Category: Research Culture

The role of the social sciences at Imperial, part II

Recently I was invited to give the keynote lecture at the annual summer symposium of the London Interdisciplinary Social Science DTP, and I was delighted to be there. There were impressive student presentations during the day, and I was reminded again not only of the importance of relations between the disciplines, but also of the importance  of students from different institutions meeting and working together.

In my lecture I debated the interesting challenges and opportunities a STEM-based research institute faces when it begins to integrate the social sciences. As I explain, the challenges and the opportunities are both institutional and philosophical.

 

The Strange Case of Imperial College London; and how the Social Sciences Ride to the Rescue

 

Keynote lecture to the Annual Symposium of the London Interdisciplinary Social Science Doctoral Training Centre

 

Friday May 30th 2025

 

I’d like first to thank Professor Mujamdar, of Imperial College London, and also your very own Doctoral Training Programme[i], for inviting me today. We spend far too much time explaining why this particular institution, or that particular institution is the best for this, or for that, when actually the race to be best probably is not terribly creative, on the whole. So your small organisation, the London Interdisciplinary Social Science Doctoral Training Programme, with its aim of bringing students together from across London, is very much to be praised.

 

I’m going to start my lecture by thinking about conversation – the conversation between the social sciences, and the natural sciences. Surely the two can make common cause. My comments will be wide-ranging, but my case study is Imperial College London, where I work. At Imperial the social sciences are arriving in a big way. I will explain, as far as I can, some of the reasons. And I will ask about the way an institution can make best use of its social science capacity, and its natural science capacity. I will ask: how easy is it going to be, living together?

 

It seems to me the social sciences are particularly dependent on collegial conversation and trust. Enlightened people will say the same about the sciences, but surely the discussive tone is very evident in the social sciences. Perhaps them LISS, and days like today, carry such importance because, literally, they encourage, and carry, conversation. If our academic institutions are  somewhat rushed these days, and anxious to promote their own virtues, then for sure the conversation between students of different universities will be a very important way for research institutions to learn from each other.  This talkative aspect of the social sciences, you might remember, was celebrated by the philosopher and historian Thomas Kuhn, who was very interested in what indeed might constitute the boundary bewteen the natural and the social sciences. Kuhn’s tool of comparison, interestingly enough, was the conversation. His argument can be found in what now is an elderly book, a classic rather than a sure guide, his Structure of Scientific Revolutions, published in 1962.[ii]  At the start of that book – which, by the way, is quite readable and is consistently interesting – Kuhn suggested that social scientists can never stop talking and arguing, and in particular, disagreeing.

 

The debates of the social sciences, Kuhn suggested, are endless and never resolve. The same thing, famously, was said by the eminent ethicist Alasdair MacIntyre, in his classic text After Virtue.[iii] Here, MacIntyre is eloquent on the reasons ethical discussion tends to be interminable: they never stop because the antagonists approach the problem – assisted suicide, for example – from different angles, angles that are quite hard to change.  For both Kuhn and MacIntyre, the point about the natural sciences is that at some point they stop talking. Once the answer has been found, these authors suggest, the conversation can stop, and we all can move on, and write the textbooks. For Kuhn, because the talk can stop – the situation in the natural sciences – so the settled paradigm can emerge. Whereas the social sciences, always able to develop a new and opposing view, the talk can never stop, and so the settled truth can never emerge.

 

We might protest that such a picture is to misunderstand the natural sciences, to fail to see that science also can never ‘settle’ to the truth. But we must admit that a search for, and a belief in, the ‘settled truth’ has always been a feature of the sciences. Perhaps science’s ‘truth project’ began in the early 17th century, when Sir Francis Bacon wrote his influential Novum Organum, a letter to King James 1 explaining why it was time to give science its due, fund it properly, and agree it had its unique method that set it apart from the mental wanderings of the classical Greeks.

 

To oversimplify, in some sense the natural sciences are naturally mute, while the social sciences are garrulous. Crude though this characterisation might be, it gets at the idea that the sciences confront nature, which ignores the human language. The social sciences however, even when quantitative, sit in the arena of human action, and thus depend on our ideas about that most dynamic and shifting of materials, humanity. An articulate critic of this view was the philosopher Richard Rorty, celebrated for his text Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature[iv]. Anxious to see the links between the social and the natural sciences, Rorty was at pains to develop a constructivist understanding of science, where acknowledgement is made of the ‘human factor’ in scientific knowledge. His Mirror of Nature metaphor, representing the idea that science is simply a direct reading of nature, , is interesting for the suggestion again of silence: we don’t think of mirrors as noisy. Rorty wants to replace the mirror metaphor with another, where he describes science as ‘an edifying conversation’. He wishes to bring the talk back into science, because it will make us better scientists. We might be realists, and consider ourselves to be describing the material world, but still our talk is central.

