the idea of action in the
world having effects and consequences that are ramified and impact
upon others who are not the initiators of the action. Essentially, all
action is associative action, but a public is brought into being in
consequence of being indirectly and seriously affected by those actions
of others. His analysis of the problem of modern democracy, then,
was concerned with the imbalance in the development of associations
and the proliferation of problems in areas where the public cannot
properly defend itself.
This immediately raises the issue of the state as the representative
of the ‘public’. It is the point at which Dewey shifted gear to argue
that the wider idea of a public can achieve a level of generality that
requires organisation and personnel to express it. This is the idea of
a state understood as a set of public authorities. Thus, Dewey proposed
that ‘the lasting, extensive and serious consequences of associated
activity bring into existence a public. In itself it is unorganized and

5 It is precisely this that Dewey suggested allows the understanding of the changing
definition of the boundaries of what are conventionally regarded as private and
public. The conventional definition of the ‘private’ is that of associated life that does
not impinge with wider consequences upon others.
Afterword 315

formless. By means of officials and their special powers it becomes a

state. A public articulated and operating through representative officers
is the state; there is no state without a government, but also there is
none without the public’ (1927: 67).
Dewey by no means suggested that these developments mean that
a state necessarily will act in the public interest – power can be accrued,
authority exercised despotically, and, indeed, the personnel of govern-
ment can act on their own private or other special interests. The
fundamental point, however, is that the state takes its meaning from
the idea of a public and its interests, and that this is conceived as a
dynamic thing. This means that, for Dewey, not only associations
external to the state, but the state itself and its modes of organisation,
are subject to change and revision in the light of other changes in the
development of associative life. In other words, although the state
exists in relation to the problems of associative, social life that create
a public, its own forms and modes of organisation may come to
constitute a problem for the expression of that public, although,
paradoxically, that is its raison d’être.
Dewey had as his target two pathologies. The first sets the state
against the public and is attributed to liberal individualism and its
argument for the minimum state. The second is attributed to the
conditions of modern corporate capitalism, in which there appears
to be an ‘eclipse of the public’ brought about by the dominance of
corporate interests over the state. Dewey argued that the first under-
mines the individual as surely as it seeks to set the individual free.
This is because the ruling idea of liberalism is that of the individual
free of associations, which is linked with the idea of the ‘naturalness’
of economic laws (embodied in market exchanges). It is precisely
the ideology of liberal individualism, according to Dewey, that
suggests that the market can replace the state as the regulator of
social life, but leaves the individual vulnerable to the outcomes of
the market.
However, according to Dewey, this doctrine emerged just as the
idea of an ‘individual’ free of associations was being rendered untenable
by the very developments of corporate capitalism with which it was
linked. Thus, Dewey said that ‘ “the individual”, about which the new
philosophy centred itself, was in process of complete submergence in
fact at the very time in which he was being elevated on high in theory’
316 Science and the politics of openness

(1927: 96). The ideology which operates in the name of the individual,
then, serves to undermine the very protection of the individual from
egoistic, corporate associations that are themselves the very antithesis
of the doctrine being espoused.
For Dewey, what is necessary for the proper expression of the public
and for democracy is a ‘Great Community’. Without it, there would
be nothing more than state-supported corporate interests, together
with partial and ad hoc responses. In contrast, Dewey wrote of
democracy in the ‘Great Community’ that, ‘from the standpoint of
the individual, it consists in having a responsible share according to
capacity in forming and directing the activities of the groups to which
one belongs and in participating according to need in the values
which the groups sustain. From the standpoint of the groups, it demands
liberation of the potentialities of members of a group in harmony
with the interests and goods which are in common. Since every
individual is a member of many groups this specification cannot be
fulfilled except when different groups interact flexibly and fully in
connections with other groups’ (1927: 147).6

Reclaiming the public university

Dewey was also writing at the birth of the ‘multiversity’. Knowledge
production and professional services were coming increasingly to be
university based, and, at the same time, the university was becoming
increasingly involved in the corporate economy with the commodifica-
tion of research. As I have argued, these are all aspects of our current
impact agenda. Yet, Dewey wished to argue that the university has a
role for democracy and in facilitating the Great Community. The final
issue I want to address is whether the complexity attributed to con-
temporary society and the problems it poses for a democratic public
can be answered by the role of ‘experts’.
Quite apart from the undemocratic implications of Lippmann’s
claim that experts can represent publics, Dewey also challenged it on
sociological grounds. Co-production takes the structure of associations

6 The transformation of university decision making from collegial to hierarchical,

managerial modes of organisation is significant in the context of this quotation (see
Holmwood, 2016a).
Afterword 317

