Editorial Staff – STRINGS

Rasheed Sulaiman V presents at the Global Conference on Green Development of Seed Industries

Editorial Staff — Wed, 19 Jan 2022 09:33:35 +0000

On Friday, 5 November 2021 Rasheed Sulaiman V participated at the session Facilitated Adoption of improved varieties by small-scale farmers which was presented during the Global Conference on Green Development of Seed Industries, organised by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and referred to STRING’s work on pathways. In particular Dr Sulaiman V discussed the need to support both pathways that are analysed in the STRINGS’s case study if we are keen to enhance use of better seeds by farmers.

See the session programme for more information.

What knowledge do we need to address Chagas?

Editorial Staff — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 15:26:37 +0000

Valeria Arza, Julián Asinsten y Sol Sebastián

Results from World Café exercise | Online Workshop from STRINGS project

On October 29^th, we held a virtual workshop to outline, in a collaborative way, what type of scientific research is most helpful in addressing Chagas disease, which is one of the case studies carried out in the context of the STRINGS project. Fifteen people participated from different parts of the country. They contributed their experience and perspective on the topic. Among participants, there were actors from scientific, public policy and civil society organisations.

The workshop was organized with a “World Café” methodology: three discussion tables were proposed, around which all participants rotated over two and a half hours. The discussions were very rich; they were carried out in small groups and we noticed interest in participating and a fair word circulation. We synthetise the main points that emerged in each table below.

Table 1: Why are some topics more highly prioritised in the scientific agenda about Chagas?

Participants contributed with different views. They pointed to funding schemes as one of the main reasons for the prevalence of certain research topics over others. This generates a bias: as there is more research on certain topics, there are also more academic outputs (publications/patents) and experience, which further reinforced the existing research trajectories. In addition, funding schemes often depend heavily on political-regional strategies affected by different interests. Some participants argued that the research system is tied to an economic system that privileges research in areas in which greater future economic returns can be obtained.

In turn, scientific institutions developed a trajectory on certain topics and it is then difficult to change the course. There are sunk costs associated with starting new research lines. The importance of the incentive system to guide research was also mentioned. In particular, it was pointed out that interdisciplinary research is not promoted since its potential for social impact has only recently been acknowledged

There were some claims for scientific policy to be more explicit about directions to be promoted. In particular, many agreed that there is a need to better articulate the scientific research on Chagas within the public policies arena and the health system.

Several participants highlighted that science and technology policies do not take into consideration the multidimensionality of Chagas: for example, the programme “Argentina Innovadora 2020” only funds the development of diagnosis kits and vaccines. Some participants claimed that they were concerned that the idea that Chagas should be addressed “more at the laboratory than in the territory” is extending. They argued that this conviction only contributed to further consolidating the biomedical hegemony.

In addition, we found that there are still concepts under dispute: while some argued that Chagas is a disease that should be tackled both from the medical and social perspectives, others pointed out that it should not be thought of as a disease but rather as a complex and multidimensional problem.

Table 2: What are the social needs for scientific production in relation to Chagas?

Carlos Chagas´ studies identified the parasite, the vector and a series of clinical manifestations of the disease more than one hundred years ago. Yet, today Chagas continues to be a very important problem, with multiple dimensions to address. What knowledge is lacking to better address this complexity? For various participants, the question about “knowledge” referred to contributions from biology or medicine, where most of the scientific production on Chagas is concentrated. For many, “knowledge” is not lacking, but instead, there is a need for knowing better how to apply scientific knowledge.

Enhancing the articulation between the scientific systems and those who make decisions was seen as a strategy to address such shortcomings. The need to link the State with the companies to develop new technologies was also noted. Problems of communication and education were highlighted as well: “We need a health system that sees Chagas as an existing problem”.

Several participants commented on the need to improve the approach on public policy to be more comprehensive, taking into account biomedical, epidemiological, economic, political and cultural issues. Among other aspects, some participants mentioned the need to empower affected communities to defend their rights, arguing that in relation to other problems with lower incidence of affected people, such as HIV, the scientific and political solutions that emerged were triggered by pressures from an organized community.

Table 3: How can Open Science help to produce knowledge better aligned with needs?

The definition of “Open Science” was presented at the beginning of the session as research done in collaboration with diverse academic and non-academic actors including potential users. Open science practices promote sharing openly both research outputs and processes. In addition, they include extensive engagement, outreach and communication activities to enhance science-society connections. “Open Science” was presented as opposed to “Conventional Science”, defined as professional scientific research based on expert knowledge carried out in academic spaces or laboratories. The main aim is to design technical solutions that can be transferred to society using different policy schemes such as public-private research partnerships, or technological licenses or contracts of technical assistance.