 

I don’t want now to exhaustively and philosophically probe the distinction, or lack of distinction, between the social sciences and the natural sciences, extremely interesting as this may be. More, let me turn to my case study, and discuss certain themes running quite warmly at Imperial right now, concerning the relationship between the social sciences, and STEM innovation. In a nutshell, Imperial, famous for being a ‘STEM institution’, finds itself more and more dependent on the social sciences. The reason is easy to see, but still quite startling for an institution that since its founding in 1907 has tended not to set up research spaces for the humanities and the social sciences. Why, then, this recent change? Let me explain.

 

All academics and all academic institutions are very conscious of the concept of impact: our enduring impact on our profession, and on society. At Imperial, as at QMUL and KCL, the concept of impact is huge. When Sir Francis Bacon wrote to King James with some neat ideas about the scientific method,[v] his method of persuasion was really that science, if wrested from the Aristotelians and the theologians, would have enormously enhanced utility. And this is, and always has been, the guiding philosophy of Imperial. The challenge is that scientific impact, in the 21st century, seems to go hand-in-glove with major issues about the relation between science and society. Big areas of interest at Imperial, such as machine learning, climate science, new vaccines, robotics, data science, transport studies, bioengineering and medical devices, security science and societal resilience, are each increasingly dependent on the social sciences. The advancement of these STEM topics depend on a sophisticated understanding of society.

 

The debate at Imperial is not really about the fact of the relevance of the social sciences – we can consider the matter settled – but the nature of Imperial’s dependency on the social sciences. Again to over-simplify, one of the questions we are asking ourselves at Imperial is whether, implicitly, we see the social sciences as an assistant to STEM – for example organising the focus groups that help us make sure our new robots get good uptake in society; or, whether, in addition, we see the social sciences as active in setting STEM research agendas, shaping it from the beginning, applying the cautionary note and being a critical friend.

 

Consider the important role engineers, and engineering, have always played at Imperial. Engineers are interested in optimising. There may be contrasting and even contradictory physical forces at play in a system but the role of the engineer is to remove those conflicts and arrange them so that things work together. A bridge is a case in point. All the forces must work in harmony, or else the bridge falls down. Is this how we feel about things at Imperial? Do we think that disciplinary conflict is bad, a sign of imminent failure? Perhaps our ‘received view’ is that the way to optimise our interdisciplinary work is to hope that in essence the social sciences and the STEM disciplines tread the same path. And maybe they do. Yet we should remember a very interesting statement from the 20th century Australian philosopher John Anderson, who urged us ‘not to ask of a social institution “What end or purpose does it serve?” but rather, “Of what conflicts is it the scene”‘ In the same vein, Anderson continues: ‘For […] it is through conflict and sometimes only through conflict that we learn what our ends and purposes are’.[vi]

 

So we begin to see the outline of a question, quite familiar I admit, for Imperial. Is there a conflict – ‘an issue’ – between STEM and the social sciences, or are we happily building bridges and watching the traffic flow? Do we simply take as a matter of principle that conflicts between the social sciences and the natural sciences arise because of some easily solved misunderstanding? Or do we work rather harder to see what such misunderstandings may be, for fear that if we simply smooth them over, to keep things ‘optimised’, we simply fend off inevitable trouble, or perhaps worse, radically reduce the possibility of truly creative results from good interdisciplinary work.

 

Let me quickly turn again to the past, and to a story that is indeed suggestive of trouble. As you will know, this Doctoral Training Programme is funded by the ESRC, the Economics and Social Research Council. It sits along a handful of others: the BBSRC, the AHRC, the NERC and so on, all of them part of an umbrella organisation, the UKRI. You may have wondered, when you see the logo Economics and Social Research Council, whether perhaps there is a typo here. No-one says ‘Social Research’. We tend to say ‘Social Science Research’. Could it be that, somewhere along the line, the phrase ‘Social Science Research’ has been ‘disappeared’, to be replaced by ‘social research’. That is exactly what happened and let me tell you the story. In 1979 a new conservative government was elected, under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a known radical, one inclined to doubt the value of the state, or the BBC, or the Greater London Council, or the Inner London Education Authority, trades unions in general, nationalised industry and so forth. Her tenure saw a great amount of conflict as she took on and battled with what we might call ‘the centre ground’, allowed the mining industry and the steel industry to perish, instituted what was called ‘monetarism’, and asked us to see the public finances as akin to an individual’s bank account. In her ideological push Margaret Thatcher had a number of influential advisors, of whom the most important may have been the cabinet minister Sir Keith Joseph (1918-1994). As Secretary of State for Education, one charged with making some of the cuts that the Thatcher government became famous for, he looked at his suite of research councils and decided that the axe should fall on one of them, the so-called Social Science Research Council, or SSRC. He was being asked to save money, it is true, but also he was vexed by this notion of ‘Social Science’. One of his intellectual prejudices was to doubt the scientific credentials, and the rigour, of subjects like sociology and psychology, and felt they must be kept distinct from the noble term ‘science’. He duly asked the CEO of the SSRC ‘Do the social sciences follow the Popperian paradigm’, by which he meant: Does the SSRC restrict its funding to work that adheres to the model of hypothesis and test model. As we all know, hypothesise-and-test, definitely a feature of science, may not be its only feature. In the 1970s and 1980s, in the heyday of Sir Karl Popper, the mark of science was its reliance on testable hypotheses.

