Science for Society in the Digital Age
Science is the bedrock on which modern societies have been built and is essential in navigating the complexities of life on Earth. Although many of science’s greatest discoveries have depended on reductionism, contemporary demands on science are increasingly for an understanding of higher-level systems. One of science’s insights has been that all phenomena are interconnected, implying the absence of barriers between the natural, social, medical, and engineering sciences and parts of the humanities. Science is a way of working, not a set of subjects. Irrespective of the route by which a truth claim is developed, the claim and all relevant evidence must be made widely available to be tested against logic and reality through the scrutiny of peers. The word “science’ as used here applies to all the disciplines of scholarship.
The shift from analogue to digital information systems has created new scientific possibilities, including enabling AI, but also rewired the communication networks that are essential to the functioning of human society. The centralised, edited, one-way analogue systems of radio-television-newspapers-books have been replaced by decentralised, unedited, two-way, interactive systems. The expectation was that the digital network would create a ‘global village square’ of democratic integration and cooperation. The reality has been tribalism.
Rather than a space that recognises and celebrates diversity, the internet is a space of intolerance, fuelled by algorithms that reinforce outrage and discourage restraint to create self-insulating bubbles of certainty, fuelled by conspiracy theories and misinformation. But where does the truth lie? Those who benefit from confusion advocate “alternative facts” or “flooding the zone with shit”. The very institutions that have provided the frame for social solidarity in modern democracies are crumbling before our eyes. Capturing public attention has become paramount. It overrides debate and sweeps evidence aside. If you can’t be heard, it doesn’t matter what you say.
How has science fared in this environment? As the digital revolution gathered pace, the opportunities for general public availability of scientific publications were recognised but blocked by a failure of publishers and scientists’ institutions to adapt to change. Scientists have been incentivised to write papers for other scientists to read, whilst publishers’ high paywalls have put these beyond the reach of a wider public.
Large language models have supercharged an industry of fake papers and fake data that have polluted the record of science. Science communication still works in analogue mode, whilst society has become digital. The voice of science is drowned in a digital cacophony. Its voice is both unheard and unheeded.
If the future is to be determined by the application of science, science itself must become more democratic. It must avoid privatisation of knowledge where society is presented with technological changes that appear to outpace the slow tempo of democratic processes, thereby encouraging the emergence of technocratic dictatorships. So where is the human scientific resource that could lead democratisation? It is estimated that 73% of research in OECD countries is done in private companies, with much of the remainder done in universities. Commercial scientists ultimately owe a duty to the company they serve, where financial interests and scientific perspectives are not always aligned, whilst university scientists owe their duty to the public. Universities have the potential to understand the trajectory of new knowledge creation and its implications, and to maintain social awareness of this through public engagement. It is in this domain where action and the voice of science are most urgently to be felt and heard. Mobilising the universities to play this key role in digital society should be an important national priority. But how?
Universities should be a continuing source of knowledge for graduates and for wider society in their region, stimulating and supporting citizen science and the transdisciplinary mode, with scientists working across the disciplines with societal stakeholders to address major problems. Universities’ potential to contribute is inhibited by the incentivization of research to the detriment of other priorities. The growing mountain of worthless publications is evidence that much academic effort could be redirected towards public engagement without negative impact on national research creativity. It is time that this broader perspective of the social contribution of universities is taken up by governments, with funding mechanisms that liberate universities to engage more deeply with their ambient societies. It is vital at this moment in human history that the full potential of science as set out by Berthold Brecht is realised, “not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.”
Geoffrey Boulton is Regius Professor of Geology Emeritus at the University of Edinburgh. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland’s national academy. He is distinguished for his work on Ice Age ice sheets and their processes of movement and drainage, having worked on glaciers in Svalbard, Greenland, Baffin Island, Iceland, the Alps and Antarctica. He has been a member of the UK PM's Council for Science and Technology, the standing Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, President of the International Committee on Data for Science and Technology, and President of the Scottish Association for Marine Science. He is currently a member of the Governing Board of the International Science Council. He has received the Founders Medal of the Royal Geographic Society, the Lyell Medal of the Geological Society, the inaugural James Croll Medal of the Quaternary Research Association, the Kirk Bryan Award of the Geological Society of America, the Great Medal of the University of Heidelberg, and was made a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Palmes by the French Government. He has received several honorary degrees from UK and European universities.
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