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Ethics and The Good Science Project



When Vice-Provost Mary Ryan said: ‘Yours is an ethics project’, I had to start thinking.

Two years ago I started The Good Science Project. My idea, as told to Mary, was simplicity itself: the research culture in which we flourish will be one where conversation and debate, on contextual issues as well as ‘scientific topics’, are nurtured. I would set up brief, in person, lunch-included, discussion meetings – the Friday Forums. Nothing much, but it would help. At this point Mary said to me ‘That sounds good, this is an ethics project’.

I went away and asked myself: is communication-within-an-institution, however thoughtful and illuminating, a matter of ‘ethics’? Is Mary right?

The history of the phrase ‘research culture’ gives us a clue why the topic might indeed be an ethical issue. For the previous word we used was ‘misconduct’. As I write in a previous blog, the ancestor to our interest in research culture is a concern about trust. At the start of the millennium a number of high-profile cases from across the world made journal editors in particular, and research centres in general, worry about cheating. To a large extent the concern at that time seemed to be trust in individuals. Are some scientists ‘bad apples’, and what should we do about them? The year 2000 was also the time when the House of Lords Science Select Committee produced their epochal Third Report ‘Science and Society’. The report began with statements about a ‘crisis of trust’ in science. No particular mention was made there of misconduct or research culture, but in highlighting the concept of dialogue between science and society, the idea that the internal workings of science has civic relevance was bound to gain ground.

Thus it was that a discourse grew about science ethics being as much about institutions as it is about individuals. In 2002 and 2003 influential MRC scientist Peter Lawrence wrote for Nature magazine well-received articles on publication norms and the nature of scientific esteem. A broad conception of the culture of research institutions was the force of Sir David King’s code of conduct Rigour, Respect and Responsibility in 2007. Perhaps of greatest significance was the Nuffield Council of Bioethics 2014 report The Culture of Scientific Research in the UK, chaired by Professor Ottoline Leyser (who subsequently went on to champion these issues when she became CEO of United Kingdom Research Innovation).

All of us know that ethics is about the difference between right and wrong, about how to separate benefit from harm, and about how to advance justice rather than injustice. But all this is very abstract-sounding. How do ideas like these get traction on a laboratory? If discussions about research culture classify as an ethics project, what precisely should we discuss? Why might people gathering to discuss perspectives on their work, at a lunchtime Friday Forum, be considered to be engaging in an ethics project?

Let’s do some homework. When it comes to serious descriptions of European ethical thought, three strands exist. At the risk of being dull, I will list them. Firstly, there is deontology, or rules-based ethics. Here you know right from wrong because of rules: religious rules; rules which seem self-evident (murder is wrong; dishonesty is wrong); and, famously, ‘the golden rule’: do unto others as you would wish others would do unto you’. The philosopher most associated with rules-based ethics is Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). In science we have plenty of rules: animals, health and safety, and any number of management, HR and policy requirements.

Secondly, there is utilitarianism. This is where you judge an action by its consequences. If, all things considered, the action makes the world a better, happier place, then that action is the right one. A corollary, and a slightly disturbing one, is that the action itself does not carry particular moral weight. For example, perhaps in some circumstances killing, or telling lies, is the right thing to do, because the consequences are seen as so important. Another way of putting this is ‘the ends justifies the means’. Utilitarianism is a 19th century movement especially associated with the social reformers Jeremy Bentham (1746-1832) and J.S.Mill (1806-1873).

In science we are well-practised in using rules-based ethics, and utilitarianism, as groundings for our work. As regards utilitarianism, the resources we put into science are justified because of the future benefits that will accrue to people. Consider our College strategy: it is called ‘Science For Humanity’.

Almost automatically we think of the values of scientific research as founded on rules and on utility. The rules we set ourselves, the truth of the scientific results that we produce, and the likely future value of our work, dominate the stories we tell about our work.

But, just to give us pause, accounts of what scientists value about their work seem not quite captured by concepts of future benefit, or adherence to rules. Scientists on the contrary prefer to describe their enjoyment in their craft skills, in their steady accumulation of knowledge, and in their sense of being in a community where trusted sharing of ideas is a norm. And when they discuss their concerns about the scientific life it is the distorting impact of intense competition, too hard a fight for grants, and fears about a secure future in science research, that gain mention. And the strong sense often is that these drivers, even if accepted as inevitable and manageable, are not considered as central to scientific practice. These are not the aspects of science that make scientists happy, and cause them to think they are making progress in their understanding. Instead they are a distracting burden from the main task, a tax. We can suggest then that there is more to the life scientific than rules and future benefit. And this is where the Good Science Project comes in, and where Mary’s words prompted its strategy.

For it turns out that a third and lesser-known branch of ethics is perhaps best placed for elaborating the actual lives of scientists – virtue ethics. This is a very ancient tributary of ethical thought, stemming from the classical Greeks. Here, it is character that forms the focus, especially as regards a person’s daily commitment to their work and to their growing skills. For example, to use an example from classical Greece, a ‘good’ farmer is one who understands seed and soil behaviour and knows what needs doing when. Getting good at all these things – the steady development of skills and knowledge, and with that the steady growth of reputation – is the ethical ground for this farmer. There is no emphasis on broader rules, or on consequences. In today’s language, you might say that it is the person’s ‘practice’, and the respect it gleans within their professional community, that matters.

For the Good Science Project, virtue ethics provides the best way of responding to Mary Ryan’s declaration, and indeed establishes the point that this is ‘an ethics project’. By finding ways to help scientists articulate those aspects of daily science that normally lie hidden from view – I mean the pleasures of the technical and intellectual challenges of daily science – we can claim to be followers of Socrates and Aristotle, the very founders of European ethics.

A rough guide to ‘research culture’

 

Preamble

No doubt about it, anyone trying to understand the concept ‘research culture’, in particular its problems and its routes to improvement, has their work cut out. In considering research culture, are we likely to find ourselves discussing ethics, or management technique, or HR policy, or diversity and inclusion, or something else entirely? As the Good Science Project moves into its third year I anticipate spending time trying to put order into this unruly list. I remember, at our very first meeting, I discussed the god Perseus, and his way of dealing with the Gorgon by refusing to look directly at those terrifying locks. Instead, by holding up a mirror, he could deal with his problem satisfactorily. Is there a sense in which ‘research culture’ cannot be looked at directly, that like Perseus we must hold up a mirror? This was certainly my thinking in setting up the Triptych of Science art project, where scientists made art works to express their views on their working life.

It always helps discipline the mind when an invitation to give a talk comes your way, and so I was grateful to the United Kingdom Research Integrity Office when it asked me to give a seminar, alongside my ex-student Mun Keat Looi, on the relation between research culture and science communication. I decided to take the opportunity to do some ‘organising’, both of how I see the history of the field, and how I think ‘ethics’ might have a role in issues of research culture. Thus, towards the end of my talk, I began to discuss how virtue ethics – that is, the branch of ethics that considers matters of character and stems from classical Greece – might be for us a key support in our search both for understanding, and for action. My next blog, in fact, will be a detailed look at how ethics, and what aspects of ethics, might illuminate our thoughts about research culture.

