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You are wrong, Mr Blair. Colin Tudge. Monday
3rd June 2002
The Prime Minister believes in the unfailing beneficence of high tech. Colin
Tudge, who has devoted his adult life to scientific study, wants him to think
again
There was much to warm the heart in Tony Blair's address on science to the
Royal Society on 23 May. We shouldn't be afraid of it, he said. The high tech
that comes out of science can truly benefit humanity and indeed has become
essential. New ways of doing things should not be dismissed a priori, not
even those apparently as radical as genetic engineering. We should not allow
our "prejudice" to deny us a better life. We should spend more on research
(and "today the science budget is increasing by 7 per cent per year in real
terms"). Yes, moral awareness should keep pace with technical power - and
this is happening. The quandaries of embryonic stem cell research were sifted
by the appointed ethical committee. Now we need public debate to keep things
on track. We should step up science education.
So why, as a devotee of science these past 40 years, do I find Blair's reassurances
so unreassuring? His vision of science, of what it really is and what it can
do for us; his belief in its capacity not simply to make us richer but truly
to improve our lives; the absence of introspection, his self-assurance, which
reflects that of the scientists themselves; his (and the scientists') deep
conviction that if people at large ("the public") have misgivings, then it
is because we have failed to understand; the broad notion that "public trust"
is simply a matter of public relations - all this is chilling. Science is
what I spend my life on, but I want no truck with the insouciant, confident
monster that Blair (and much of the scientific establishment) construes it
to be.
There is a worrying, "not me, guv", false innocence even in Blair's apparently
unexceptionable claim that "science is just knowledge" and so is morally neutral.
Giving ourselves carte blanche to find things out is itself a moral decision,
as many a priest would point out.
Besides, although "science" means "knowledge" etymologically (scientia),
it now connotes much more. It seeks to find out how things work, by testing
formal hypotheses: constrained by facts, logic and especially maths, it is
the ultimate exercise in rationality. Rationality is necessary for survival
and is in many ways attractive: the Apollonic tradition, as opposed to the
Dionysiac. But rationality is itself an attitude, and it is a moral decision
to put store by it. It is rationality, for example, that justifies experiments
on animals in the face of aesthetic repulsion. Voltaire made this point long
before any modern "animal libber".
One of the things that bothers people is the apparent unwillingness of scientists
to engage in serious discussion on such matters, man to man as opposed to
de haut en bas; and it does not help if they or their apologists begin
by denying that there is anything serious to discuss.
On the whole, though, Blair was more down to earth: "Our goal is prosperity
for all through successful business using excellent science. . . . Britain
can be as much of a powerhouse of innovation - and its spin-offs - in the
21st century as in the 19th and early 20th." We're getting there: "In 1999-2000,
199 companies were spun off from our universities, compared with 70 a year
in the previous five years." And: "The biotech industry's market in Europe
alone is expected to be worth $100bn by 2005."
It is true that science, high tech and modern commerce are tightly interlocked.
The kind of technology to which science gives rise is high tech by definition.
Science and modern capitalism have grown up together since the 17th century,
in a feedback loop: capital finances the science that provides the high tech
that produces the industry that provides more science and so on, as Newton
noted with approval. This loop has become the engine of the modern world.
The societies that thrive best (in material terms) are those whose governments
ride the engine most adroitly. This, rather than ideology, determines who
comes out on top.
But what should be of prime concern to a government with "Labour" in its
title is whether this whirring engine of high tech coupled with material prosperity
necessarily raises general well-being. In an unalloyed capitalist world,
industry can finance only the research that produces the things that can
be sold for the most profit. If it does not, the shareholders go elsewhere.
So the engine, left to itself, produces oodles of goods for people who can
afford them but do not necessarily need them. So far, it has not proved able
to provide drugs against Aids for poor South Africans, or to support research
that will provide drought-resistant crops for poor South African farmers.
New Labour seems to believe as firmly as Margaret Thatcher did that the
market is bound to deliver. Yet, if science is truly to operate for the betterment
of humanity at large, it cannot simply be left in the hands of commerce. A
prime concern for humanity - perhaps the most important single task, in the
long term - is to liberate science from the feedback loop in which it has
grown up. Blair's government is not only failing to do this, it gives no
sign that it acknowledges the problem. But people at large understand it
perfectly well: they believe not simply that the leaders and experts have
got it wrong, but that they have less feel for the deep issues than many of
the rest of us.
