Art + Science Now

My complementary copy of Art + Science Now arrived from the publishers today.

Buy it. It's great, and I'm on page 105 :-)

Here's the blurb:

Art + Science Now is a groundbreaking overview of the art being made at the cutting edge of scientific research. The first illustrated book in its field, it shows how some of the worlds most dynamic art is being produced not in museums, galleries and studios but in the laboratory, where artists probe cultural, philosophical and social questions connected with scientific and technological advances. Featuring the work of around 250 artists from the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, the USA, Japan and elsewhere, it presents a broad range of projects, from body art to bioengineering of plants and insects, from music, dance and computer-controlled video performances to large-scale visual and sound installations. This comprehensive guide to contemporary art inspired or driven by scientific innovation points to intriguing new directions for the visual arts and traces a key strand in 21st-century aesthetics.

Michele Bachmann: the stupidest politician of them all?

I seem to have written a lot about numeracy, climate change, politicians and science lately. Michele Bachmann brings it all together: a stupid, innumerate politician who passes off a risible pastiche of science as the real thing - and gets away with it!

Her initial argument is, 'if carbon dioxide is good it can't be bad' (See Is carbon dioxide good or bad?) She goes on to argue that as there's not very much of it carbon dioxide can't be a problem (See If carbon dioxide is a 'trace gas' why is it a problem?) In explaining how little of it there is she overstates the concentration of carbon dioxide by a factor of 100 (3% rather than 0.0388%) and understates the proportion that is anthropogenic by a factor of 10 (3% rather than 30%). None of that really matters to her though - she knows she is right so why does she need to know what she's talking about? Her understanding of science does not get past the public relations definition of science.

UK politics is not exactly inspiring at the moment, but I'd like to think that any MP who made a speech like Michele Bachmann's in the House of Commons would be laughed out of Westminster. At the very least, he or she would get a hard time from the press. How is it that Americans let their politicians get away with it? I wouldn't trust Michele Bachmann with a Soda Stream, let alone a planet. (A Soda Stream is a device for carbonating drinks.) It's time the rest of us realised that we can't leave the future of the World in the hands of US politicians - they aren't up to the job and I'm not sure there's much that the American people can do about it. 

Why stupid lazy politicians like science

This is a delayed response to the Home Secretary’s sacking of Professor David Nutt, chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. The boundaries between science and politics used to be a research interest of mine. The Nutt affair reveals how poorly British politicians deal with any political issues that bump up against science. In the case of drug policy that’s regrettable but in the case of climate change it could be catastrophic. What follows isn’t a detailed account of what happened but an attempt to unpick how politicians can get it wrong and why it matters. The truth is I don’t know what happened in fine detail, but that doesn’t matter for the aspects of the affair that I discuss here.

The main point of contention between Professor Nutt and the Home Secretary was the classification of cannabis and ecstasy. There are many advantages in having a classification of drugs that is based on an objective measure of harm. However, there are also good reasons for being more flexible about classification. Here's the thing: when you change the system of classification from one that is ostensively objective to one that is politically flexible, don't pretend that it's still objective.

My MP, Kerry McCarthy told me "the decision of whether or not to re-classify the status of cannabis was not [...] a wholly scientific matter". She’s right and that is precisely why the lack of leadership shown by Alan Johnson is so regrettable. What Alan Johnson would have liked from his scientific advisors was license to say: 'this is evidence-based policy'. Being able to say that would have saved him from having to balance competing interests. He could instead have said, 'it's out of my hands - this is policy based on independent, objective facts'. (More on this in The public relations definition of science, and Why it’s OK to be unscientific.)

Unfortunately for Alan Johnson, the evidence-based policy that emerged wasn't the policy that he wanted. At this point leadership was required. He should have said: 'There's more to this issue than mere epidemiology. I'm basing the Government's policy on wider criteria'. He didn't do that. Instead, he said of Professor Nutt:

"He has a view on relative harms, which I do not share; he has a view on ecstasy, which I do not share; and he has a view on cannabis, which I and the majority of the House do not share." (See Hansard: http://bit.ly/5IzQhG)

Alan Johnson accused Professor Nutt of straying into politics, when actually it is Alan Johnson who has strayed onto Professor Nutt's territory. In contrast to the policies for alcohol and nuclear power that he cites, Johnson failed to make any case whatever for broadening the issue beyond the expert's remit. No doubt there are very good reasons for broadening drugs policy development, but Johnson didn't actually get round to broadening it. (Here's David Nutt making a similar point on Sky News: http://bit.ly/5VadVI.) Nutt was accused of 'campaigning against the government' when all he was doing was pointing out the difference between his advice and government policy. Pointing out the difference between the scientific advice and government policy was something that Alan Johnson should have been doing himself, and would have been doing if he had any political integrity.

What the Home Secretary wanted was the expediency of evidence-based policy combined with the consolations of a popular policy. Rather than 'doing politics', Alan Johnson suggested that the advice he'd been given was simply wrong, and that his own take on the science of relative harms was right. He got away with it because the distinction between 'evidence-based' and 'right' is one that is too subtle for most journalists and for most voters and politicians too. (See Why it’s OK to be unscientific.)

