Science: Listening to a clamour of voices

DO SCIENTISTS have a social responsibility? My own view is that the only special obligation they have is to put their work and its applications into the public domain. Love my colleagues as I do, I would not let them choose me a tie, let alone make ethical decisions on my behalf.

I do not want any group of experts making ethical decisions on their own that could affect our lives. Of course, any public discussion must be informed by reliable knowledge - the debate on genetically modified foods is an excellent counter-example .

Because there is so much anxiety that unregulated exploitation of new discoveries may seriously affect our health and quality of life, I became involved in organising a meeting at the Royal Society to discuss such issues. This was not just a public relations exercise but an attempt to have a real discussion between scientists and technologists and their most vocal critics. So Dr Douglas Parr, the campaign director of Greenpeace, and Sheila McKechnie, director of the Consumers Association, were invited, as well as Jonathon Porritt. (We did not invite Prince Charles, as public argument would have been difficult.) All the tickets - which were free - were taken up weeks before the meeting. So how did it go?

Very well, even better than I had hoped. I had to listen to arguments to which I would normally give very little attention, and I suppose that was true for a lot of the audience. The discussion was vigorous and the Royal Society should be proud to have had so much criticism of science within its walls, justified or not. I cannot, for example, take seriously arguments against reductionism, which has been so successful, or agree that science does not tell us the "truth" about how the world works.

A common theme was an attack on my position on the distinction between science and technology, and anxieties about the increasing power and influence of biotechnology companies, which drive many of the changes. There was concern that the market was the arbiter of risk, rather than people's own assessment. Dealing with the problem of global warming was driven by inter-governmental organisations, but the question of risks from GM foods was tackled by companies.

Another concern was the medicalisation of lifestyles, such as Steven Rose's claim that treatment for attention deficit disorder by the drug Ritalin was increasing in a way that bore little relation to real need.

Douglas Parr emphasised the importance of public values in policy making. These values, he argued, were both better and more reliable indicators than those of the experts. In terms of the precautionary principle, if there were any dangers with respect to GM foods, why proceed? Jonathon Porritt took a similar line and attacked the idea that public understanding of science should be based on a deficit model - that is, that the public are ignorant and need to be educated. He treated with contempt the idea that GM food would help solve the world's hunger problems. That some people went hungry was nothing to do with the amount of food available; it was about political and economic decisions about distribution. A doubling of the world's population early in the next millennium could easily be catered for without any new food technology, a theory that was a shock for me. He has promised to send me the evidence.

Lord Sainsbury, the minister for science, opened the meeting and made clear that science had, from its very inception, a built-in set of rules for self regulation - what was later referred to by Robert May, the Government's chief scientific adviser, as involving a clamour of voices, better known as peer review. Messy and noisy, but it works.

Science by press release, whether on GM foods or cold fusion, is just not acceptable. Lord Sainsbury and Robert May emphasised the importance of public consultation and more openness. Scientists need to understand the public.

Lewis Wolpert is professor of biology as applied to medicine at University College London