Author: Stephen Webster

A Memo on the role of the social sciences at Imperial

A Memo on the role of the social sciences at Imperial College

 Support paper for Task and Finish Group

 Summary

 

It is unarguable that the social sciences have become a significant part of the work of Imperial College and it seems likely this influence on our research and on our teaching will only grow. The powerful commitment of the College to an enterprise-centred, high impact identity necessitates a sophisticated understanding of the role of scientific knowledge in the public sphere.

If we consider areas very important to Imperial – AI, climate change, security science, public health and infectious disease – all are highly charged with volatile and hard-to-predict social forces. No one now believes that natural scientists, engineers or medical researchers on their own can control the flow of scientific knowledge through society.

Not all of Imperial’s research has an immediate societal dimension. On the whole, though, public utility drives the College philosophy, as we see from the Strategy strapline ‘Science for Humanity’.  In navigating the turbulent waters of the knowledge economy, so as to ensure our research is needed and finds favour, policy experts and public engagement professionals are clearly important. But essential also will be the cadre of social science and humanities academics the College possesses. It is social science research that will better position Imperial enterprise and innovation as ready for uptake by society. Yet, we should be wary of the metaphor that sees the social sciences as an ‘interface’ between STEM research and ‘the market’. As the contributors quoted in this Memo explain, the true power and value of the social sciences will be found, here in Imperial College, when they are fully integrated into the choice and design of our research.

In this Memo I talk more of ‘the social sciences’ than I do of ‘the humanities’. It is true that in terms of research funding, and the guarantee of societal impact, the former seem more significant. However these are areas of knowledge that are highly dependent on each other, and in fact the humanities also are a very significant component of the Imperial identity. At the end of this Memo, as a coda, I will trace out the contours of Imperial’s commitment to the humanities.

The immediate cause of this Memo however is a Friday Forum that took place on November 8th 2024. Titled ‘What is the role of the social sciences at Imperial?’ the meeting was an in-person lunchtime session, immediately followed by a two-hour workshop held in the in the Centre for Languages, Culture and Communication (CLCC). Seventy people attended. Three MSc Science Communication students took notes throughout the afternoon, in effect producing a transcription. A homework sheet was issued, encouraging participants to consider their thoughts at leisure and submit them later. The Friday Forum, the workshop and the homework all centred on the following questions:

  • What should be the relationship between the social and the natural sciences (and, indeed, the formal sciences!) at Imperial?
  • What are the challenges of being a social scientist at Imperial?
  • Thinking back to the Geoff Mulgan quote ‘there is little point having furious innovation in science and technology if our societies stagnate’, can we imagine Imperial as a driver of social innovation, as well as S and T innovation?
  • Is there any sense in which the social sciences at Imperial College need ‘separateness’ in order to flourish?

Seventy pages of notes were taken from the transcript and the homework returns. This Memo is based therefore on the participants’ comments at the Friday Forum; on the various points raised in the homework sheets; and on numerous conversations and email threads.

The panellists at the Friday Forum were Dr Mike Tennant (Centre for Environmental Policy); Dr Diana Varaden (Environmental Research Group) and Professor Steve Fuller (Comte Professor of Social Epistemology, University of Warwick). The facilitators at the afternoon workshop were Dr Giulia Frezza (Centre for Engagement and Simulation Science), Dr Kayla Schulte (Environmental Research Group) and Lauren Shields (Centre for Higher Education and Scholarship). I am very grateful for these colleagues’ help

All the quotes used in this memo are italicised.

 

A. How how much social science is there at imperial College?

It was great to meet so many researchers and was an inadvertent confidence builder too.

 It was really interesting to hear everyone’s views on science for humanity and the role of the humanities and social sciences at Imperial.

 I’ve never seen so many social scientists together at Imperial.

It would be hard to obtain a simple quantification of how many social scientists there are at Imperial. This kind of measurement might anyway be at risk of missing the point. There are members of staff, postdoctoral staff and PhD students, who can be defined as ‘social scientists’, but there are a greater number of STEM-based staff and research students who, as part of their work, take on social science methodologies. A true measure of the reach of the social sciences at Imperial would also have to explore the UG STEM curriculum.

Dr Alex Berry, Zero Pollution Initiative Manager for the Faculty of Engineering, has – independently of this Memo – been working on this question:

On the Imperial Profiles system I looked at academics with tags related to social sciences for the following research areas (some academics will have more than one tag): sociology (22), human geography (24), policy and administration (22), anthropology (2), psychology (29, when linked to other search terms as there are hundreds of people on Imperial Profiles system with this research tag), political science (18), public policy (4), environmental policy (4).

 I found 202 academics at Imperial who have done some social science related research; this includes PIs from the funding snapshot I looked at (research projects which seem to be related to social sciences 2013-2023 based on keywords, funder and project title), people with a PhD student in the LISS DTP, people engaged with the social science networks of excellence, those who identify their expertise as social science, etc.