as given, when the issue of publics is always how they are to be brought
into a responsible share in the direction of activities. ‘Co-production’
is necessarily based upon forms of inclusion and exclusion. Finally,
while the operation of economic interests can be unseen, precisely
because of the formal separation of economic and political institutions
typical of modern capitalism, the application of expert knowledge
must necessarily take place in front of the public.
While the argument about the role of experts depends upon the idea
that the public is unable to judge complex matters, it remains the case
that it will be able to judge the pretensions of experts. Moreover, it is
likely to be vulnerable to populist mobilisations by the very interests
that expert opinion is being called upon to moderate. Thus, Dewey
wrote that ‘rule by an economic class may be disguised from the
masses; rule by experts could not be covered up. It could only be
made to work only if the intellectuals became the willing tools of big
economic interests. Otherwise they would have to ally themselves
with the masses, and that implies, once more, a share in government
by the latter’ (1927: 206). As soon as ‘expertise’ is defined in terms of
the instrumentalisation of knowledge, there arises the problem that it
is aligned with interests and, thereby, a problem of trust.
Dewey’s concern with the problem of experts and their relation to
wider publics speaks directly to our own circumstances. As expertise
is increasingly co-produced, what seems to be attenuated is the role
of the wider public. In a context where risks of concentrated activities
– whether of nuclear power production or carbon-hungry economic
profit seeking, to give just two examples – are also seen to be widely
(indeed, globally) distributed, those that are affected are displaced
from participation in decisions about them. At the same time, the
nature of democracy is that wider public opinions can be made to
count in elections and are subject to populist influence by advertising
and by mass media, precisely as Dewey set out.
For Dewey, however, the significance of expert knowledge is how
it can facilitate public debate, not government and corporate decision
making independent of the participation of the wider public. The
character of expert knowledge increasingly embedded within corpora-
tions and government serves to delegitimate expertise precisely by
these forms of associations. It is necessarily part of the ‘eclipse of the
public’. As Dewey put it, ‘the essential need … is the improvement
318 Science and the politics of openness

of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion and persuasion.

That is the problem of the public’ (1927: 208).
If the improvement of debate, discussion and persuasion is the
problem, then the university is necessarily part of the answer. But
it is only part of the answer if it is at the service of the public. A
university at the service of the public, in Dewey’s sense, is a uni-
versity that should properly be regarded as a public university. This
would not be the only function of a university, but it is a necessary
function and it is one that would place social justice at the heart
of community engagement. Anything less and the university is just
another private corporation in which a corporate economy has become
a corporate society. The neo-liberal university would finally have given
up any pretension to a social mission other than being at service to
whoever paid.7

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Epilogue: publics, hybrids, transparency,
monsters and the changing landscape
around science
Stephen Turner

Science, science journalism and the academic study of science itself are
grappling with rapid changes in the nature of their object in the three
disciplines of science and technology studies, philosophy of science, and
history of science. Science is no longer the familiar world of laboratories
and chalkboards full of equations, with the public at a discreet remove,
buffered by a set of benign images of unworldly scientists pursuing
arcane interests. These images of science were captured by the Ronald
Reagan movie Bedtime for Bonzo (de Cordova, 1951), which featured a
charming scientist living with a chimpanzee to test his theories about
nature and nurture. The science was individualistic, rather than a team
effort; the scientist was a sincere and harmless seeker of truth and
friend of humanity removed from ordinary concerns and bumbling
in his human interactions, and the results were understandable in
human terms, though largely without practical significance.
The disciplines studying science, journalists and scientists them-
selves upheld aspects of this image well into the 1960s. Science was a
separate world of special practices and rituals, with an individualistic
epistemology, in which science was ultimately a matter, as Michael
Polanyi put it, of personal knowledge (1958). In this idealised image
of science, it was governed by merit. Funding, self-promotion, and
academic and scientific politics and conflict were neatly excised from
the image of the scientist. Science occasionally challenged our sense
of ourselves as humans, or our place in the universe, but for the most
part it was hidden from the public and appeared in popular science
magazines and boys’ fiction as technology.
Epilogue 323

Elements of this image have been gradually chipped away, however

incompletely, in the disciplines studying science. But scientists them-
selves, as well as their publics, have now progressed beyond chipping
away at the image into consciously transforming it: ‘opening’ science.
The sciences are being opened in many ways. The chapters of this
book begin to address this change. As in all large-scale social change,
it is difficult for the participants to understand: the old landmarks
remain, chalkboards can still be found and laboratories are more
impressive than ever, but the landscape itself has become strange.
Like the British landscape itself, the British science landscape is
imbued with meaning and ancestral meanings that lurk below the
surface, together with a few monsters. The issue of social class was
central to the Great Devonian controversy of the early nineteenth
century (Rudwick, 1985), which was itself the result of a novel form
of public science – survey geology sponsored by the state. By the end
of that century Karl Pearson was promoting a vision of modernity
shorn of religion, with scientists as the new priests and the state, run
by experts, as the new object of veneration (1888: 20, 130–131,
133–134). With it came a model for science education in which workers
were taught elementary science with the goal of impressing on them
the greatness of science and its authority. By the 1920s, fear of the
effects of science led to calls for a moratorium on new discoveries by
the Bishop of Ripon (Burroughs, 1927: 32). In the 1930s, under the
influence of Marxism, a vast body of popular science writing promoted
the idea that the full use of science was central to economic well-being,
and that it was being held back by backward capitalist elites working
through relations of production that had been made obsolete by the
forces of production of modern technology. This was called – the title
of one of the key texts of the era – The Frustration of Science (Hall,
1935), a concept endorsed by such major figures as Frederick Soddy
and John Desmond Bernal.
Where was the public in all this? It was present, surprisingly. The
geniuses of science were known to the public, discoveries were cel-
ebrated, and science education was initiated in Britain in the form of
working men’s institutes with lectures on elementary science, and
there were best-selling books, such as Mathematics for the Million
(Hogben, 1937) and the ABC of Relativity (Russell, 1925). There was
a lively interest in amateur science: radio clubs, for example, sent
324 Science and the politics of openness

