The creation of the OST compels a re-examination of advisory and administrative
structures. No one expects anything less. But let us not confuse such rearranging
of the deck chairs on the ship of state with a determination to tackle some
fundamental issues. After all, whatever its problems, basic research in
Britain remains excellent using any international comparison. Moreover,
the research councils have just been handed £154 million from the
Universities Funding Council predicated on the recognition that they can
effectively manage the science budget.

So what is the problem? We should resist the temptation to invent new
problems out of a misplaced sense of novelty. The central issue which the
White Paper must address is all too familiar: how can Britain’s scientific
excellence be translated into international competitiveness? This is not
a mere abstract concern; without the resources being generated from a competitive
economy, Britain’s science base will be unable to obtain the resources it
needs to sustain its international standards of excellence.

Strengthening the links between the science base and industry is now
a national emergency. The proliferation of ad hoc and ‘sub-optimal’ schemes
devised over the past decade will no longer do. A major reason for this
is that they misconstrue the relationship between science and industry.
It is often suggested that, given sufficient resources, scientists will
make the necessary discoveries to produce the technological changes necessary
for social and economic progress. This ‘production model’ of research, whereby
a fairly linear sequence of activities starting with well-defined inputs
progresses through a series of processes to the production of outputs, has
resulted in the practical success of science. This model falls down, though,
when we look for real examples of the application of scientific knowledge
to commerce and industry.

Economic competitiveness is created by advances in science and technology,
but not by these advances alone. To be effective they must be harnessed
to human resources, effective management and long-term investment. In other
words, innovation in British industry is as much a phenomenon of ‘market-pull’
as it is of ‘science-push’. This alone suggests that if we are to reverse
economic decline, we must ensure we make the most of the social sciences
as well as the natural sciences in creating the best environment for innovation
in competitive companies. Innovation is driven by competition as much as
by technology. It follows, therefore, that competitive innovation is continually
affected by market environments which are both shaping and being shaped
by technological change. Moreover, technological change is fed by social
values, legislative and fiscal regulation, military imperatives and market
conditions. The relationship between technological innovation and industrial
competitiveness is thoroughly interactive.

The nature of this link is perhaps better understood now than it was
a decade ago, when more ‘unilinear’ conceptions prevailed. Unfortunately,
much of the science base and many (though not all) sectors of British industry
remain ill-equipped to manage this interaction effectively. Somehow the
many admirable attempts to remedy this, such as LINK or the Teaching Company
Scheme, have not solved the problem. Too often they are, in reality, predicated
on the old and discredited linear model, with its emphasis on ‘getting the
science right’ without reference to market needs, followed by valiant attempts
at ‘technology transfer’ to convince the market that it should want what
the science base has ordained is good for it.

There is an irony here: modern management practice in British industry
disdains such ‘operations-led’ or ‘supplier-driven’ practice. The competitive
sectors of British industry have reorganised themselves, sometimes painfully,
to be customer-driven, market-led organisations which regard innovation
as a constant process, rather than as a one-off, and which have established
new techniques of managing change. There has been an imperative to introduce
‘flat’ management structures and devolved systems of management which promote
flexibility with the objective of remaining close to customers (Mr Waldegrave:
please note this when you come to consider the structures within the OST).

What, then, are the implications of this for the White Paper? I would
suggest five major issues. First, a sensible division of labour over British
research and development practice needs to be established. British scientists
are good at research. On the whole they do not have the skill, nor the desire,
to be in business. Conversely, those in business are not, on the whole,
conversant with basic science. Instead of trying to persuade or bribe these
otherwise sceptical groups to be what they are not, they should stick to
their knitting. Good fences, as the American poet Robert Frost once put
it, make good neighbours. This, however, reinforces the need for well-established
and proactive intermediate institutions – such as the proposed Faraday Centres
– to promote interaction both ways.

Secondly, we need to recognise that those companies which have the managerial
and organisational skills to implement change are likely to be decidedly
more successful than those companies which do not. This, in turn, highlights
the need to invest more heavily in people to establish a corporate climate
that is receptive to change. In particular, more attention needs to be focused
on the interaction between human and technological resources. There is evidence
that the competitiveness of British engineering companies is being restricted
by the lack of commensurate workforce skills.

Thirdly, this suggests the need for stronger integration between the
social and the natural sciences in most, if not all, aspects of basic and
strategic science and in particular how innovation can be harnessed to economic
competitiveness. We need less talk of technology transfer and more talk
of knowledge transfer – not only from science to industry, but from industry
to science. All Faraday Centres, for example, should have a social science
component. Some should concentrate on social science issues, such as the
management of innovation or, indeed, innovation in management. We should
abandon the foolish notion that social science only has a role after scientific
advance has occurred. An organic link between science and industry demands
an organic link between the natural sciences and the social sciences via
a common purpose in addressing economic competitiveness and improvements
in the quality of life.

Fourthly, government itself must develop a clear and consistent conception
of its role. It can do much more to promote a sense of common purpose among
those who contribute to innovation in business, in the academic world and
in public administration. It is not just a question, therefore, of creating
new institutions. If the innovation process is interactive, then what is
required is much more effective networking among the stakeholders – not
just, or even especially, at the national level, but at the local and regional
level where, crucially, the small and medium-sized enterprises will become
more actively involved.