On the whole, thought Joseph, the SSRC is a bogus institution that puffs up sociology and anthropology into great fields that needed large investment, but never test their hypotheses. He thought: let’s get rid of this absurd funding council, save a tidy sum, and stand down a clan of annoying charlatans. He admitted there probably was some good work going on in this area ‘the social sciences’, but very little, and these good people, he imagined, could perfectly well be supported by their Colleges, or by the British Association.

 

To his credit, Sir Keith Joseph, a scholarly person, did like to consult, and rather than simply wield the axe, in time-honoured British fashion he asked Victor Rothschild, Lord Rothschild, an eminent scientist and businessman, and an FRS, to look into the matter. Much discussion then took place and in the end Rothschild reported that state funding of the social sciences was an important matter, could be considered a valuable investment, and should be kept going. At which point Sir Keith Joseph, heeding the wisdom of those who know better, signalled a reprieve for the SSRC. But he had one condition. It had to change its name. The phrase ‘Social Science’ – in his view a contradictory term – must go. From now on the council, though allowed to continue, must be known as ‘the Economics and Social Research Council’.[vii]

 

The philosophical point Sir Keith Joseph was rehearsing was the status of different sorts of knowledge. He was touching on something that we all know as ‘positivism’: the belief that in the quest for reliable knowledge that can form the basis of enduringly successful decisions, numbers, objectivity and scientific observation rank the highest. It is sometimes called ‘the hierarchy of knowledge’ and sometimes called ‘reductionism’. The role of the positivist mindset was a theme of discussion recently, at Imperial, at a meeting I organised a few months ago to discuss this issue of the social sciences in a STEM institution. The room was filled with very talkative social scientists, all based at Imperial, all embedded in STEM departments. You will know that we have no departments of sociology, anthropology and linguistics; no department of history or geography; not even a department of economics or of psychology. Now, as I’ve suggested, we cannot doubt that the social sciences are significant at Imperial; but here is the question: what is it like, being embedded in a STEM department, doing social science work, but surrounded absolutely by scientists?  This was one of the questions we asked at the meeting.[viii] Another was this:  when it comes to social scientists flourishing at Imperial, can we rely on their STEM departments to provide the congenial and creative environment good academic work relies on; or should Imperial find additional ways to support an identified ‘community of social scientists’, perhaps in the spirit of your Doctoral Training Programme.

 

Here are some quotes from that meeting:

 

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

 

  1. 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.

 

  1. 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.

 

  1. 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.

 

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

 

 

This brings me back to the issue of ‘engineering culture’ at Imperial. On the one hand we are now a place with a significant social science presence, where investment in the social sciences is seen as a good thing. And in terms of mood music, we find in the new Strategy the strapline ‘Science For Humanity’, surely a sign that the social sciences are now in situ. In the meeting I organised, social scientists were united in seeing the value of being embedded in a STEM department. There may be work to be done culturally, but – so I heard – the concept of the embedded social scientist, working within a science department rather than a sociology department, can be just fine.

 

But – a big but –  it must be admitted that in this meeting there was a lot of discussion of the support communities of social science academics need: their ability to work together on methodological issues; their ability to press ahead, with a degree of autonomy, on their own new ideas; their desire to be involved in STEM research from the beginning, not just at the end.

 

Again, I quote:

 

  1. 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.

 

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

 

  1. 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.

 

And now we get to the heart of the problem, which it seems must face all academics and universities seriously interested in interdisciplinarity. If people from across the campus are to work together, it is important to recognise institutional and philosophical boundaries – we could just as well call them ‘traditions’ – rather than pretend they don’t exist. To ‘optimise’ by failing to recognise the problem is just to jinx the research from the beginning.

