Did you know that, according to the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, you have a “right to science”? More specifically, “Everyone has the right freely… to share in scientific advancement and its benefits”. That right became legally binding for signatory nations of the 1966 International Covenant for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
But what exactly does this right mean? It seems reasonable to suppose that when, say, scientific research created the Covid vaccines, everyone in the world should have had a right to access them – although of course in practice that access depended strongly on circumstances, often with the global south coming second place to the wealthy north. But can we really grant everyone a “right” to a hugely expensive new drug or treatment? Isn’t it inevitable that access to the technological fruits of scientific advancement is going to be trammelled by economic considerations?
And what does it mean to “share in scientific advancement”? Doesn’t that perpetuate a picture in which scientific research is conducted by an elite, who with a kind of noblesse oblige dispense products that the rest of us consume? Might there be a less passive way of understanding the UN’s “right to science” as a right also to participate in and to shape the scientific enterprise?
Such questions were the substance of a recent meeting at the Royal Society titled “Science as a global public good?” That framing takes its cue from the economic notion of a public good as a product or service from which no one is excluded in principle, and which is “non-rivalrous”: in effect, not zero-sum, so that its use by one consumer doesn’t reduce its availability to another. That’s the idealised view of science: anyone can join in, and discoveries are available to all.
This is not how it works in practice. For example, it’s rather meaningless, even insulting, to say that researchers at African universities are as free as anyone else to submit papers to leading journals when their resources – in teaching, funding, and in terms of opportunities – are so limited. How can anyone participate in, say, astrophysics without undertaking demanding study – and why should they expect to? Meanwhile, the increasing privatisation of scientific research means that data and discoveries are often withheld from the public sphere for proprietary reasons. And research conducted at taxpayers’ expense gets published in journals that charge eye-watering subscription rates for the privilege of seeing it. “Without access to knowledge, science cannot function as a public good”, said Konstantinos Tararas of Unesco.
Issues of inclusion in science are a battlefield right now, not just because of the decimation of DEI-related research in the US. (The predicament of US science cast a pall over the meeting. Witness the title of the talk given by Maria Leptin of the European Research Council: “Can we sustain science as a global public good in a ‘wrecking ball’ world?”) Some scientists ridicule the idea that “indigenous knowledge” has anything to contribute to research that demands an exquisite degree of specialist training.
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But it’s easy to caricature such suggestions – what can Australian Aboriginal culture possibly tell us about quantum physics? – whereas if we’re talking about, say, farming practices or ecosystem maintenance, local knowledge might be more valuable than high-tech solutions imposed from outside. It’s untenable too to deny there are systemic and cultural obstacles to the inclusion of women in science, from subtle biases in education to career structures and daily microaggressions that leave many female scientists jaded or exhausted. Misogyny in Silicon Valley is rife. And if you believe there’s simply some innate difference in the choices and abilities of males and females, explain why there is essentially no sex-based difference in attitudes to or enthusiasm for science in lower-income countries such as Uganda.
Some participants, like philosopher Philip Kitcher, questioned whether science is even the kind of thing that can be meaningfully considered a “right”. But the benefit of framing it as a public good, said political scientist Zeynep Pamuk, is that it puts the public element “front and centre”. It seems crazy that, for example, AI is being thrust upon the public with barely any public consultation, but rather, admonitions that we have a duty to get up to speed (and why the heck do women seem especially hesitant about it?).
Some scientists think the public is too ill-informed to be entrusted with decisions about regulation or priorities – and they are wrong. Consultations show repeatedly that people can, given reliable and accessible information, reason thoughtfully about such issues. To the extent that science affects our lives, that much at least is surely a right.