The participants agreed that the definition of Open Science is very broad and that, depending on how it is interpreted the contribution may vary. Thus, there were discussions about different strategies related to, on the one hand, sharing scientific resources openly and on the other, enhancing collaboration, especially with social actors who may participate in knowledge production processes. Open access databases were seen as valuable for drug discovery and development. Similarly, the possibility of sharing data from clinical records was seen as important to move ahead in developing better diagnosis methods and treatments. Most participants agree that sharing knowledge saves time and resources. It was suggested that science policy should promote these types of strategies, especially for research funded by public sources.

There was a fairly wide agreement around the idea that interaction among different actors is enriching. In addition, inter- and transdisciplinary research, which also includes the affected population, was seen as superior to address complexity. It was claimed that in this way science could be better situated, and therefore, it may be in a better position to respond to societal needs. Participants also mentioned the need to translate research results for a wider and diverse audience. However, many participants proposed that these activities should be carried out by people trained in communication skills, who should be involved in research teams. This was seen as important not just to avoid putting too much pressure on researchers’ time but especially because they may not be the most capable to pursue those tasks effectively. In addition, the use of social networks was seen by some participants as an effective channel to interact and exchange with other actors. “These networks create a back and forth channel with the people, and when the laboratory opens the projects are enriched”. Finally, open science was also seen as enabling the possibility of involving social actors in the design of a research project, which may further contribute to translating scientific language into plain language.

Dr Valeria Arza presents Chagas research at 76th United Nations General Assembly forum

Editorial Staff — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 14:55:02 +0000

Dr Valeria Arza, member of the STRINGS project, participated at the session “The significance of international research cooperation for the attainment of the SDGs – approaches from research management”, within the ScienceSummit@UNGA76 around the 76th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA76), held on 27th September 2021 and was organised by the German DLR from Germany.

In the session, Dr Arza talked about her research on Chagas within STRINGS project, whose goal is to map Science Technology and Innovation (STI) for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with a focus on Lower and Medium Income Countries (LMIC).

Focusing on Chagas, Dr Arza said that there are needs related to SDG 3, 16, 11 and 4, and highlighted that there are mismatches with science production, mostly concentrated in SDG 3, 15 and 11 and that research collaboration was found to be key. The requirements are:

Interdisciplinarity, to create bridges between production of science mostly in biology and medicine and the needs in education and governance.
Transdisciplinarity, to better understand Chagas complexity by promoting participation of stakeholders with different experience about the problem
International collaboration, particularly when collaboration involves partners from countries where the disease is endemic, possibly because they have more contextual experience of what is needed.

Interview: Conserving India’s Rice Diversity

Editorial Staff — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 14:49:53 +0000

As part of the STRINGS project, Rasheed Sulaiman V and Nimisha Mittal conducted an interview with Mr Shankar Patnaik, a retired school teacher from Modeigaon village of Kosagumuda block in Nabarangapur, Odisha.

Mr Patnaik and his wife Minakshi Devi started collecting, conserving (in-situ), documenting and promoting seeds of indigenous rice varieties without any external help. Shankar has been honoured with the ‘Dr Richaria Samman’ by Odisha Desi Bihana Mancha in 2017 for his contribution towards conservation of indigenous rice.

Read the full interview

Five metaphors for steering institutional change

Editorial Staff — Wed, 12 May 2021 11:44:55 +0000

Prof John Robinson

Creating a sustainable world will require significant change in the way our institutions function and act. What follows is one attempt to outline some lessons learned—in the form of five metaphors—that I have found useful in trying to foster institutional change in universities.

The metaphors grew out of a 12-year process—from 1999 to 2011—of trying to get the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) created at the University of British Columbia (UBC). CIRS was designed to be a living lab of sustainability and net positive in four environmental and three human ways (it eventually succeeded in five of these goals). Creating it proved much more challenging than expected. What became evident as we tried to get this building and its programs conceived, funded, approved, designed and implemented, is that there were many institutional road-blocks, grounded in the normal decision-making practices and institutional culture of the university, that worked against our efforts.

It speedily became apparent that every aspect of that vision—the inter-institutional academic partnerships, the nature of the relationship with non-academic partners, the governance structure, the sustainability goals for the building process, the building design process, the process of obtaining funding for the building and program, the need to negotiate the divide between capital and operating costs and revenues in new ways—involved going beyond standard operating procedures for UBC and other partners, and took the organizations involved out of their comfort zones with regard to their decision-making processes. These difficulties had not been created to prevent CIRS from happening, but they all had to be overcome for CIRS to be built.

And they gave rise to a fundamental insight: the barriers to creating CIRS were not technological or, in the end, economic. In every case the real barriers turned out to be institutional, having to do with the need to challenge and change the standard rules of the game involved in funding, financing and constructing academic buildings, creating and funding new research programs, setting up governance systems, devising new ways of teaching, and creating new forms of partnerships with other academic and non-academic partners.

