When politics and science collide

Professor Dave Wark, physicist & Fellow of the Royal Society, visits the House of Commons...

I got involved with the Royal Society’s pairing scheme because I want to understand how the Government uses science and because I’m interested and concerned about the level of support for science and higher education. Most scientists feel sort of helpless before the political process. The scheme, however, has made me realise that politicians do want to learn from us, that we have to get involved and help them.

I’m the first Fellow of the Royal Society to take part in the pairing scheme. I’d always said I was too busy in the past but you can’t be too busy for this. It’s too important. This time, with all the doubts about science funding because of the financial crisis, I thought that I had to make time to do it.

And it has been amazing to watch what happens around the Commons. The experience has given me a new respect for politicians. I get to concentrate on one question for a decade; I become an expert, I look like I know what I’m talking about. Here, you get agriculture policy one minute, the next it’s armoured personnel carriers in Afghanistan. I find it incredibly impressive that MPs cycle through so many issues.

The most surprising thing I discovered in Westminster was what’s wrong with scientists’ conventional attitude to politicians. We tend to think of them as well-meaning but a bit thick, because their public pronouncements are mostly bland and inoffensive. But the minute they’re behind closed doors they’re incredibly forensic. As soon as they find information that might be useful, they’re interrogating you in great detail. I was bombarded with astute questions. Nicola didn’t just accept data, she treated it like a scientist. She’d be a good external examiner on a thesis.

I realised that I had been unfair to politicians. It’s much easier to mistrust cardboard constructs than actual people you’ve met.

I’ve helped to lead a collaboration of 500 scientists who share a common project, and it was often difficult to get them all to agree. Politicians have to try to forge agreement between many more people with very different perspectives. Politicians don’t need to be expert in every last bit of science to engage with it positively, after all the director general of CERN wouldn’t be able to tell you what every bit of the LHC does.

I have come out of this much more hopeful about the relationship between science and politics. But it has made me realise that if scientists want to influence the political process, we’ve got to get involved with it.

Since my week in Parliament, I have appeared twice before a select committee, giving evidence on the issue of student visas. I’d always figured that the pros would deal with this, and that no one would listen to me anyway. But we all need to be pros. On student visas, there weren’t that many responses to the call for evidence. If you don’t get involved yourself, you can’t assume that others are going to do it for you.

I also got my first anonymous hate mail. Someone who’d seen my evidence to the select committee wrote: “Are not British universities for the British? Let’s focus on our own only.” But my point was that it’s because of our success in attracting foreign students that we have the resources to educate our own students. I now know how politicians feel when you say one thing and some people hear almost the opposite.

The pairing scheme has been a phenomenal experience. I’d encourage any scientist to take part and it’s something I’d like to repeat, perhaps with a civil servant next time. I’m surprised that more senior scientists don’t take proper advantage of this scheme, and I would encourage everyone to apply.

Nicola Blackwood MP visits the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory at Harwell, Oxfordshire...

I come from a medical family: my father’s a cardiologist. I used to have the lymphatic system explained to me at the breakfast table and I did a chemistry A level, but my education is really in the arts and humanities.

My constituency is home to many scientists and science-based companies. I have to stand up and represent the scientific community and I felt the need to engage with them, to deepen my understanding of scientists and where they’re coming from. The pairing scheme gave me an opportunity not only to see my job through the eyes of a scientist, but also to see how the world looks to them.

I have volunteered and worked in international development and that made me realise that it’s extremely difficult to understand things just from statistics and briefing notes. You need to see things for yourself. I get on brilliantly with Dave and he’s helped me to do just that.

What was really valuable, when Dave was in Westminster, was being able to turn to him and ask him what he thought. It gave me a different perspective. It’s also built a relationship that’s going to be really useful to me in the future.

Dave doesn’t mind me asking stupid questions. I know I can ask him what he thinks, or ask him to put me in touch with experts who can explain.

The Royal Society project does the groundwork and makes the contacts. I’ve got a better base of knowledge to start from, and I know who to ask to point me in the right direction when a scientific issue comes up. Humanities graduates can feel a bit intimidated by scientists, it sometimes feels as though they are speaking another language with all the jargon. I know all professions can be guilty of that but this scheme is a good way to help. It breaks down barriers to mutual benefit.

There’s a myth among politicians that science is too technical, that you won’t understand it if you’re not a scientist. But you don’t have to understand every detail to appreciate the goals, why they matter, and how the funding streams and infrastructure are important to them. No one is an expert in everything — you can’t be a pensioner and a teacher and a doctor and a university student — but you can educate yourself so that you can make properly considered decisions. The same is true of science and we should be encouraging more non-scientist MPs to take time to get more educated about science issues. More scientists should be offering help for them to do so.

I’d like to see more scientists in politics but I’d also like to see more scientists engaging with politicians. Many scientists don’t think that politicians are interested, that even if they say something nobody will listen. That’s not true at all. What grabs my attention as an MP, given the demands on my time, is when significant numbers of people contact me. It gets the issue on my radar. I had about 80 e-mails about Science is Vital [a campaign to protect science funding]. It’s something I would have supported anyway, but the e-mails concentrated my mind.

Even when you get only one e-mail, it means you have to draft a response, and doing that makes you think about an issue, engage with it. You learn. You’ve got to educate yourself before you reply. In international development, all the NGOs run e-mail campaigns like this. The impact of 500 people doing this can be great: you have to read them and draft constructive responses.

I can’t see why any MP wouldn’t want to do the Royal Society pairing scheme. It’s a great crash-course in understanding science, which has such huge importance across all government departments.