EU science policy: It’s time to go public

If a government does something and nobody knows about it, did it really happen?

On 11 December 2013, the European Commission formally launched the biggest-ever research programme in Europe, the seven-year, €79 billion Horizon 2020 programme. There was media coverage. There were speeches. There were conferences – and will be many more. The Commission’s specialised online portal about the programme has been getting heavy traffic. 

But by whom? Well, chiefly by people who want money from the programme: academic researchers, university grant offices, business lobbyists. There’s nothing wrong with that; indeed, by the EU’s normal measures of public engagement, Horizon 2020 is already a best-seller. The Commission is expecting a flood of new grant applicants – with the prospect of a frighteningly low 15 per cent average acceptance rate. But what about the broader public? 

Talk of a ‘democratic deficit’ in Brussels is nothing new, whether you’re considering monetary or immigration policy. But, it seems to us, Brussels should be crying out for greater citizen participation in science policy – whether the kind set in Brussels or in the national capitals. 

First, public misinformation about science is dangerous for Europe’s future. Consider human stem cell research. Conservative Poland has taken the contradictory position of restricting it at the same time it tries to foster a local biomedical industry. The Commission, not wishing to meddle with local politics, has performed in Horizon 2020 the bureaucratic equivalent of covering its eyes: It won’t fund research in a member-state where local law bars it. 

Or, consider the case of two other controversial areas of research - genetically modified organisms and nuclear energy - in Germany. If the German electorate was well-informed about the issues, one could understand opposition to such research; but in fact, when it comes to science, public debate is more often led by demagoguery than fact. And that leads to bad policy. 

Second, science could benefit from more citizen engagement. “Citizen science” has become a hot topic in policy circles – with astronomy the model example. It’s no exaggeration to say astronomy could not happen without the thousands of amateurs around the world who like to look at stars, and will log their findings or home computer calculations in astronomy Web sites. A dream for ecologists, public health experts and many others would be to have a similar degree of engagement in their fields – multiplying the scientific work force, for free.

Third, public disinterest in Horizon 2020 is dangerous for the EU. This programme is the third biggest pot of money in Brussels, after agriculture and regional development. And it has been growing fast – 44 per cent from the prior seven-year EU planning cycle to the new one, on top of a comparable jump in 2007. The budget battles so far have been waged largely among technocrats – a small group of EU and member-state officials, lobbied by an equally narrow set of special-interest groups with the most to gain or lose: universities, research labs and some companies. 

But surely, if you were to ask an average citizen for his or her views on how to spend €10 billion a year on science, at least a few useful opinions might emerge. 

With a new Parliament and a new Commission due to take office later this year, here are a few suggestions for what could be done to close this democratic deficit in science policy:

• Create a strong, grass-roots science organisation, to lobby the member-states and enlist wider popular engagement for science. There are a few, already: Euroscience tries to recruit individual scientists as members, and the Initiative for Science in Europe managed to gather more than 100,000 online signatures in 2012 for a petition in support of EU science funding. But none of them have adequate funding to be effective. The Commission needs to invest in building up a few organisations that can be vectors for dialogue with millions – scientist and non-scientist. There are models elsewhere: the American Association for the Advancement of Science is a dominant voice for scientists in Washington; and the climate-change wars in the US have shown how special-interest groups – whether you agree with them or not – can effectively mobilise millions of citizens to write or call their elected representatives about scientific issues.

• Get creative in online outreach. There are countless good ideas circulating around. Here’s one: crowd-sourcing ideas for research. Didier Schmitt, an official who works with EC Chief Scientific Advisor Anne Glover, recently suggested in The Guardian that citizens could be invited to vote – with one euro apiece donated online – for their own favourite research priority. This technique is already used on occasion by patients’ organisations or other special-interest groups to raise research money; why not try applying it to the setting of EU research priorities?

• Break out of the EC communications departments. Despite having some talented individuals, the Commission’s communications services as organisations are bureaucratic and timid; a thousand public comments on an EC Green Paper are considered a stunning success at democratic dialogue in Brussels, and once achieved the job of public outreach is viewed as over. Of course, it’s that way in most member-state governments, too – though Finland, Denmark and Sweden, when setting their own national innovation policies, were notably more successful. But one key difference between Brussels and the national capitals: the politicians value their images enough to hire a few trusted, outside professionals to set strategy, with the power to over-rule the civil servants. (Of course, the member-state politicians care because they are elected, not appointed; but that’s another democratic deficit issue in Brussels…)

• Build up, inside the Commission, a service whose sole mission is outreach for science policy. Of course, it kind of exists already, in the recently created Office of the Chief Scientific Advisor. But such a group would need more funding. One small example: The Ombudsman of the National Institutes of Health in the US. That office has seven staff members dealing exclusively with citizen complaints or comments for just one area of research – more staff than its EU counterpart has for the entire range of science and technology.

• Create a media fellowship programme for science and policy journalists, to spend a half year in Brussels getting to know about how EU research policy works. A few research universities – notably, MIT and Stanford – have been doing this for years with astonishingly good effect: Foundations pay for the journalist stipends so the employer won’t oppose the sabbatical on cost grounds, and the universities every year graduate a class of a few dozen science and technology journalists who often go on to senior positions in the media world. (This writer was in the MIT programme many years ago.) Imagine how news coverage of EU science policy would change if there were even 100 journalists across the EU who understood how the system worked.

There are many more possibilities. In fact, the current Commissioners should convene a task force this year specifically to gather ideas and have a plan ready for their successors in November. There is no lack of ideas; only a lack of political courage to make a noise for science in Europe.