Blair and Science (yet again)

In A Journey Tony Blair commented on his Chief Scientific Adviser’s contribution to the resolution of the foot and mouth disease (FMD) outbreak in 2001:

When l got back to Downing Street on Sunday I decided to grip the whole thing, and got my close advisers together. By some masterstroke - not mine, I hasten to add, but Richard Wilson, the Cabinet Secretary's - our chief scientific adviser, Sir David King was invited to join the inner circle. If anyone tells you that scientists are impractical boffins, refer them to David. What he told me sounded a trifle wacky, but over the weeks to come it was to be of priceless value in defeating the disease. Essentially, by means of graphs and charts he set out how the disease would spread, how we could contain it if we took the right culling measures, and how over time we would eradicate it. The officials were extremely sceptical. So was I. How could he predict it like that, with so many unknowns? But almost faute de mieux, I followed his advice - and blow me, with uncanny, almost unnatural accuracy, the disease peaked, declined and went, almost to the week he had predicted.

The first post on this blog drew on this remark and others in A Journey to bewail the gulf between politicians and science, subsequently confirmed by Blair’s chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, in his memoir of Number 10. Now, the third volume of diaries, Power and Responsibility 1999-2001, by another Blair consigliere, Alastair Campbell (Chief press secretary and the PM’s official spokesman), provides another account of the uses of top scientists during a time of pestilence:

… After Cabinet, Jeremy H{eywood PM’s principal private secretary} and I discussed whether David King [chief scientific adviser], who TB had taken to, and was affectionately calling ‘Dr Strangelove’, should do a media briefing showing various possible projections. … I met David King and we agreed to go for a detailed, heavy briefing Sunday for Monday. I felt that despite the risks of it being misinterpreted, he would do it well, and it was important we give a sense of being on the front foot, and stop the whole thing from being dominated by burning pyres and a politically driven agenda from elsewhere. … (p564-5, 29 March 2001)

… TB called and said Scotland felt better. We agreed to postpone Dr Strangelove’s briefing to Tuesday. … (p564 ,30 March)

We finally agreed David King would do his presentation to TB and Nick, so he could frame it at PMQs, and then King see the media after that. He was clearly a clever bloke, and very keen to help, but both Jeremy and I had concerns the media would stitch him up, or at the least exaggerate and take out of context what he was saying, or verbal him into an over-interpretation that would scare the hell out of people. I told him not to imagine he was about to engage in a rational conversation with rational, intelligent people. They are intelligent but in the main they are out for trouble, and he needs to be very careful. In the end he probably came over as a bit too optimistic, and we had to recalibrate a little … (p570 4 April)

which is probably valuable advice for anyone trying to put something complex and objective before an unsympathetic audience. Blair’s team seemed to take Churchill’s view of scientists almost literally:

… We agreed to get King up again to try to get the focus on the figures showing the cases coming down. … (p579 19 April) 

(Randolph Churchill is the source for his father’s often-quoted comment that ‘Scientists should be on tap, but not on top’).

Campbell, a vet’s son, is chairman of fundraising for Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research.  @campbellclaret tweets about visits to cancer research labs when, presumably, he is coming across more scientists than at any time since leaving Cambridge. Perhaps he will get round to blogging about his perspectives on science when in government, and whether they’ve changed now.

ADDENDUM 15 JULY

This week The Times (£) has serialised The unfinished life. An odyssey of love and cancer by Philip Gould. Lord Gould, as he is now, had played a key role in establishing New Labour and in the elections which Tony Blair won in 1997, 2001 and 2005. In 2008 Gould was diagnosed with and treated for oesophageal cancer, but later realised that the disease had recurred:

In November I had dinner with Tony [Blair]. I was not so much low as lost; I could not see a way through. Why had it happened? The first diagnosis I understood: I got cancer as others did and I fought it, with as much determination as I could muster. I had taken every pill, undergone every treatment, done everything required of me, got through the crucial two-year mark and still it had returned. Why had it come back? He paused for a second and said slowly: “Because the cancer has not finished; it is simply not done with you, it wanted more. You may have changed but not by enough, now you have to go on to a higher spiritual level still. You have to use this recurrence to find your real purpose in life.” Tony was right, I had to find meaning in this recurrence, to finally come to terms with the purpose of the cancer.
… Tony came to see me, just as he had on the eve of my previous surgery. He said one of his most precious possessions was a 6th-century ring he had got from Mount Sinai. He gave it to me to give me luck. I was touched but anxious, certain that I would lose it, …