In getting CIRS off the ground, we learned that it is by no means sufficient to come up with new ideas, approaches and concepts for achieving non-incremental social change. Instead, considerable thought and effort must go into articulating and implementing new institutional rules that allow such initiatives to flourish, and to survive the setbacks and failures that inevitably accompany innovation and experimentation.

Lessons learned – five metaphors

Photo by Steve Harvey on Unsplash

1. Needle in the groove (Responding to path dependence)

The first challenge we confronted in trying to develop CIRS was that decision-making about such issues as new buildings or programs does not take place in a vacuum but is characterized by what might be called strong path dependence. There exists a set of rules and standard practices which strongly constrain what decisions get made and actions undertaken, including who gets to create new buildings and programs. In essence, CIRS was an answer to a problem the organizations necessary to its success had not set themselves.

The metaphor here is that of the needle of a phonograph spinning in its groove, producing the tune that the organization has asked for. If we want to change the tune being played, we have to create a new groove. This requires effort, to hold the needle in a new position, out of the old groove, until it grinds a new groove. This amounts to creating a new set of operating procedures. Perseverance, visibility and a very clear sense of mission are required.

“Plate spinning…” by vcorne00 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

2. Plate spinning (Anticipating choke points)

A second challenge we encountered was related to, but separate from, the question of path dependence. It resulted from the fact that responsibility for approving the myriad aspects of a project like CIRS, which did not fall into conventional patterns of decision-making, tends to be distributed across the relevant organization.

In fact, there were nine UBC offices that had full or partial veto power over the future of CIRS. These included UBC Treasury, Development, Industry Liaison, Research Services, Land and Building Services, Legal Services, the College for Interdisciplinary Studies, and the offices of several Vice-Presidents. It became necessary to keep in continuous touch with the relevant representatives of each of these offices to make sure that they were in the loop and that the evolution of the CIRS program did not cause problems for any of them.

Metaphorically, this process could be likened to a process of plate-spinning. Each office had a CIRS plate spinning on the end of a stick. They had all to be visited frequently enough that their plate could be given a spin so that it did not fall off the stick. The breakage of any plate could cause serious or fatal complications for CIRS.

“Lion Dance’s audience” by Johnragai-Moment Catcher is licensed under CC BY 2.0

3. Wallflower (Fostering institutional engagement)

A key problem for the CIRS initiative was that it did not belong to any one Faculty, and so did not fit into existing capital programs and did not have a specific institutional home. Given the zero-sum nature of institutional budgeting, it was not obvious why any individual Faculty or Department would champion or even support it. It was necessary to mobilize support, and get but-in within the university by connecting to institution-wide agendas and priorities, and provide connections to other projects and priorities. In a sense this is the flipside of the plate-spinning process.

The metaphor that came to mind in this context was that of the wallflower at the dance. We needed to find ways to engage a wide range of institutional actors and have them join the CIRS dance.

“Ed Vorisek laying brick in Paraguay” by pennstatenews is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

4. Bricklaying (Ensuring momentum)

By its very nature, CIRS was an implausible idea. In its early days especially, CIRS required a leap of faith on the part of its supporters. This meant that it was very important to keep a sense of forward momentum or continuous progress. Any significant barrier could be lethal.

The metaphor that seemed to illustrate this aspect was that of laying bricks to build a wall. Each time contact was made with the expanding list of CIRS partners, it was important to demonstrate some progress. In effect, at each visit to any given decision-maker or partner, the CIRS wall needed to be a little higher than it was at the last visit. Frequent updates and continuous follow-up are a must.

Photo by Shayan Ghiasvand on Unsplash

5. The Mosaic (Creating external partnerships)

If CIRS was to be built and fulfill its goal of contributing directly to the achievement of sustainability on the ground in the Vancouver region, then strong partnerships with non-academic organizations in the private, public and NGO sectors were essential. Extensive partner-building activities led to the development of two principles for mutually beneficial partnerships.

The first is the principle of “no net increase”. Everyone we approached was already working at capacity and had little time to identify, let alone explore, new activities they are not already undertaking. As a result, we consciously tried to identify connections to existing activities of potential partners. A second, and complementary, principle is that of “mutual benefit”. The idea is that the CIRS partnership must be of tangible benefit to both sides of the partnership.

The metaphor here is that of a mosaic. Each partner is a tile in the mosaic and the CIRS development team had to be the grout, tying together these sometimes quite unconventional relationships. It was our job to show how the goals and activities of CIRS would connect with, and promote, the already-existing priorities and agendas of our partner organizations and supporters.

