Science academies must learn to be more transparent

Demands for openness

This cultural change demands more openness and transparency, at all levels. Gone are the days when disagreements between scientists could be contained within institutions. These days, diverse opinion, often (though admittedly not always) well informed, vents itself freely through blogs and online discussion fora.

If academies are to keep public trust, they must retain their credibility in these spheres. And to achieve this, they must emerge from their 'old boys club' way of doing things.

To judge by the track record of Indian science academies, some have a way to go. The academies were conspicuously silent when a former science minister introduced astrology as a science course, and they have not made any meaningful contribution to Indian science policy formation, or to parliamentary debates on contentious issues such as the presence in India of foreign universities, or liability for nuclear accidents.

Indeed, the fact that last month's Indian inter-academy report on genetically modified crops - intended to shed more light on the vexed issue of GM brinjal - was the first of its kind in India only underlines how inactive the academies have been in a country that prides itself as growing knowledge economy.

All the sadder, therefore, that the report stands exposed as a well-meaning but ill-executed exercise. In India, a popular Hindi saying roughly translates as "inviting a bull to gore you". Submitting a report on GM crops without careful scientific evaluation, omitting references and citations, and including sections copied from another report in a pro-biotechnology government publication, was just such an act.

Complacency in the face of controversy

The controversy surrounding the earlier prediction that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035, made in a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) but based only on a journalist's telephone interview with an Indian scientist, should have alerted the academies to the need for more rigorous scrutiny in documents that are likely to be controversial.

It would be a tragedy if academies were to become discouraged from engaging in public debate on important science-related issues. They have important messages to give about the role of scientific evidence in policy-making, and valuable expertise that can assist this process.

But the messages will be lost if academies remain wrapped in a complacent belief that the traditional authority of science is sufficient to carry the argument.

The modern world demands transparency in the way that decisions are made. That applies as much to the way in which advisory institutions - such as science academies - operate as it does to the political process itself.