small donations to support Jodrell Bank, the array of radiotelescopes

that was the first major achievement of post-war British science. And
this produced a particular inflection on the relation of science and
the public – scientists wanted support and deference, and also, especially
in the leftist science writing of the 1930s, claimed to have a fundamental
solidarity with the working class by ascribing scientific knowledge to
craftsmen and identifying scientists with the ‘workers’.
These writings, directed at the public, promoted a model of public
engagement of science that was not far removed from Pearson’s:
scientists were workers, but workers whose capacity for rationalising
production and economic life generally made them primus inter pares
in the future planned society, in which science itself would be planned
for the public benefit. The plan would be produced collectively by the
trade unions, representing the productive units of the plan, coordinated
at the top by science. Science itself was understood as technology, a
form of rational engineering that could be effectively applied to the
problems that had formerly been addressed by markets and politics.
The idea of planning was a fetish of the 1930s. It was opposed
by liberal scientists and economists, with the scientists calling for
the preservation of the autonomy of science and its freedom. They
also rejected the equation of science and technology. In both cases,
part of the justification was efficiency – ironically, an idea central
to Pearson – that made free markets and free science superior to
planned science. And they did not support the idea that science could
replace politics. But, in one of those dialectical moments that history
occasionally provides, this discussion was upended by a scientific,
technological and planned achievement that produced a radically new
problem on the status of science and its relation to the public: the
atomic bomb project.
The shock of the bomb led to a new sense of the responsibilities of
scientists for the consequences of science. The reaction was powerful:
scientists organised to assert themselves and sought ways to control the
nuclear menace. The anti-nuclear movement in science was paralleled by
a powerful social movement, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
This added a new element that simultaneously empowered scientists,
placed them in the public eye and demanded something new out of
them. But their reaction traded on the same image of science as the
font of authority, and the idea that this authority extended to politics,
Epilogue 325

especially to a domain of politics outside the planning paradigm:

international politics. The idea was still that scientists, not politicians,
should be in control.
This sense evolved in the face of political reality, and new hybrid
organisations were created, especially the Pugwash conferences devoted
to the eventual elimination of nuclear arms. This still asserted the
authority of science. On the website of the organisation we read that
‘The mission of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs
is to bring scientific insight and reason to bear’ (Pugwash Conferences
on Science and World Affairs, n.d). But it did so by ‘meetings and
projects that bring together scientists, experts, and policy makers’.
This may seem like a minor change, but it was nevertheless important.
The older social relations of the science movement, with its reliance
on the model of craft unions to organise scientific workers, owed
its inspiration to the guild socialism of the 1930s and to the idea of
exclusion. Pugwash, which had a highly active UK branch, was based
on a recognition that science was not the only voice that needed to
be heard in order for scientists to carry out their own responsibilities.
Nuclear weaponry was a novel issue with implications for the future
of humanity: a monster. It was an intellectual challenge and a com-
prehensive one: it challenged basic ideas of security and the meaning
of life, as well as the whole notion of warfare and national security.
It took a long time for central political institutions as well as their
intellectual coteries in the fields of international relations and security
studies to even grasp the issues. And the positions that ultimately
emerged were not especially friendly to scientists. The topic was so
large and complex that it generated counter-expertise, and a whole
panoply of actors – scientists speaking as citizens and sometimes
politicians, self-proclaimed spokespersons for humanity, social move-
ments, a bomb literature like the war literature of the past, and many
more. We now have more monsters and more people who have a
stake in science, together with opinions that diverge from those of
scientists and more organised movements and currents of thought.
From this point on one can discern two movements: on the one
hand, science, in the form of such things as evidence-based decision
making, risk analysis and regulatory science, appears in more and
more domains. On the other, the practitioners in these new domains
are compelled to deal with the people who already occupy them or
326 Science and the politics of openness

who have a stake in them and special knowledge about them: the
public, policymakers, and practitioners and participants in related
social movements or causes. The new landscape was produced by
these two directions of change. Science now consisted of much more
than laboratories and chalkboards, but there was no guide to this new
landscape; its meanings had to be constructed on the fly.
The merit of detailed case studies is that they tell us something
new. They tell us where old templates and old expectations are wrong,
and complicate the attempt to reduce novel phenomena to a simple
formula. In the case studies in this volume we find many complications.
In the first part of this book, on transparency and openness, we
can begin to see the larger outlines of the problem. Openness and
transparency are ideas that conceal many different and potentially
conflicting agendas, even agendas that are entirely opposed, such as
the use of the concept to enable the powerful to engage in surveillance
as well as to empower the disempowered by giving them access to the
knowledge and practices of the powerful in order to monitor them.
From the point of view of democracy, this means that transparency
can cut in many different ways to diminish the privacy and therefore
autonomy of subjects as well as those of the powerful, who use secrecy
as a weapon (see Worthy and Hazell, 2013). Open access is an example
of the complexities of the consequences of actual policies, as Stephen
Curry shows. The simple motivation is to get the taxpayers access to
the science they have paid for, and perhaps more quickly than can be
done by the traditional journal model of publication. But one startling
effect, as he points out, is that the distinctions between real science
and something less real are being radically undermined by the rise
of rapid response blogging, which blurs the line between academic
criticism controlled by the journal system and sheer opinion. He gives
the example of a blog response to the questionable claim by NASA to
have found microbes on Mars, to which NASA declined to respond.
But recent events have shown this blurring to be more pervasive.
There is the long-running (and much despised by scientists) practice
of blogs criticising the claims of climate science, together with the
example of ‘methodological terrorism’ practised by critics of the work
of Princeton psychologist Susan Fiske in blogs, and not through private
channels or the journal system (Association for Psychological Science,
2016; Letzter, 2016; Singal, 2016). Non-response to criticism is no
longer an option, if one’s public reputation matters.
Epilogue 327

