Science, Democracy, and the Right to Research

Abstract

Debates over the politicization of science have led some to claim that scientists have or should have a "right to research." This article examines the political meaning and implications of the right to research with respect to different historical conceptions of rights. The more common "liberal" view sees rights as protections against social and political interference. The "republican" view, in contrast, conceives rights as claims to civic membership. Building on the republican view of rights, this article conceives the right to research as embedding science more firmly and explicitly within society, rather than sheltering science from society. From this perspective, all citizens should enjoy a general right to free inquiry, but this right to inquiry does not necessarily encompass all scientific research. Because rights are most reliably protected when embedded within democratic culture and institutions, claims for a right to research should be considered in light of how the research in question contributes to democracy. By putting both research and rights in a social context, this article shows that the claim for a right to research is best understood, not as a guarantee for public support of science, but as a way to initiate public deliberation and debate about which sorts of inquiry deserve public support.

A Social Licence for Science: Capturing the Public or Co-Constructing Research?

“…We only briefly consider the case of social science, not because this is unimportant, but in part because the relationship between social science and society represents an established tradition of writing and debate (e.g., most recently under the umbrella of 'public sociology' proposed by Michael Burawoy). Also, Brown and Guston (2009) argue that scientific research has much greater power to transform society than other forms of knowledge because science has the capacity to become embedded in material arrangements including technologies, transform social and cultural relations, and shape the environment. Science has a higher degree of what they call materiality and sociality by comparison with other forms of inquiry.…”

“…Public engagement activities should be evaluated in terms of their capacity to articulate diverse social and cultural perspectives rather than to provide a statistical sample of individual opinions in the population (Brown 2009;Burgess and Chilvers 2006). For an exercise that was geared towards trying to secure a social licence in the sense of getting public acceptance for stem cell research (for which, incidentally, a clear mandate had already been expressed in the UK Stem Cell Initiative's terms of reference), it was not surprising that such philosophies did not have much impact on the process (Mohr and Raman 2012).…”

Scientific Research and Human Rights: A Response to Kitcher on the Limitations of Inquiry

“…Such knowledge would, for example, advance our human cloning capacities, enable private citizens to create biological weapons, violate copyright protections, or give trade secrets or confidential government information to terrorists. Scientific speech, construed as the communication of ideas that have as their expressive content scientific information, could debatably fall under First Amendment protection (e.g., Volokh 2005;Brown and Guston 2009;Weinstein 2009). Specifically, ideas that might inform public policy, such as climate science research, food safety information, or medical technological advancements, might arguably be best thought of as belonging in the marketplace of ideas.…”

Private Interests Count Too

“…4 Perhaps a better and more recent example is the enactment of the Researcher Protection Act of 2008 in California. In that case, the California university system led the charge in efforts to pass legislation that would increase law enforcement's tools to protect academic researchers and their families from intimidation and violence by anti-animal research extremists(Guess 2008).5 This is whatBrown and Guston (2009) refer to as ''the expansion of conflict. ''…”