Why would gain of function research be permitted at all? There is a serious political movement to ban it in the U.S. and indeed laws have been passed to that effect but science bureaucrats keep trying to route around them. Is this international effort just another attempt to do that using international institutions?
Science in itself is not an institution, it represents nothing and belongs to no-one, or, to put it better, it is a treasure shared by all humanity.
Science is also a practice based on rigorous methods (or which should be) carried out by researchers who also have the role of teaching and passing on knowledge. The adjective "scientific" is ambiguous because it describes content, qualifies that content and also its origin. When Greta says "it's scientific" it doesn't have the same meaning as when Roger Pielke Jr. says it (or rather avoids getting sidetracked by such inadequate judgements).
Diplomacy is the practice of dealing between states according to rules, customs and traditions. Professional diplomats are experts mandated by their governments. Governments and diplomats need advice on scientific and technical knowledge, but scientists should not be expected to become diplomats or governments. That is not their role, and they have neither the skills. nor the competences.
In several countries during the Covid-19 pandemic, the great confusion was precisely to let people believe that experts had a governance role to play. It should also be noted that, faced with real dilemmas that could not be postponed, many governments hid behind the cloak of "it's scientific".
A similar confusion is fostered by the existence of the IPCC, which has gone from being a college of experts assessing the state of knowledge about the climate to a prescriber of knowledge (no dissent acceptable), a manipulator of speculative scenarios (to paint the bleakest possible picture), and a prophet and master of the implications that this knowledge should have for political governance (summaries for decision-makers WG I, II, III).
This is to forget that sovereignty does not belong to the "knower" but to the decision-maker under the obligations of the Rule of Law. In my country, this power is in the hands of the citizens, who can make mistakes and must accept the consequences. Every decision is a choice between proposals and priorities, all fraught with vast uncertainties, which no 'scientist' can prefer (except as a citizen like any other). Pre-empting such decisions in the name of science is not simply idiotic, it is called arrogance or totalitarianism.
The new "Governing Body" proposed by the WHO is exactly what is never to be desired. A closed group of experts appointed and delegated on equivocal grounds to determine unforeseen actions in unforeseen cases?
The WHO is already in place to establish a platform for the exchange of knowledge and experience. Even within such a framework, it has demonstrated its inability to be above the fray and not to lie. It can lend eminent services in countries without resources, but it cannot become a global shadow ministry.
What's more, no one can anticipate the next pandemic, either its nature or its development. The only thing we have learned but which the WHO rejects in its proposal is that the future is uncertain and unplannable.
Wouldn't do a thing - those that signed the treaty would outsource work to those that haven't. As you may recall, that is EXACTLY what Fauci did, because GOF research WAS banned in the U.S. It is quite possible that Fauci was an accessory before the fact for the murders of thousands of Americans, which might explain why he was so intent on obfuscating his role in the whole debacle.
Unfortunately academic science and academia in general is highly political and generally infested with foreign ideologies of the sort that are hostile to free expression and that seem to take their political ideas from Mao and Stalin. Giving these guys influence and money is simply throwing gasoline on a fire. The IPCC is a wonderful example of how bad international science organizations can be. Let's not expand the number of politicized international organizations that can be trusted to be ideologically opposed to everything America is supposed to stand for and that will create fake science in pursuit of their political goals.
I quite like the phrase 'authoritarian high modernism' (James C. Scott - Seeing Like a State) to describe many of the policy responses to both climate and global health crises/'crises'.
The “diplomatization of science?” I sure hope not!
A sidebar on "wicked problems." One class of them is based on Gödel's Theorem. You can logically pose them, but can't solve them within the same Logic. If you exclude "Uncomfortable Knowledge," you are constraining your logical domain - in effect, making at least some soluble problems wicked.
Dear Roger, there is an article in the Wall Street Journal's Feb 28th edition, by Nicholas Wade, regarding the origins of COVID- 19. A request for funding for Project DEFUSE was sent to DARPA by EcoHealth Alliance, the Wuhan Virology Institute and the U of North Carolina. This project mapped out exactly the sequence of lab steps needed to create what later became known as the COVID-19 virus, by inserting a human furan cleavage site into the COV-SARS-1 bat virus. (I hope I have not mangled the biological details with this summary. Please consult the article for accuracy.) Project DEFUSE was rejected by DARPA in February 2019 as being too dangerous. However, since she couthored the proposal, Shi Zhengli, at the Wuhan Virology Institute, had in hand the precise sequence of laboratory tasks required to create the COVID-19 virus. Which virus suddenly appeared in Wuhan, some time between August and November of 2019. One does not have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that COVID-19 was engineered in the Wuhan laboratory and escaped from that level 2 biosafety facility; the inference is so strong that no other conjecture makes any sense. I do not see how any scientific advisory body which defers to the compromised WHO and the Chinese government's desire to save face over COVID-19 is going to create effective policy for future events.
