Sharing knowledge

Mistrust of science

The exclusion of people from advancing human knowledge not only accentuates the gap between developed and developing nations. Increasingly it is dividing our own societies also and building suspicion and mistrust of modern science and technology.

US Physics professor Juan Roederer observes "an alarming erosion of public trust" in science, which is causing many societies and politicians to suspect the motives of the research community, to set in place measures to scrutinize it, and even to limit its scope and freedoms.

The "crisis of trust" in modern science was highlighted in the UK House of Lords Third Report on Science and Technology, which recorded "much interest but little trust among the public in science today":

Many communities and groups are starting to protest their exclusion from the scientific and innovative process. While grateful for the life-saving and life-enhancing benefits of science, in western democracies the community is already jerking the reins, resisting the relentless onward thrust of knowledge acquisition and application.

Some are retreating into age-old beliefs, new-age beliefs, superstitions, pseudosciences, alternative medicines, conspiracies and there is a general questioning, in almost all societies, of the morality, ethics, practices, motives, ownership and control of modern science.

A knowledge democracy

For the "knowledge society" to exist, there needs to be a change in the culture of science: its practitioners must come to recognise that the knowledge possessed by the community in the form of values, beliefs, traditions, morality, feelings, behaviours is critical to the successful uptake of scientific knowledge.

These values, traditions and beliefs are rooted in millennia of experience in the identification and avoidance of risk.

Science needs to recognise "lay knowledge" and "scientific knowledge" are equal, and necessary, partners in the innovation and adoption process. Without this, the support of society for technological advancement cannot be taken for granted.

A recent British Council international seminar on science and society strongly urged the "democratisation of science", cautioning that many of the institutional structures and practices of science today prevent this.

Citizens should be permitted to be active partners and participants in the innovation process, it said. Efforts to promote a democratic science need to encourage:

• openness;
• transparency;
• responsibility and accountability;
• independence of research and advice;
• negotiation of appropriate technological trajectories; and
• meaningful dialogues.

Such advice about ways to share knowledge applies not only to western democracies - but especially also to the developing world where it is most urgently needed to give people the power and opportunity to improve their health, wellbeing and sustainability and take control of their own destinies.