Science's Social Effects

Issues in Science and Technology, Spring 2007 by Frodeman, Robert, Holbrook, J Britt

For their part, scientists should embrace, not merely meet (or even attempt to avoid) the broader impacts criterion. We philosophers believe that publicly funded scientists have a moral and political obligation to consider the broader effects of their research. To paraphrase Aristotle, unexamined research is not worth funding. But if calls to duty sound too preachy, we can also appeal to enlightened self-interest. Agency officials, from the NSF director on down, are constantly asked to explain the results of the funding NSF receives and distributes. A fresh set of well-thought-out accounts of the broader effects of last year's funded research is likely to play better on Capitol Hill than traditional pronouncements about how investments in science drive the economy and are therefore necessary to insure the U.S. competitiveness.

Sadly, there is little evidence that proposals deemed strong in terms of the broader impacts criteria find themselves at any significant advantage over proposals that are weak on those topics. Often, the criterion is used as a sort of tiebreaker in cases in which reviewers must decide between proposals of otherwise equal intellectual merit. Although in principle there isn't a problem with occasionally using this approach, tiebreaking is not the criterion's only function.

To encourage scientists and engineers to use the broader impacts criterion to its fullest, NSF should include an EPO professional and a researcher on science both as individual reviewers of proposals and as members of review panels. Such an approach-particularly in the review panels, in which researchers from different disciplines interact with each other-will encourage all reviewers to be more responsive to the broader impacts criterion. This, in turn, will encourage scientists and engineers to be more concerned with the broader effects of their research. Scientists and engineers will be motivated to seek out both EPO professionals and researchers on science to work together on grant proposals. The result? The kind of integrated and interdisciplinary research NSF seeks to support.

Scientists may view these suggestions as attempts at politicizing the (ideally) value-neutral pursuit of science. We suspect that such a reaction may underlie many scientific and technical researchers' resistance to the criterion, as if assessing and articulating the broader effects of scientific and technical research were somehow outside science and engineering. It's as if the criterion somehow represents outside interference in science.

We also suspect that one reason EPO professionals have been so successful in engaging scientists and engineers on broader effects is the widely shared view among scientists that any resistance on the part of the public to the advancement of science and technology is simply due to lack of science education. The public certainly ought to know more about science and technology, but there is little evidence that universalizing scientific and technological literacy would by itself produce a wholly supportive public.