While in principle I support increased scientific/technologic advice informing public policy, after covid and the progressive fervor of many scientists and doctors, I remain skeptical of their current usefulness. If Fauci is the model, we're all in trouble.
I like it, and not to be cynical about the scientific enterprise but..
"In 2010, the Royal Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) defined “science diplomacy” as three functions:
informing foreign policy objectives with scientific advice (science in diplomacy);
facilitating international science cooperation (diplomacy for science);
using science cooperation to improve international relations between countries (science for diplomacy)."
2 and 3 usually require infusions of $ and seem to be reasons to spend $ on science without hope of utility to anyone.. as the governance of what scientific projects, exactly, are cooperated on- is left to the Science-Industrial complex.
I'm not sure that your going in assumption that 'stronger' <--> 'better'. If history is any guide, I would suggest that the governance of public health requires WEAKER institutions. As we know from history, ANY bureaucratic organization eventually falls prey to the whims of its masters - witness UNRWA's capture by Hamas in the Gaza strip, and Iran's appointment to chair the UN Committee on human rights, and WHO's absolute failure to even TRY to determine Covid-19 origins. I would advocate that the ABSENCE of a global health organization would be much better than any alternative - as then ad-hoc organizations created to address a real issue might actually get something done. A 'global' institution is one of those situations where the cure (WHO relative to C-19) was demonstrably MUCH worse than the disease itself. If the U.S. had ignored everything, including its own CDC/FDA guidance, we would have been MUCH better off.
Quite good explanation of the risk potential of such a Scientific Advisory Committee.
As for your working definition of "diplomatization of science": my first thoughts are that it will not catch on easily. But, alas, I have no alternative to offer.
Why would gain of function research be permitted at all? There is a serious political movement to ban it in the U.S. and indeed laws have been passed to that effect but science bureaucrats keep trying to route around them. Is this international effort just another attempt to do that using international institutions?
Science in itself is not an institution, it represents nothing and belongs to no-one, or, to put it better, it is a treasure shared by all humanity.
Science is also a practice based on rigorous methods (or which should be) carried out by researchers who also have the role of teaching and passing on knowledge. The adjective "scientific" is ambiguous because it describes content, qualifies that content and also its origin. When Greta says "it's scientific" it doesn't have the same meaning as when Roger Pielke Jr. says it (or rather avoids getting sidetracked by such inadequate judgements).
Diplomacy is the practice of dealing between states according to rules, customs and traditions. Professional diplomats are experts mandated by their governments. Governments and diplomats need advice on scientific and technical knowledge, but scientists should not be expected to become diplomats or governments. That is not their role, and they have neither the skills. nor the competences.
In several countries during the Covid-19 pandemic, the great confusion was precisely to let people believe that experts had a governance role to play. It should also be noted that, faced with real dilemmas that could not be postponed, many governments hid behind the cloak of "it's scientific".
A similar confusion is fostered by the existence of the IPCC, which has gone from being a college of experts assessing the state of knowledge about the climate to a prescriber of knowledge (no dissent acceptable), a manipulator of speculative scenarios (to paint the bleakest possible picture), and a prophet and master of the implications that this knowledge should have for political governance (summaries for decision-makers WG I, II, III).
This is to forget that sovereignty does not belong to the "knower" but to the decision-maker under the obligations of the Rule of Law. In my country, this power is in the hands of the citizens, who can make mistakes and must accept the consequences. Every decision is a choice between proposals and priorities, all fraught with vast uncertainties, which no 'scientist' can prefer (except as a citizen like any other). Pre-empting such decisions in the name of science is not simply idiotic, it is called arrogance or totalitarianism.
The new "Governing Body" proposed by the WHO is exactly what is never to be desired. A closed group of experts appointed and delegated on equivocal grounds to determine unforeseen actions in unforeseen cases?
