Science and citizenship

Scientists are ordinary men and women who do science through teaching, research or both. Before they are scientists, they are citizens of a country and have as much of a say as any other citizen in thinking about, talking about or doing something about what they feel is in the best interest of the country in which they live and work. Scientists vote like other citizens and in this sense they say something about national and local issues, though in anonymity. All this is in accordance with Article 14 of the Constitution and is as it should be.

Scientists are not special folk who do something that is esoteric and totally beyond the understanding of the common people and are, therefore, “different” from others. Thinking on these lines has led to a common perception that because scientists are not like ordinary people, they should not comment on national issues that affect everyone. Many have asked me why I comment on national issues and why I do not “stick to my science”, almost implying that I am not qualified to speak about matters that are felt to be outside my science.

If one takes this line of thought, we do not understand a lot about what economists, bureaucrats, sociologists, linguists, authors or psychologists do. However, nobody criticises members of these professions when they comment about national issues. Do the Humanities and the social sciences have a monopoly over commenting about general issues of national concern? Do scientists and technologists fall outside the pale? Curiously, no academic person in the above areas has ever questioned my commenting on national issues. It’s more the general public who question me on social media.

The ways and means by which scientists do their work is probably difficult for common people to understand and appreciate. What the general public does not seem to be aware of is that these difficult-to-understand things lead to products, goods and facilities that make the life of ordinary people better and even enjoyable. Over the past 100 years, science has given humanity insulin, silicon chips, nylon, plastics, antibiotics, fertilizers, and digital computers, even the smartphone you are perhaps reading this article on.

Scientists need to talk about national issues in three distinct contexts: they need to alert those in authority to matters in which a scientific input would make for clearer policy determinations; they need to talk about important issues with a scientific underpinning to the general public and explain the underpinning in a way that is understandable to the common citizen; and they should comment about any matter of national concern bringing into board a scientific way of looking at these issues.

The first point is illustrated by the example of the rare earth elements (REE) commonly referred to as rare earths. Many in the government realise this is an important topic with serious economic implications. However, several documents and policy statements list metals such as as lithium, manganese, and cobalt as rare earths. A scientist needs to educate the people in government and the general public that the term “rare earths” is applied only to a specific group of 17 metals, and most important, that the properties that make these rare earths economically and geostrategically important are unique to these 17 metals only.

The second point pertains to AI which is something that many educated people now know about, and the implications of which will affect all of us, educated or otherwise, in the near future. By mining existing data on a certain topic, AI makes reasonable projections of future phenomena and events. The key to AI predictions is therefore the data itself. What happens if the data bank is skewed, non-representative or biased? The projections will also be slanted in a particular way. This becomes especially a problem with AI projections, ironically, in the social sciences. Today’s data banks are all heavily U.S.-based. AI projections on geopolitical issues are more likely than not going to reflect the U.S. bias. Scientists need to make politicians, bureaucrats, and the general public aware of such things.

The third point concerns scientists speaking out about national issues that have no obvious scientific connection. An example from our electoral procedures is pertinent. Our elections are conducted on the basis of the winner securing the highest number of votes, the first-past-the-post system. The alternative system, followed incidentally by a majority of electoral democracies, is proportional representation in which the elected persons are decided on the basis of the proportion of votes their parties have received overall. It is not easy to decide which of these methods is better for a country at a given point in time. My personal belief is that first-past-the-post is probably in its last days in India today, and I have arrived at this conclusion using methods of probability and statistics that most working scientists in any area are familiar with. I have also coupled this with the fact that first-past-the-post has led to a degree of corruption that would not be possible with proportional representation. So a scientist can indeed look at a national issue through a scientific lens even if the topic under discussion is not strictly of a scientific nature.

I feel strongly that scientists reaffirm their citizenship by speaking up about national issues and they bring to the table their unique scientific way of looking at events, a way that ideally is free of prejudice, political bias, obscurantism, illogicality, and hypocrisy. Above all, a scientist’s view of things is characterised by that one quality without which that view cannot even exist — honesty.

Gautam R. Desiraju is in the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and UPES, Dehradun; views expressed are personal