 

I reproduce below the briefing notes I provided to UKRIO and the participants of the webinar.

 


Hand-out notes for UKRIO webinar talk by Dr Stephen Webster, Imperial College London. 26th June: ‘Science Communication and Science Integrity’.


Introduction

Science communication is generally considered to be the facilitation of science-society relations, through a number of formats: science journalism, university outreach and communication, policy initiatives and social science research. However, a very important aspect of science communication concerns the issue of how, within a research institution, scientists communicate with each other. Therefore, in today’s webinar, if Mun Keat Looi considers integrity and science journalism as a key external communication issue, I will look at something more internal: integrity and daily laboratory life. While Mun Keat looks at how science journalists manage the various and often conflicting demands of their profession, so I will look at the way research integrity is sometimes vulnerable to the conflicting demands of the life scientific.

A Brief History of Science Integrity

The United Kingdom Research Integrity Office, today’s host of our discussion, was set up in 2006. Fourteen years earlier, in 1992, the US Department of Health had instituted the Office of Research Integrity, in response to anxieties running from the early 1980s about some well-publicised, even sensational, cases of scientific misconduct. An example would be the David Baltimore Affair. Later in 1997, responding also to what was felt to be rising cases of misconduct, all of them quite challenging to deal with, British journal editors, including Richard Horton of The Lancet, set up The Committee on Publication Ethics (‘COPE’). By this time the problem of scientific misconduct was raising serious issues for the journals, for the universities, and indeed for the whole concept of science as a truth-gathering exercise. Quite a range of interesting comment began to accumulate, with the MRC scientist Peter Lawrence FRS being notably influential through his thought-provoking 2002/3 Nature articles ‘Rank Injustice’ and The Politics of Publication. A particularly high-profile case in 2005/6, involving the multiple and well-publicised ethical transgressions of scientist Woo Suk Hwang, can be seen as a defining moment.

Many reports and codes of conduct followed this 2005 watershed. One such code of conduct was Sir David King’s Rigour, Respect and Responsibility, which had its university launch at Imperial College in 2007. In the same year Imperial’s graduate school started its compulsory course ‘Science, Research and Integrity’, where neophyte scientists could discuss these issues, and – very importantly – give their point of view. It was as a result of Sir David King’s work, and courses similar to the one offered by Imperial, that a subtle but important shift occurred. While the misconduct cases we read about in those years seemed always to involve astonishing examples of individual frailty and corruption, leading to the view that we were dealing here with ‘bad apples’, wise heads, including those of PhD students, reminded us that if ethics always has an individual component, the institutional aspect is critically important too. Slowly we moved in the direction of this question: ‘How Can Our Institution Support Good Science?’ Then, in 2014, under the guidance of Professor Ottoline Leyser (now CEO of Research England), the Nuffield Council on Bioethics launched at Imperial College their seminal report ‘The Culture of Scientific Research’. This brave document made plain the issue of institutional responsibility. It asked: how can an institution make unethical behavior less likely? And, particularly, it seemed to imply that we must be as diligent in discussing culture as we are in chasing down example of misconduct. In sum, as I discuss in the webinar, discussions of research integrity have roots in very different styles of discourse: there is an alarm about misconduct, and there is an aspirational, fervent desire for something just as complex, ‘good science’. Does this ‘mix’ of discourse pose problems?

What Does ‘Integrity’ Mean?

While I wouldn’t say that the discourses of ‘misconduct’ and ‘integrity’ are wildly incompatible, some thought is needed over how to navigate a rather heterogeneous set of concepts. And while ‘misconduct’ centres on the transgression of fairly well-defined rules, it is hard to know quite what ‘research culture’ means. For example, should we talk about ‘research cultures’, in the plural? That might look like a good option, but then we remember the important philosophical tradition, still central today, that science is unified: it has a method; it doesn’t matter where you do your science or who you are; a scientific fact is the same, whether you are in Southampton or in Sydney. Culture scholars, however, spend a lot of their time exploring how cultures evolve, and how they remain sustainably different. Meanwhile a growing aspect of enhancing research culture relies on the idea that both in in our wider lives and in our laboratories, identity recognition is central to the flourishing of our working life.

The word ‘integrity’ is usually defined as ‘honesty, the capacity to inspire well-founded trust, a position of moral worth’. However there is a second, equally important meaning. This is to do with wholeness, of different parts within a system being in communication, being in balance, and being mutual, interested and respectful.

Research Integrity and Science Communication

It is this second aspect of the word integrity that forms the basis of my short talk. I will be exploring how concepts like balance, and of course imbalance, are helpful tools in understanding research culture. At Imperial College we have been promoting the idea that research culture (among other things) is a matter of ethics. Similarly, at Imperial, we understand the ethics of research culture as broader than that routinely examined by research ethics committees. As I shall briefly suggest at the end of my talk, to attain the required ethical breadth, more to do with character and habit than with rules and policy, it may be helpful to study the great tradition of Virtue Ethics, stemming from Aristotle and the traditions of classical Athens.

Summer travels

 

Good science and the European dimension

British prime minister Sir Keir Starmer has been travelling this week, aiming, as the media put it, to ‘re-set’ relations with Europe. The self-destructive act of Brexit, while not likely to be undone anytime soon, must plainly be mitigated if our new government is to see the economic growth that forms the basis of its plans.

 

A big headline this week, coming from Starmer, is that perhaps a European youth mobility scheme is back on the agenda. We all know it is important for young Europeans to experience life in another country. This is not migration. Let’s call it growing up, or simply growing a better world. In an interesting accident of timing Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, that great poem to human unity, has just had its annual performance up the road from Imperial College, at the BBC Proms.

 

For the Good Science Project, the link between travel and science, between research and new perspectives, is endlessly interesting. Our first Friday Forum last year, titled Nauka Emigrantka, looked at the joys and the perils of migrating for your science. Chaired by science journalist Urszula Kaczorowska, a staffer at the Polish Press Agency, this was a fascinating panel discussion about the challenges a scientist faces, when they move their research to another country.

 

As the Good Science Project moves into its third year, I hope we can grow links with other European countries, and travel more,  both physically and intellectually. Certainly the desire to enhance research culture is not simply a British preoccupation. The distortions scientists sometimes suffer, from the competitive hunt for grants or from the insecurities of employment and publication, are found across the continent.

 

The Good Science Project in Krakow

Can we learn from our European colleagues, as we try to understand better the social, economic and political forces that impact on scientists? Last summer I co-directed, with Urszula Kaczorowska, a summer school in Krakow, at the invitation of the Jagiellonian University. We worked with social science doctoral students, nurturing the communication skills young academics need if they are to flourish. Because they were social science students, their research areas often touched on the fractured nature of European politics.

 

Each morning of the Summer School, Urszula probed the students’ research. What was their project? How does it work? Why does it matter? Listening to Urszula’s interviews I felt I was experiencing in real time the basic tenets of the Good Science Project: that when it comes to research we always will find that the character of the scientist – their persistence, their care, their ingenuity – has powerful relevance. So often, in laboratory life, the gaze turns exclusively to publications, grants won, and the frailties of collaboration. It was a great discovery too, to see how much the students enjoyed and benefited from those conversations with Urszula, feeling – rightly – that such supportive but critical scrutiny itself is a boon to their research. At the same time they were learning the best ways for academics and journalists to interact.