 

B. What is the scope and nature of the social sciences at imperial?

At the Friday Forum workshop attendees spoke of the advantages of being a social scientist at Imperial. Attendees were also clear about the importance of social science and humanities content in the UG curriculum

 

I think Imperial is exactly the place that can play a role in encouraging radical social and behavioral science research. [It’s] because we don’t have a dedicated social/behavioral science space.

 Engineering students who are studying risk and risk assessment cannot effectively do so without a social sciences approach.

 I think what is special about Imperial is that we chose as social scientists to be here, not in an anthropology department or wherever, but instead came here specifically for interdisciplinary work.

 

Professor Nick Jennings, Vice-Provost (Research and Enterprise) from 2016-2021 provided a valuable compilation in his report How do we ensure science works for all in society?

As indicators, below, three members of staff – social scientists – write about their work.

Dr Daniella Watson is a Research Associate at the Climate Cares Centre, Faculty of Medicine:

We work on climate change and mental health. Most of our research is co-designed with those with lived experiences, such as young people and also experts. We work with surveys but mostly with qualitative and participatory methods such as group discussions, interviews, audio diaries. We also work with community partners on evaluating their interventions.

Dr Nejra Van Zalk is Senior Lecturer in psychology and human factors at the Dyson School of Design Engineering, and is Director of the Design Psychology Lab:

I lead the Design Psychology Lab with the aim of conducting research combining psychological insights with design thinking to understand how products, services, interventions can help maintain and/or promote mental health and well-being of users.

Professor Camille Howson is Professor of Higher Education within the Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship (CHERS) and is a member of the working group overseeing the London Interdisciplinary Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership, or LISS DTP. This is a partnership between Kings College London, Queen Mary, University of London and Imperial College London:

The LISS DTP trains the next generation of research leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs who will transform the way social scientists tackle complex problems and global challenges. The vision for the DTP is informed by three interwoven core principles, which we see as essential to delivering on Imperial’s Strategy:  

    • Interdisciplinarity: students will develop the competencies to engage with challenge-led doctoral research across topics and disciplinary boundaries, both within and beyond the social sciences; 
    • Data-driven research: students will be equipped with enhanced data analytics and digital competences to exploit increasingly large-scale and complex data for research purposes whether their foundation is quantitative or qualitative; 
    • Impact: students will develop the competences to engage with extensive networks of non-academic collaborators, and co-design research and training with users, practitioners, and potential future employers.

 

LISS DTP is not the only social science network in the College. For example, the 2024 ‘Network of Excellence Update Document’ update for the Human Behavior and Experience Network (HuBEx) reports that:

…researchers with social and behavioral science interests are present across most College departments … our steering group currently includes members from Brain Sciences, the Business School, Chemical Engineering, Dyson School of Design Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Faculty of Medicine … our ever-growing membership is representative of the College broadly speaking.

These researchers stress the utility and impact of the social science work. They also note that an Imperial environment where the social sciences flourish will also be one where social science training is deeply-rooted in the institution.

We should be actively organising workshops, conferences, and collaborative platforms that bring together scholars from diverse disciplines to exchange radical ideas. Debates could help to break down existing silos and serve as a forum to encourage contrarian views.

At the Friday Forum many attendees expressed the view that it would be better for College leaders to put work into recognising our own social science talent, and our own social science potential, than in too quickly seeking outside collaboration.

I reckon any further projects should aim to draw on extant expertise rather than exterior advice.

 

C. What are the challenges in being a social scientist at Imperial College?

There were many people at the Friday Forum that suggested the research environment for social scientists needs more stewardship.

Firstly, there are issues over how Imperial sees its social scientists.

Although it is good to be embedded in an Imperial College department, social science funders aren’t oriented towards STEM-based projects. This is really where the College could help us, establishing connections with the social science funders.

In my opinion […] there are entrenched power dynamics that position STEM as a “harder” discipline and social sciences as “softer” counterparts. While this position may be shifting, STEM continues to hold greater inherent value in many contexts across the College. Achieving truly equal collaborations demands mutual respect for the distinct and valuable contributions of every field.

I think the social sciences should not be seen as just a supporting discipline or a ‘nice-to-have’ add on… I have noticed the perception have of the social sciences from, in their perspective the ‘harder sciences’… I find one of the challenges of being a social scientist at Imperial is being proud to showcase oneself as a social scientist … I feel that as a ‘STEM’ university, many academics at Imperial have an identity that sits certain domains above others. In particular I have been told by colleagues that “social science isn’t a proper science”.

 The criticism I often hear from natural scientists is that social science projects feel like they lack rigor or authority and are “wishy-washy”.

The idea of an intellectual hierarchy is common in academia, and for the natural sciences the sense of favourable status dates back to Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626). This superiority, when analysed, depends on the idea that the methodology of the natural sciences is more robust, more likely to deliver enduring truths, more replicable, and more likely to enable useful interventions, than are the social sciences. In this debate Imperial may be a special case. At other universities, social science academics will be in their own department of economics, sociology, and so on, surrounded by a community of like-minded researchers. Although social scientists at the Friday Forum reported many advantages to working at Imperial, they were vocal on the question of their institutional esteem. While social scientists at Imperial will clearly benefit from being ‘embedded’ in successful and funding-secure departments, where practical and high-impact research challenges are plentiful, the fact they work within a STEM environment will make these social scientists more intimately aware of any tacit suspicion of their craft.