 

Now Imperial, anxious to get this matter right, has set up a working group to look at these issues, and report to the University Management Board with some findings and some numbers on the role of the social sciences.[ix] I’m very happy to be on that group and it has been interesting seeing, at an institutional level, how the debate proceeds.

 

Quite a lot of the work so far has been – of course – ‘mapping’. Where is the social science work taking place, and what is its significance? I have noticed that while always at Imperial we will be drawn to numbers and to solutions, it must be admitted that at our Task and Finish Group,  discussions have usually veered in due course from matters of numbers to matters of philosophy. To me this axis, from positivism to something more interpretative, now seems inevitable at Imperial and is very much to the credit of the institution. And, when we do lay down our spreadsheets, important and interesting though they are, and turn to philosophy, the issue we come to first is the concept of utility.

 

Let’s turn to this point of the utility of the social sciences to STEM innovation, and also consider a related point – one Imperial is currently debating  – that the social sciences, working in interdisciplinary relation with STEM, are a source of critique, of innovation and the frame of an objective gaze that can help STEM see the wider picture.

 

On utility, here is another quote, from an Imperial social scientist.

 

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”.

 

That’s what we mean by utility. And it is not wrong in itself. Of course it is not. Moreover, social scientists are no different from anyone else: They need to earn their living. And even if scientists do have quite a reliable route to the world of utility, academics of all types very much want their work to be valued by others.

 

Now I hope I’ve suggested that for interdisciplinarity to work well, the STEM/Social Science partnership can never be reduced to some simple transaction. Rather, it  is dynamic, ill-defined, and somewhat conflicted. Yet time-consuming and expensive though these tussles may be – dynamic, ill-defined, conflicted – it is this kind of academic work that will make our planet a safer place than it is right now, in terms of health, climate, politics and justice.

 

Let me tell you a few more stories, to show why I am quite confident about the rich opportunities the social sciences provide to STEM.

 

I first became interested in the natural science/social science relation when I was a school science teacher, in London,  some time ago. I’d studied zoology first, and my postgrad was in History and Philosophy of Science.  This was before the days of the National Curriculum, and for reasons I’m not sure I understand, when I started teaching there was much interchange between scientists, social scientists, and science teachers. When I trained, at a department in Chelsea College, which then moved here to Kings, we were expected to ask ourselves the question: why are you teaching science to these children, here in London? What will they gain?

 

It wasn’t enough to say: so they can go to university; or so they can become scientists. We were trained to ask ourselves, what is the value of science to people who don’t plan to study it a lot longer? And in searching for solutions, we had to look quite hard. Always in front of you were exams. When you are teaching science, there are things to be got through:  Newton’s laws, the digestive system, the electron transfer system in photosynthesis. But when I became a schoolteacher the National Curriculum – an idea of the Thatcher government – was not yet in place, and there was more room for teachers to follow their nose. In the freedom we had, issues of politics tended to loom large. With the Cold War still running strongly in the 1980s there was big defence spending on science; Poland was still part of the Soviet Union; we were very conscious of the way science is not simply a bunch of facts but mixes it strongly with geopolitics. Among many initiatives I remember a course available for Sixth Formers, to be used both by STEM students and humanities students, called Science in a Social Context (SISCON). I remember that in the introductory material the authors wrote that with science-and-society issues, expect disagreement, expect discussion. Those authors said that this disagreement and this discussion would very greatly enhance the classroom, and the quality of the science learning.

 

 

And that’s what I’ve always found, with the science classroom – that if you can step back from the grind of learning facts, and adopt the interactive and discussive mode, then the deployment of politics, or ethics, or philosophy, very quickly becomes central to the science learning. The same goes for Higher Education. In the university STEM curriculum the social sciences, or for that matter the humanities, should not be lecture 13, after 12 lectures on molecular genetics. The social sciences should be in there from the beginning.

 

In my experience,at Imperial, until about 10 years ago, the question of how we should deal with the social sciences and the humanities had elements of the long-running Two Cultures debate. We taught the social sciences and the humanities, to broaden our students’ minds, give them ‘soft skills’, and in some sense complement the specialisation of the STEM curriculum. By ‘Two Cultures’ I refer to an influential row, dating from mid-way through the last century, where the novelist and scientist CP Snow, giving the Rede Lectures in Cambridge in 1959, and comparing scientists to humanities scholars, said that in going from Burlington House in Picadilly  (the home of the Royal Academy) to South Kensington (the home of Imperial College) ‘one might have crossed an ocean’. For a long time, in spite of some rather obvious problems with Snow’s diagnosis, the ‘Two Cultures’ was a very recogniseable phrase for people planning a science training. As Snow said, his lectures had ‘touched a nerve’.[x] At Imperial for many years the social sciences and the humanities have therefore been taught, at undergraduate level. You cannot take a degree in history, or in philosophy. But you can take modules and gain ECTs for your degree

 

But what about the partnership of science and social science in research? What are the relevance of the social sciences to scientific practice itself, or to the research ambitions of Imperial?? The first time I began to wonder whether something serious was in the air was around ten years ago, following the Ebola epidemic in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Wilkinson et al, from the Ethox centre at Oxford, put the matter this way: ‘More than any health emergency in recent times, the West African Ebola outbreak has demonstrated the importance of community engagement and the risks of doing it badly’.

