Get science and tech community out of silos

Our under-informed public needs its knowledge to advance

The presidential race placed logical fallacies, causality abuse and factdeficient allegations on full frontal exhibit. Logic-centered professions and their organizing bodies can help our government develop policies based on logic, data and critical thinking.

These communities must not limit their work to the science and technology (S&T) component of policy but must also address issues’ social, political, ethical, economic, legal and moral dimensions.

The S&T community is needed to research and model policies to forge policies that help all Americans. The USA needs GDP growth above 3 percent per year and lower costs for healthcare and education. Other challenges include: wealth and income distributions, job creation, optimization of regulations, increased start-up rate, federal budget deficit, crime, K-12 education quality, incarceration epidemic, workforce retraining, heroin and opioid addiction, immigration, terrorism, trade deficit, etc.

To address these challenges, the S&T community must expand its problem solving beyond the physical sciences.

Much of society doesn’t know exactly what S&T is and what its disciplines are capable of addressing. Equally important are: (1) the lack of understanding of the S&T community about what the public needs to know about S&T, (2) how to convey that information in laypersons’ language and (3) the public’s priorities for the problems the S&T community addresses.

It is time for an enlightened conversation about how science and technology can better serve the public. S&T professional societies and associations, important organizing bodies of the S&T community, should lead that conversation.

In today’s polarized environment of extremist political parties, fake news, point-of-view media, group-think, political-correctness, social media and think tanks obliged to their funding sources, it is excessively time-consuming and difficult for the public to sort fact from fiction. An under-informed public creates an opportunity for the S&T community, led by their professional societies, to fill this knowledge gap.

After 10 years of fulltime S&T policy research, I believe the following can help S&T organizations play an important role in policy.

Policy is forged as a compromise between players with diverse opinions, e.g., members of Congress, by making use of political processes. Legislators’ opinions are, of necessity, compliant with those of their constituents — the public — but can be influenced by immersing their constituents in facts and data. S&T groups can lead that immersion.

Policy can be driven topdown by interaction with policy makers and their staff and bottom-up by public opinion. Bottom-up is better because politicians are reluctant to take actions not sanctioned by their constituents.

Apocalyptic scenarios are often hyperbole spun by fearmongers to gain federal funding; inappropriate use of “sky-is-falling” arguments compromises the credibility of S&T organizations.

S&T societies wishing to influence Congress on an issue top-down should know the issue better than congressional staff and have well-researched policy ideas. The competitiveness solutions the S&T community brought to Congress and the competitiveness programs Congress and the president funded served the S&T community but were irrelevant to the competitiveness problem. Congress soon figured this out and stopped these programs.

S&T societies and their members should spend more time talking to the public about issues, e.g., global warming, and less time talking to each other, seeking peer approval and lobbying for increased federal funding.

S&T societies should address issues important to the public, integrate policy discussions into their conferences and publications and engage their members in policy discussions at the local level.

These recommendations are not easy to implement and will require S&T communities to move from under their technical specialty security blankets and substantially increase their relevance to society. However, if the S&T community can have a meaningful voice in policy-making it will result in policy that is better grounded in facts and data and it will increase the status of S&T communities. Both will be good for our country.