Conclusions – what we learned

Building on these five metaphors, I think we can arrive at several more general lessons about creating institutional change:

Institutional issues are as important as substantive ones: need to change the rules of the game.
Hold the needle up; spin plates; lay bricks; create mosaics; join the dance: the common thread is continuous engagement.
There Is a big latent demand for change and sustainability in organizations. The key is to find ways forward that work for various partners.
It is very important to enable others, not control, manage or direct.
Success is when sustainability is normalized throughout the institution: it becomes the default not the change.

Creating a sustainable world will require action to steer change in terms of (i) policies, technologies and behaviours; (ii) socio-technical systems, collective practices and systems of governance; and (iii) fundamental ways of conceiving of, and being in, the world. But such activities must be institutionalized in ways that foster and support their continuation. We therefore need to play close attention to the institutional rules that govern day-to-day activity: job descriptions, performance evaluation criteria, codes of practice, professional standards, etc. that govern what people do in their jobs.

These five metaphors were developed out of my experience with the CIRS project. I have since found that, in many other contexts, they help to bring this institutional level of change to light and provide very useful guidance on how to navigate pathways to more sustainable outcomes.

Watch: Dr Ismael Rafols on STRINGS’ novel approach to mapping STI for SDGs

Editorial Staff — Thu, 29 Apr 2021 10:22:00 +0000

In a webinar for Georgia Tech Library, Dr Ismael Rafols presented STRINGS’ novel approach to mapping scientific publications to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and introduced a beta-version of an interactive tool that will allow stakeholders to scrutinise a global map of science related to SDGs.

Ismael highlighted the inconsistencies that arise when using different approaches to mapping publications to SDGs. These inconsistencies are not due to minor technical issues, but instead represent different interpretations of SDGs.

Given the variety of understandings regarding the relationship between research and SDGs, STRINGS’ approach to mapping proposes that bibliometrics analysts should not assume that there is one single, preferred or consensus way of mapping SDGs to publications.

Instead, since different stakeholders have contrasting views about the relationships between science and SDGs, the contribution of bibliometrics should be to provide a plural landscape for stakeholders to explore their own views.

watch the webinar

Consensus and dissensus in ‘mappings’ of science for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Editorial Staff — Thu, 30 Jul 2020 09:02:25 +0000

Ismael Rafols, Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University and Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex

The shift in R&D goals towards the SDGs is driving demand for new S&T indicators…

The shift in S&T policy from a focus on research quality (or ‘excellence’) towards societal impact has led to a demand for new S&T indicators that capture the contributions of research to society, in particular those aligned with SDGs. The use of the new ‘impact’ indicators would help monitoring if (and which) research organisations are aligning their research towards certain SDGs.

Responding to these demands, data providers, consultancies and university analysts are rapidly developing methods to map projects or publications related to specific SDGs. These ‘mappings’ do not analyse the actual impact of research, but hope to capture instead if research is directed towards problems or technologies that can potentially contribute to improving sustainability and wellbeing.

…but indicators on the contributions of science on the SDGs are not (yet) robust

Yet this quick surge of new methods raises new questions about the robustness of the mappings and indicators produced, and old questions about the effects of using questionable indicators in policy making. The misuse of indicators and rankings in research evaluation has been one of the key debates in science policy this last decade, as highlighted by initiatives such as the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), the Leiden Manifesto or The Metric Tide report in the UK context.

Indeed, the first publicly available analysis of SDG impact, released recently by the Times Higher Education (THE), should be a motive for serious alarm. For almost two decades, the THE has offered a controversial ranking of universities according to ‘excellence’. This last May it has produced a new ranking of universities according to an equally questionable composite indicator that arbitrarily adds up dimensions of unclear relevance. For example, the indicator of the impact on health (SDG3) of a university depends on the one hand on its relative specialisation on health – as captured, e.g. by the proportion of papers related to health (10% of total weight), and on the other hand on the proportion of health graduates (34.6%). But the weight is also based on (self-reported) university policies such as care provided by the university, e.g. free sexual and reproductive health services for students (8.6%) or community access to sports facilities (4%). This indicator is likely to cause more confusion than clarity and it is potentially harmful as it mystifies university policies for the SDGs.

The relative specialisation on health captured by the proportion of papers related to health in the THE ranking is partly supported by an Elsevier analysis of the publications that are related to the SDGs – which might seem more reliable than those based on data self-reported by universities.

However, mapping publications to the SDGs is not as straightforward as it might seem. An article published last month by a team at the University of Bergen (see Armitage et al., 2020) sounded the alarm by showing that slightly different methods may produce extremely different results. When comparing the papers related to SDGs retrieved with their own analysis with those by Elsevier, they found that there is astonishingly little overlap – in most SDGs only around 20-30% as illustrated in Figure 1. The differences also affected the rankings of countries’ contributions to the SDGs. The Bergen team concluded that ‘currently available SDG rankings and tools should be used with caution at their current stage of development.’