There might be two prejudices here, in fact. If the first is the issue of epistemological privilege, the second related misconception is the idea that the social sciences, at a place like Imperial, are an ‘interface’, helping scientists deal with a tricky public.

Currently [at Imperial the social sciences are] more of an afterthought, eg “we created this beautiful solution (in engineering, medicine, AI, etc) now let’s convince people to use it”.

Many attendees at the Friday Forum voiced concern about promotion prospects, and grant-winning prospects, for social science researchers at Imperial College. We heard examples where it was felt that social science funders were unused to STEM-oriented proposals, diminishing the chances of an award. This in time feeds into metrics, and the promotion round, putting Imperial social scientists at a disadvantage also when seeking to move institution.

 

D. How can we frame the social sciences in relation to the College Strategy?

The Imperial Strategy document is dominated by its commitment to societal development. A ‘Future Leaders’ campaign and an ‘Institute of Extended Learning’ are just two of many initiatives whose success is highly dependent on a shrewd understanding of society. Similarly, the four new ‘Schools of Convergence Science’ stabilise themes, for example ‘Human and Artificial Intelligence’ and ‘Security’ that comprise social as well as technical challenges.

As the Strategy itself puts it, ‘…before we can usefully change the world, we must first seek to understand it’ (p2). Notably the Strategy ends its introduction with the phrase ‘Imagine that’. Also in that introduction is a note about the importance of humility.

Although the Strategy mentions ‘society’ frequently, the phrase ‘social sciences’ does not appear. Similarly, the word ‘humanity’ appears often but not the term ‘humanities’.

Our language will evolve. For this to happen we need considered reflection on our attitude to the social sciences at Imperial. Meanwhile there will be discussion of issues of organisation.

This question of organisation, addressed at the Friday Forum, generated a great deal of  comment.

 A more integrated approach is required, where the social sciences are recognised as necessary in the conception, design, testing and implementation of any STEM innovation that aims to improve people’s lives.

 We need to pool the methodological resources of science and social science, tear down the methodological and intellectual obstacles between them to move forward.

 What is worrying, is that sometimes social science methods are used in science research, without including social scientists in the process, which may have implications for how we interpret the results of the research.

 Many voices at the Friday Forum were sceptical of more re-organisation, or thought that organisation initiatives on their own cannot address the challenges under discussion.

 Some staff did argue for a degree of separateness. These views had nothing to do with a need to retreat behind a wall. Rather, they stem from the need for social scientists to discuss their work, debate methodology, and learn from each other. In other words, along with the need to be recognised as integral to Imperial College innovation and enterprise, Friday Forum voices saw value too in the concept of a ‘social science community’, with some autonomy, and some sense of belonging.

We do need some sort of space for mixed methods [and methodology discussion], as the research will benefit from that. [Also] our students have brought this up.

We need to encourage social scientists to evolve their methodology, we need to grow our thinking and support those who want to work in this space.

[I see] a value in separation. By distinctly being ‘a scientist’ or ‘social scientist’ (and distinctly in a discipline within that) allows us to use the strengths of each discipline more fully.

 

In discussions of this sort, input from the centres, institutes, centres of excellence and schools of convergence will be important. They have disciplinary foundations, but are champions of interdisciplinarity, and know its challenges. And they consider themselves places where careers, as well as science, can flourish.

The overall mood of the Friday Forum however was that ‘separation’ will not be the solution here. Yet simply setting up email lists, and Teams encounters, to get some interaction between far-flung social scientists, may not be enough: at the Forum mention was made of ‘network-fatigue’.  Rather, it was the concept of ‘community-strengthening’, that gained attention. Whatever might be the mechanism of such strengthening, some of its elements were identified: the vigorous and imaginative deployment of social sciences within departments, an institutional commitment to the ecosystem of social science research funding, through College seed funds as well as through national and international agencies; and through academic promotion.

 

E. Coda: the role of the humanities at Imperial College

There are many reasons why, if we are to discuss the social sciences at Imperial, we should also, in the same breath as it were, discuss the humanities. We are currently planning a Friday Forum, and afternoon workshop, on ‘The Role of the Humanities at Imperial’.

Imperial has a strong contingent of humanities academics. Naturally they are teachers: as Thomas Mann’s character Settembrini said, ‘We humanists have always the pedagogic itch’. Imperial’s work in the humanities is a partnership therefore with its students.  Students’ demand for the humanities, fulfilled by the CLCC teaching, is very significant for the questions discussed in this Memo. It is not that our broadest perspectives we simply farm out to our young, for CLCC staff are active in their book writing, their papers, and their research seminars – theirs is a ‘humanities community’.  Rather, a student body wanting to supplement a STEM perspective with other knowledge, will want to know that their departments are working in that direction also. By analogy, if the social sciences enrich and challenge STEM research, so humanities teaching challenges and enriches the STEM education. And in this, our humanities research is important too.