Yet all Blair seems to see in public misgiving is signs of "prejudice against
science", which, he tells us, would be "profoundly damaging". He wants "to
reach my judgements after I have the facts and not before". We need "a culture
that values a pragmatic, evidence-based approach to new opportunities".
Again, evidence is certainly a good thing. But there is little evidence
from the past 200 years that people at large are prejudiced against science,
or against the technologies it produces. Steam power in general and the railways
were embraced avidly; they transformed the western world, and then the eastern,
within decades. Electricity, radio, the telephone, the motor car, the jumbo
jet, television, CDs, drugs and food additives of all kinds have been seized
on so eagerly that Blair might, with at least equal fervour, have urged restraint;
after all, it may turn out to be true that mobile phones fry the brains.
All these high technologies had their initial detractors ("lightning conductors,
invented by Benjamin Franklin, were initially torn down", Blair reminds us),
but none of the important advances was seriously held up by public reluctance.
Doubts have persisted only where the facts - the evidence - suggests that
doubt is absolutely justified. Perhaps nuclear power is necessary, but you
would have to be mildly deranged not to take seriously the threat implied
by Chernobyl or Three Mile Island.
Today's symbols of progress, and also of public prejudice and intransigence,
are genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Blair tells us that he "can find
no serious evidence of health risks", and in this he is probably justified.
The direct risks are probably low. Again, however, he has missed the point.
Nobody can deny that there are some theoretical risks, notably ecological.
That is why we have the trials that have prompted some people to pull up GM
crops. But "the public" would like to know why these risks are being taken
at all. They are told that genetic engineering alone can provide the drought-
and pest-resistant super-crops that we need to feed ten billion people by
2050.
This is just not true. I am writing a book about agriculture and have found
plenty of evidence that it, and we, need excellent science. But it is also
clear that what has enabled the human species to flourish is not the science
of agriculture but its traditional craft: good husbandry, which means raising
the right plants and animals in the right places, in ways that minimise the
spread of infection.
The evidence shows that science does good when it helps good farmers of
all kinds to do even better the things they already do well. But history
demonstrates again and again that any attempt to flout good husbandry invariably
proves disastrous. Homer knew this. The Roman Columella wrote about it. Stalin
demonstrated it, and so did the creators of the American dust bowl.
Government policy since the Second World War has primarily been designed
to reduce the cost of production (which is not the same as reducing the price
of food), and, in this, the basic rules of husbandry are flouted systematically.
Science makes this possible. The policy is frightening, and the role that
science plays in it is shameful. Blair is right to point out that BSE did
not result directly from science misapplied. But BSE, and foot-and-mouth disease,
did result directly from the cut-price production policies to which science
has become central.
Genetic engineering may or may not have a part to play in feeding the world
in future, but, at present, its role is almost entirely to abet a cut-price,
profit-based agricultural policy that, as the decades pass, will surely prove
disastrous. There is no evidence at all - absolutely zilch - that GMOs so
far have contributed one jot of serious, lasting value to the world's food
security, or are liable to do so in the near future, or that they will do
anything truly worthwhile that could not be achieved by conventional breeding
(and yes, genetic engineering is qualitatively different even from the most
advanced conventional breeding).
In other words, those who truly have respect for evidence would be very
cautious indeed about GMOs; not about whether they are more dangerous to
our individual health than, say, the average parsnip, but whether they truly
have any serious role to play in feeding the world, and whether, if they
are simply a commercial expedient, we should countenance any risk at all.
It is not evidence but prejudice - an uncritical belief in the need for high
tech and its unfailing beneficence - that drives so many professional scientists,
and Blair himself, to advocate GMOs so vehemently. One reason why "the public"
is so reluctant to rely on experts is that the experts so often seem to live
in their own fantasy worlds. In general, where people have been happy to
follow the experts (as they did into the age of steam and the age of computers),
they have been right to do so; and where they have been seriously reluctant
(nuclear energy), they have been right, too.
So what of Blair's final plea, for more and better science education? I'm
all for it. I would love the universities and schools to ask what science
really is, and what it is not; what it can and should do; what it cannot and
should not do. This would be a broad education, with facts and maths and
hard philosophising, all set in its properly metaphysical context. New Labour,
however, has plans for "about 25 specialist science colleges" and "a new
applied science GCSE".
In short, the big metaphysical and moral decisions have already been taken.
Science is a purely materialist pursuit, its role is to support British industry
in the face of competition, and that is self-evidently a good thing. Anyone
who has any doubts on this score is prejudiced and foolish. There is no point
in the public debate. It's already over.
Colin Tudge's The Variety of Life and In Mendel's Footnotes
are out in paperback