Figure 1. Comparison between the Bergen and Elsevier approaches to mapping SDG-related publications. Based on Web of Science Core collection, 2015-2018. Source: Armitage et al. (2020)

Why are mappings of publications to SDGs so different? Lack of direct relation between science and SDGs

Perhaps we should not be surprised that different methods yield so different results. The SDGs refer to policy goals about sustainability in multiple dimensions – ending poverty, improving health, achieving gender equality, preserving the natural environment, et cetera. Science and innovation studies have shown that the contributions of research to societies are often unexpected and highly dependent on the local social contexts in which knowledges are created and used.

Nevertheless, most research is funded according to the expectations of the type of societal benefits that it may generate – and thus one can try to map these expectations or promises according to the language used in the (titles and abstracts of) projects and articles. Unfortunately, the expected social contributions are often not made explicit in these technical documents because the experts reading them are assumed to see the potential value.

As a consequence, the process of mapping projects or articles to the SDGs is ineluctably carried out through an interpretative process that ‘translates’ (or attempts to link) scientific discourse into potential outcomes. Of course, such translation is dependent on the analysts’ understandings of science and the SDGs. There is consensus on some of these understandings. For example most analysts would agree that research on malaria is important for achieving global health. However, other translations are highly contested: should nuclear (either fission or fusion) research be seen as a contribution to clean and affordable energy? Should all educational research be counted as contribution to the SDG on ‘quality education’?

Furthermore, in a number of SDGs such as gender equity (SDG 5) or reduced inequalities (SDG 10), there is a lot of ambiguity on the potential contributions. In particular, there is relatively little research specifically on these issues in comparison to the research with outcomes affecting gender relations and inequalities.

Another challenge of these mappings is that the databases used for analysis are not comprehensive, having a much larger coverage of certain fields and countries (See Chapter 5 in Chavarro, 2017). This is particularly problematic when analysing research of the Global South.

In summary, there are many societal problems where there is lack of consensus and ambiguities, and in these cases, the mappings will depend on the particular interpretation of the SDGs that the mapping methods implicitly adopt.

A plurality of SDG mapping methodologies

It follows from the previous discussion that different analyses carry out different ‘translations’ of the SDGs into science through the choice of different methodologies. The study by Clarivate (2019) is based on a core set of articles that mention ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ – thus it is related to research areas with an explicit SDG discourse.

The approaches developed by Bergen University, Elsevier, the Aurora Network and SIRIS Academic are based on searching for strings of keywords, in particular keywords found in the UN SDGs targets or other relevant policy documents. These searches are then enriched differently in each case. The hypothesis of this ‘translation’ is that publications or projects containing these keywords are those best aligned with the UN SDG discourse. The question is then where should the line be drawn. For example, why in some lists zika virus is included in the list of health SDG3, but not the closely related dengue virus, with a much higher disease burden?

An alternative approach being developed at NESTA and Dimensions uses policy documents and keywords to train machine learning algorithms in order to identify articles related to the SDGs instead of creating a list of keywords to search the articles. The downside of this approach is that is it a black box regarding the preferences (or biases) of the machine learning algorithms.

Comparisons as a pragmatic way forward

In the face of this plurality of approaches potentially yielding disparate results, the STRINGS project aims to be a space for constructive discussion and comparison across different methodologies. A comparison between methods will help in finding out to which extent there is consensus or dissensus in the mappings of various SDGs.

To this purpose, in collaboration with the Data Intensive Science Centre at the University of Sussex (DISCUS), on July 23-27 we have carried out a hackathon focussed on retrieving publications related to clean energy research (SDG 7) (to be reported). We have also organised a workshop to discuss the results obtained by the different teams mentioned above with the various methodologies, and how each methodology might capture a particular ‘translation’ or understanding of the SDGs. As proposed by the Bergen team, this comparison ‘will allow institutions to compare different approaches, better understand where rankings come from, and evaluate how well a specific tool might work’ for specific contexts and purposes.

Disclaimer

The discussion in this blog builds on ongoing work carried out by the STRINGS project. It presents my personal view (rather than the project’s) following my engagement debates on the use of indicators in policy and evaluation, for example a recent participation in an EC Expert Group on ‘Indicators for open science’.

The COVID-19 pandemic and open science

Editorial Staff — Wed, 06 May 2020 14:50:05 +0000

– Valeria Arza and Agustina Colonna

Research Center for Transformation (CENIT), Economics and Business School, National University of San Martin

6 May 2020

The global coronavirus pandemic has brought about many changes throughout the world in only a matter of weeks. Humanity is facing a problem without precedent; the final effects are yet uncertain and most of us have been forced to drastically change our routines and behaviors in a way we have never imagined. Big challenges often boost creativity and promote important transformations in society, and this has been the case with the coronavirus crisis. Note for instance the many solidarity initiatives ranging from fund-raising schemes and food banks, to volunteers assisting individuals in high-risk groups, together with several citizen-led resources that have been created or adapted to help find our way through the pandemic (EU Citizen Science 2020). Another relevant example has been the drastic change in many information markets, where thousands of resources such as books, museum exhibitions and movies have been temporarily opened for the community free of cost.