Yet there can be strong motivations for transparency even where

there are fundamental conflicts. Carmen McLeod shows, in her discus-
sion of the issue of research involving laboratory animals, how openness
initiatives in various countries attempted, with partial success, to
overcome the distrust of animal-rights activists. As she notes, this is
one of the longest running and most intense of all conflicts between
science and society, marked by anti-vivisectionist legislation and
occasional violence. Here, an organised effort by scientists to open
up research has been made, with the aim of reducing opposition and
increasing public trust. But cherry-picked information and the kinds
of rationalistic utilitarian arguments presented with this information
may, as she shows, have no effect on trust itself. Evidence-based policy
is one of the mechanisms by which so-called expert practices suspected
of arbitrariness can be opened up to scrutiny in contested spheres.
But what is evidence? As Roda Madziva and Vivien Lowndes show,
in the case of an immigration officer’s determinations of persecution,
the evidence is itself subject to systemic biases and errors, leading to
new kinds of contestation.
In each of these cases, transparency is a double-edged sword. It is
assumed that transparency places everyone at the same level. But, in
part because of the different viewpoints of those whose activities are
being made transparent and of those who are assessing the activities,
the result is often the opposite: more contention and less trust. These
are, however, cases of hands-off opening up and transparency, without
actual engagement, geared more to the relations of science with an
abstract public, such as the simple making of scientific publications
available through open access. A new dimension is introduced with
the attempt to deal with the same kinds of issues through the self-
conscious creation of new, hybrid, organisational forms.
Future Earth is a project of exactly this kind: an attempt to bring
together different forms of sustainability knowledge and create both
a new kind of science and a new social contract between science and
society. As Eleanor Hadley Kershaw, in the first chapter of the second
part of the book, devoted to responsibility and openness, shows, this
project is, however, plagued by ambiguities resulting from its ambition.
The extent to which it can be regulated and made coherent and the
openness to diversity required by its remit are particularly ambiguous.
This points to a problem that becomes apparent in the next part of
the book, on expertise: whether it is possible to create such a new
328 Science and the politics of openness

science with a new relation to society without the limitations of normal

disciplinary knowledge. She suggests that perhaps the tensions and
ambiguities are a virtue that will help sustain the project.
Alison Mohr describes a revealing example of another organisational
innovation: a project to provide for a transition from traditional energy
sources to low-carbon forms of energy in the global South. The SONG
project was an attempt to co-design off-grid systems in Bangladesh
and Kenya. It was transdisciplinary and offered an active role for social
scientists. The framework, nevertheless, was top down. What emerged
were unanticipated conflicts over justice and differing aspirations for
the future between generations and genders, in a setting in which
community inclusion was required. Here, the unexpected conflicts
over issues of justice worked to undermine the project itself.
These cases raise a fundamental question about monstrousness, and
the monstrousness of the unsolved and unresolved, which animates
these conflicts. As Stevienna de Saille and Paul Martin note, the
anthropologist Martijn Smits, writing on novel technologies, says that
monsters embody ‘characteristics that make them both horrifying and
fascinating at the same time’ (p. 149). This produces simultaneous fear
and attraction that can never be reconciled. They are thus especially
mythogenic, which becomes apparent in the controversies over
genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and the earlier controversy
over recombinant DNA and the use of synthetically modified algae
as a source of oil to replace palm oil by a natural food company
named Ecover. In these cases, engaging the public was not enough:
the imaginaries constructed around the products, which were fed
by larger social imaginaries, prevented these monsters from being
tamed. And the idea of responsible innovation itself may be an attempt
to resolve irreducible contradictions intrinsic to the innovations
themselves.
One apparent solution to the problem of resistance to innovations is
public inclusion in decision-making processes themselves. In the next
part, entitled Expertise, Sarah Hartley and Adam Kokotovich deal with
an example of this: the formal requirements for public involvement in
risk assessment; that is, opening up the risk-assessment process itself.
These are not often met in practice. But why? As the authors show,
in the case of the European Food Safety Authority, the bureaucratic
division of labour purports to separate value issues from science
Epilogue 329

and allocate distinct roles for the public and science. But this means
that the implicit value judgements that are part of the science are
excluded from public control and scrutiny. And the chapter points
to another important phenomenon. Risk assessment itself is a case in
which a bridge discipline is created that is not purely scientific and
becomes ‘disciplinary’ in character, with the effect of undermining
its openness to the public, despite the formal machinery provided of
public involvement.
Judith Tsouvalis’s study of ash dieback shows the complexity of the
entanglement of science with regulatory and legal regimes, and the
way in which these regulatory regimes can be backward looking. This
makes it difficult for novel scientific results to have an effect. But the
study points to a result similar to that found by Hartley and Kokotovich.
Particular bureaucratic and academic specialties with quasi-scientific
status, such as ‘biosecurity’, figure in this case, and these hybrid fields
mediate between the more traditional science of plant pathology and
an interested public. On the one hand, this novel discipline empowers
the public by giving it someone to represent it and its interests. But
it does so in ways that disempower the public by narrowing the issues
into technical ones and excluding the public’s own voices.
The issues we have encountered so far have typically involved
conflicts between broader notions of participation and top-down
models of public understanding of science, which involve the acceptance
of the special authority of science. There is also a tropism toward
disciplinarisation. The same tropism is evident in the development
of the novel discipline of climate science. But climate science from
the start had a policy objective and sought to influence public policy.
It became spectacularly successful in this respect. But how? The film
An Inconvenient Truth (AIT) by Al Gore (Guggenheim, 2006) represents
an instructive case. Gore spoke both to, and on behalf of climate
science, and for the people to the politicians. But the Gore story
presents even more ambiguities. Gore created himself as a new type,
a prophet–politician–activist–explainer of science, and the mediatisation
of global warming shows new aspects of the relation between the
public and science. The public needs, as Gore understood, to be created
– to be formed, enlightened and energised as a force. And he succeeded
by creating a phrase, ‘an inconvenient truth’, which, as Warren Pearce
and Brigitte Nerlich explain, became instantly recognisable and part
330 Science and the politics of openness