Much of Gould’s account of his illness is about the application of science-based medicine to his case, and he has donated his fee for the articles to cancer research. In so far as Gould found comfort and support from Blair’s words (and the ring) in a dark hour, the reader can only be pleased. But just what was Blair talking about? It’s odd that Blair didn’t get on a lot better with Prince Charles than seems to have been the case according to Campbell (eg p151-152 Vol 3). Charles’ views and Blair’s are not altogether dissimilar, to judge from this extract (kindly provided by Amazon) from the former’s Harmony A New Way of Looking at Our World:

The essential point here is, how far our empirical knowledge can go before it begins to encroach on territory it is not qualified to discuss. Let me be clear about it. Science can tell us how things work, but it is not equipped to tell us what they mean. That is the domain of philosophy and religion and spirituality.

When you're clever but ill-connected

Michael Skapinker has a column in today’s Financial Times: How poor students become top scientists. The ambiguity of this title seems to have escaped the FT's subeditors. In fact, he is drawing on an OECD study of young people from poorer families who beat the odds academically:

What distinguished high achievers from poorer backgrounds, apart from spending longer in the classroom, was their attitude. “Resilient students are more motivated to learn science, more engaged with science and have greater self-confidence in their ability to learn science. The level of self-confidence in their academic abilities is in fact one of the strongest correlates of resilience,” the OECD study said.

Skapinker concludes:

Can companies, particularly science-based companies, encourage those attitudes? Sending their people into schools as mentors could help, the study says. So could other forms of interaction between poorer students and those working in science companies. Many companies offer internships and work experience. The problem, as other studies have shown, is that the best-connected often grab most of the opportunities. Where are the companies ready to declare that their internships will go to those who need them most?

I put this comment on FT.com:

The “high achievers from poor families” don’t just lack material resources, but also, as the article implies, face a shortfall in “social capital” including access to networks, contacts and internships. In these circumstances, studying STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, maths), where what you know matters rather than who you know, may be a better strategy than taking softer options with a more uncertain access to employment.

Blair and Science (again)

My first post consisted of some hand-wringing about the political class’s view of science. It touched on Blair’s reporting in A Journey of his Chief Scientific Adviser’s contribution (“faute de mieux”) to dealing with the foot and mouth epidemic - “Blow me” etc.

I was delighted to find this passage in Allan Mallison’s Spectator review (The other Prince of Darkness) of The New Machiavelli: How to Wield Power in the Modern World by Jonathan Powell, Blair’s chief of staff, (drawn on before in a post):

When Foot and Mouth strikes, for example, Powell rings (‘most days’) a farmer in Cumbria whom Blair had met on a visit: the impression is one of surprise that there are telephones in Cumbria, or farmers who speak the language. But just when there seems no solution to the terrible plague afflicting the people of this little-known country, ‘a saviour appears in the unlikely form of the government’s chief scientist, David King’. Why, one wonders, is it unlikely that the chief scientist would be the source of cool scientific analysis?

Blair and Science

Some years ago when I was working in a government department in London, the New Labour politician at its head (the Secretary of State no less) decided that he ought to meet some of the lesser mortals on his staff. A lucky few of us, no doubt perceived by our management as being of comparable character to the unarmed trusties who used to run the Mississippi state prison system, were invited to gather in a large and rather forbidding room early one autumn evening. On the tables were some glasses ungenerously filled with cheap wine and bowls of crisps to match both provided at our leader’s expense. Like many in the Cabinet at the time, our man was a Scot. The gathering was not well-attended and attempts at circulating were soon abandoned. I fell into conversation with a former colleague. The Secretary of State, one of those short men who are so graceful on the dance floor, glided up to us. “What do you do in the Department?” he asked. Unwisely, I replied “Oh, we are both scientists.” His small mouth opened and shut goldfish-like. Without a word he turned on his ample heels and slid away with an elegance which nowadays would make him a serious minor celebrity candidate for 'Strictly Come Dancing’. A few months later he quickstepped away altogether, having found a lucrative job outside government.

