Chief Scientific Advisers: S&T Committee Report

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Grand Committee

[Viscount Hanworth]

As there can now be no doubt, our politicians and civil servants have an uneasy relationship with scientists and technologists, exemplified by the circumstances of the departmental chief scientific advisers and the roles that they play.

If you look elsewhere in Europe, you will be hard put to find persons who are playing comparable roles. You will not find the counterparts of our chief scientific advisers either in France or in Germany. It is interesting to consider the reasons for their absence there and for their presence here.

There are cultural and historical circumstances that explain the roles of the scientific advisers in the UK that I shall touch on later. In France and Germany, their counterparts are absent for the reason that their civil services are already permeated by scientists and technologists, which implies that there is no need to appoint them to a special role.

Many of the civil servants in France have been educated in les grandes écoles. These establishments fall outside the main framework of the French university system and have traditionally produced many, if not most, of France’s high-ranking civil servants, politicians and executives, as well as many scientists. We tend to date the inception of les grandes écoles from the years following the French Revolution and to attribute them to a Napoleonic initiative. In fact, some of the better known ones, including les Ecoles des Mines and l’Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées, predate the French revolution.

In Germany, a high status is accorded to scientists and engineers, who are well represented in the civil and diplomatic services. The current German ambassador to Britain, for example, is an academic physicist.

In a common perception, the role of scientific advisers in UK government is to represent the scientific point of view. To persons trained in science, this must seem to be a curious requirement which mistakes the fundamental nature of science. Science is not a systematised set of opinions; instead, it is a discourse.

Admittedly, the discourse depends greatly on codified knowledge; and scientists can be arrogant and dismissive of arguments that pay no respect to such knowledge. However, in the main, arrogant opinionation is not the hallmark of science or a common personal characteristic of scientists. If science does encourage any particular traits of personality, surely these are a diffident nature and a tentative opinionation. Such personal characteristics are the very opposites of those that the report we are considering has identified as the necessary qualities of a chief scientific adviser. For this, there are good reasons.

However, it is probably misleading to talk in general of the personal characteristics of scientists or, indeed, to talk of the scientific ethic as if individual scientists necessarily embodied it. The greatest virtues of science are not intrinsic qualities that are inherent in the individual scientists; instead, they are the extrinsic qualities that characterise the realms of scientific discourse. Aberrant opinions and false conclusions, which abound in science, tend to be eliminated in a ruthless manner in the process of scientific debate. This is another feature that is barely recognised or is generally misunderstood in the common perception.

A difference of opinion among scientists is commonly perceived to be a symptom of scientific failure. On occasion, when differences arise, the right-wing press, which is largely inimical to science and to scientists, can be vengeful in its invective. Such invective accompanied the dismissal in 2009 by the Minister of Health of his chief scientific adviser, Professor Nutt, for making observations that were contrary to his own fixed ideas. Professor Nutt had ventured the opinion that cannabis is less harmful to those who smoke it than would be their likely consumption of tobacco and alcohol. He suggested that it should therefore be classified not as a class B drug, in common with alcohol and tobacco, but as a class C drug of a lesser potential harm. The contrast between this mild opinion and the fierce invective to which it gave rise was remarkable. Professor Nutt received the support of many of the chief scientific advisers, some of whom resigned in sympathy on the occasion of his dismissal. This episode highlighted the hazards of the job and illustrated how different the political environment is from the normal scientific environment. It also emphasised that considerable strength of character is often required in the role.

Some persons of remarkable strength of character have filled the role of a chief scientific adviser in the past. The formal arrangements that prevail today date from 1964, at the beginning of the Government of Harold Wilson, and the first person to fill the post was Solly Zuckerman. However, there had been precedents, among which the careers of Churchill’s wartime advisers were perhaps the most influential. The personalities of Henry Tizard and Frederick Lindemann impacted heavily. Lindemann, who became Viscount Cherwell, was—according to a received opinion that has been strongly challenged today—an able scientist with a wide range of competence. He tended to derive firm and inflexible opinions. In the main, valuable services were rendered but sometimes his opinions were decidedly haywire. This created difficulties for his successors and was responsible, in large measure, for the cautious and resistant approach that has often characterised the reactions of senior civil servants to scientific advice. The expectation that the Government Chief Scientific Adviser should be able to give informed opinions on a wide range of matters is also a legacy of Lindemann. To meet this requirement, the chief scientific adviser needs far more support in terms of staff and resources than is currently available. This is a need that the report has clearly identified.

The effect of Harold Wilson’s exaltation of the roles of science and technology has been widely misconstrued. A conventional interpretation is that, despite his commitment to “white heat” technology, his intended scientific revolution came to nothing because of the resistance of the established powers. In fact, the Governments of Harold Wilson were committed to the tasks of curtailing the nation’s expenditure on military and civil aviation, of resisting the ambitions of Britain’s nuclear scientists and of holding many other great technological endeavours in check. Many people would maintain that this was a necessary endeavour. However, its pursuit had an influential effect on the attitudes of the Civil Service to expensive technological projects.

It is precisely such ill effects that the recommendations of the report are designed to counteract, by advocating that the roles of the scientific advisers should be enhanced and that the resources available to them should be increased. The advisers have to contend with the effect of the history that I have recounted. They also have to contend with a culture within our Civil Service that is largely ignorant of the sciences, if not inimical to them. For a hundred years from the beginning of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century, the education of senior civil servants was predominantly in the classics and humanities. A rapid change then began in the 1950s. It was recognised that it would be more appropriate for civil servants to study economics and law. A degree in politics, philosophy and economics became the paradigm of the appropriate education.

Economics can be described as a philosophical Weltanschauung, which is to say that it represents a powerful overview of science that can afford to ignore the inessential details. There is a common opinion among economists that matters of science and technology are among such details. We need to defeat this false opinion and the Science and Technology Committee has been influential in its endeavour to do so. Unfortunately, it has recently suffered at the hands of those who fail to recognise the importance of its mission and some of its activities are being curtailed.