of the language. But Gore’s efforts also produced a counter-politics

and a scientific counterpublic, made possible by the exaggerations
that made AIT so successful.
Gore’s movie is a solution to the problem of including the public.
We can think of these cases as failed or only partially successful attempts
at hybridisation and openness, but none of them were self-conscious
attempts to open science or create a new relation between science
and the public. Instead they were attempts to achieve goals or values
of different kinds, from different perspectives and sources of knowledge,
but in concert with one another, and in doing so they required the
invention of particular forms, such as new discipline-like bodies of
publicly valuable knowledge, or new templates that could be used to
mobilise public sentiment. This differs from a self-conscious pursuit
of novel forms of hybridity in the name of openness as a value, or
out of a desire to bring science and the public together under a novel,
organised intellectual structure.
But what is the public? Sujatha Raman, Pru Hobson-West, Mimi
E. Lam and Kate Millar approach this problem through the issue of
minority perspectives. As they note, discussions of the pluralisation
of the public into unruly and competing perspectives has led to a
neglect of the processes by which the public interest is itself constructed.
In the case of animal research in the UK, where this is an especially
salient issue, the construction involves opinion polls that serve to
sideline protesters. The example of Canadian fisheries policy and the
Canadian Government’s legally adjudicated conflicts with First Nations’
interests and conceptions shows how these minority viewpoints are
marginalised, but also how they might be inserted into broader discus-
sions of the public good.
What if science itself is the monster? This is the problem posed by
the oldest of these conflicts, the conflict between religion and science,
explored in the last part of the book, devoted to faith. In the two final
chapters the theme is taken up by Fern Elsdon-Baker and by David
Kirby and Amy Chambers, who make an interesting point about the
ways that this conflict has been both managed and inflated. Elsdon-
Baker discusses the construction of creationism as an alien doctrine
threatening scientific progress and social progress. But as she shows,
few people adhere to the full menu of the creationist doctrine, and
ethical concerns over the doctrines of eugenics and practices of forced
Epilogue 331

sterilisation have historically fuelled opposition to a Darwinian world

view. The inflated bogey of creationism is a monster that obscures
these and other moral concerns. Kirby and Chambers reveal a history
in which the Catholic Church in the USA endeavoured to influence
the image of science through the mechanisms of quasi-voluntary
censorship agreed to by Hollywood. Its concerns were various, but
many of them involved the idea that science could replace God or
lead to a future without God. It was the opposition of religion to
science itself that especially perturbed it: the Church sought instead
a kind of accommodation in which the limits of science were acknowl-
edged and a place for religion retained. These chapters show that the
binary oppositions between science, which Elsdon-Baker describes
as a ‘nebulous object’, and its various ‘others’ are unstable and constantly
being constructed and reconstructed. This is a lesson of the other
chapters as well. Once we look closely at such things as the public,
they, too, fragment and disappear.
When Hadley Kershaw alludes in her title to the Leviathan, the
Hobbesian monster created by our actions in the form of a mysterious
act of collective willing, it is a reminder that science is not the only
creator of monsters. The state, with its inhuman power, the ‘mortal
God’, as Hobbes put it, is also is one of those things that has ‘charac-
teristics that make them horrible and fascinating at the same time’.
Science routinely produces such results: whether it is the horrors of
the treatment of laboratory animals or the idea that we have inadvert-
ently, through our normal daily actions, produced the collective
catastrophe of anthropogenic global warming, science is a special and
prolific source of monsters. Openness and transparency are the sup-
posed cure for this sense of the monstrous: they make science less
alien. We can tame these monsters by turning them into ordinary
objects of expert knowledge; for example, by making risk into the
sort of thing that can be subjected to a bureaucratic regime, with a
hybrid discipline of risk assessment and a special provision for public
input. Or we can mediate the oppositions that give rise to the monsters
and which the monsters in their dual nature embody by constructing
and reconstructing them, or by creating social and epistemic move-
ments, such as Future Earth, in which the oppositions become prosaic
organisational problems. But in the end these devices create new
monsters that are as alien as the old ones.
332 Science and the politics of openness

