Science in the marketplace and the role of the government
Rendra Suroso, Bandung
I must say that, in concurrence with Robert Shiller (The Jakarta Post, May 27), there are two different faces of our academia, the theoretical and the procedural. One is tied in feedback loops to the other. Like the chicken and the egg problem, if one fails, the overall will diminish or at least degenerate.
The former concerns the whole idea behind our capability to gather and develop knowledge that has been the subject of the philosophy of science since ancient Greek essentialism to present day Popperian refutationism. The latter, not surprisingly, is a consequence of how science should grow and evolve if embedded in modern society. In Shiller's view, not also surprising that the latter finally will come up with spurious ideas that are far from the content of science itself: peer review, grant, agency or foundation, market-value and marketability, publication and seminar, and even publicity in the media.
We can now ask the fundamental questions, "Is science supposed to be marketable?" It appears not to be so.
A colleague once told me, "What you have done this far can never attract people because what you do doesn't belong to the marketable part of science." That statement immediately reminded me of what used to happen in cognitive science back in the early 1980s. Back then cognitive science appeared to be a subject of cynicism as observed by cognitive psychologist Philip Johnson- Laird.
He strongly rejected the view that cognitive science was merely a clever ruse dreamed up to gain research funds. And in return, cognitive science we see today is panoply that has a prominent role behind the architecture of highly-sophisticated gadgets like Sony's Aibo, the explanation of mental and behavioral deficiencies like autism and insomnia, and even to some extent, the nature of cultural evolution as reflected by our daily dose of pop culture.
Pop culture and other industrial commodities were born from greed. Greed is natural. Greed is good. Individual greed is the fuel of our enhanced capitalistic society. It may cast a moral problem but it also moves civilization. But greed in non- competitive climate will eventually lead to destruction or at the minimal, a preserved oppression. Depending too much on entrepreneurial society -- hence less relevant to the problems of nationhood -- is merely isolating ideas and restraining novelty. This statement might be hard or foolhardy. Yet, it is definitely vague.
How much is much? Too much, in this sense, is almost all, whereby all scientific endeavors must end up in every possible but still marketable novelty.
Instead, what if governmental responsibility takes this role, to foster advancement, as it is supposed to? A U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)-like agency might be a good model and it works in many countries, but not most. When we dive a bit deeper into the details, the model seems dubious and incomplete. And Shiller does not seem to apply the peer review system to each and every country. In Indonesia where peer review has not been a standard for the procedural necessity of science, an NSF-like agency is exactly the form of autarchy that Shiller brightly portrays.
When cooperation with a foreign agency is the only choice left, I am afraid that the spectacle of non-functioning NSF-like local foundations can lead to a sort of stereotyping by agencies from developed -- i.e.: grant-giving -- countries. The stereotype is that researchers from the Third World country are by themselves incompetent because they do not know how to do science the right way despite the fact that it could be more a problem of procedure rather than theorizing.
A recent study published by David Schmitt (2004) concerning human sociosexual behavior indicates such a stereotyping mode. Not the result of the study, which is remarkably precious for the cognitive science society, but the way the data was gathered that is striking for the Indonesian scientific community. The data for the study was simultaneously gathered by experts from academic backgrounds. Surprisingly, out of 48 countries, the expert from Indonesia was a person from a reproduction clinic, the only one not from the academia.
Even when the necessity of an NSF-like agency has been surpassed by a hopeless fear of unbearable scientific autarchy, and the procedural side of science is supported by foreign agencies with an external solid peer review system behind them, troubles may easily come. From outside it may come from the stereotyping that always puts scientist from developing countries in non-initiating position. From the inside, and this is more frightening, it may come from the fact that there may be no "real" scientists left at all.
Ironically, we cannot blame history for this in every scenario. Unless the necessity of science for the society is no longer relevant -- that I believe is counterintuitive -- then what we can do is to construct the future, from scratch if we have to. The common problem for a developing country like Indonesia is that it currently has no advanced science center yet in any university, and it is so unfair to compare the country to those whose NSF-like foundations are well-established and functioning.
We are far behind and immature indeed, but do we have choice? For a change, it might be a relief to observe what and who a scientist really is in an introspective way. In the preface of the famous Six Degrees, network scientist Duncan Watts (2003) gives a tribute to his father who was the first person to guide him through the pleasures and pains of "original" research. Absurd as it may seem, at least for the crowds, Immanuel Kant's passage, Sapere aude! applies for the knowledge of knowledge itself.
That, I believe, is the real call of the scientist. Not grant, conference, or market.
The writer (rendra@rock.com) is a researcher of the Bandung Fe Institute