It would be vulgar to only seek quick and simple links between the humanities and STEM innovation. However a good story, centring on the humanities’ interest in discussion and language, comes from Charles Darwin. The great man, back from the Beagle, filled already with ideas about evolution, but hard-pressed to find any like-minded scientist, was much influenced by dinners with his cousin, Hensleigh Wedgwood, a barrister and an historian of language. Joining conversation about the way languages shift and bifurcate – continuous but different –  he could find a way to talk about the natural world too.

This Memo urges a degree of inward-looking. By contrast, wouldn’t it be enough to rely on our links with industry leaders and politicians, for Imperial to secure its way in society? In the end, will not our trust in right-minded and pragmatic industrialists, and our access to them, ground the ambitions expressed in the College Strategy?

Possibly not. We hear that Mark Zuckerberg is getting rid of his fact-checking department, Elon Musk is getting rid of decorum, and that Silicon Valley will soon be rid of its EDI programmes. Dogmatists – people who feel no doubt – are now the executive branch in the USA.

Very obviously, ‘scientific knowledge’, if we allow ourselves the category, cannot on its own pick its way through these complex matters. Whether it is ‘history’, ‘ethics’, ‘philosophy’ or ‘the social sciences’, or all of them that provides the guidance, the College needs to make the mix.

Our social scientists – the people which this Memo discusses – themselves face an intellectual challenge here, and perhaps a responsibility. The more the College recognises their value, the more freedom our social scientists will have to advance their thinking and come to represent the extraordinary breadth of their field. Social scientists can be as quantitative and reductionist as any physicist; as imaginative and searching as any novelist; as radical as any social theorist. Imperial needs all sorts.

 

Stephen Webster

Senior Lecturer in Science Communication

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

The Good Science Project

 

14th January 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A blog about art


Announcing the Good Animated Science Project

Two artists join the Good Science Project this month, Litza Jansz and Esther Neslen. Their task is to make an animated film, or series of animated films, about the research life at Imperial. They won’t be on their own: for Litza and Esther plan a participatory project, one where staff and students are involved from the beginning. Our first workshop is Wednesday 29th January, in the afternoon.

Would you like to join up? Do you have an interest in art and in animation? Are you looking for innovative forms of science communication, that might help you think deeper about your research? No special artistic talent is required. More, it is your ideas and your interest in thinking ‘laterally’ about your science that will makes the difference here. And as people like to say, when it comes to scientific creativity, fresh perspectives always help. We plan six more workshops, following the one in January, stretching till July, always on a Wednesday afternoon, always with lunch included. You’ll learn animation skills and you’ll develop novel ways of seeing and communicating your work. And you’ll have a lot of fun along the way. Your time commitment can vary greatly, according to your own work timetable and deadlines: we deliberately plan the project to be flexible and responsive to the professional commitments of the participants.

Why work with artists?

From the beginning the Good Science Project has wanted to work with artists. At our first conference, The Day of Doubt, artist Daksha Patel was an important voice through the day. And a little later Daksha helped us run a workshop looking at the ways artists and scientists are united by their interest in research.

Our founding artist-in-residence Ella Miodownik, based at the London Interdisciplinary School, has just finished work on The Tapestry of Science. You can see this splendid artwork on the fourth floor of the main stairwell of the Abdus Salaam library, where it now is installed permanently and looks down over our toiling students, and perhaps inspires them. Over ten weeks, and eight workshops, Ella and around a dozen scientists, humanities scholars and research managers met regularly for lunch and discussion, working with various media. They tried stuff out, played and experimented, returning to artistic leanings, and seeing how art and the research life can speak to each other. Towards the end of the programme our participants looked to themselves, and each created a small artistic representation of their life in science, with Ella finally making of their work a whole.

Why is The Good Science Project so interested in artistic expressions of research culture? One answer is that, like good scientists, artists are skilled at avoiding simple answers. Artists may encourage us to see something we rarely teach our science students: that there are many styles of doing science. Ever since Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1621) founded modern European science by developing the basic methodology, it has been hard to see how personal style, or local influence, can become part of scientific knowledge. Bacon was motivated by a wish to keep the classical Greeks, the Church, and personal influence, out of the deliberations of science. And he was successful in his project: over the years there have been many attempts by scientists, philosophers and schoolteachers to simplify science and find the style and method that will infallibly guide the work, to map out what we might call  ‘the royal road to truth’. At times you can detect almost a mythical aspect to this quest for clear guidelines. Speed and efficiency are often the signposts on the quest. And why not? For with the fruits of science so enticing – a vaccine, a new fuel cell – why wouldn’t we hurry up? Why wouldn’t we, in a favourite expression of research institutions, ‘accelerate’?