For science, the particular challenge posed by this situation is immense, as the spread of coronavirus has created urgent and life-threatening problems. Solutions must then be fast, while the need persists to respect health protocols in order to minimize risks. Given the global extent of the situation, any health outcome must also be affordable to reach all communities regardless of their economic status. In this context, open science practices have suddenly emerged as a promising path to cope with such a challenge.

This process started in mid-January 2020 with the placement of the DNA sequence of the SARS-Cov- 2^[1] by Fudan University in Shanghai in an open-access data repository (EOSC 2020). This information is extremely useful for the development of diagnosis methods and drugs against the virus and has allowed scientists all over the world to start working in this direction (Johnson 2020). This first step was followed by an enormous number of initiatives providing open access to information to help combat COVID-19 such as the EU COVID 19 Data Platform and the COVID-19 section of the New England Journal of Medicine. Scientists around the world are sharing the real-time progress and results of their research with the global academic and overall community (Kubota 2020). In addition, scientists are avoiding the long delays in journal publishing through the publication of pre-prints (Kubota 2020) and scientific publishers have made articles and studies on coronaviruses free to access. Wiley, Springer Nature and Elsevier have all temporarily dropped their paywalls and signed onto the Wellcome Trust’s pledge to share research data and findings relevant to COVID-19 (EOSC 2020). Another huge effort in this opening process has been the Open COVID Pledge where participants agree to make all of their patents freely available to the public for use in the fight against COVID-19. This initiative counts with the participation of leading digital companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM and Microsoft.

Thus, in the face of the challenges created by the global health crisis, the scientific community has reacted rapidly and creatively by increasing collaboration and open access to data and research outcomes (Fressoli 2020). The increase in the flow of knowledge has allowed for science around COVID-19 to progress at incredible speed and scientists are already working on a vaccine for the virus, which is expected to start being tested on humans in 3 months (a historical record) (Johnson 2020).

As a result, open science is gaining momentum. Governments, international organizations and private stakeholders (see article by Fortune magazine, Gold 2020) have called for more open and collaborative ways of producing science, claiming that they are more efficient, reliable and can produce solutions more affordably to promote access by many. UNESCO for instance, recently called on governments to promote scientific cooperation and open science in their countries through the pooling of knowledge among countries, provision of free access to data and research findings, reinforcement of links between the scientific and political community and the opening of science to society (UNESCO 2020).

The emergence of open science practices in a health-related area and at such a global scale is quite a novel event. So far, open science projects in this area have been mostly dedicated to seeking solutions for diseases with non-profitable markets^[2], such as Malaria, which are financially supported by philanthropic or public organizations. Most milestones in open science have been observed in the milieus of basic research, where science is perceived as a public good with few practical applications to be sold in markets. This is the case for instance of the Human Genome Project, which was developed thirty years ago and involved the participation of twenty organizations around the world committed to deciphering the human genetic map and sharing it openly. The present case of COVID-19 is quite different, as the scientific discoveries are much closer to applicable solutions and hold an immense potential demand (and economic profitability). However, it is not entirely surprising that open science has emerged in this context for several reasons.

Firstly, open science boosts efficiency by avoiding duplication, promoting collective intelligence mechanisms (Nielsen 2011) and creating positive externalities (David 2005). Openly available data and research outcomes also prevent or reduce the effect of defensive strategies based on intellectual property rights (IPR) mechanisms that slow down or impede urgently needed solutions. While in a normal situation there are few economic incentives to open up highly profitable health-related research^[3], the pandemic context may have led to international pressures to prioritize efficiency over private profitability. Thus, open science becomes a promising path to deal with this urgency.

Secondly, the process of opening science is not starting from scratch. The scientific community has already gained experiences and developed capabilities, infrastructure, and instruments to enhance the economic benefits of open science which can be useful to apply in the current situation. For example, the Human Genome Project and its more recent development of the Structural Genoma Consortium are providing evidence about the economic benefits associated to openness (Simon Tripp and Grueber 2011). There have also been multiple experiments on open source health-related business models (M4K Pharma 2020) as well as other open source drug development projects for neglected diseases which provide concrete evidence on breakthroughs and opportunities created by open science (OSM; TSL; Spangenberg et al. 2013; Veale 2019).