 

Thinking of that wonderful Summer School in Krakow, it is clear why Poland is a good country for a science communication partnership with Imperial College. Like the United Kingdom, a change of government in Poland has brought a sea-change in official attitudes to Europe and the EU. Today, from opposite ends of the continent we in the UK and colleagues in Poland look across at each other, and perceive in the land between us not zones of national fervour, but routes to a shared wealth. No doubt an element of that wealth will be the common benefit that good science brings.

 

In 2021 Imperial College signed an agreement – a Letter of Understanding – with four Polish Universities. Together we would explore ways of spurring on progress in science communication. The agreement was a success, with meetings in Poznan, Krakow and Warsaw. Back at Imperial, Gareth Mitchell, Urszula Kaczorowska and myself, looking for ways to capture good practice in science communication training, made the Minding Science podcasts. Meanwhile feelers are out also with the Medical University of Gdansk, the Pomeranian University of Słupsk and the Wrocław University of Science and Technology. Let’s see what happens.

 

A philosophical epilogue

There are philosophical reasons too why those interested in innovation in science communication might be drawn to Poland and other Central European countries. For in this area of Europe, over the last 100 years, two vital philosophical developments gave us new ways to look at science. Interestingly, the two developments seem at odds with each other. On the one hand, partly in response to the programmes of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, scientists, mathematicians and philosophers, many of them fleeing west, looked for ways of detaching science from society and from culture, so that research could never again be abused and shaped by dictators. Yet, on the other hand, our contemporary belief that science is inseparable from society also has origins in Poland and its neighbouring countries. Think of the Polish physician and microbiologist Ludwick Fleck (1896-1961), a survivor of Auschwitz, who argued that scientific facts take shape through the collective processes of belief and social interaction. For Fleck, scientific knowledge is as much social construction as it is the mechanical collection of data and the blunt comparison of theory. If Fleck is an obscure name to us today, his vast influence is obvious once we remember that his work was known to Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996). Kuhn’s 1962 text The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is today recognised as the epochal moment when science was pushed back into the embrace of society – sometimes an unwilling embrace, but an embrace nonetheless.

Another Central European philosopher-scientist, Hungarian chemist Michael Polanyi (1861-1976), was also a forerunner of  Kuhn. In his 1958 book Personal Knowledge Polanyi wrote that scientific thought and practice are guided and even fixed by tacit understanding and by personal styles of thought and expression. These social and personal aspects of the scientific project, argued Polanyi, are central to scientific advance, but are not easily reduced to objective foundations of data gathering and theory testing.

These rich intellectual traditions of Poland and its neighbours, both pulling science into society, and also separating it from society, remain pressing and central tensions for science communicators. For it is science communicators who we rely upon to navigate a safe path through social issues as well as through scientific issues. Science journalists, in other words, are not simply transmitters of information, or informal educationalists. When they work properly, these communicators are agents of science-society enrichment, and are very much needed. Science communicators must continue to look across Europe, learning from each other, and developing their philosophical, social and technical understanding of the scientific world-view.

Triptych of Science Blog: Embracing all forms

On 3 May, we hosted the first arts workshop for the Triptych of Science arts initiative, which brings together people working in scientific research culture to create art about their experiences in science at Imperial. The idea of the ‘Tryptich’, a tripartite art piece, is to explore three themes that might not be involved in the typical narratives of research culture, but that tend to surface in any conversation with people working in research: Time, Emotion and Balance.

As the curator in residence, I was tasked with thinking about building an exhibition, the “end-product” of this project. Yet I found myself observing what happens when researchers come together to make art, fascinated by watching the process unfold. If I had to choose one word to describe what this workshop was about, for me, it would be ‘forms’.

As people trickled into the room, they were greeted not by the typical set of classroom tables, but by a single large one formed of several pushed together. On this banquet table was a feast of art materials: string, paper, clay, glue, thread, ink. And of course, some plastic covers to anticipate (and encourage) mess.

3D printing, Fashion, Graphic design, Handcrafts, Interactive art, Marbling, Miniature, Music, Painting in glass, Presentation slides, Sculpture, Sewing, Storytelling, Writing
Scribblings from Mikayla’s notebook

Once everyone found their seats, introductions began: we shared our occupations, research or professional focus, and perhaps most importantly, any experience with art. To my surprise, there was hardly any repetition; almost everyone mentioned a different creative form.

 

 

 

Some participants brought in examples of things they had made: the yellow jacket they were wearing, a cute fluffy dog, an egg of glass filled with purple swirls; paper marbling in bright cellular shapes; an exquisite miniature landscape, featuring a bloodthirsty bunny rabbit nestled among tiny rocks and flowers. We also heard about many examples of participants combining science and art, for instance, a piece of music encoded in DNA, with simulated evolution to mutate the melody over time.

Discussions of science became quite detailed, but these cheerful chats about genetics and material science seemed different around a multidisciplinary table than they might within a laboratory. The knowledge exchange was more social than goal-oriented – not done to build an argument or make conclusions, but simply to share without judgement. This became clear when someone expressed hesitancy about being entirely new to art making. The others soon reassured them that the experience they bring is just as valuable in the context of this project, as a collective initiative of learning and unlearning, art making and thinking about research culture.

A theme emerged that we should not focus simply on making the final product for the installation, but that we should also display evidence of the process. We decided to keep an archive of drafts, notes, sketches, and reflections as equally important to the final art piece.

Then, our artist-in-residence, Ella Miodownik, facilitated the main activity of the day: to make ‘bad’ art. The word ‘bad’ was used to encourage a letting go of judgement and end-products; to not focus on trying to make something good, but just to play around and enjoy the making process. Each person was directed to take a piece of paper and do something to it for five minutes – to manipulate it in some way, whether cutting, folding, or ripping. Drawing or writing was implicitly discouraged due to a lack of any writing utensils on the table – but our own project leader, Stephen Webster, broke this rule, procuring a biro from his pocket and composing a short poem, hidden in a fold of his paper.

Stephen's poem hidden in his craftwork, reads: Classroom on a cold spring day. String, glue, scissors, papers. Light glimmers below the waves.
Stephen’s hidden poem

The craft session therefore began with the very important and serious process of picking out one’s favourite colours of paper and soon, everyone was immersed in making. People were sneaking peeks of what others were doing out of pure curiosity, but were mostly dedicated to their own ideas. And so began a period of comfortable silence, interrupted only by quiet requests to pass the scissors.

Somehow the five minutes I had planned for the activity turned into an hour, with all of us quietly absorbed in art-making – even Mikayla scribbling away and Madisson filming the process were totally immersed in their own quiet practice. It felt like a reversion to childhood and was supremely calming to my nervous system. Being together, and making-with… I think we might have accidentally done some kind of art therapy. (Ella)

Once again, no two forms were the same. Some chose to let their paper remain flattened and experiment with embroidery, cutting and weaving; others created shapes, structures and texture out of the paper. We even explored interactivity – one participant ripped and folded their paper into a perfect cone, before allowing the audience (which was just us, for now!) to unfold the piece in a performance artwork. Ella appealed to my curatorial perspective by hanging her piece from the ceiling, showing how the concept of ‘all forms’ is not just about the piece of work, but also about how the work is displayed. People gradually started to stand up, walk around and talk about each other’s art. Small and sweet conversations were humming in the room.