Whether or not we can speed up science is not the point here. And if the word is understood to signify ‘guiding principles’, rather than falsity, no research institution can live without myth.  The important thing is whether, along with the myth-making, we can find realistic, truthful descriptions of research culture, its hopes and its problems. Such descriptions will help us. And, to go back to our artists, being realistic and truthful are as important to the artistic project as they are to the scientific world. For sure, artists find their realism, and find their truth, in ways that differ from those of the scientist. Moreover, artists disagree amongst themselves on how to do this: compare Braque with Van Gogh. This brings something good to Imperial. For the Good Science Project, one of the values of artists is that they understand so well that ‘final truth’ is not a reasonable ambition.

Scientists’ experience

It always is interesting, and important, when scientists discuss what they like about their work. In public representations of science, and very likely too in departmental culture, the contentments of the scientific life are not much talked about. This is not because such contentments do not exist – they clearly do. Rather it is because such mundane aspects of ordinary work seem outclassed by the coming glories and salvations we so much like to point to. That’s a pity, because if we can’t ponder the small moments of science, then there will be no glories.

Nature magazine often surveys its readers to see what they like and do not like about being a researcher. There are few surprises, but still such surveys are worth perusing, and are quite thought-provoking. For example, when post-docs are asked about what they favour in the research life, three controlling factors are: ‘interest in the work’; ‘degree of independence’; and ‘relationships with colleagues’. Conversely, when asked about the downsides of the life scientific, post-docs mention ‘salary/compensation’, ‘availability of funding’ and ‘job security’. Those three profound categories in the list of scientific pleasures need to be noticed more. For example, when a scientist finds their work interesting, we might suspect that a ‘good’ like this, even a scientific ‘good’, is quite personal, linking to the emotional aspects of simply being in a laboratory. Moments of personal commitment to an ‘interesting problem’, fruitful conversations with colleagues, and growing skills and knowledge, together produce something of importance to the actual scientist. At the Good Science Project we have never found the best word for this daily, common-yet-profound aspect of the research life. Philosophers call it ‘practice’; theologians call it ‘spirit’; managers mention ‘values’; the eminent historian of science Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996), credited with getting philosophers of science to take the naturalistic turn, and to look at laboratories themselves, called it ‘normal science’. And scientists call it ‘the scientific method’.

We have no word that properly captures the combination of values and skills that animates the scientist and helps them flourish. Ironically, the Greek philosopher and biologist Aristotle, who Bacon warned us against, did have a concept, ‘virtue’, actually the topic of a recent Friday Forum ‘Measuring Science, Seeing Virtue‘. At that enjoyable meeting we discussed how it is easier to stress the significance of the final product, rather than to elaborate the virtues of ordinary daily science. Re-establishing the balance on this is one of the aims of The Good Science Project, and in this the contribution of our artists is vital. They look at the constellation of action and feeling that constitutes good science, and with their artistic mix of freedom and discipline, they find the right expression.

 

Good Science Project launches programme of animation workshops

Good Science Animation Project

Science for Humanity

 

Room S303a/b

Centre for Languages Culture and Communication

South Kensington Campus

 

 

To sign up or find our more please email Dr Stephen Webster (stephen.webster@imperial.ac.uk)

 

 

Workshop leaders: Litza Jansz, Esther Neslen and Stephen Webster

 

Introduction

 

Through a series of participatory animation, film, art and sound workshops we will explore and represent the experience of being a scientist, in all its forms, from the profane to the sublime.

 

The research life is varied and rich, and also repetitive and frustrating. When we think of ‘good science’, and try to imagine ways of describing it, we might well turn to art. Very likely we will seek some very flexible artform, one that can capture and express myriad meanings, and which can utilise diverse talents.  Here, the animated film is ideal.

 

Our short experimental films, made with you, will combine montages of animated images and sound that together represent contemporary research culture and ‘the life scientific’.

 

 

General notes about all Animation workshops

 

  • All 3 hr workshops take place on Wednesday afternoons. They are designed to offer an interesting art/animation experience both to those who just want to drop in for a short time as well as those committing to the full session. We understand how busy you are.
  • There will be more than 1 participatory activity per session. You will always be learning new skills.
  • Some activities will continue and build from session to session; other activities will be introduced as we progress through the programme.
  • Some activities will be developed by participants in between workshops. You will be able to contribute anywhere and anytime, through creative drawing activities, time lapse filming and sound recording in labs, film and photography recording of aspects of home life, interviewing colleagues and mentors.
  • Workshop themes and outcomes can change and develop according to the wishes of the participant: you will help us shape the programme.
  • All participants will be credited in the final films and artworks.

 

 Animation Workshop 1

Wednesday 29th January 2025 14.00 – 17.00

Lunch and pre-workshop project development chat 13.00 – 14.00

 

Suggested themes and techniques

The pace of science, the race against time – rush to publish, winners and losers.

Participants learn technique of Rotoscoping to create a drawn animation of athletes sprinting to the finishing line

 

Revealing the human – exploring the spaces in between our conscious attention to science and the academic life. Participants develop creative approaches to doodling as an art form. Practice encouraged to be continued outside workshop to be shared with group (through social media) for development as animation.

