WHEN Tony Blair gave a speech to the Royal Society last month, he chose the title 鈥淪cience matters鈥�. It clearly sums up his sentiment. But while many professed delight that the Prime Minister鈥檚 mind appeared wedded to the rational, others seemed worried that he thought science mattered rather too much.
This mixed reaction reflects a fundamental question about Blair鈥檚 image of science. He unwittingly reopened the age-old debate about how science relates to the rest of life. Are scientific facts subservient to the value judgements that underpin the arts and humanities? Or are they free of them?
In the space of a few short paragraphs, Blair managed to say yes to both. Shortly after supporting 鈥渁 process where science tells us the facts and we make a judgement鈥�, he claimed that 鈥渟cience is a central part, not a separate part, of our common culture鈥�. So which is it? Does science stand with or apart from our larger cultural values?
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When Blair attempted to draw a sharp line between science and value judgements, the word he used most often was 鈥渇acts鈥�. Yet the idea that science is preoccupied with facts is not one that scientists, or even philosophers of science, have ever seriously promoted. Science sets itself grandiose objectives, including the search for universal and timeless truths. The most plausible examples of such truths are not expressed as facts, or even generalised facts. They are regularities that apply under prescribed conditions. A physical law is not a fact. It reveals possible experience; it does not aggregate actual experiences.
鈥淔act鈥� has no technical meaning in either science or philosophy. The very word rings a sour note: its Latin root means 鈥渕ade鈥�, which quickly suggests 鈥渕ade up鈥�. Science was first identified with facts by Francis Bacon who was, significantly, a politician rather than a scientist. Bacon wrote in the 17th century, an era that had only recently escaped the grip of numerology鈥攖he notion that numbers have a defining influence on human affairs. Nevertheless 鈥減olitical economists鈥� soon filled the breach by diligently counting, and later measuring, features of the human condition to gain power over it.
The Victorian era witnessed considerable scientific and philosophical resistance to the use of statistically generated facts in social policy without proper expert interpretation. Liberals such as John Stuart Mill were so worried about possible misinterpretation that they flirted with bringing professional scientists into government, at least until citizens were trained to treat statistical conclusions as other than brute facts.
This history should be kept firmly in mind when assessing Blair鈥檚 enthusiasm for what he called an 鈥渆vidence-based approach鈥�. Evidence-based policy, such as that which the National Health Services professes to use, is the seemingly common-sense idea that government should have all the facts at its disposal before making policy. That Blair singles this out as a proper focus for science suggests that the mode and tempo of scientific research is not normally in sync with the needs of policy. However, behind this complaint is a conception of facts that has more to do with information science than natural science.
快猫短视频s are used to treating their findings as way stations on the path of inquiry that are designed to be superseded, if false, or subsumed, if true. The transformation of findings into factual bedrock for policy requires considerable work. The method of choice is 鈥渕eta-analysis鈥�, which involves amalgamating research results relevant to a particular policy area. Meta-analysis is scientifically most illuminating when it shows that different policies converge at the same outcome. Unfortunately, policy makers use it to determine which policy gets the best outcome and tend to ignore concerns about how a policy might work differently in different contexts.
Britain is the world鈥檚 leading exporter of evidence-based policy. This I learned during a recent visit to Japan, where the government, backed by biotechnology firms, is pushing evidence-based medicine, allegedly to make health professionals more responsive to public concerns. Success rates for various medical treatments are made readily available to researchers, clinicians, policy makers and ordinary citizens. What鈥檚 wrong with that, you might ask? The answer is: plenty.
Firstly, evidence-based medicine deprofessionalises biomedical researchers by stripping away the distinctive assumptions and limitations of their findings. The same applies to clinicians, who are discouraged from relying on their own practical experience. Finally, and paradoxically, it disempowers ordinary citizens because it provides them with a false sense of security about medical findings without the necessary background to make more discriminating judgements.
It should therefore come as no surprise that there is little evidence that evidence-based medicine has actually improved healthcare. So why, then, is it so actively promoted? One clear reason is that the identification of research with success rates provides free publicity for the biomedical firms behind the successful treatments. But at a deeper level, the focus on facts enables politicians to have their cake and eat it. Their appeal to statistics can claim scientific authority without bothering with potentially awkward scientists. At the same time, they can then blame those very scientists if policies go awry. Of course science should inform policy, but as flesh-and-blood scientists, preferably in the presence of non-scientists, and certainly not as pre-packaged black boxes of facts.
Blair鈥檚 speech to the Royal Society has been widely read as a response to anti-science activists. Yet Blair himself has bought into an unscientific view of science that has enchanted politicians for the past 400 years. It is only a short step from his 鈥淚 want to reach my judgements after I have the facts and not before鈥�, to Thomas Gradgrind鈥檚 鈥淣ow, what I want is facts 鈥� Facts alone are wanted in life,鈥� in Dickens鈥檚 Hard Times. Indeed, facts are what politicians demand of science when they need to justify themselves.