There was an interesting conversation about handcraft, where we discussed how distinctions between what is considered ‘fine art’ and ‘arts and crafts’ often correlate with hierarchies of gender and class. We resolved that this project would reject this distinction, embrace all forms of art as equal, and celebrate undervalued art forms such as textile.

Ella's illustration of what a multimedia quilt would look like on the white board. Different parts scattering around and linked with strings
The multimedia ‘quilt’

This led nicely to Ella’s announcement of what our final art form would be: A multimedia quilt!

What is a quilt? In a sense, it is a constraint, but one that allows for creativity. It is made up of units, or quilt squares, but each one is different. This gives us options: We could each make our own quilt square, collaborate with someone on a square, or make a square all together. Then we can bring it all together at the end. This way, we can participate in a mix of co-creation and individual or asynchronous working. (Ella)

 

Participants discussed the idea of creating a collective piece where they could still have the capacity to be imaginative and create their own works. Ideas started to bloom: using materials from the lab, integrating journals and other aspects of daily scientific life, mapping and graphing out emotions or time spent doing science, and how they might want people who come to see the exhibition to engage with the quilt.

All of it will contribute to the multidimensional quilt – paper, string, marbling, clay, writing, video, data collection, narrative, performance. The focus on process, co-creation, multiple media – moving forward these ideas will be central to the project. The ideas of our Tryptich of time, emotion, and balance, will still be simmering there, directly relevant to some quilt “squares’ and more tangential to others. (Ella)

Although some people slowly began to leave and return to the hustle and bustle of their lives, conversations ranging from handcraft to chemistry lingered in the room for another hour. One of our participants brought their marbling materials to the session and gave a brilliant impromptu workshop on the technique, guiding us to create bright abstract prints while explaining the science of surface tension. More importantly, we started to see people making connections, comparing and exchanging their inspiration, and forming a sense of belonging as a group of artists in its early days.

It’s not too late to join the group of scientist-artists and contribute to our tryptich-quilt of research culture! The next session will be held on Wednesday 19th June 12-2pm. Reach out to Stephen Webster (stephen.webster@imperial.ac.uk) if you are interested.

 

Nauka emigrantka/science on the move

Nauka Emigrantka/Science on the Move


We’ve just had our last Friday Forum of the year, on The Ages of Science. Naturally this milestone made me reflect on the series as a whole, and particularly on the first event, held in February.

Our subject was Nauka Emigrantka, translated from the Polish as ‘Science on the Move’. The Polish motif comes from a Warsaw-based colleague of mine, Urszula Kaczorowska. Urszula is a long-time visitor and teacher with Imperial’s Science Communication Unit and is a science journalist at the Polish Press Agency.

Some years ago Urszula became interested in the issue of ‘migrant science’. What is it like, travelling for science? Scientists often uproot themselves to go and pursue their craft in another country. Science is always international, global. What could be more ordinary, then, in moving somewhere that offers the right opportunity? But what are the difficulties in ‘being global’, in migrating for your science? Being a journalist, Urszula sensed a good story.

In its publicity material Imperial describes itself as ‘the United Kingdon’s most international university’. UCL in turn calls itself ‘the global university’. But ‘being international’ can’t be an undiluted good. Mixed in must be joy, opportunity, peril and heart-ache.

These are big themes for the life scientific, and rather under-explored. I was interested too in the philosophical angle. It is a myth of science that it has a method, maybe one method. In that case surely science is the same everywhere. You can see the point: DNA is a double helix, whether you are in Moscow or in Malibu. But do the undoubted facts of science flatten out all difference, all geography, all sociology? Is science more a place of nowhere, rather than somewhere? It seems unlikely.

The job of the Friday Forum is to explore in congenial fashion such issues. And so we gathered one Friday lunchtime, to take stock of the matter. Naturally, three travellers took charge. Urszula herself chaired the session, and her interviewees were two perambulatory scientists, one from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, the other based at Imperial but trained in India.

Dr Szymon Drobniak is an evolutionary biologist, especially interested in bird colouration. Like a migrant bird himself, he moves rather regularly between Poland, Australia and Sweden, spending good patches of time in each. Dr Dhanya Radhakrishnan works in Imperial’s Form and Function lab, and gained her PhD in India in 2021.

Urszula carefully probed our speakers’ motives for their migration, and way they feel about their radical geographical extension. Symon and Dhanya’s perspectives of course were multiple, and far from straightforward. Part of the challenge is in adapting to a new culture: Syzmon was by turns amusing and thought-provoking in comparing the Scandinavian mind-set with that of the Australian. For Dhanya, the remarkable change in opportunity and in the dynamics of research culture made Imperial almost the natural place to be. But not quite natural. She is far from home, from parents and friends, and time is passing.

It is a rule of the Friday Forums that, of the short hour available, half is given to the panel, half to the audience and a question-and-answer session. Ideas, thoughtful and challenging, flowed quickly. We discussed how, for those who have come to the UK from LMICs, the phrase ‘brain-drain’ is too much of a simplification. We talked about how migratory science, as a phenomenon, intersects in complex ways with other features of science that vary nationally. You can’t talk about migrant science without considering the gender gap, and the professional status of women. The rigidities of hierarchy, and how they shift across societies, will impact on a person’s choices when it comes to workplace. And then there is the issue of dominance of English as the lingua franca of science, and how this influences both the native, and the non-native speaker of English.

As ever, our Friday Forum produced no answers. As ever, the simple act of assembling in person, to discuss as a group some contextual issue of science, seemed both profound and easy. Led by Urszula, and with Szymon and Dhanya pondering the issues, no one wanted the discussion to end. As the next class filed into our room, and we made our exit, we soon assembled again down the stairs, in the Medical School café, to continue the discussion. Szymon I noticed, settled there too, with his enormous suitcase, all ready for Heathrow, and Australia, and another lap of his travels.

With thanks to:

Dr Szymon Drobniak, The Jagiellonian University, Krakow
Dr Dhanya Radhakrishan, Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London
Urszula Kaczorowska, Polish Press Agency, Warsaw

Briefing note for Friday Forum No. 5

Friday Forum May 17 Briefing Note

What do undergraduate education and science research have in common?

The Good Science Project, which organises The Friday Forums, exists to promote debate and development in research culture, here at Imperial College. What is meant by ‘research culture’? Certainly this is a large and amorphous concept. It relates to how scientists work. It is in particular interested in the social and personal factors that are so important in the ‘life scientific’. These factors include intellectual autonomy, the importance of trust between colleagues, the stresses of career security, publication and funding, the pace at which we work, the pleasures of slowly building expertise, the costs of set back and failure, and much else besides.

Today’s discussion

Our main aim in the May 17th Friday Forum is to explore the links between UG education and research culture. Quite often in universities research and education become somewhat separate. We should always aim to challenge that division. Tomorrow’s scientists are drawn from today’s undergraduates. Further, for the majority of UGs who do not go to work in universities, an authentic understanding of scientific culture will be an important part of their CV.