 

Referring to the importance of engaging communities suffering from the virus, they wrote:

 

In the face of a deadly new disease, and an array of suspicious outsiders who were often dressed head-to-toe in protective suits and spraying chemicals, some people chose to cut themselves off from help. They threw stones at ambulances, rioted and, in one episode in Guinea, killed eight members of an Ebola prevention delegation. Reasons for resistance are multiple, ranging from contradictory messaging, unsafe and degrading conditions in hospitals, and histories of violence, extraction and corruption which fed fears that Ebola (or the chlorine disinfectant spray) was a means of ethnic cleansing.[xi]

 

This interesting experience was noticed at Imperial. Debate gained ground. Whatever might be the way to prevent, or halt the Ebola epidemic, biomolecular innovation on its own would not be enough. And three other areas of research, much emphasised at Imperial, soon enough showed precisely the same dynamic, where technical knowledge is just one aspect of successful innovation. Among many examples we could choose Covid-19, and the concept of vaccine hesitancy. You need knowledge of the virus, and you need knowledge of society, of political systems, and the media; climate change, ditto; and most recently, what we call ‘security science’ and ‘community resilience’. Just as we mark 80 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany, so once again we have war in Europe, as well as elsewhere. And with war in Europe comes the idea that wars are won by force of arms,  but also by ‘the resilient society’. And resilience it turns out, is not just a matter of hardened electricity grids and protected communication systems: it is also a matter of societal trust in institutions, in social cohesion, and faith in the motivation of our leaders.

 

Take one further example. AI research regularly wonders whether health consultation, including of care needs, could ‘be streamlined’ by machine-led interviews. Instantly you see the issues: might this be a welcome increase in efficiency; or an alienating intervention, further distancing the patient, or the elderly person, from the health service? We might want to keep an open mind on this. But its obvious that the success of research like this will depend not only on the subtlety of the algorithm, but also on the expectations, traditions and feelings of the user. And the way to learn about expectations, traditions and feelings is through the social sciences.

 

Dr Stephen Webster, Office of the Vice-Provost (Research and Enterprise)/Science Communication Unit

 

 

[i] The London Interdisciplinary Social Science DTP is a consortium of Queen Mary (University of London), Kings College London and Imperial College London: https://liss-dtp.ac.uk

[ii] Kuhn T.S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, 1962.

[iii] MacIntyre A. After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory. Duckworth, 1981.

[iv] Rorty R. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, 1979.

[v] Jardine L. and Silverthorne M. (Eds.) Francis Bacon: The New Organon. CUP, 2000 (orig. 1620)

[vi] In: MacIntyre A.  ibid. p153

[vii] Posner N. Social Sciences Under Attack in the UK, 1981-1983. https://doi.org/10.4000/histoire-cnrs.547

[viii] https://blogs.imperial.ac.uk/the-good-science-project/2025/01/16/a-memo-on-the-role-of-the-social-sciences-at-imperial/

[ix] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/about/leadership-and-strategy/provost/vice-provost-research/vpre-led-initiatives/social-sciences-at-imperial-task-and-finish-group-sstfg/

[x] Snow C.P. The Two Cultures. CUP, 1998 (orig, 1959) p54.

[xi] Wilkinson A., Parker P., Martineau F, and Leach M. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci

2017 Apr 10;372(1721):20160305. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2016.0305

Measuring science, seeing virtue

 

A blog by Lilia Moreles-Abonce, Georgia Christie, and Katinka Hunter-Morris

 

 

A place like Imperial College – a leading global institution – has to be successful. We therefore need to know and understand, as a community, what we mean by success. What do we mean by ‘good science’ or ‘good scientists’ and are there conflicts between institutional and personal successes? What are the different criteria we should use to measure this? Actually, can we even measure these criteria, even if we can decide on them? Indeed, for a high-impact and competitive institute like Imperial, how best can we include the human touch within our metrics?