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Index

accountability 8, 23, 24, 36, 39, 57, 69, Britain 5, 11–13, 15, 16, 26, 45, 46,
110, 111, 121, 122, 181, 234, 236 56, 61, 67, 80, 90, 102, 195–198,
animal research 8, 30, 43, 55–58, 200, 201, 230, 235, 236, 239, 241,
60–66, 68–70, 170, 174, 233, 242, 245, 253, 260, 265, 278, 289,
238–242, 244, 330 305, 306, 323, 324
animal rights 56, 58–60, 65, Bush, George W. 174, 218, 220
239–241, 246, 327 business 41, 45, 61, 112, 122, 148,
anti-evolution 259, 261–263, 267, 155, 239, 311
269–271, 273
anti-science 152, 153, 255, 269, 273, Cameron, David 12, 79
293 capitalism 98, 315, 317, 323
Assange, Julian 25 censorship 10, 257, 279–289, 293,
asylum 8, 30, 75–78, 80 296–297, 331
authority 3, 43, 47, 88, 117, 177, centralisation 9, 99, 108, 113, 118,
187, 235, 254, 282, 315, 323–325, 123, 135
328, 329 China 137, 305
automation 1 Christianity 16, 30, 77, 78, 80, 256,
257, 279, 280, 287, 288, 290–297
bacteria 43, 154, 156 citizen-science 45–47, 102
Bentham, Jeremy 25, 28, 55 climate change 6, 172, 212–215,
biosecurity 170, 171, 195, 198–202, 217, 219, 222, 223
205–208, 329 Climategate 2, 6
Blair, Tony 173, 230–233, 235, 236, climate justice 140
238, 240, 241, 245–246 climate science 212, 213, 215, 216,
blasphemy 78, 85, 86, 284, 285, 293 218, 220, 222, 223
bodies 23, 26–28, 59, 80, 100, 107, Clinton, Hillary 12, 13
133, 149, 176, 178, 180, 198, 234, confidentiality 8, 25, 30
257, 266, 273, 283, 304, 310, 311, Congress (US) 158, 218, 220
323, 330 consensus 14, 15, 23, 99, 116, 123,
Bok, Sissela 23, 25, 28 214, 304
Brexit 1, 11–13, 15, 16, 304 consent 213, 270
334 Index

conservatives 12, 16–17, 173, 221, economists 1, 35, 203, 324

253, 256, 292, 293, 311 ecosystem 112, 200, 242–244, 310
constituencies 17, 40, 172, 175 EFSA (European Food Standards
counterpublic 213, 216, 220, 221, Agency) 157, 177, 185–188, 190
238, 241, 330 energy 1, 7, 9, 42, 98, 131–145, 150,
counter-representation 173, 213 151, 159, 160, 328
creationism 10, 16, 17, 253–267, energy transitions 101, 131–133,
270–273, 292, 330, 331 137, 143
credibility 15, 24, 82, 85, 88, 182, enlightenment 170
190, 221, 273 epidemics 172, 199–201, 207–208
critique 38, 43, 118, 221, 234, 239, epistemology 202, 273, 322
255 ethics 6, 28, 29, 62, 68, 296
cybercrime 1 ethnography 16, 253, 255
cyborg 107 eugenics 257, 270–272, 281–283,
296, 330
deliberation 116, 121, 171, 183 evangelical 16, 83, 85
deliberative 121, 175, 184 evidence 2, 4, 6, 8, 15, 27, 30, 69,
democracy 10, 17–18, 23, 25, 98, 75–77, 79, 81–85, 87–90, 97, 116,
169, 188, 202, 233, 306, 313, 314, 176, 177, 179, 184, 188, 203, 205,
316, 317, 326 208, 212, 220, 223, 237, 244, 269,
Democrat 212, 223 271, 274, 304, 307, 325, 327
democratisation 4, 114, 123, 208, evolution 10, 16, 253–257, 259–267,
308 269–274, 285, 286, 292–294, 296
Dewey, John 173, 213–216, 220, evolutionists 261, 265
222, 223, 307, 312–318 experimentation 27, 55, 61, 67, 133,
dialogue 49, 64, 66, 69, 99, 116, 187, 144, 240, 290
195, 205, 235, 238, 284, 290, 314 experiments 25, 27, 28, 30, 44,
digital 2, 6, 35, 42, 98, 101 55–57, 61, 65–67, 113, 124, 136,
digitalisation 1 137, 145, 169, 230, 237, 238,
dinosaurs 292, 293 285
direct action 58 experts 8, 10, 75, 82, 87–89,
disciplines 16, 36, 45, 49, 100, 102, 169–171, 175, 178, 181, 183, 184,
107, 108, 112, 121, 183, 189, 260, 187, 189, 195, 198, 202, 204, 205,
322, 323, 329, 331 212–213, 215, 218, 221, 222, 260,
disclosures 26, 29, 61 313, 317, 327, 331
discourse 23, 28, 57, 64, 78, 79, 89, expertise 1, 3, 5–7, 9, 10, 17–18, 76,
90, 104, 178, 201, 202, 241, 246, 82, 84, 99, 102, 121, 141, 167,
259, 264, 265, 267, 268, 270, 271, 169, 170, 172, 174, 180, 189–191,
273, 304 198, 212–216, 218, 220, 222–224,
dissemination 35, 99, 102, 120, 214, 234, 246, 258, 313, 317, 327, 328
216, 280, 292, 293, 296
dissent 2, 150, 154, 202, 213, 303 faith 3, 8, 10, 75–79, 82–84, 86, 87,
diversity 9, 76, 78, 79, 84, 87, 90–91, 251, 253, 254, 258, 260,
89–90, 99–101, 113, 115, 123, 265, 280, 287, 290, 294, 295,
125, 136, 237, 255, 256, 327 306, 330
fake asylum claimants 85, 87
Ebola 41, 42 ‘fake news’ 6
economics 1, 232, 234, 314 Faust 25
Index 335

