National Scientific Academies and Their Place. (June 24, 2010)

This week, Nature takes the occasion of the 350^th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Society of London to have one of its editorialists write about "the right sort of elitism" and specifically how "national academies can be pivotal in speaking up for science, both to those in power and to the public".

The editorial notes that on the whole as an independent national academy the Royal Society has become "highly regarded in the corridors of power and prominent in public debates on major science-related issues." It also notes that along side the Royal Society the national scientific academies of the United States, the Netherlands and Sweden have achieved the distinction of speaking with voices that are bother authoritative and independent of government.

The editorial urges that national academies must utilise modern means to engage the public: "[T]raditional avenues are only part of what academies can do to exert influence today. They can also issue more concise statements for wider audiences. And they can proactively engage with the public and the media in the same way that corporations and environmental pressure groups do — by anticipating or responding rapidly to events, and making sure that science's voice is heard amid the general cacophony... [but] in order to have an independent voice, at least some of their funding must come from non-government sources."

But from the viewpoints of many nations, Australia included, it adds a prerequisite difficult to achieve: "To exert influence, they must also carefully nurture connections with people and institutions inside government who genuinely want independent scientific input — and who can tell the difference between such advice and propaganda," and then adds what is an obvious, but in many cases insurmountable caveat:

Without that audience, no

amount of earnest objectivity

will establish a place for a scientific

academy inside the framework of a state.