I was reminded of this incident by a passage in Tony Blair’s ‘A Journey’ dealing with the foot-and-mouth epidemic of 2001 (page 312 of the UK edition):

When I got back to Downing Street on Sunday I decided to grip the whole thing, and got my close advisers together. By some masterstroke - not mine, I hasten to add, but Richard Wilson, the Cabinet Secretary's - our chief scientific adviser, Sir David King was invited to join the inner circle. If anyone tells you that scientists are impractical boffins, refer them to David. What he told me sounded a trifle wacky, but over the weeks to come it was to be of priceless value in defeating the disease. Essentially, by means of graphs and charts he set out how the disease would spread, how we could contain it if we took the right culling measures, and how over time we would eradicate it.

The officials were extremely sceptical. So was I. How could he predict it like that, with so many unknowns? But almost faute de mieux, I followed his advice - and blow me, with uncanny, almost unnatural accuracy, the disease peaked, declined and went, almost to the week he had predicted.

 “Blow me”, indeed. Does Blair really think impractical boffinry, "for lack of something better", keeps planes in the air, invented the internet and the pill, or threatens us with WMD (ok bad example)? The answer is that he just doesn’t see his world as having much to do with science and technology, as opposed  to, say in his case, religion or law. Nor do most politicians – according to The Times ‘Eureka!’ October 2010, there are only two MPs out of 630 with science PhDs. Blair again (page 646):

The fourth speech again concerned a quiet passion of mine that was partly the result of missed opportunities at school: science. I had been a woeful student. Failed my physics, gave up on chemistry, scraped through in maths, never bothered with biology and spent the rest of my life regretting it! For some reason or other, I just couldn't grasp it. I felt a deep stupidity about it, unable to glimpse let alone see fully its principles and elements, in any shape that bestowed understanding. So my early life in regard to it passed in a slough of frustration, incomprehension and indifference.

The school was Fettes (chosen by his father as the best in Scotland – page 43) which he says had given him an exhibition (page 561). No lack of opportunity then, nor presumably was Blair deeply stupid, although Roy Jenkins supposedly said that he is a first-class politician with a second class brain. It’s just that the culture and practice of modern democratic politics, about which Blair writes penetratingly, has little, if anything, in common with that of science and technology. Scant call for measurement, analysis, objectivity, verifiable and substantiated assertion and so on, in an occupation where the central skills include the avoidance of direct questions, media management and the squaring of circles, and in which the branches of Arithmetic seem to be those studied by the Mock Turtle: Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision. Blair’s next (one sentence) paragraph:

Now I am fascinated by science and by its possibilities; in awe of how its progress is changing our world and the lives we lead.

apart from its reading like an uninspired UCAS Personal Statement, is quite unbelievable in the context of ‘A Journey’. Much more credible is the account of Blair’s meeting with Bill Gates as Leader of the Opposition some time between 1994 and 1997 (page 255-6):

David [Miliband] was smart and modern on technology. I was non compos mentis on the subject, being a genuine technophobe. He tried to tutor me before the meeting, alarmed that I would behave in a way inconsistent with the New Labour ‘we are at the cutting edge of the technological revolution’ mantra.

We are then told that he didn’t disappoint David’s expectations, and got his terminology muddled in front of Bill. Well, much good has his geekiness done David recently.

The fact is that our Secretary of State’s attitude to us that evening and Blair’s to his much more senior Chief Scientific Adviser were of a piece. (I am giving that post capitals as Blair does not – but note “Cabinet Secretary” three words earlier above.) It would be naive to think things are going to be otherwise, at least in Western democratic politics and government now. On the other hand most of China’s top leadership are qualified engineers or scientists, a factor which may well influence their awesome investment in infrastructure and education, and shape the capabilities of their armed forces. The prospects for the US and Europe’s position relative to China by say 2050 do not look too good, probably with very uncomfortable consequences. Something for other posts in due course.

Senior government scientists who have regular dealings with politicians and the high mandarinate (the sort Blair happily capitalises) are far too intelligent not to be well aware of how they are regarded and valued. Some of them, understandably, sought status compensation by treating their own staff in a rather old-fashioned and high-handed way I used to think, with predictable consequences for morale. Not that this showed up in regular personnel surveys which would reveal that a high percentage were much enthused with their work and the way it was organised. This was to the relief of the high-ups whose bonus pay might have been affected. The fact that about half the staff declined to complete the survey forms, and the disenchantment that this might imply, were ignored, of course. No better than the politicians, really.