 

Animation Workshop 2

Wednesday 26th February 2025 14.00 – 17.00

Lunch and pre-workshop project development chat 13.00 – 14.00

 

Suggested themes and techniques

Clearing the hurdles – The obstacles in the way of achieving success.

Participants further develop technique of Rotoscoping to create a drawn animation of athletes jumping over hurdles. Hurdles will be creatively represented by collages of money, publications, pride, hope, etc.

The life scientific- effect on home life, issues for women

Stop motion animation of containers and machines used in labs (specimen jars/test tubes/spectrometers etc) juxtaposed with stop motion animation of containers and machines used in the home throughout life (baby’s bottles, mugs, home devices, bedpans etc)

 

Animation Workshop 3

Wednesday 26th March 2025 14.00 – 17.00

Lunch and pre-workshop project development chat 13.00 – 14.00

 

Suggested themes and techniques

Change of pace – The sometimes-slow pace of scientific investigation, with its moments of no-progress, sudden advance, new understanding.

Participants further develop technique of Rotoscoping to create a drawn animation of different sorts of progress.

Message in a bottle – How has our view of science changed and what would we like to be different?

Animate the reveal of written messages. These can be used in conjunction with container animation from wkshp 2.

 

Additional

Filming faces of participants for use in Animation wkshp 4

 

Animation Workshop 4

Wednesday 30th April 2025 14.00 – 17.00

Lunch and pre workshop project development chat 13.00 – 14.00

 

Suggested themes and techniques

 

The Amazing Technicolour Dream Coat – What status, preference or privilege does a lab coat confer? What does it conceal? Do we still wear lab coats? How do scientists protect themselves from different sorts of danger – toxins and other laboratory hazards, doubt, hype, ethical issues.

 

Remake a lab coat out of pages from prestigious science journals.

 

The scientific gaze – we turn our attention to the subject of our ‘gaze’. When we do our science, what actually are we looking for? How do we know when a project is finished? We consider our collaborations and we question what makes for good collaborations. What is friendship and collegiality, in science?

 

Film and create a drawn animation of close-ups of faces of participating scientists examining an instrument, or the results of an experiment or research project.

 

Workshop 5

Wednesday 28th May 2025 14.00 – 17.00

Lunch and pre-workshop project development chat 13.00 – 14.00

 

Suggested themes and techniques

 

The Amazing Technicolour Dream coat (continued). We develop further the techniques for workshop 4. Possibly rig and animate lab coat and/or green screen movements of lab coat for track matting (filling 2D image with moving image footage) or projection mapping (projecting onto 3D object).

 

The scientific gaze (continued)– What does the scientific gaze see? What lies behind the subject of the gaze? Further develop drawn animation of close ups of faces of participating scientists closely examining an instrument or research result.

 

Workshop 6

Wednesday 25th June 2025 14.00 – 17.00

Lunch and pre-workshop project development chat 13.00 – 14.00

 

Suggested themes and techniques

 

The Amazing Technicolour Dream Coat (continued) Further develop the techniques of creating, rigging and animating a lab coat. – How is status affected when we put on or take off a lab coat, literally or metaphorically?

 

Develop further animation of lab coat exploring different signifying poses and movements.

 

Heroes – What were our personal motivations and inspiration in deciding to become a scientist?

 

Using different drawing/collage techniques create images of Inspirational characters or events.

Workshop 7

Wednesday 9th July 2025 14.00 – 17.00

Lunch and pre workshop project development chat 13.00 – 14.00

 

Suggested themes and techniques

 

Heroes (continued) – Who are (or were) our heroes? What flattens our imagination or creativity. Introducing personal motivations and inspiration in choosing to become a scientist. Changing the world – Publish v protest.

 

Using different drawing/collage techniques to create images of Inspirational characters or events continued. Create puppets from characters and animate them.

 

Additional Activities

Sound/voice workshops – Dates TBC These will be held outside workshop dates

Sound over recordings – Dates TBC These will be held outside workshop dates

Filming timelapse footage of labs- Dates TBC These will be held outside workshop dates

 

Additional Themes

These may be foregrounded in creative voice montages.

Friendships and collaborations – importance in ‘good science practice’, is this supported?

Why do experiments sometimes fail? – factors outside our control/importance of failure

Migrant science – How international is the science community? What are the issues that make this challenging?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New series of Friday Forums to discuss the scientific virtues

I was happy this week to announce a third series of Friday Forums, and indeed a third year of life for the Good Science Project. Our first Friday Forum, on October 25th, is on the future of animal experimentation. Like all our Forums, this one will be a discussion of something close and intimate to the life scientific. And like all our Forums we will be able to step back from our busy lives for a short hour, discussing a matter of great importance to our lives as scientists, and gaining new perspectives.

The subtitle for the ‘animals’ Forum was provided by my colleague in Central Biomedical Services, Dr Anna Napolitano, who has been so helpful in setting up the meeting, finding speakers and setting the agenda. The subtitle is ‘Looking back, looking forward’ and is an excellent pointer to how the discussion might go. For in our work to ensure animal experiments are efficient in their outcomes, controlled by agreed conventions, and tied to progress in biomedicine, no doubt we should have a sense both of the history of vivisection and its projected future.

