Public accountability - is science exempt?

In an article in The Guardian last week, Richard Horton provides a useful summary of the wider implications of Sir Muir Russell's Independent Climate Change Email Review (also published last week). Of particular interest to us, given our recent work for the BBC on accountability and social media, was the point Horton drew out about the need for scientists to change their idea of accountability. The framework of peer review and scientific conferences has traditionally determined both who is a legitimate critic and how they should exercise their criticism. As the scientists at UEA have discovered to their cost, digital media and blogging in particular are forcing the science community to recognise that this framework may not always remain sacrosanct.

As the report itself puts it, in a chapter devoted to "The Changing Context of Modern Science", 

There continues to be a scientific debate about the reality, causes and uncertainties of climate change that is conducted through the conventional mechanisms of peer reviewed publication of results, but this has been paralleled by a more vociferous, more polarised debate in the blogosphere and in popular books... This strand of debate has been more passionate, more rhetorical, highly political and one in which each side frequently doubts the motives and impugns the honesty of the other... It is difficult at the moment to predict whether and how the necessary cooler, rigorous scientific debate and the vital public policy interface will develop, or the effect that it will have on scientific publication or peer review...

[Without] openness, the credibility of [scientists'] work will suffer because it will always be at risk of allegations of concealment and hence mal-practice...

Therefore, the Review would urge all scientists to learn to communicate their work in ways that the public can access and understand; and to be open in providing the information that will enable the debate, wherever it occurs, to be conducted objectively. [our bold]

There is arguably a still wider implication for openness here. The issue is especially pointed around science, in that the rigour of methodology for peer review is designed to ensure that what enters the scientific record is as accurate and factual as possible. But the same process - arrival at optimal decisions through internal or closed review - is at work, albeit in softer focus, in government, public institutions, even private companies with power over the public good. And the same pressures in the direction of greater transparency and openness to debate are also at work.

We value the quest for objective truth that science represents so highly that we want to optimise the process of accountability around it. On the one hand we want to safeguard that process by keeping it highly engineered and the preserve of professionals. On the other hand, the Russell report shows that we also demand involvement where the science is controversial, and that the need for true accountability is going to force change. So we accept that science should not be exempt from greater scrutiny by an informed public. But we also value other activities - such as government, commerce, non-scientific research - enough that we choose as a society to pay for them. If we are going to apply greater demands for transparency to science, in the interests of improving the outcomes, then maybe we should flip the question we started with, and ask: should other fields of organised activity be exempt from these increased demands of scrutiny and openness?