To make clearer the link between UG education and research we frame our discussion around sustainability. Sustainability is of course an important aspect of environmental concern. But it has a wider meaning that makes it relevant both to the life of an undergraduate and to the life of a scientist.  In this wider meaning, something that is sustainable can endure and flourish with no risk of long-term damage to the individual, to the institution, or to the environment.

To see how we can encourage sustainability in both education and in scientific research we will focus on five areas of interest:

Imagination

Both as students and as scientists, we want to be able to use our imagination. In one way of telling the history of science, our great scientific heroes are often pictured as people of imagination: Einstein with the beam of light he imagined riding upon; Kekulé and his ring of fire that became the benzene ring. But more ordinarily, any scientific observation requires imagination – admittedly an imagination that is mixed in with reason. Science always involves ‘the making of meaning’, a concept not quite captured by a word more commonly used about science, ‘discovery’. For example, how is it that two scientists, looking at the same set of data, can reach completely different conclusions? And when a science student is captivated by something they are learning, is it not their imagination that has been fired? Here is a concluding question: if imagination is central to science research and to science learning, how do we ensure that students and scientists have space and time for the imagination to flourish?

Inclusivity

For a long time after Sir Francis Bacon founded modern science in the 17th century, science was considered to be ‘one thing with one method’. We know this as ‘the Enlightenment view’. But today the philosophy of science leads us to doubt the monist view of science. Rather, we sense that Inclusivity – the ability of different groups  to access science as a profession, and science as a body of knowledge, itself enriches science. A many-headed science will be better at finding the way.  We might say: the scientific imagination, is enriched by difference. And the resulting truths may be more relevant to more people. But we ask: how good is the laboratory, or the classroom, at encouraging ‘different views’?

Collaboration

Perhaps when we collaborate – work together – our imagination is enhanced. Suddenly we are ‘thinking jointly’.  Collaboration, whether in the classroom or the laboratory, is much more than the sharing of equipment. It is guessing together, developing ideas together, working together. But for this to happen you need trust and you need time. When we organise collaborative work for students, do we allow enough time? And what are the challenges in making a collaboration successful?

Interdisciplinarity

It is often said that good ideas occur at boundaries, at the interface between disciplines. All scientists, and all science students, are aware of the costs of specialisation, of narrowing. But how easy is it, in the classroom or in the laboratory, to traverse disciplinary divides? Are we honest about the difficulties? Both for students and for scientists, are there risks to being interdisciplinary?

Assessment and evaluation

All through this Friday Forum we focus on the themes above. But something big is missing: the question of our success. We want to know we are doing well: we enjoy the approval of our teachers, our peers, the leaders in our field. What are the problems of assessment however? Can it get in the way of learning, or of scientific innovation? Scientists know all about the pressure to publish, and students know that assessment can somehow miss the point. Do students have examples or assessment that enriches learning, and aids collaboration and the imaginative spirit? And do scientists know of ways their work can be followed and appreciated in ways that remain supportive and fruitful?

Dr Stephen Webster

Senior Lecturer in Science Communication

Office of the Vice-Provost (Research and Enterprise)/Science Communication Unit

May 17th 2024

The Scientist as Citizen: Finding your voice

By Philip Howard | 14 June 2023

What happens when the nature of your research seems to necessitate urgent political action, particularly in the fields of climate change, biodiversity and air quality? Should you be the passive, contemplative scientist who lets their data do the talking? Or should you take a more active role as a concerned citizen, and, if so, how could you give voice to your concerns?

In contemporary research culture, with ‘the impact agenda’ so important to research finance, scientists and the institution they represent need to be to be open to discussing all these questions. In the second Good Science Friday Forum, with 50 undergrads, postgrads, postdocs and academics, we did exactly that.

Led by Claudia Cannon and Stephen Webster, for a brief hour over lunchtime we were invited to ‘close the scrolls of information, let the laptop sleep, sit still and shut your eyes’ to listen to the voices of a podcaster, policymaker, pedagogue and, as you may have guessed, a poet.

‘a story you have to tell’

It was Nick Drake, the poet but also a dramatist and a screenwriter, who opened the meeting giving voice to his form of activism – storytelling. During an expedition to Svalbard his first reaction of a sense of wonder at its sublime beauty was transcended through his own reflections and conversations with scientists. He then saw the pollution in the water and the ice, and the effects of global warming such as variations in the thermohaline circulation. His ‘activist’ response was to write a book-length poem, The Farewell Glacier (Bloodaxe 2012). It is the voices of people who were there, in voices both humans and non-human and to write in the voices of time, the voices of the past, the present and the future.

Pete Knapp, a PhD student at Imperial in indoor air pollution is active in Imperial Climate Action. Like Nick, Pete communicates with stories. His turning point to activism occurred as he overflew endless palm forests on his way to see a much-depleted rainforest in Borneo. On joining Scientists for Extinction Rebellion Pete started a podcast called ‘Tipping Points’ to share the stories of why some scientists became environmental activists. He extended this to those in other professions and to those under 25 who have yet to fix on a career.

‘not written in stone but in time’

Becky Mawhood, Head of the Climate and Environment Hub, UK Parliament, highlighted some other ways to get your voice heard. Our laws, after all, are not fixed but can change with convincing evidence. Scientists, citizens and activists can influence and shape policy by representing their research through bodies such as The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, the Common and Lords Libraries and Select Committees which scrutinise Government policy.  Becky’s team and a Knowledge Exchange unit support the exchange of information and expertise between researchers and the UK Parliament.

Tilly Collins is a Senior Teaching Fellow in Imperials’ Centre for Environmental Policy. It is now on its 45th MSc cohort. Tilly’s environmental activism is voiced through her teaching of people about sustainability. These people, spread across the world, can make an impact, ‘nudging’ others such that environmental benefits, such as not eating meat, become globally normalised.

‘we are in this together’

It was clear from the audience reaction that they wanted themselves to go beyond the passive. Each person was striving to find their own voice but all felt some constraints in their desire to do more. Several referenced the ‘invisible ivory tower’ and how that challenged them to be able to tell their story. The behind-the-scenes environmental activist professor did not want to get arrested and ‘embarrass their husband. The undergraduate wanted to be supported by a wider Imperial culture, as did the academic who experienced a tension at Imperial between what he thought and what he could say due to perceived funding issues. Some needed ‘safe spaces’ such as publishing on Instagram to showcase their research to connect globally with like-minded people.

‘now open your eyes’

As the brief hour closed and we prepared to return to our desks and labs the last words were for the panellists. The need to engage all, ‘friend or foe’ in telling the story of your research was emphasised and the power of influencing policy was reiterated. Perhaps a good overall summary was inspired by Tilly’s years of teaching. Whichever voice you choose, be true to the science, true to your research, and, most importantly, be true to yourself.

The meeting closed with Nick Drake reading his poem ‘The Voice of the Future’. You can hear his poem being powerfully performed in the attached link.  Please, take two minutes out of your ‘busy’ and ‘colourful lives’ to listen to these and other voices.

