In the fall of 1987, I was part of a group that examined the degree to which our elected representatives comprehend science. Looking at the thirty-eight Cabinet ministers of the Canadian federal government, we found that of the thirty-two who could be assigned a profession outside politics, twelve were from business, ten from law, three from farming, and two from engineering. Thus, almost 70 percent of those thirty-two were from business or law, perhaps explaining why governments are so preoccupied with economic and jurisdictional issues. Why such a disproportionate representation from those two areas? I think it's because more of the practitioners in these fields can afford or are funded well enough to run for office and risk the enormous costs if they lose.
In a related study in 1987, fifty members of Parliament were administered a very simple test of their comprehension of scientific terms and concepts. Those with backgrounds in business and law scored absolutely rock-bottom. Yet these people will have to make informed decisions about climate change, alternative sources of energy, farmed versus wild salmon, intelligent machines, space research, space missile defence shields, biotechnology, stem cells, cloning, and other issues that require at least a basic grounding in science. No amount of simplification by technical staff will overcome the barrier of scientific illiteracy.
So decisions will end up being made for political reasons. How scientifically literate do we believe U.S. president George W. Bush is apropos of space-based missile defenses, teaching of intelligent design in science courses, foreign aid for HIV/AIDS, or responses to avian flu? Do we believe Australian prime minister John Howard understands the science behind global warming as he opposes the Kyoto Protocol?
Given the degree of scientific illiteracy among politicians, it's not surprising that we can't reach informed, rational decisions on these issues. I have spent a lot of time trying to bring new ministers up to speed when they are appointed, but they get moved around, and we have to start from scratch when a new person is put in the job. Only when scientific literacy is a central part of our education and culture will we have the possibility of a government that can make fully informed political decisions.
IN THE EARLY HISTORY of the human species, the invention of a spear, bow and arrow, needle, pottery vessel, metal implement, and domestication of plants and animals ushered in monumental changes that often reverberated for centuries and transformed individual lives and social arrangements, rendering the old ways extinct. Today multiple technological changes occur at an ever-accelerating rate, thereby ensuring that the world I knew as a boy is no more.
In my childhood, I wasn't permitted to go to movies at all or public swimming pools in the summer because my parents worried that I might catch polio, a viral disease the Sabin and Salk vaccines later pushed into obscurity. Each year around the world, hundreds of thousands of people suffered agonizing deaths or horrible scars from the now-eradicated disease of smallpox. The world I grew up in lacked jet planes, oral contraceptives, heart transplants, transoceanic phone calls, CDs, VCRs, plastics, photocopying machines, genetic engineering, and so much more.
Not only does each innovation alter the way we do things, many may change the very definition of what it is to be human. We love technology because we design it to do specific things for us, but we seldom reflect on the consequences or have any inkling of what the long-term repercussions might be. Thus, we discovered biomagnification of pesticides, the effects of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCS) on the ozone layer, and radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons only after the technologies had been created and used. Consider the impact of the automobile: it liberated us from being local creatures, killed tens of millions of us, facilitated urban sprawl, caused massive loss of land under roads, created global pollution, and accelerated the depletion of resources. Television has had a corrosive effect on communities and social mores and has led to commercials and consumerism and the general dumbing down of issues and thought processes. Technology has huge costs.
When I began my career as a scientist, we took pride in exploring basic ideas of the structure of matter, the origin of the cosmos, or the structure and function of genes without having to justify the expansion of human knowledge. Medical genetics was considered intellectually inferior to the kind of work we carried out with fruit flies.
In 1972, a special Canadian Senate committee under Maurice Lamontagne had examined the role science plays in society and concluded there was a need to tie research more directly to society's needs. “Mission-oriented” work was to be encouraged, presaging the enormous pressure that would be put on scientists to make their work economically useful. Scientists are led, by necessity, by the priorities underlying the granting procedure. If good basic science is all that is required to receive a grant, then scientists will be much more honest about what they are doing. But when there is pressure to find a cure for cancer, for example, then scientists engage in a game that ultimately undermines science by creating a false impression of what science is.
Why do we support science? Former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau seemed to feel science is a frill we support when times are good. I couldn't disagree more. We support science because it is a part of what it means to be civilized, pushing back the curtains of ignorance by revealing bits and pieces of nature's secrets. But more and more, we are under a demand that science deliver practical uses. This is a dangerous requirement, because it imposes an urgency that can lead to shortcuts, unwarranted claims, and deception.
Canadian scientists make up a very small proportion of the total number of scientists around the world. Our total grant money is minuscule compared with the U.S. total, and globally, it is even less. If we assume the quality of science is about the same everywhere, then on average perhaps 2 percent of important discoveries will be made in Canada. Thus, the probability that some fundamental “breakthrough” (how I hate that misused and overused word) will be made here is very small, and one might suppose that Trudeau was right — we should simply parasitize the world's literature and focus on rapid capitalization of new ideas.
But that is not how science works or how it leads to applications. The really exciting creative moments are in conversation with leading scientists at conferences and on visits, or in closed meetings where a handful of the elite in a field gather to bat around ideas that are still in the embryonic phase and not available in publications. Such meetings are exciting, creative, and exclusive, open only to the top people. That's why we support the members of our small but top-notch Canadian scientific community — they are the price of a front-row seat at the action. Without them, we aren't plugged in to the cutting-edge work going on around the world.