Ethics in science is always a mixture of technical fact and moral principle. With the animal model, the sense of moving forward in ethical discussion is very reliant on technical and methodological advances. Such advances are characterised by the ‘3Rs’, namely ‘replacement, reduction and refinement’, and have as their champion a campaigning organisation that promotes the very ideas we will be exploring at our Friday Forum. It is a very good thing that Imperial College now has its own, excellent website devoted to the 3Rs.

Stepping back a little, I can see that our ‘animals’ Friday Forum is a good example of how I want the Good Science Project – now in its third year – to work. I want our meetings to be properly sensitive to the daily priorities and pressures of daily science, and the things we call ‘ordinary science’. In the last two years the Project has therefore promoted a great amount of such ‘ordinary’ talk. We’ve argued about: the way technicians are important to science; the way scientists sometimes feel they have to be politically active; the way the design of laboratories matters; the problems of moving country to do your science; how your priorities change, or do not change, as you get more experienced in research. At the same time I have wanted to mix in with these quotidian matters much broader and elusive concepts: what do we mean by progress in science? What are the risks in science moving away from ‘blue-skies’ research to the high-impact variety? Can the arts and the sciences find points of contact?

In a recent blog I started to discuss a theme close to the heart of the Good Science Project. I told how our Vice-Provost, Prof Mary Ryan, had described my project as ‘ethics’. This had prompted me to go away and get clear in my mind how good science, and ethical principles, might mesh. As I described in that blog, the Good Science Project’s interest in daily science didn’t seem to match well the demands of utilitarianism, or rule-based ethics, which are the two strands of ethical argument we are most familiar with, and which typically are seen as the moral grounding of science. Instead, I asserted, it is virtue, or Greek ethics, that seems the better fit.

Can I explain this further, by looking at the subject matter of our first Friday Forum, on animals? Can I be confident that, if the Good Science Project is an exploration of ethics at Imperial College, as Mary Ryan suggested, the main philosophical tradition we should use comes not from Kant (rule-based ethics), or the Victorians (utilitarianism), but instead from classical Athens, and the work of Plato and Aristotle?

At first sight it seems likely that the ethics of the animal model will depend entirely on rule-based ethics, and on utility. For the way we describe the ongoing relevance of the animal model is clear. The results obtained from animal experiments are highly beneficial to human health and understanding. This lines up with the utilitarian idea that an act is good if it increases the sum of human happiness. And Kantian ethics are central to our understanding of the animal model too. For legislation and regulation – ‘Home office rules’ – are the basic grounding of good practice.

No doubt at our Friday Forum discussion of animal models these strands of thought will be mentioned. But it is my strong hunch that, when we have finished our conversation , and leave the Sir Alexander Fleming Building for some well-deserved weekend rest, it will be the classical Greeks, and the moral philosophy of Aristotle, that in some quiet way will be echoing in our minds.

For Aristotle, and for the tradition of virtue ethics, the point of focus must be on daily life and on the steady practice of our skills. This is no mere ‘turning of the handle’. On the contrary, for the idea of virtue to take hold, the importance is in the way we constantly enhance our skills, share our knowledge with others, see how best we can do our job, and challenge ourselves to work well. Aristotle describes this vision of virtue at length in his Ethics but for a more contemporary, and highly celebrated account, you should turn to Alasdair MacIntyre’s magisterial After Virtue, published in 1981. It’s a densely argued book, so you’ll need to take your time. It is said that MacIntyre tore up his first manuscript, and started again, after reading the highly influential text of philosophy of science, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Written by Thomas Kuhn in 1962, the book is famous for its elevation of the importance of ‘normal science’ and its suggestion that the heart of science is not its progress, but rather its daily practice. And Kuhn went so far as to suggest that if philosophers want to ‘understand’ science, it is laboratory life that matters, rather than simply its developing knowledge. In a sense then, MacIntryre’s subsequent promotion of virtue ethics owes a lot to new ideas then circulating about the life of science.

Let’s be precise. Where does virtue ethics get traction, when it comes to the animal experiment? Why might utility, and rules-based management of animals, be usefully supplemented by ideas dating back two and a half thousand years, to classical Athens?

When we gather in Room 121 SAFB, on January 25th, it is the attentiveness, and the craft knowledge, of our panellists that no doubt will be striking.  They will be triangulating ideas about physiology, biochemistry, and comparative evolution and anatomy. We will hear about animal husbandry and we will hear about veterinary science. We also will hear from our Imperial experts about the regulation of experiments, and the way the value of such experiments can be discussed in public. It is great that joining us is John Meredith, head of outreach and education at Understanding Animal Research. And no doubt our audience will listen, share experience, and ask important questions. This, quite precisely, is what is meant by ‘virtue ethics’: a community, learning together over time, sharing skills, and putting priority into what is in front of us now, rather than some imagined future. Take care of the present, Aristotle would have said, and the future will take care of itself.

