Lord May: Science as Organised Scepticism
Robert May, former President of the Royal Society and Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government, spoke at a Royal Society conference on "Handling uncertainty in science" (mp3):
Science is in itself organized skepticism. … Science is a powerful way of asking the right question, no more no less. …
My own view is that on any scientific issue there is, at any one time, what might be thought of as a landscape of opinion. In the early stages of research, various ideas are proposed. … There are a range of very different ideas, like lots of little hillocks on the landscape, the beginnings of the exploration of this territory.
Questions are raised, possibilities noted, experiments designed, and as that happens, some of the bumps shrink and some of the hills grow. Sometimes, apparently different hills on the landscape turn out to be the same idea and coalesce.
As things progress, we’ll tend to find there are two or three major schools of thought – some growing, others fading. Ideally the way it’s supposed to work, over time real understanding emerges and appears and one tall and triumphant peak in an otherwise vacant landscape. In reality this never happens, and Planck put it well, when he said, “some never abandon an idea, you have to wait until they die.” …
Especially in the early stages, questioning and dissident opinion are hugely useful. It is most important that the consensus is not reached to early, too glibly, because it can inhibit fruitful lines of investigation. … Yet, despite its importance in the early geo-morphology of the scientific landscape, such questioning becomes unhelpful if it stubbornly persists in the teeth of clear and contrary evidence. …
What morals do we draw from this, for our management of decisions we make? … How seriously should we take climate change, and how much inconvenience would we be willing to put up with to avoid – what I regard as virtually certain – much greater inconvenience in the not too distant future. We’re asked to do things for which we and our institutions have no evolutionary experience, acting on behalf of a seemingly distant future.
What are the guiding principles?
I believe, in broad outline, what one wants is the science, with all its uncertainties fully exposed, to frame a debate and constrain a debate, so that the democratic debate that ensues does not have cloud cookieland as one of the options. But then the debate we have is one in which science itself, having framed the stage, and constrained the stage, and emphasized the fuzziness of the stage, has no special voice – although scientists themselves can and should play a role as citizen-scientists.
The ideals are that you begin consulting widely and openly, deliberately including and indeed seeking out dissenting opinions. You don’t exclude anybody because they have a conflict of interest; you just identify the interest clearly.
If you are going to be assessing risks, you should try and manage them proportionately, instead of being unduly alarmed about little things and walking past big things.
Where possible, which it often isn’t, you should give people choices. Above all, you should frankly acknowledge uncertainties – both because it’s right, and if you don’t you lose credibility by being blindsided.
And that’s easily said, but it’s really hard to do.