To be clear about this I'm not saying Alan Johnson's policy is wrong or that it's right - just that it is not evidence-based. If pressed though I’d have to say that it is indeed totally wrongedy wrong wrong! I think it is craven and irrational and not a good way to send signals about cannabis. It doesn't affect me directly but it will affect criminals (to their great advantage) and drug users (to their detriment) and it will give readers of the Daily Mail a warm glow. Other than that, its impact is limited.

But there are other issues where understanding the complex relationship between science and policy is absolutely essential, and getting it wrong could result in the deaths of hundreds of millions of people. Climate change and pandemic influenza are but two examples. As Kerry McCarthy rather patronisingly told me, "the actual decision-making in a democracy is a matter for politicians who have to look at all sides of the debate". My point is that when science is involved there is a lot more to 'looking at all sides of the debate' than merely valuing expert advice. It's up to politicians to understand how science can and can not inform policy and to explain this in the policies that emerge, but I see very little evidence that the current government has the first idea about the relation between science and policy.

My real problem with Alan Johnson, with the rest of the Government, and with Members of Parliament is that it seems that they don't care if they end up with a good drugs policy or a bad one as long as they make enough voters believe that they've done the right thing. What I expect of politicians, on the other hand, is genuine leadership, which means explaining policy that might initially be unpopular or counterintuitive.

How W. H. Auden reconciles a respect for science with belief in fairies

These two poems constitute (almost) everything you need to know about science and society :-)

Belief

We do not know 
if there be fairies now
  Or no.
But why should we ourselves involve
In questions which we cannot solve.
  O let's pretend it's so
And then perhaps if we are good
Some day we'll see them in the wood.

(W. H. Auden)

The History of Science

All fables of adventure stress
The need for courtesy and kindness:
Without the Helpers none can win
The flaxen-haired Princess.

They look the ones in need of aid,
Yet, thanks to them, the gentle-hearted
Third Brother beds the woken Queen,
While seniors who made

Cantankerous replies to crones
And dogs who begged to share their rations,
Must expiate their pride as daws
Or wind-swept bachelor stones

Few of a sequel, though, have heard:
Uneasy pedagogues have censored
All written reference to a brother
Younger than the Third.

Soft-spoken as New Moon this Fourth,
A Sun of gifts to all he met with,
But when advised 'Go South a while !',
Smiled 'Thank You !' and turned North,

Trusting some map in his own head,
So never reached the goal intended
(His map, of course, was out) but blundered
On a wonderful instead,

A tower not circular but square,
A treasure not of gold but silver:
He kissed a shorter Sleeper's hand
And stroked her raven hair,

Dare sound Authority confess
That one can err his way to riches,
Win glory by mistake, his dear
Through sheer wrong-headedness?

W. H. Auden, 1966,  Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957, London: Faber & Faber, p 305

The second poem is allegorical. The title, History of Science, is possibly for the benefit of literal minded sciencey people like me who might otherwise miss the point and think the poem is a fairy story. In fact it's a brilliant account of how science is epistemologically and socially distinct from other human activities. (I particularly like the bit about blundering on a 'wonderful instead'.) 

In the first poem, the title Belief is a clue that Auden may be talking about more than just fairies. He may have chosen fairies to give a sense of lightness to otherwise big and unwieldy questions of theology. But actually no! Unlike The History of Science, I think this one should be taken at face-value; it really is about fairies.

I can't claim to have seen a fairy myself, but often when I'm walking in the woods I can sense them all around. Now, the problem with science is that everything has to fit with everything else, which leaves no room for fairies. Quite apart from being subject to Occam's Razor fairies would cause all sorts of inconsistencies between different branches of science. What people often don't realise though is that  many, many things have no natural home in science - not just fanciful entities like fairies and deities but more prosaic things like beer and love. Science has something to say about most things but there is usually much more to be said once the scientific account is exhausted. Science has something to say, for instance, about how it feels to walk in the woods, but not very much, and on the interesting and important stuff it's mute.

People who are tempted to think of science as the alpha and the omega - to think that beer is 'just' fermented barley or love is just a 'brain-state' - do science a dis-service. Indeed, the instinct to see science as the explanation for everything, to conflate 'science' with 'nature' and to blinker oneself from anything that doesn't appear to fall within the remit of science is the same instinct that leads to religion. Science is just one way we humans make sense of the world; there are others. 

But let's be clear about this, because it's easy to get it wrong: just because there are many ways of making sense of the world, it doesn't mean that competing conceptions can ignore science. Here's how it works: for most human activity, if science has something to contribute, you don't have to listen because whatever it is that science has to say, does not demand a response. (Science can tell us about the experience of walking in the woods, but so what?) For some human activities and beliefs that is not the case - you can't merely shrug off the contribution of science and tell yourself you are on a parallel path, working within a different belief system, or whatever. For instance, biology, geology and cosmology all have something to say to creationists that demands a response - creationism and cosmology clash. Similarly, scientific medicine often clashes with alternative medicine in a way that can't be ignored (especially when alternative medicines dress themselves up as a pastiche of science).

Nevertheless, it is still the case that science is just one way to engage with the world (a particularly human way) and not the only way. Do I believe in fairies? Of course not, that would be daft. What makes a walk in the woods so special? Fairies. Like Walt Whitman, I am large, I contain multitudes. So, although there is no room for fairies in science, I'm not going to let that stop me finding them in the woods.