A thesaurus of doubt

As we shall discuss at the conference, doubt is a many-faceted aspect of science. To get a sense of the importance of doubt within the manifold of science, one would have to explore many disciplines, from metaphysics to logic to sociology to politics.

Special thanks are therefore due to MSc Science Communication alumnus Philip Howard, who has compiled for us a selection of thoughts on doubt and science. Quite rightly, considering his Imperial degree, Philip here is particularly concerned with the question of how doubt can best be handled in relation to the communication of science in public arenas.

Doubt is a fundamental element of science

  • Doubt is an essential part of the process of science. In the philosophy of science, from Sir Francis Bacon to Goethe to Sir Karl Popper, doubt in one’s hypotheses structures investigations, with their possible falsification perhaps just the next experiment away. For Popper, the route to good science is self-criticism.
  • It is a matter of metaphysics that science – because of its empirical grounding – cannot reach certain knowledge. The physicist Richard Feynman, in his 1955 ‘The Value of Science’ Caltech lecture, said ‘When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty – some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain.’

Doubt is an engine of creativity

  • Jennifer Michael Hecht in her 2004 ‘Doubt: a history’ celebrates doubt, in an evolving religious context, as an engine of creativity and an alternative to the political and intellectual dangers of certainty. Her book is long, but highly recommended as an example of ‘synthetic’ non-fiction writing.
  • Why in science might we want to ‘protect’ doubt, and cherish it as a stimulus to thought? Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said ‘there is no permanence in doubt; it incites the mind to closer inquiry and experiment, from which, if rightly managed, certainty proceeds, and in this alone can man find thorough satisfaction’. Goethe suggests then that it is the ‘unsettledness’ of doubt, the way it needles you (‘incites the mind’), that is creative.
  • Doubt ensures constructive dialogues between researchers and research groups. The clarity of settled knowledge emerges from the fog of competing hypotheses such that existing theories, and their inherent uncertainties, are replaced by new theories albeit with their own unknowns and doubts. Are we proud of a conclusion, if it was not accompanied by new questions and new doubts.
  • By the end of the Victorian era some thought physics to be complete. But Lord Kelvin’s famous ‘two clouds’ lecture, given at the Royal Institution in 1900, highlighted two problems of classical physics. These doubts were resolved by the new quantum and relativistic physics of Planck and Einstein.
  • Doubt is contemplative, but it also is practical. By unsettling us, it ensures that the complacencies of the great and the good can be challenged. Rutherford’s reference in 1933 to the industrial scale production of atomic energy as ‘Moonshine’ drove a doubting Leo Szilard to register a patent in 1934 for a viable chain reaction. Another example: Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry, maintained that muriatic acid must contain oxygen. It took a young Humphry Davy, in 1810, to take the bold step to doubt the great man, and prove that muriatic acid, now called hydrochloric acid, contained no oxygen.

Doubt is more than just error bars, and eludes quantification

  • The communication of science to wider groups of people challenges how doubt is presented.
  • Emile Roux, an associate of Louis Pasteur and renowned scientist in his own right, said ‘Science appears calm and triumphant when it is completed; but science in the process of being done is only contradiction and torment, hope and disappointment.’
  • Covid showed to the public science in the moment and how doubt is part of ‘science in the process’. Error bars were not enough to express the uncertainties and doubts in the science and could hardly calm the multiple social and political forces that interacted with scientifically-based predictions.
  • In contrast, and as a taster of ‘Science Communication Studies’, see Brian Wynne’s paper on Cumbrian Hill farmers after the Chernobyl accident led to high levels of radioactive material in sheep.  The difficulty scientists had in acknowledging their own doubt and uncertainties, as they tried to undertand a situation far different from laboratory work and simple modesl led to them losing the trust of the hill farmers.
  • We scientists, rather prone to suggesting that the public don’t understand that science is uncertain, might on second thoughts admit that most people are used to handling uncertainty and doubt as a fact of life. Might ‘the general public’ be more at ease with scientific doubt than scientists imagine ?

Reasonable versus Unreasonable Doubt

  • Henri Poincaré, the great French physicist and mathematician, said ‘To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.’ And this is a basis for a thought-provoking article by David Allison, Gregory Pavela and Ivan Oransky.
  • How can we prevent the ‘illegitimate co-option of doubt’ being used to undermine good science. According to Allison, Pavela and Oransky these are the occasions when ‘doubt is [used to create] disingenuous expressions of skepticism, motivated by financial or other nonscientific interests, which are allowed to pervert scientific interests.’
  • But, on the other hand, we need to be careful as ‘The same tools used to discredit disingenuous expressions of doubt can be used against those who express well-supported doubt. Those with particular political views may declare some doubt to be unreasonable, even if it is actually quite reasonable.’
  • In presenting climate change science how should we communicate the uncertainty in climate science without that doubt undermining the ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ science.

The ‘stupid’ do not doubt

  • Bertrand Russell said, ‘The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.’
  • How should we present science, the implications of science and our doubts and uncertainties, without undermining the legitimate authority of the science itself, and our own long-held expertise?
  • In pushing back on those who try to exploit a scientific doubt to challenge the beyond reasonable doubt science, there is a danger. We need to avoid, as described by Allison, Pavela and Oransky, using counterproductive rhetoric to describe doubters as ‘“deniers,” “shills,” “fringe” persons, and the like”.
  • ‘There truly are people—some of them in positions of authority—who are promoting disingenuous and unreasonable expressions of doubt. However, if we slip and rely on non-scientific rhetorical devices to argue against them, then we invite others to use these rhetorical devices to dismiss cases in which scientific doubt is reasonable and even essential.
  • Are Allison et al right, when they say at the end of their article, ‘As scientists and scholars, we need to rise above [politics and rhetoric], stick to the science, and never give up the virtue of doubt’.

When dogma trumps doubt

  • The consequences of people who are convinced they are right, with no doubt as to the ‘truth’ of their absolute knowledge, can have varied and profound consequences, especially when scientific dogma allies itself with vested interests and political dogma.
  • Sometimes, scientists put doubt aside. Didier Raoult, a physician and a microbiologist, gained global fame for promoting hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19 despite no evidence for its effectiveness and the subsequent opposition from experts around the world. On the other hand Charles Darwin, no stranger to doubt, was exceptionally stubborn on behalf of his theory of natural selection, and his belief that modern humans are a single species.
  • A brilliant example of science communication, on the theme of dogma trumping doubt, comes in the episode ‘Knowledge or Certainty’ of Jacob Bronowski’s acclaimed 1973 Ascent of Man TV series. In it he says, ‘Science is a very human form of knowledge’ and scientists must always believe that they are ‘fallible and that they ‘may be mistaken’. The episode ends with Bronowski standing in a boggy pond outside Auschwitz. To Bronowksi, the consequences of a lack of doubt and the dominance of dogma and ignorance were all too plain to see and feel in the mud formed by the ashes of four million people. It is a theme echoed by the historian Sir Isiah Berlin, who saw, on occasion, a continuum between the simplifications of the Enlightenment, and totalitarianism.

‘I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.’

