SUBJECT: Science and governance
AUTHOR: Ferdinando Boero
DATE: 16th April 2003

In an introduction of university courses to high school students I crossed an engineer. He spoke before me. He said to the boys and girls: you give a problem to an engineer and he will find a solution. I had to introduce the faculty of science and I said: you give a problem to a scientist and he will find ten other problems. No wonder decision makers like engineers. The problem is (we like problems!!!): do the solutions really solve the problem? If you take coastal erosion, it is a solution to build walls in front of the coast. The whole coast of the Italian Adriatic sea is a wall. This beautiful solution brought not ten but one hundred other problems, after some time. By that time the decision makers forgot who caused the problem and called engineers again to provide solutions, while scientists remained confined in their Cassandra lament.

It is strange that politicians find money to explore outer space, looking for Martians. There is a research project (extraterrestrial life) that has been going on for 40 years with enormous investment and absolutely zero results. How come the funds are not cut? I have some answer but I do not want to go on much on this. Politicians want answers, but the way to reach answers passes through fundamental research. The foundations of the answers you ask are, by definition, in branches of science that are apparently "useless" but fundamental. I have already said what happened when politicians wanted us to give an answer on jellyfish blooms. They asked the question when the bloom was a problem, and lost interest when the blooms were over. And funds were cut. Then they are irritated if we do not have answers. Most of the time, however, there is no answer, if you want precise predictions.

Chaos theory (that I invoked so many times in this forum) is there to tell politicians that meteorologists can predict the weather at a very short term, and that it is impossible to give forecast over the long term. We would like to know if next summer will be arid or very rainy. Sorry guys, it is impossible. In our field, however, there are people who come out and say that they have the answer. The politicians go for them, even if they invariably fail. Look at the economists. They play the game. The best thing a politician can do is to have panels and hear different opinions. And then take a decision. Usually the guys who have answers are very active, looking for the people who ask questions, in order to get their money. The people who have more questions usually play with their questions, you have to look for them, they will not come pulling your arm to catch your attention. It is easy to find them, though. There is the ISI (Institute of Scientific Information). They can tell you who is publishing good work on the topic you are interested in. There are Scientific Societies. Ask them.

My experience in Italy, but maybe in Bruxelles it is the same, is that there are very "active" scientists in getting money by going to functionaries. They nurse them, invite them out for dinner, and become their friends. The others do not have time to do this. What I want to say is that, sometimes, those who might provide answers are not invited. I participated in several panels on biodiversity and realised that very few of the people in the room were actually studying biodiversity. At first I was shocked and withdrew. But I had to withdraw several times. Then I almost stopped going.

A contribution by:

Ferdinando Boero
Universita de Lecce
Via Prov. Le Lecce-Monteroni
73100 Lecce
Italy