In sum, the pandemic is shaking structures and forcing us to rethink the status quo. In the scientific field, traditional research methods are being questioned not only by external actors claiming greater commitment to society, but also within the research community. A recent article in the American Economic Review argues that research productivity is falling (Bloom et al. 2020). ^[4] This is particularly present in pharmaceutical research where the therapeutic value of new drugs is marginal and the productivity of R&D in medicine is shrinking (Scannell et al. 2012). This has been associated with the expansion of patents that, far from promoting, hinders the generation of new ideas by occluding the collective knowledge previously generated. Let us hope that the movements produced by this extraordinary situation allow the scientific and political community to see the opportunities that open science pathways create. We need open science practices to be sustained after the pandemic ends as it may be the way to improve the impact that science, technology and innovation have on the numerous challenges faced by humanity.

Footnotes

[1] The virus strain that causes coronavirus disease 2019

[2] Where the populations suffering the disease tend to be poor and the cure/treatment for the disease does not have a potential market with high purchasing power

[3] Competition and secrecy, rather than collaboration and openness, define both market success and the opportunity to obtain exclusive rights through intellectual property.

[4] Medida como crecimiento de la productividad total de factores por investigador

References

Bloom, Nicholas, Charles I. Jones, John Van Reenen, and Michael Webb. 2020. “Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?” American Economic Review 110 (4): 1104–44. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20180338.

David, Paul. 2005. “The Economic Logic of ‘Open Science’ and the Balance between Private Property Rights and the Public Domain in Scientific Data And,” March.

EOSC. 2020. “Open Science Spreads in Search for COVID 19 Vaccine,” March 23, 2020. https://www.eoscsecretariat.eu/news-opinion/open-science-covid-19-vaccine.

EU Citizen Science. 2020. “Citizen Science Resources Related to the COVID19 Pandemic.” EU Citizen Science. March 31, 2020. https://eu-citizen.science/citizen-science-resources-related-covid19-pandemic/.

Fressoli, Mariano. 2020. “¿Qué Ciencia Necesitamos Para Enfrentar El Coronavirus?,” January 4, 2020. http://elplanc.net/que-ciencia-necesitamos-para-enfrentar-el-coronavirus/.

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The COVID-19 pandemic shows how power produces poverty

Editorial Staff — Tue, 28 Apr 2020 16:09:29 +0000

Saurabh Arora and Divya Sharma

This blog was originally published on the STEPS Centre blog.

Responses by governments to the COVID-19 pandemic around the world reveal how poverty is produced by social power. The pandemic points, in particular, to the culpability of power exercised through the state.

Consider the Indian government’s top-down lockdown imposed on 24^th March 2020. Arguably “the world’s strictest lockdown”, it is producing widespread impoverishment through mass unemployment, leading to hunger and hardship for millions. Livelihoods carefully built over many years by people are being destroyed. Hard-earned dignity is being compromised by desperate poverty produced through diktats of the state.

Many observers in India have noted that some of the immediate suffering produced by the lockdown could have been avoided. The chaotic lockdown is marked by police violence (against street vendors and migrant workers) as well as a lack of responsibility and accountability. The national government, it seems, was unprepared for the effects of its own response to the pandemic. A relief package, announced two days after the lockdown’s imposition, has proven inadequate. It is failing to reach many of those who need it.

Vulnerable people are being pushed into poverty in other parts of the world too. In Nigeria, millions of people are going hungry under the government’s lockdown restrictions. A CNN journalist reporting from Nigeria points to a “battle of lives against livelihoods”, constructing a false dichotomy. One wonders if this language might help to justify the pushing of millions into poverty by a single stroke of state power.

Is a responsible approach to the pandemic really beyond the reach of governments, particularly in post-colonial countries such as India and Nigeria? Why was Taiwan’s successful strategy of early screening of arrivals from Wuhan and home quarantining (with diligent public support) not considered a viable one? What role did the World Health Organisation and global geopolitics play in this marginalisation of Taiwan’s success?

Closer to home, we must also ask why there was no learning based on the experience with COVID-19 in the Indian state of Kerala and with Ebola in West Africa long before that. Can’t governments respond by collaborating with local communities and civil society organisations to tackle the pandemic, while protecting livelihoods and ensuring that nobody goes hungry or homeless? The answer is obviously yes, if they so desire. In India for sure, the government has access to plenty of stockpiled food and money to fend off immediate impoverishment.

As governments around the world mimic each other in imposing one-size-fits-all lockdowns, the pandemic itself is producing different effects for different groups of people, in different settings. It is likely to push vulnerable people into poverty. It is already disproportionately affecting people who have been historically oppressed across intersecting racial, gendered, class, caste, religious, and ‘ethnic’ hierarchies. COVID-19 data from many parts of the USA show that African Americans have been infected and killed at a far higher rate than the rest of the population. In the US state of Louisiana for example, Black people constitute 60% of the deaths associated with COVID-19, while forming only 33% of the state’s population.

