Knowledge is not Neutral
Why academia and industry need to remain distinct
By Homayoun Bagheri
Archeologists get to know human societies through examining the use of technology. Seemingly banal artifacts as pottery and jewelry can help us piece together the cultural and technological development of a society. Since the earliest documentation of human societies, technology was always there. Science was not. A sharpened rock used to immolate a prey is technology. So are the paintings of the same prey on cave walls. The scientific knowledge that those prey were made of cells and water came much later.
The scientific method is a late manifestation of human history. University science as we know it is an even more modern manifestation. Humans have been formalizing the relationship between experience and technology ever since they could express themselves in language. At some point, that formalization led to what we know today as the scientific method. However we should not confuse science with knowledge.
Science is a method. Scientific knowledge is an idea corroborated by the scientific method.
Not all knowledge is scientific. In the same way that technology was there before science, so was knowledge. The most basic method for corroborating knowledge is experience. People know that the sun is warm. They know that at night, the tide can come in.They may know that there was once an emperor called Caesar. Testing these things with the scientific method is not straightforward. You try to build hypotheses and try to falsify or verify them. Falsification can be achieved by observation, experiments, or by simply applying logic or mathematics. In the end, the scientific method is a recipe to systematically categorize experience and logic in order to gain confidence in an article of knowledge. This knowledge is then classified as scientific knowledge.
We use knowledge to create technology, and technology to create knowledge.
As already alluded to, you can have technology without science. However, technology based on scientific knowledge is usually more far reaching. Using the Venn diagram above as a guide, much of human activity is modifying the world to one degree or another. Farming, eating, mating, producing waste and building are all activities that modify the world. The agricultural and industrial revolutions physically modified the world. Population growth modifies the world. Some modifications are intended and based on understanding. Others, are side effects and have nothing to do with understanding.
Commerce modifies the world for the purpose of profit. Often, to do these modifications, we use technology. Given these constraints, R&D in industry is undertaken with this ultimate goal in mind. Within industry, the scientific method is used to acquire knowledge. However this knowledge is acquired with the explicit goal of making business decisions or developing technology that can produce profit. Hence business strategy determines which scientific questions are asked. Furthermore it determines how deep one investigates, and which results are communicated.
The goal oriented aspects of science in R&D are not unique. Research in academia also responds to a series of goals. Nowadays these goals may include career prospects and political priorities within academic fields. In planning their career, scientists may weigh the research fields that attract more contemporary interest. A corollary is the choice of questions that can attract more public and private funding. Nonetheless, some argue that science in academia should ideally be responsible for documenting and elucidating scientific facts regardless of their profit motif. If this aspect is ignored, the science done in academia will slowly move to the left in the Venn diagram and merge into industrial R&D. This is in fact the case in developing countries with less established scientific traditions, whereupon university science focuses mostly on a national science agenda that directly feeds into engineering, medicine and commerce. The traditional argument from the side of basic research is that if activities concentrate solely on the “blue intersection”, then it would eventually lead to a drying up of cutting edge innovation.
So who do we hold responsible for scientific truths?
The institutional context within which science is done and recorded is highly varied and has often changed during human history. Academia and industrial R&D are not the only realm where science is done (government research entities being an obvious venue not discussed here). In democratic societies governed by the rule of law, what should be clear to the public is that each type of institution pursues science in a different way. An enlightened society should ideally be highly aware of the differences in the goals and type of scientific research that each type of institution pursues. In a well balanced society, each type of scientific institution has a function to play. A national scientific ecosystem for the sole purpose of commercial goals is a disaster. So is a national science that never engages with technological and social applications.
While reminiscing on his career development, the psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers (b. 1883 Oldenburg, Germany; d. 1969 Basel, Switzerland) noted that during the early part of the twentieth century, being a scholar at the University of Heidelberg was like being in a “fairy tale.” To him this was a special time when people at the university were allowed tremendous freedom in pursuing what they thought to be interesting questions. The scholars themselves were responsible for deciding what was interesting to pursue. The university was an entity that was largely beyond the state (“ueberstaatlich”). This he thought was exceptional, given that the university was funded by the state. However, he regrets that this all changed with World War I and its aftermath. The period to come created an ambiance where professors were increasingly expected to fall in line with national economic and political interests. The consequence was a reduction in diversity and academic freedom. He also regrets that the university faculty was not particularly adamant in defending these freedoms. In his view academics yield too easily in response to peer pressure. He resisted political pressure for a long time, until he left —-in protest, or perhaps disgust—- for Switzerland in 1948.
Jaspers’ frustrated fairy tale is a cautionary plea for what can happen if academics and university administrators do not take academic freedom and the safeguarding of the truth seriously. Research universities have a social function to perform. Whatever this function may be, if it becomes indistinguishable from industry, then the university has failed. Furthermore, it would be a mistake to think that industry leaders necessarily want university research to copy what they do. Industrial R&D can be highly demanding and dependent on innovative and rigorous science. The last thing industry wants is a situation in which they no longer know if they can depend on the reliability or objectivity of academic science. As economic and political pressures build on academic science in some countries, this may be precisely where we are heading.
Neither academia nor industry have a monopoly on scientific knowledge. We should realize that each has a different set of goals and function in society. In both cases, a good rule of thumb is to know where the science stops and where the marketing begins. A successful automaker can be trusted to do its best R&D to increase engine performance. Its survival depends on it. However, one should be more circumspect if the same automaker does in-house research on global warming. Similarly, a successful academic working on the human genome can be trusted to know a lot about DNA sequences and their organization. If he tells you that he can cure cancer or predict your future, you should be more circumspect.
Picture credits: The background painting for the title is from the Altamira Cave in Santander, Spain (D. Rodriguez, Museo de Altamira, Wikimedia Commons 2010).
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this post are the opinions of the author Homayoun Bagheri and do not represent the position of any institution.
A version of this article originally appeared as an Aug. 19th 2014 post on LinkedIn
@hb_Divan
Further reading
1. For an authoritative background report on scientific responsibility, see Kathrinka Evers (2001), “Standards for Ethics and Responsibility in Science”, International Council for Science, The Standing Committee on Responsibility and Ethics in Science (SCRES).
2. Within its Horizon 2020 program, the European Commission has a specific 2014–2015 work program on “Science with and for Society”.
3. For links and references on the reliability of academic research, see Lloyd Hughes (2014), “The State of Science and Unreliable Research”, Scottish Universities Medical Journal, Vol 3 (Supp1):s6-s11. Given that is a journal mainly run by medical students, the article is an indicator of the concerns of future medical scientists.
4. For those of you who speak German, here is a link to a 1968 Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) television interview with Karl Jaspers. The part with his comments on developments within German universities starts after the 26th. minute. For a more modern take on the decline of scientific “quality control”, the weekly newspaper Die Zeit did a series of articles and interviews in early 2014.
