The science we need, the science we want
by Jack Stilgoe
As is so often the case with science policy's unclear lines of responsibility, the buck has been passed along. The Science Minister was on the Today programme arguing that the money was available through the MRC, but that no applications were of sufficiently high quality for research council funding. In other words, we asked the scientists to tell us what they wanted to do, once we'd told them what we wanted them to do, but we weren't interested in what they wanted to do. We've heard this argument before, and it utterly misses the point of this sort of science. This is not glamourous research. It is like scientific book-keeping. It is not going to set the world alight. But it will tell us whether new sun creams are going to kill us and it needs to be done. John Berringer from the CST put it like this..."The past two years have shown responsive mode funding alone will not fill the knowledge gaps. To put it bluntly, the safe development of a new technology should not depend on whether an academic wins a highly competitive research grant."
Unfortunately, as was discussed at last year's Governing at the Nanoscale event, all of this talk of heel-dragging on nanoparticle toxicity obscures a more positive discussion about what nanotechnology is for, where we want it to go and who should be involved. There are fascinating discussions taking place about nano-futures at the research councils. For government to drag them back into defensive mode seems unfair.