Finally, there are implications of the OST itself. If it is accepted
that the crucial issue for the White Paper is the link between the science
base and industry, and if innovation is regarded as an interactive process,
then the White Paper will need to address issues which go beyond the remit
of the OST. It takes two to tango and there are deeply rooted cultural problems
in sectors of British industry relating to their receptiveness to innovation.
This will lead, at the very least, to dialogues with other government departments,
whose budgets (and therefore political clout) exceed those of the embryonic
OPT. How tragic if this historical opportunity were lost through traditional
Whitehall in fighting. And how sad if OST were to retreat in the face of
these big battalions to indulge itself in another deckchair-shuffling exercise.
Our current economic crisis deserves a more profound response than this.

Howard Newby is chairman of the Economic and Social Research Council.

Indeed, one of the more fascinating aspects of the recent upsurge of
interest in the global environment is the way in which it reflects a new
kind of relationship between research and policy – or, if you prefer, science
and politics. Trraditionally, this relationship has been based on the belief
that science provides decision-makers with objective, ‘hard’ facts on which
to base their ‘soft’, value-ridden policies. But now we find scientists
delivering ‘soft’, uncertain ‘facts’ to politicians and policy-makers who
face ‘hard’ decisions. Politicians demand to know whether nuclear energy
(or British beef) is ‘safe’; while scientists can only state that nothing
is ever risk-free.

To social scientists, long cursed with the burden of being cast as society’s
witch doctors, this experience is a familiar one. Social scientists have
often provided the news about social problems rather than the solutions.
Global environmental change is placing natural scientists in a somewhat
analogous position, because they can no more solve the problems of climate
change than economists can stop inflation.

It is doubtful, however, that this will lead to a greater awareness
among natural scientists of the dilemmas which face social scientists in
studying global environmental change. This is because there are many natural
scientists who find their new, high-profile political role uncomfortable
because it disrupts the established relationship between science and politics.

It was seen as the scientists’s role to describe the problem, but the
politicians’s to do something about it. A different kind of expertise –
an essentially social scientific expertise – which analyses, evaluates and
communicates options for policy and change is thereby defined as ‘unscientific’
and omitted from proper debate. Social science is hence reduced to a rather
feeble voice, a pleading for interdisciplinary research in a game where
the deck has already been stacked against it.

As a result, research on climate change has already demonstrated a strange
kind of dualism, which threatens to marginalise the economic and social
aspects, not because these are deemed unimportant, but because they are
regarded, by default, as ‘soft’ and therefore unscientific.

This kind of implicit, but systematic, downgrading of relevant intellectual
inquiry is comforting to politicians in search of scientific legitimacy
for their decisions, and for scientists who see a golden opportunity to
pursue the ideas of science for the betterment of society. But it is ultimately
dangerous where the problem is intractable to technological solutions alone.
For as we move away from the expression of abstract goals (like mitigating
the greenhouse effect) to the actual means of achieving them (like carbon
taxes) the costs of solutions become clearer to the public at large and
many provoke widespread conflict, especially when the technical uncertainties
are so many, and the stakes so high. As these costs become clearer, so public
attention will come to focus more on the uncertainties of predicted climate
change, in reaction to the certain effects of potentially costly policy
actions.

This leaves scientists to rue the apparent ‘irrationality’ of the public
in refusing to accept the best scientific knowledge, while politicians will
be looking for scapegoats for their unpopularity. In Britain you have to
look no further than the recent food scares for an example of this chain
of events.

It is in the national interest to receive social science as an equal
partner in the British effort on global environmental research, not so much
in terms of funding, since social science is cheap, but in terms of influence
over our national priorities. It is essential that policy-makers recognise
the contribution of the social sciences – in areas like demography, environmental
economics, attitude measurement and risk perception – just as they must
also be aware of its limitations. Similarly, it is essential that natural
scientists recognise the validity of social science knowledge, even when
it does not conform to their own models of knowledge creation. Because social
scientists do not, in general, make ‘discoveries’, this is not a process
which can be taken for granted.

However, the process is more subtle than even this implies. Interdisciplinary
collaboration requires not only bringing together researchers with differing
expertise to address a common problem. It also involves, crucially, using
many theoretical approaches between, and sometimes within, particular disciplines.
This requires a recognition that there are differing methods of creating
knowledge and that such knowledge is subject to a variety of interpretations
which are equally valid. Unfortunately, this runs counter to the consensus
in the natural sciences, where there are extremely powerful mechanisms at
work defining what is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ science. This has led to the scientific
soundness of some work on the global environment being challenged within
the scientific community itself.

Leaving aside technical arguments about the validity of drawing inferences
about global warming from rather flimsy data, there are those who regard
this brand of science as unanalytic, over-descriptive on laboratory-based
methods. In other words, as the prevailing methodology veers towards techniques
familiar to social scientists (sample surveys, inference, heuristic and
predictive modelling), so the knowledge being produced has, in some quarters
at least, been granted less legitimacy.

True interdisciplinary research will, then, require plurality and tolerance
without sloppiness and rampant relativism. This is a tall order – but then
so are the solutions to our pressing environmental problems.

Howard Newby is Chairman of the Economic and Social Research Council.
Until 1988 he was Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex and
Director of the ESRC Data Archive. He has published many books and articles
on aspects of social change in rural Britain.