The WHO is already in place to establish a platform for the exchange of knowledge and experience. Even within such a framework, it has demonstrated its inability to be above the fray and not to lie. It can lend eminent services in countries without resources, but it cannot become a global shadow ministry.
What's more, no one can anticipate the next pandemic, either its nature or its development. The only thing we have learned but which the WHO rejects in its proposal is that the future is uncertain and unplannable.
Wouldn't do a thing - those that signed the treaty would outsource work to those that haven't. As you may recall, that is EXACTLY what Fauci did, because GOF research WAS banned in the U.S. It is quite possible that Fauci was an accessory before the fact for the murders of thousands of Americans, which might explain why he was so intent on obfuscating his role in the whole debacle.
Unfortunately academic science and academia in general is highly political and generally infested with foreign ideologies of the sort that are hostile to free expression and that seem to take their political ideas from Mao and Stalin. Giving these guys influence and money is simply throwing gasoline on a fire. The IPCC is a wonderful example of how bad international science organizations can be. Let's not expand the number of politicized international organizations that can be trusted to be ideologically opposed to everything America is supposed to stand for and that will create fake science in pursuit of their political goals.
I quite like the phrase 'authoritarian high modernism' (James C. Scott - Seeing Like a State) to describe many of the policy responses to both climate and global health crises/'crises'.
The “diplomatization of science?” I sure hope not!
A sidebar on "wicked problems." One class of them is based on Gödel's Theorem. You can logically pose them, but can't solve them within the same Logic. If you exclude "Uncomfortable Knowledge," you are constraining your logical domain - in effect, making at least some soluble problems wicked.
Dear Roger, there is an article in the Wall Street Journal's Feb 28th edition, by Nicholas Wade, regarding the origins of COVID- 19. A request for funding for Project DEFUSE was sent to DARPA by EcoHealth Alliance, the Wuhan Virology Institute and the U of North Carolina. This project mapped out exactly the sequence of lab steps needed to create what later became known as the COVID-19 virus, by inserting a human furan cleavage site into the COV-SARS-1 bat virus. (I hope I have not mangled the biological details with this summary. Please consult the article for accuracy.) Project DEFUSE was rejected by DARPA in February 2019 as being too dangerous. However, since she couthored the proposal, Shi Zhengli, at the Wuhan Virology Institute, had in hand the precise sequence of laboratory tasks required to create the COVID-19 virus. Which virus suddenly appeared in Wuhan, some time between August and November of 2019. One does not have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that COVID-19 was engineered in the Wuhan laboratory and escaped from that level 2 biosafety facility; the inference is so strong that no other conjecture makes any sense. I do not see how any scientific advisory body which defers to the compromised WHO and the Chinese government's desire to save face over COVID-19 is going to create effective policy for future events.
While in principle I support increased scientific/technologic advice informing public policy, after covid and the progressive fervor of many scientists and doctors, I remain skeptical of their current usefulness. If Fauci is the model, we're all in trouble.
I like it, and not to be cynical about the scientific enterprise but..
"In 2010, the Royal Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) defined “science diplomacy” as three functions:
informing foreign policy objectives with scientific advice (science in diplomacy);
facilitating international science cooperation (diplomacy for science);
using science cooperation to improve international relations between countries (science for diplomacy)."
2 and 3 usually require infusions of $ and seem to be reasons to spend $ on science without hope of utility to anyone.. as the governance of what scientific projects, exactly, are cooperated on- is left to the Science-Industrial complex.
Roger,
I'm not sure that your going in assumption that 'stronger' <--> 'better'. If history is any guide, I would suggest that the governance of public health requires WEAKER institutions. As we know from history, ANY bureaucratic organization eventually falls prey to the whims of its masters - witness UNRWA's capture by Hamas in the Gaza strip, and Iran's appointment to chair the UN Committee on human rights, and WHO's absolute failure to even TRY to determine Covid-19 origins. I would advocate that the ABSENCE of a global health organization would be much better than any alternative - as then ad-hoc organizations created to address a real issue might actually get something done. A 'global' institution is one of those situations where the cure (WHO relative to C-19) was demonstrably MUCH worse than the disease itself. If the U.S. had ignored everything, including its own CDC/FDA guidance, we would have been MUCH better off.
Quite good explanation of the risk potential of such a Scientific Advisory Committee.
As for your working definition of "diplomatization of science": my first thoughts are that it will not catch on easily. But, alas, I have no alternative to offer.