fear 4, 14, 38, 40, 55, 58, 66, 68, 81, Hobbes, Thomas 107, 331
82, 85, 86, 90, 104, 108, 149–154, Hollywood 46, 153, 280, 286, 288,
157, 159, 160, 202, 273, 286, 323, 291, 292, 295, 331
328 humanism 273
filmmakers 10, 279, 285–290, 292, humanities 14, 38, 39, 110, 112,
294–296 208, 309
Frankenstein 107, 150, 152, 153, Huntington Life Sciences 58
158, 160, 161, 278, 284
freedom 24, 26, 38, 39, 118, 122, identity 44, 78–82, 88–90, 111, 113,
160, 289, 305, 324 116, 119, 120, 172, 174, 175, 196,
funders 30, 36, 37, 39, 41, 42, 63, 202, 260, 262, 263, 266, 268, 269,
67, 99, 111, 112, 116, 239, 240 273
funding 11, 13–16, 37, 41, 48, 67, ideology 75, 307, 315, 316
101, 109, 113, 149, 198, 303–305, ignorance 30, 41, 158, 159, 181
307, 309, 311, 322 immigration 8, 15, 75–82, 87–90,
327
Gallup 265, 266 inclusion 173, 232, 233, 238, 240,
Galton, Francis 270, 271 242, 282, 317, 328
gender 107, 139, 142, 143, 145, 268, income 132, 139, 144, 145, 308,
269, 272, 328 309
Genesis 259 inequality 98, 102, 104, 122, 136,
genetics 2, 9, 43, 46, 150, 154, 156, 138, 139, 141, 143, 145, 307–309,
157, 179, 186, 187, 208, 222, 230, 311, 312
270, 272, 312, 328 intelligence 6, 16, 206, 264, 272
globalisation 201, 304 internet 35, 42, 44–46, 49, 98, 292
global North 131, 136, 137, 144 interpretation 23, 76, 77, 82, 100,
global South 137, 144, 145 102–104, 110, 115, 123, 184, 237,
God 151, 153, 253–255, 263, 266, 257, 284, 287, 296
267, 278, 284, 289, 331 Irwin, Alan 7, 103, 110, 124, 176
Gove, Michael 305 Islam 79, 86, 89, 90, 265, 272
governance 7, 36, 57, 61, 67, Islamophobia 80, 90, 272
108–111, 119, 121, 135, 141, 143, Israel 293
145, 149, 162, 170, 176–178, 180,
182–186, 188, 190–191, 201, 206, Jasanoff, Sheila 4, 7, 55, 57, 110,
233, 235, 236, 245, 260, 303, 309 113, 125, 149, 178, 216, 217, 232,
234, 237, 246
Habermas, Jürgen 5 journalism 1, 322
Haida Nation 174, 238, 241–244, journalists 4, 6, 38, 49, 154, 246,
246–247 322
half-animal 69 Jurassic Park 291–293
Haraway, Donna 3, 4, 107, 230, 238, justice 7–9, 100, 101, 131–134,
241 137–141, 143–145, 258, 305, 306
HEFCE 37, 38 328
hegemony 173, 214–216, 221 justification 15, 36, 57 174, 285,
herring 242–244 303, 307, 324
hierarchy 23, 87, 145, 254, 316
Hitchcock, Alfred 287 Kansas 16–18
HIV 42, 270 Kubrick, Stanley 289
336 Index

Latour, Bruno 107, 152, 160, 195, non-belief 263

202 non-Christians 91
laypeople 5 non-scientists 253, 254
legitimacy 3, 10, 26, 75, 141, 149, norms 24, 39, 41, 42, 103, 124, 222,
169, 170, 174, 177, 190 241
leviathans 107, 108, 113, 114, 116, nostalgia 217
117, 119, 123, 331
liberalism 315 Obama, Barack 174
open access 7, 8, 35–42, 44, 46–48
markets 11, 36, 133, 148, 303, 307, open science 39, 49, 55, 66, 99–101
309, 312, 324 open-source 101, 171, 198
May, Theresa 11, 12, 16, 25, 306
medical 26, 42, 45, 46, 61–63, 67, Panama 26
239–241, 246, 280–283, 295 paradigm 207, 272, 325
migrants 15, 77, 80, 270, 306 peer-review 37, 40, 122, 223
migration 3, 78, 79 pluralism 100, 306
military 157, 202 plurality 43, 44, 76, 84, 90, 116,
Mill, J. S. 169 117, 118, 121, 122, 125, 135
mistrust 57, 69 Polanyi, Karl 322
moderates 16 polarisation 160, 162, 222, 305, 309
moderation 305 policies 17, 26, 28, 35, 37, 38, 79,
modernisation 24 98, 185, 187, 231, 245, 272, 281,
modernism 149 283, 286, 303, 304, 309, 312, 326
modernity 152, 153, 323 policymakers 2, 5, 6, 14, 75, 76,
monsters 2–4, 7, 9, 55, 69, 75, 77, 112, 148, 189, 237, 238, 307, 312,
85, 90, 103, 104, 113, 131, 326
148–155, 157–162, 207, 212, 216, policymaking 2, 3, 5, 7, 75, 176,
223, 230, 256, 257, 259, 278, 279, 195, 199, 200, 202, 204, 208, 230,
284, 322, 323, 325, 328, 330 239
monstrare 3 politicians 6, 24, 25, 27, 29, 45, 173,
Monstropolis 150, 160 212, 218, 221, 325, 329
morality 257, 278, 279, 281–283, politicisation 2
287, 289 pollution 45, 47, 140
Muslim 15, 78–81, 84–87, 89–90, populism 1, 10, 11, 169, 175,
93, 272 303–307, 311, 312
myth 152, 239 privacy 8, 25, 29, 30, 326
mythogenic 328 privatisation 5, 6, 307, 311
mythology 25 Protestants 151, 254, 256, 258, 279,
287, 290
NASA 30, 43, 44, 326 protests 58, 59, 156, 281, 293
nativism 13, 17, 306 psychiatry 257, 286, 287, 296
neo-liberalism 3, 11, 24, 201, 208, public attitudes 266
303–305, 307, 309–311, 313 public engagement 190, 238, 260
networks 79, 108, 124, 125, 136, public interest 2, 4, 10, 27–28, 37,
174, 234, 240, 242 40, 42, 44, 158, 170, 172–175,
neurotechnology 42 230–246, 312, 315, 330
non-academic 109, 110, 113, 121, publicity 25, 55, 71, 169, 170, 238
310 publicness 2, 6
Index 337