 

These questions and more were explored in the Friday Forum, ‘Measuring Science, Seeing Virtue’ held at Imperial College in December 2024. Around 60 people attended, from a range of academic disciplines and faculties. First there was an engaging discussion between three panellists, which was followed by a very lively audience Q&A.

 

Our panellists were:

 

  1. Mary Ryan (Vice-Provost for Research and Enterprise, and Armourers and Brasiers’ Chair for Materials Science, at Imperial College). Well-experienced because of her current role, and her previous career, Professor Ryan stressed at once the need to have different methodologies for measuring different sorts of success. She also stressed, as a senior academic, her view that the act of measuring success, and its problems, is a community issue that matters deeply.

 

  1. Stephen Curry (Emeritus Professor of Structural Biology). He served as one of seven College Consuls, and as Imperial’s first Assistant Provost for Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion. Professor Curry emphasised that these issues are complex as well as important. Thus, events such as this Friday Forum, where staff can debate together the collective criteria for success, are to be welcomed.

 

  1. André Spicer (Executive Dean of the Bayes Business School). Professor Spicer reminded us that an important aspect of measuring ‘success’ is simply leadership: high performance occurs when there is a high level of trust within the university. 

 

Once the panellists had been introduced, each gave an opening statement of around eight minutes. Professor Ryan elaborated on different dimensions to measurements of success in science. Of course, as Professor Ryan said, university rankings are a factor here, because they have such a strong influence on how a university is perceived. And there are links also to the necessity of Imperial making sure it delivers what it promises. This suggests a commitment to mission and to objectives: naturally the extent of their achievement must be evaluated, which calls for measurement. But probing further, she noted that there seems to be a lot of measuring of the ‘whats’ but less of the ‘whys’. We must always remind ourselves that we tend to measure to measure the obvious things, and so are at danger of missing more elusive aspects of the academic life.

 

As a final note, Professor Ryan emphasized that we shouldn’t have a single, or simple sense of the measurement of the ‘life scientific’, as there are so many criteria and so many methodologies for looking at what scientists are doing. She therefore ended her talk by inviting the attendees to ask themselves constantly: “How do we make sure that as a community we focus on ‘what really matters’,  and how do we make sure we seek always the right measurements for supporting  ‘what really matters’?

 

Now it was Professor Curry’s turn. Imperial, he reminded us, is a global top ten university with constantly growing impact. With this success, he said, goes a responsibility to take a sufficiently complex view of rankings. He suggested that a fixation on output – on results –must always be complemented by an appreciation of the quality of the scientific process. Professor Curry reminded the audience that success, as a concept, is in truth somewhat elusive. There is the risk that the more we make success the target, the more we will miss the real thing. Success, he said, is multidimensional, and he talked of ‘weaving into the system’ good training, good leadership, and good mentoring. Get this wrong, and the human cost is high.

 

Please keep your values to the forefront, urged Professor Curry. After all most people come into science with a desire to make positive changes. Yet trying to hold onto one’s values throughout a scientific career is difficult. Ours is a competitive environment, he said, though also one that always we hope will be supportive. Professor Curry ended his talk by urging the audience to see the importance of talking to one another about what we might consider worthwhile, and worth cherishing, in the university life.

 

Professor André Spicer began his talk by describing the case of a seemingly prolific Spanish scientist, who was found to follow questionable practices in order to generate a remarkably high research output. With this example, Professor Spicer touched on the recent research showing that while overall research effort is increasing, the amount of significant ‘discovery’ does not have the same upwards trajectory. Such a proliferation of research may ‘pay off’ for individuals, said Professor Spicer, because of the influence of simple metrics, but overall the problem becomes the issue of people confusing the impressive career metric with the actual goal.

 

This is the dynamic we must be cautious about. The wrong kind of incentive, perhaps those that produce a simple ranking of scientists, leads to researchers getting misdirected in their focus, who thus succumb to cheating, the gaming of systems, and the ignoring of long-term thinking. More optimistically, Professor Spicer offered us six steps that can be followed to keep us from such destructive habits:

 

  1. Get people involved in the development of measurement strategies.
  2. Focus on narratives, as these tend to create long term measures, giving people a sense that variables – criteria of success – are attainable, given perseverance and diligence.
  3. Loosen the relationship between incentives and measurement.
  4. Use a wider range of measures.
  5. Add some strategic uncertainty to the metrics, to help people avoid an over-fixation on simple criteria, and to discourage ‘gaming’.
  6. Focus on careful metric design, so that the techniques and objectives of measurement are simple, fair, available, immediate, and reliable.