Celebrating the social sciences at Imperial

We are now planning our next series of Friday Forums, including one that will focus on the social sciences as a partner to STEM research. Titled ‘Celebrating The Social Sciences at Imperial College’ this keenly-awaited Friday Forum will have three panellists – Diana Varaden, Mike Tennant and Steve Fuller – debating the issue. Traditionally Imperial College, with its focus on the natural sciences, mathematics, engineering and medicine, has not been a place associated with the social sciences and the humanities, although these fields have always maintained a presence. Yet as the impact agenda increases in importance, and complex fields such as climate change and AI accelerate the interdisciplinary gaze of Imperial, the number of social scientists at Imperial, and the value of social science research in our institution, correspondingly increase.

A few months ago I gave a talk to a group of social science-oriented PhD students at Imperial, all of them interested in how best Imperial can support them in their research fields. To an extent I adopted a philosophical approach, as can be seen in the transcript, reproduced below. We can expect in the Friday Forum similar points to be discussed, together with talk of institutional matters concerning how Imperial can put in place structures likely to help the particular research needs of our social scientists.

Talk given by Stephen Webster to PhD students on the relation between the social sciences and the natural sciences, with especial reference to Imperial College

 An historical preamble

The relation between the natural sciences and other arenas of knowledge is a centuries-old issue.  When Sir Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626) made his first attempts to kickstart modern science, three issues preoccupied him. First, he wanted to identify the method of science. Second, he wished to separate science from religion and from classical knowledge. Third, he wanted to establish the utility of science – ‘science for humanity’.

 Bacon did not disguise how difficult it might be to obtain secure scientific knowledge. But he did imply that science was a royal road to truth and that its method was in principle a mechanism for obtaining certainty. He suggested that science, properly performed, was a deductive activity in constant interaction with careful observation. To assist the smooth running of this method, he said, every effort should be made to reduce or eliminate ‘the human touch’.

His motive in all this was partly to do with his own ambition, and partly because he was impressed by the work of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) and Nicolas Copernicus (1473-1543). A major statesman rather than ‘scientist’ (the word scientist was only coined in the mid-19th century), Bacon was influential in the setting up of the Royal Society, which then as now combined scientific learning with civic, institutional power.

Bacon’s suggestion that with scientific knowledge comes power provides us with a starting point on how to understand the position of the social sciences at Imperial.  For the natural sciences are understood to be interested in the mechanisms of nature – material independent of humans that we convince ourselves can be observed objectively. The social sciences, with their gaze turned to human beings, find themselves embroiled in issues of objectivity. For Bacon, and all those who follow him, a secure sense of objectivity is exactly where the power of science lies. For all social scientists therefore, a considered view on objectivity is a necessity.

The philosophical questions I ask today are well-rehearsed. How objective, really, are the natural sciences? And how non-objective, really, are the social sciences?

The situation at Imperial College

As a social scientist at Imperial College you are not alone. The number of researchers here who incorporate into their work, or attempt to, a degree of social science methodology, is increasing. As today’s meeting shows, there are researchers now at Imperial who are based entirely within social science arenas. Your meeting is prescient because it foregrounds an issue Imperial has never felt it necessary to address specifically: the role of the social sciences in driving, guiding and critiquing the natural sciences.

Several explanations are readily available for what some would call STEM’s reticence in collaborating with the social sciences. In the case of Imperial College our specialisation in STEM results from our origins in the Victorian golden era of advances in science and technology, linked of course to the wealth created by the British empire. The Great Exhibition of 1851, an initiative of Prince Albert, led to the founding of all the institutions of Exhibition Rd. The success and importance of the scientific vision was so obvious that no apology could be needed for a science-specialist research and teaching institution. 

A philosophical detour

Given the success of Imperial College in all areas, including its recent QS classification as second in the world, and first in Europe, its role as a ‘STEM university’ seems beyond challenge. Nevertheless attempts to better articulate the role of the social sciences, in a place like Imperial, are likely to be fruitful, and perhaps even welcomed. Broadly speaking, there are two strategies to follow, in such efforts. One we will describe as epistemological, the other pragmatic. On the first, efforts since the 17th century to downgrade the truth claims of the human sciences in comparison to the natural sciences (the ‘Enlightenment project’, have proved unreliable. Rather, a whole series of philosophers, ranging from Giambattista Vico and David Hume in the 18th century, to Thomas Kuhn, Quine and Russell Hanson in the 20th century, have argued convincingly that scientific knowledge has a profoundly social element. And on the second, and this is a particularly contemporary point, scientific research now, with its ever-growing emphasis on utility and impact, transfers very quickly out of the lab and into the world of human politics, culture and media. We might even talk of scientists having to orientate their work – their knowledge – to a society where trust in institutions and authority seems to be changing. We also know that the laboratory, far from being an austere place of objective fact-finding, is irretrievably social. In sum, there are good philosophical reasons to doubt that scientific knowledge is more foundational than social science knowledge; and there are good reasons to believe that science innovation is impossible now without a corresponding understanding of social processes.

Dr Stephen Webster

Senior Lecturer in Science Communication

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

10th June 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

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