public opinion 239 scientisation 4

publics 3–6, 8–11, 16–17, 45, 49, Sci-Hub 42
62, 69, 101, 103, 104, 159, 170, scrutiny 2, 4, 23, 90, 97, 170, 174,
172, 173, 176–178, 181, 195, 197, 178, 181, 186, 188, 195, 199, 202,
230–234, 236–240, 245–246, 254, 214, 216, 233, 236, 245, 307, 327,
255, 257, 258, 260, 263–265, 270, 329
274, 304, 307, 314, 316, 317, 322, secrecy 8, 25, 26, 28, 55–57, 326
323 secularisation 268, 272
public space 259, 264, 267 secularism 273
security 2, 8, 15, 25, 28–30, 56, 150,
rational 24, 27, 29, 75, 76, 124, 160, 170, 201, 202, 325
259, 296, 324 sharing 2, 36, 65, 66, 100, 171, 221,
rationalising 324 254
rationalistic 327 Snowden, Edward 26, 28, 29
RCUK (Research Councils UK) 37, socialisation 25
40 social movement 236
reductionism 117, 259, 261, 271, 274 social science 57, 121, 144, 263,
REF (research excellence 268, 280
framework) 37–39, 198 solar energy 132, 139–140, 142
referendum 11–13, 17, 304, 311 syphilis 281, 285
regulations 4, 7, 25, 26, 57, 58, 148,
161, 185, 201, 206 taboos 25
regulators 170, 171, 315 tax 17, 26, 36
relativism 268 taxonomy 196
relativity 323 taxpayers 35, 45, 304, 326
representation 172–174, 212–216, teaching 6, 13, 16, 86, 198, 265, 304
218, 220–223, 238, 259 technocracy 10, 134, 171, 175, 204
representatives 36, 156, 172, 303 ‘technocratisation’ 5
reproducibility 15 technologies 1–3, 6, 7, 9, 57, 107,
Republicans (US) 11–13, 15–17, 306 137, 142, 148, 152, 153, 161, 176,
rhetoric 75, 76, 79, 169, 272, 312 177, 202, 208, 219, 239, 281, 282,
rights 30, 35, 36, 39, 42, 45, 56, 59, 328
60, 78, 121, 174, 241–243, 246, terrorism 1, 62, 79, 80, 240, 326
308, 309 Thévenot, Laurent 307
risk 7, 9, 10, 13, 15, 81, 83, 100, transdisciplinarity 108–110, 120, 124
104, 140, 154, 155, 161, 170, 171, transparency 2–4, 6–8, 15, 21,
176–191, 197, 201–204, 206–208, 23–29, 36, 43, 44, 56–58, 60–62,
265, 307, 325, 328, 329, 331 64–69, 75–77, 79, 88, 90, 97, 98,
rituals 291, 322 102, 169, 186, 190, 235, 236, 258,
RRI (Responsible Research and 322, 326, 327, 331
Innovation) 7, 36, 43, 48, 103, Trump, Donald 6, 11–17, 230, 304
104, 109, 149, 159 trust 2, 5, 23, 24, 40, 42–44, 55–58,
rules 25, 40, 61, 122, 123, 136, 187, 61, 62, 66–69, 75–76, 80, 90, 148,
197, 283, 311 158, 160, 161, 174, 195, 199, 223,
235, 241, 270, 273, 317, 327
science–society 1, 55, 56, 58, 64, 66, truth 6, 10, 49, 85, 172, 212–214,
109, 110, 113, 230, 232, 233, 236, 219, 221, 263, 273, 304, 322, 329
245 truthfulness 82
338 Index

UNHCR (United Nations High Whitehead, A. N. 61

Commissioner for Refugees ) 78, WikiLeaks 26, 28, 29, 102
81, 82, 88, 93 Willetts, David 35
universities 5, 6, 13, 35, 36, 59, 62, women 13, 77, 98, 140, 142, 151,
63, 67, 198, 304–307, 311 280, 283
Wynne, Brian 5, 55, 109, 113, 125,
values 69, 170, 171, 178–180, 183, 149, 154, 166, 176, 180, 186, 232,
184, 188, 190, 268 233, 243
violence 56, 58–60, 139, 153, 240,
288, 291, 327 Zika 2, 41, 42
vivisection 56, 67 zombies 153
Zooniverse 47
welfare 56, 64, 311
whistleblowing 26, 28