 

Nicely set up by these fascinating talks, we moved on to the audience Q and A.

interesting points that were brought up: we heard more about Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), interdisciplinarity, and the importance of relationships. The first question asked how social sciences, and particularly a narrative approach to research, could ever fit into evaluation metrics at Imperial. Professor Curry noted that this question is indeed important, as the amount of social science research at Imperial is increasing. Actually, Professor Curry pointed out, it might be that the social science capability we have at Imperial will become a resource to draw on when we evaluate impact and create metrics. On the same theme, Professor Ryan pointed out that if we only look at research’s impact after it is achieved, we automatically limit our vision, and fail to ‘see’ the quality, or the virtue, in science.

 

Another member of the audience defended KPIs, claiming that they can drive ambitions and assist strategy. Professor Spicer’s response was that balance is key in this: we need to weave between short term goals and long-term strategy. Professor Ryan agreed, and drew our attention to the difference between KPIs and outcomes.

 

Next, an audience member brought up the importance of relationships in the world of research. How do we maintain these relationships, and how do we measure them? All three panellists agreed that this is indeed an important question, touching on why we enjoy science in the first place, and all panellists agreed that this question is a difficult one to answer. Professor Ryan pointed out that relationships are not time-limited, and so differ from the way we organise science projects. This clearly is a problem when we try to recognise the importance of relationships in science. For example, a relationship might mature into some creative understanding of a technique or theory, and promise great things, while meantime the project time frame has long since finished, and the funding has dried up too. Professor Curry said that the work of relationship-building within research is often hidden and under-appreciated, and varies very much across Imperial. Professor Spicer also reminded us that in science we tend to look at the impact of relationships transactionally, as matters of exchange, but instead we should look at them in a richer, more human, more dynamic way.

 

The next question asked how a scientist’s doubts about metrics might affect their strategy for achieving promotion, especially when different departments have very particular expectations. Professor Ryan said that of course it makes sense that academics want to know what to do if they are to be promoted. Criteria, she said, are broadening all the time. She for instance mentioned that the way we think about promotion is shifting from solely a focus on research, to one that also has an eye on teaching. Professor Spicer added that we shouldn’t be making promotions based on some numerical metrics, whether via research or teaching, but must depend on a constantly re-elaborated set of criteria.

 

This Friday Forum itself was a success. The meeting facilitated a fascinating discussion, exploring the topic of how a leading STEMB institution, like Imperial, should measure itself. We saw for ourselves, as we talked over lunch, and then gathered for the discussion, the importance of creating spaces for in-person gatherings. Within the short hour that is a Friday Forum, diverse voices from academic disciplines and faculties could make their points and in turn draw comment. Imperial clearly has both the incentive and the internal gifts that to allow it to take a nuanced and sensitive approach to defining, seeing, and pursuing ‘success’ in science.

 

 

The animal model: a blog by science communication students Lizzie Childers, Suah Lee and Ajwang Okeyo

 

 

 

“So everything that we do evolves, and I think how we work will continue to evolve. I think that that’s always gonna be our goal. “ Mr. Robert Floyd, Director of Central Biomedical Services at Imperial

Our 2024/2025 series of Friday Forums is now finished, and so this is a good moment to look back at the themes and discussions of the year.  The series of Friday Forum lectures kicked off on the 25th of October, discussing the past, present, and future of animal research here at Imperial. Animal use in research is a contentious topic. On one hand, the animal model allows for rigorous biomedical research, paving the way for life-saving medicine and treatments for humans. On the other hand, ethical concerns are raised about the treatment of the animals and their potential suffering. It was a lively meeting with great discussion. Fortunately three students from the MSc Science Communication and the MSc Science Media Production were on hand to take notes, think hard, and write this blog. Many thanks then to Suah Lee, Ajwang Okeyo and Lizzie Childers.

As a part of Imperial’s ongoing Good Science Project, the aim of the forum was to initiate a discussion about the future of animal research, and the 3Rs. The 3Rs are a framework for the future of the animal model: replacement, reduction, and refinement. That is, to replace the use of animals when possible, to reduce the number of animals used for science while remaining scientifically robust, and to refine how animals are treated to minimise their suffering.

The discussion, facilitated by Dr Anna Napolitano, Communications and 3Rs Programme Manager, and Dr. Bryn Owen, a Senior Lecturer in Endocrinology at Imperial and chairperson of the 3Rs advisory group, enabled the audience to ask questions to a panel of experts. The panel included Mr. Robert Floyd, Director of Biomedical Services at Imperial, Mr. John Meredith, Head of Education and Outreach at the nonprofit Understanding Animal Research, Dr. Victoria Male, a Senior Lecturer in Reproductive Immunology at Imperial, and Dr. Richard van Arkel, a Senior Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at Imperial and the recipient of a NC3R fellowship.

