I am sure that everyone in this discussion is acutely aware of how costly research is, and where funding ultimately comes from. Do we really think that money is tainted by whomever handles it? Do you screen your customers when you sell honey? 

¶ ¶ ¶

The 1960s witnessed the emergence of critics of the non-sustainable nature of some modes of production. The publication of Silent Spring in 1962 by Rachel Carson can be considered as the dawn of this new era. Of course, environmental and health concerns have to be taken into account. Regrettably, the approach has often turned ideological, scapegoating industry, technology, and finally science.

People willing to ‘engage’ usually have a political agenda: they are often activists, relabeled as ‘stakeholders,’who view technology as a problem rather than as a possible solution. One social coercive tool for such political control of science is the concept of ‘democratization of science’.  Similar to many postmodern concepts, it is sufficiently vague that it could harbor anything, but it cannot easily be opposed without one being viewed as opposed to democracy. 

The same holds true for the concepts of ‘public engagement’ and ‘knowledge co-production’ between scientists and lay people. Public engagement in science cannot be confounded with public engagement in politics. The latter can be a valuable tool for local democracy. Obviously, it does not make sense to vote on whether a given scientific result is true or false. Faced with a real scientific controversy, scientists perform more experiments and observations to confirm or refute divergent hypotheses. 

Agricultural biotech illustrates how a European regulatory concept (the ‘GMO’), which is scientifically absurd [5], has spread to other regions of the world, propagating the false idea that a new plant breeding technology (trans-genesis) is more risky than older methods. It also illustrates how activists have distorted scientific facts and sums up everything about the postmodernist ‘citizen participation’ in science. 

The latest avatar of European postmodern right-thinking is the concept of ‘Responsible Research and Innovation’. Reading that the ‘aim of responsible innovation is to connect the practice of research and innovation to the futures that it promises and helps bring about’ is sufficient to realize its wordy and illusionary nature. RRI translates ‘public engagement in research’ as not only a moral choice, but also an obligation if researchers want to be funded. 

Marcel Kuntz, Trends in Biotechnology, April 2017, Vol. 35, No. 4

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