  • HAL 9000 in Space Odyssey 2001 also went on to say – ‘No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, fool-proof and incapable of error.’
  • Could AI systems express doubt and, if so, could they then be more useful or more dangerous?
  • Although much is written on AI and uncertainty there is very little on whether AI can ‘self-doubt’? Uncertainty in AI is about how AI deals with uncertain inputs or how humans assess the certainty of the output.
  • There seems to be very little researched or written on whether AI systems can express doubt about their own output. If AI cannot doubt then does it become, as for Russell’s ‘cocksure’, stupid?
  • Psychologist Steve Fleming at UCL argues that the ability to doubt separates humans from AI. The ‘metacognition’ of humans allows us to ‘think about our own thinking’ and ‘recognise when we might be wrong’.

Compiled by Philip Howard 26 August 2023 | Editor: Stephen Webster 

Reflections on doubt

The Good Science Project‘s first conference, the Day of Doubt, brings together leading scientists to debate today’s research culture and the values needed for good science. Any conference about research culture should encourage discussion and reflection, and in the Day of Doubt we hope everyone attending will feel free to contribute. All panel discussions will have plenty of time for audience Q and A; and after lunch, when we get into smaller groups, there should be ample opportunity for open debate.

Choosing your ‘reflection session’

We’ll be in touch with delegates in September to give you the opportunity to choose your ‘reflection session’. If you prefer to leave it to chance, or feel you cannot take your pick from such a rich offering, you can opt for ‘the lucky dip’, and the organisers will do the allocation for you. In advance, here is a short description of the likely themes of each session.

Questioning … public engagement

Join Professor Ken Arnold and Katherine Mathieson to discuss the role of public engagement as an increasingly important part of the scientist’s professional identity. What are the gains for a scientist, in doing public engagement work? How has public engagement progressed, in the last ten years? What do Ken and Katherine feel are the current challenges, in improving science-society relations? This session will also be an opportunity to learn about our facilitators’ institutions, the Medical Museion in Copenhagen, where Ken is Director, and the Royal Institution, where Katherine is Director.

Questioning … interdisciplinarity

All universities are busy encouraging interdisciplinarity, with multiple centres and institutes joining the traditional disciplinary departments. There are many areas of urgent concern where the interdisciplinary approach seems obviously necessary – climate science being an example. And we are often told that it is at the boundaries between disciplines that the best ideas and the brightest creativity can be found. But how true is this? How easy is it to be an ‘interdisciplinary scientist’? Are there specific issues for such people in terms of publishing and funding? How best can we introduce interdisciplinarity into the curriculum? And how easy is it for the traditional departments to encourage their ambulatory researchers? Join Dr Isabella von Holstein, Translation and Research Manager at the Institute for Molecular Science and Engineering, and Alyssa Gilbert, Director of Innovation at Imperial’s Grantham Institute, as they examine, and perhaps lay to rest, any doubts we might have about interdisciplinarity.

Questioning … excellence

Is it necessary for a scientist to be excellent? Does science require excellence, to advance and develop its solutions to our problems? Or is science basically dependent on being ‘normal’, as the historian Thomas Kuhn so famously said. Excellence is embedded in UK science because of its prime validator, the ‘Research Excellence Framework’ (REF). But how can excellence be measured? And when it comes to excellence, is it a concept that hardwires into science a fear of failure? Is excellence a competitive feature, a personal matter, or a collaborative one? Most pertinently, what is the significance of recent news about REF 2028, and its plans to broaden the way we judge ourselves. Join two acknowledged experts in the field – Professors James Wilsdon and Stephen Curry – to debate the issue and put your views.

Questioning … scientific truth

After Francis Bacon began to trumpet the virtues of the experimental method 400 years ago, science as we still understand it gradually came to be regarded as the ‘royal road to the truth’. And it has certainly had that status for the past 200 years. Yet, as we have come to learn more about science’s own history, working practices and institutional settings, doubt has been cast on the sort of ‘truth’ that results from scientific inquiry. After all, scientists are fallible creatures operating within limited resources, and scientific findings themselves – including very major ones – invite falsification and are periodically overturned and replaced. Join philosopher and sociologist Steve Fuller, and Dr Stephen Webster, to explore the shifting and elusive forms of scientific truth, and its role in the modern university.

Questioning … scientific expertise

Head of Chemistry Oscar Ces, technician and educator Kat Harris, and surgeon, author and teacher Roger Kneebone, together try to articulate, and weave together, the many forms of expertise that make Imperial College – and all universities – such interesting places. Increasingly we know that science benefits from diverse viewpoints, and that must imply ‘diverse skills’ too. How easy is it for a university to make use of different sorts of expert? Actually, how good is research culture at folding together the insights of scientists, social scientists and humanities scholars? And how easy is it for science to welcome diverse perspectives, while also trying to promote across society the scientific, Enlightenment world view?

And if you haven’t registered yet…

If you enjoy discussion about science, have views about its place in society and the way it organises itself in universities, then this conference is for you. Expect a lively day, with plenty of interaction, as we search for a better research culture. The conference is free and lunch is provided. Register here.

In conversation: Professor Mary Ryan and Dr Stephen Webster on ‘research culture’

Professor Mary Ryan (Vice-Provost Research and Enterprise) and Dr Stephen Webster (Director of The Good Science Project) in conversation on ‘research culture’…

Stephen Webster: Why do you think research culture is rising up the agenda at British universities?

Mary Ryan: Two reasons. Firstly, we have finally found our voice and are saying that things need to change! But there is also a recognition that we face huge societal challenges that need to be addressed. We need good people from a whole range of backgrounds working on these problems in an inclusive organisation – ideally together!

If we think about EDI it is quite easy to talk about policy, legislation and frameworks. These have a role but I think other factors are more important. For example, we should keep exploring, and reminding ourselves, of the key moral arguments that urge equality of opportunity and equality. So here is an ‘ought’ that should guide us. But apart from the moral argument, we know as scientists (and there is lots of evidence), that diverse teams deliver better outcomes.  If we really care about having the most impact then the best teams will also be the most cognitively diverse teams.

So how do we get there?  Everyone in a team needs to feel respected, valued, and able to develop their authentic self. That’s how I see my job. I’m here to create a positive research environment at the heart of Imperial College, so that its research and its enterprise achieve the best it can for the benefit of society.

SW: Every institution is different. What are the particular challenges and opportunities for Imperial, as regards research culture?

MR: Imperial is an amazing place – it is full of people who are brilliant at what they do and driven to make a difference.  This gives us a head start as we are all working to a common purpose with (hopefully) a shared set of values and goals. We are unusual too in our emphasis on STEMB. That’s our ‘flavour’: we are a remarkable community that cares about evidence and hard-won data.  This emphasis on progress gives me hope that we will continue to improve the research environment to deliver better outcomes.

There are of course challenges. In our core disciplines many demographics are historically under-represented and we need to work hard to increase the diversity of our staff and student population. We need to be more open to challenging the ‘way of doing’ and accept that as our community changes we should look to be more open and inclusive, better at valuing differences and the benefits that difference brings. We need to value team-based working, not simply applaud the ‘individual genius’ (individual genii still welcome!)