Early on in the discussion, we learned that in the panellists’ opinion the general public’s perception of animal research has changed over time. It feels as if public perception of the animal model in research has improved in recent years. John Meredith emphasised his belief that more empirical research needs to be done on the public’s current view of the animal model, as the science needs a “…renewed mandate from the public.” Despite significant public support for animal research, less funding has been available to animal researchers. One explanation for this could be that policymakers may hold misguided and over-ambitious views about alternative methods,  Another explanation, given by Victoria Male, is that it is easier to find cheaper, and just as effective alternatives to the animal model – for example genomics research. Rob Floyd added that “Funding is dependent, to a degree, on the economic climate of a country”, suggesting that the UK’s current economic state is also impacting the lack of funding for animal research.

“The other thing that moved me away [from the animal model] was actually funding because I did, at the time, come across a strain of mice that I was really excited about that had a very interesting phenotype and that I thought could have been an amazing tool for finding out something quite fundamental about how a particular kind of cell develops. I tried three or four times to get some money to keep following that up, and I just wasn’t able to.” Victoria Male

Despite the better public perception of animal research, it is still clear that many people do not fully understand the importance and necessity of the work. Gaps in public knowledge regarding the importance and necessity of using animal models remain.  The panel had different ideas as to why this issue had arisen. Richard van Arkel explained that the use of animals may feel excessive, but researchers are often required by law, through regulations, to use a certain number of animals or trials to verify the safety of certain medicines, treatments, or chemicals. He also stated that a lack of transparency can lead the public to feel confused, but that this lack of clarity can be useful for protecting the intellectual property of companies and researchers. Dr. van Arkel argued that many people are grateful for the research that leads to medical advancements, but said a lack of clarity can hinder understanding. John Meredith pointed out that activists are also becoming more focused on their demands, and suggested that addressing their specific concerns, rather than simply dismissing them,  could encourage better communication and understanding with the public. Together, these insights suggest that enhancing transparency and providing detailed information about the regulatory landscape and the role of animal testing in research could can help build public trust.

 

Panel participants and audience members discussed the importance of engaging with the public. When asked about how to get involved with creating public policy, the panellists emphasised that they wanted to work with MPs and secretaries, but noted that connecting with these officials can be quite challenging. Various other ideas about how to engage the public floated around, especially younger people who may not yet have encountered arguments for the animal model. An audience member suggested the concept of animal research should be introduced to A-level students, while John Meredith suggested that these students could also take class trips to animal laboratories. Bryn Owen brought up Imperial’s 3R Blackboard course, which aims to educate students and researchers about the ethics involved in animal research. While the course is available for anyone to take and learn, Imperial is starting to incorporate it into undergraduate education, especially for medical students.

“There are legitimate alternative views on this subject, which we reject, but are still legitimate nonetheless.” – John Meredith, Head of Education and Outreach, Understanding Animal Research

Another concern that the discussion tackled was the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’ (RSPCA) ambitious goal to end all “severe” animal testing by 2030, reflecting its commitment of promoting animal welfare and preventing cruelty. The panel suggested that this objective may be unrealistic, as severe testing protocols often yield significant benefits for human health that can outweigh the ethical concerns associated with animal suffering.  Meanwhile, John Meredith pointed out that the general public remains unaware of the fine distinctions of animal suffering categorisation in testing. After this the discussion centred on public perception and funding, particularly regarding licensing and the number of suffering categories, posing questions for the viability of the RSPCA’s goal and its potential impact on ongoing research and medical advancements.

This Friday’s Forum discussion made clear that addressing the concerns surrounding animal testing requires targeted communication that engages the public, especially those who are passionate towards animal welfare. It is crucial to emphasise that all animals hold inherent value, even as the truth remains that people often display more empathy towards cute and cuddly species. This perception can overshadow the fact that all animals, regardless of their appearance, deserve consideration and protection.  Promoting positive media coverage and highlighting the importance of all species can achieve a more favourable impression of the current issues. As awareness and concerns about animal testing continue to rise, it is essential to enhance communication and education to illuminate the complexities surrounding this important issue. Through these efforts, we can encourage a more informed dialogue to balance ethical considerations with scientific progress.

For more information on Imperial’s commitment to the 3Rs, please visit the 3R hub here. From this website, you can access a blackboard course that teaches the importance of the 3Rs, free for all Imperial staff and students to use. For further questions and potential visits to the animal labs at Imperial, please contact Dr. Anna Napolitano at a.napolitano@imperial.ac.uk. For information regarding the Good Science Project and future Friday Forum discussions, please visit the Good Science Project’s website here.

 

 

 

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.

 

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.

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.