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 8^th 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

 

14^th January 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read A Memo on the role of the social sciences at Imperial in full

Nauka Emigrantka/Science on the Move


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With thanks to:

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

Read Nauka emigrantka/science on the move in full

Friday Forum May 17 Briefing Note

What do undergraduate education and science research have in common?

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

Today’s discussion

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

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

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

Imagination

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

Inclusivity

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

Collaboration

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

Interdisciplinarity

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

Assessment and evaluation

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

Dr Stephen Webster

Senior Lecturer in Science Communication

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

May 17^th 2024

Read Briefing note for Friday Forum No. 5 in full

By Philip Howard | 14 June 2023

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

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

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

‘a story you have to tell’

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

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

‘not written in stone but in time’

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

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

‘we are in this together’

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

‘now open your eyes’

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

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

Read The Scientist as Citizen: Finding your voice in full

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

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

Doubt is a fundamental element of science

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

Doubt is an engine of creativity

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

Doubt is more than just error bars, and eludes quantification

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

Reasonable versus Unreasonable Doubt

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

The ‘stupid’ do not doubt

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

When dogma trumps doubt

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

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

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

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

Read A thesaurus of doubt in full

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Find out more and register for The Day of Doubt. 
• To sign up to The Good Science Project mailing list please contact Claudia Cannon.

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