I often hear that our focus on ‘excellence’ is unhelpful; I disagree, but I see we need to be careful how we define and measure the work that is carried out here, reflecting our interest in impact and quality, and not being swayed by volume and external metrics. We need to support people so that they deliver their best. This is the goal of our strategy for inclusive excellence. In fact that is what I mean by ‘excellence’. Excellence is not some agreed standard, or the mark of the ‘winner’. For me, simply, it is people delivering their best. I know we still have some behaviours that are not appropriate, and these need to be dealt with and become the unacceptable exception. I know that the faculty and department leadership are all working hard to make this the case.

SW: With research culture, there is a sense in which responsibility lies both with the individual and the institution. How do you see the balance?

MR: I do believe every individual is responsible for their own ethics and their own actions. But the institution needs to provide the right education, training, frameworks and structures that set expectations of behaviour and align benefits that incentivise that behaviour (and actively discourage individuals that create non-inclusive environments). All this relates to everything we do and it touches everything: from apparently routine day-to-day interactions, to the ethics of how teams organise authorship ethics, to the way we make sure we think about the impact of our work in different sectors and communities.

All this will depend on more than decisions and programmes: we need to talk openly about culture and ethics in the broadest sense and to challenge each other in a constructive way (which is why I am so happy that we are doing this work!). It’s not easy, exposing and looking at these questions but we know we must do this work. This way we can better understand the challenges both within the institution and in the wider community.

SW: When I attended your inaugural lecture to mark your appointment as the Armourers and Brasiers’ Chair for Materials Science, I noticed you discussed at length your experiments and your laboratory work. You really conveyed a sense of enthusiasm! What is it you like about life in the laboratory?

MR: I can go on at length about how brilliant it is to be in the lab. It’s something I rarely get to do nowadays so I live vicariously through my research group. There is something quite magical about starting with a hypothesis and finding out if you’re right! I work a lot with nanoscale materials – phenomena invisible to the human eye even though their effects happen at the macroscale. I’m still in awe of the fact that we can image down to atoms and see fundamental physics and chemistry in action. I also have spent far too many nights at synchrotrons: 24/7 experiments bring a different perspective to teamwork (sleep deprivation means you get to know people really well!). And the sheer engineering magnificence that delivers a beam of monochromated X-rays at 20 nm focus never ceases to amaze me.

The other thing that I love is learning how to do something ‘hands-on’ from others who have spent time perfecting their craft (and it often is a craft!). Things you would never work out yourself because you wouldn’t think like that.  Oh – and the added impact of knowing you’re the first (well, now second) person to see this!

And now I’ve got some questions for you…!

MR: When we first discussed a project on research culture, we agreed that this was ‘an ethical issue’. What is the link between research culture and ethics?

SW: Ethics is about the difference between right and wrong, how we know that difference, and why we might disagree about the direction we take. The word ‘good’ is interesting in relation to science, because it so obviously points to a possible tension. We might see an example of science as ‘good’ because of some technical virtuosity, or because, for example, it promises some much-sought solution. But it easy to see also that ‘good science’ has a broader meaning, to do with the general attitude of the scientific effort. ‘Good science’ might be to do with care of others, or perhaps a disinclination to aggressive ambition. It might be to do with the attentiveness a scientist brings to their daily, ordinary and unsung work. It might include some reticence over the rush to publish; it might include some generosity of attitude to students. It might well include a glorious accelerative moment too, a moment of ‘excellence’. It is in this sense that ethics in science moves beyond concerns over the future implications of an innovation (CRISPR, for example, or AI), or over which rules to follow (with vivisection, for example). Instead, ‘good science’ concerns our daily, ordinary practice as we go about our laboratory life: the intimate and the hidden rather than the extraordinary and the triumphant. The Good Science Project asks: how can a place like Imperial College, an institution with so many pressures, and where the stakes are so high, support best the ordinary, daily ‘internal goods’ of science?

MR: You are organising a series of lunchtime discussion events, the Friday Forums, open to all. What is their purpose? How do they help us understand research culture?

SW: When I asked you why interest in research culture has been rising up the agenda, you answered very persuasively. You said we are aware now that we must make the scientific mindset much broader – in a sense more welcoming. As you say, better science will be the result, and this surely is the motive behind EDI policies in a place like Imperial. I would add too that for many scientists the search for a link between their work and social justice, and between their work and sustainability, is becoming more pressing. You could say they are developing their ‘outward gaze’. That might have implications for research culture. Perhaps that is one reason why public engagement is taken so seriously by the College: we know that scientists see engagement with a lay audience as part of their professional identity. And other matters too might be feeding into an anxiety about research culture. Everywhere in the university sector there are worries about job security, career progression, remuneration, workload, and, judging by the headlines right now, the university financial model in its entirety. A host of issues, and surely too many to be easily resolved!

The Friday Forums are really a recognition that we must debate these issues as colleagues, openly and judiciously, just as much as we look to College leaders to propose solutions. As for the ‘internal goods’ – those ordinary but important moments of care and generosity – well,  if we don’t talk about them, it will be harder to notice them, encourage them, and celebrate them. So the first Friday Forum, which was fascinating and moving, concerned the role of technicians in the Imperial ecosystem.  For technicians, in their daily care for experiments and for people, are a source of constancy in a hectic and reactive environment. And constancy, as embodied by our technicians, is important to ‘good science’, and possesses therefore ethical significance.

MR: And what is the purpose of September’s ‘Day of Doubt’?

SW: It is an unusual title for an Imperial conference! But I have yet to meet a scientist, engineer, mathematician or business scholar who doesn’t understand immediately the force of the term. For there is something about our life at Imperial – whatever the field of work – that is shaped by unknowing, uncertainty, and doubt. It really is the nature of science: we use our senses and we use our instruments but we cannot read nature directly. Even if we like to think we are getting closer to the truth always, a moment’s reflection tells us that, at least in relation to the true map of nature, our knowledge is extremely fragile. But there is much more to scientific doubt than this particular philosophical heartache. Honest scientists sometimes have doubts about their work: its technical progress, its significance, its societal value, its professional esteem. These existential doubts are always there, and rarely discussed. The problem partly is that with 400 years of staggering success, modern science seems entitled to preen its feathers. There was that phrase of C.P. Snow, in his Two Cultures lectures, where he said that scientists ‘have the future in their bones’. And when he grumbled about traditional literary culture, his beef was that people like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and D.H. Lawrence were gloomy to their socks.

The Day of Doubt won’t be gloomy. Rather the opposite. It will be an unusual exploration of the way that the critical questions applied to our work, the doubts about what we do, and the disappointments and frustrations of laboratory life, are all part of good science. Rather than being signs of failure, they are better seen as a resource and the route to eventual success.  But for that vision to be possible, you need a supportive, ‘sheltering’, research culture. It’s great then that the conference will have as its first session a conversation between our provost, Professor Ian Walmsley, and the CEO of the Crick Institute, Sir Paul Nurse. Between them they know a lot about what makes science tick, and why sometimes the clock stops. Others, working in science, in the arts, and in policy, will help us think about these matters, so that we can make better creative use of the gaps and pauses that underpin the scientific effort. The day will have great input from people who think a lot about these things. And because, really, that is all of us, the Day of Doubt will involve huge amounts of discussion. See you there!