Hidden in plain sight

The ways that power produces poverty, so clearly foregrounded by the pandemic, can go unnoticed in ‘normal’ life. Power can produce poverty while being deeply embedded in and normalised through everyday practices. As a result, poverty is generally approached as a ‘state of being poor’. How people are made poor by power is easily overlooked.

How does this happen? Power gets normalised through state institutions, for example law enforcement, and through cultural institutions like caste and patriarchy. This institutionalised power can lead to the exclusion of women and marginalised peoples from rights to land and other resources, alongside everyday indignities.

The kind of power that produces poverty can manifest itself as capital. Capital exploits resources and labour to generate short-term profit at the expense of environmental integrity and public health. And damage done to the environment and public health often disproportionately harms people who are socially marginalised. One extension of this power is in the form of modern technological progress that deskills or displaces workers. Not only does this kind of progress disrupt livelihoods, it can also force people to migrate in search of employment.

But this power, and the ways that it works, isn’t always obvious. Ironically, it can be hidden from view by the economic knowledge about poverty itself, generated by academic and other elite observers. This kind of knowledge obscures power when it frames people as individuals characterised by ‘deficiencies’, without any recognition of (oppressive) relations they are embedded in. Individualized people are then seen as falling into or out of poverty that may be measured using multi-dimensional indicators. The question of how social power produces poverty is put aside.

Consider the hugely influential research by the 2019 Nobel Prize-winning economists. In Banerjee and Duflo’s classic 2012 book, Poor Economics, the term ‘power’ is used many times (yet never explicitly conceptualised). They mostly use power in conjunction with ‘empowerment’ to act. It is thus invoked to highlight the agency of a range of actors including politicians and ‘the poor’. But not once is power considered to produce poverty in society. Not once is the term used to point to the many pressures on the agency of people as they go about building their livelihoods and struggling for justice.

Agency against power

In emphasising how power produces poverty, it is crucial to not treat impoverished people as hapless victims. People have agency. They try to escape the fields of power. They struggle against power. And they work against social marginalisation.

In such performances of individual and collective agency, people (or groups of people) do not act by themselves. Instead, they are enabled by webs of relations with non-hierarchical ‘life forces’: their friends and family, moral values, healing rituals, lands, animals, trees, crops, water bodies, learnt skills and knowledges. Some representatives of the state, such as policies and officials, may also be mobilised into such webs of life forces that enable agency. When this happens, policies and officials work with vulnerable people, weakening the grip of state power that might otherwise produce poverty (as discussed above).

In our own research, through life histories with elderly residents of two villages in Tamil Nadu, we have documented a wide range of ways that different ‘life forces’ offer support to people. By living within webs of such life forces, people enable themselves and each other to act – to exercise their agency.

Examples of people’s agency include a successful campaign by a group of women to tackle men’s consumption of alcohol and abusive behaviour in public spaces (and inside homes), which led to the closure of a village alcohol shop. The women used petitions, concern for small children at a primary school near the shop, and pressure on the men involved to behave appropriately in public places. In using these ‘life forces’, they were able to mount an effective resistance against patriarchal and commercial power.

In these villages, many people have painstakingly built and sustained their livelihoods around multiple forms of work. One person worked as a farm labourer, while also cleaning the kitchen and washing dishes at her village’s milk sale centre. In addition, she made a bit of money as a spiritual healer, primarily focused on warding off the ‘evil eye’. She had also jumped through hoops of bureaucracy and corruption to secure her small old-age pension. This agency to build her livelihood was enabled by a wide range of ‘life forces’, including a middleman who had helped her secure the pension, local beliefs underpinning the practice of ‘the evil eye’, materials such as turmeric, lime, a small pot-like vessel, and water, a range of utensils for milk measurement, and so on.

It is these kinds of carefully assembled livelihoods, representing individual and collective agency accumulated over several years, which are at stake under callous lockdowns. Yet people continue to experiment, resist and escape from the clutches of power that is producing impoverishment. For example, migrant workers are demanding to be taken back home to their villages, rather than staying stuck in cities without jobs, food or family support. Right to food activists are calling for a universalisation of India’s public distribution system.

Multiple civil society initiatives are afoot, to alleviate hunger and hardship. Examples include university students and staff cooking for the hungry; neighbours helping care for disabled people; local non-governmental organisations delivering cash and essential goods to marginalised sex workers; and community radio providing information about procuring food and medicines.

Clearly these forms of agency to care for the vulnerable, and to struggle against impoverishment, will be carried over to the other side of the pandemic and lockdowns. After this intense period of impoverishment, it is crucial to nurture impoverished people’s agency to counter power. It is on such forms of agency that the sustainability of our shared futures depends.

Modernity without its clothes: the pandemic crisis shines a light on futilities of control

Editorial Staff — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 10:42:12 +0000

Andy Stirling

This blog was originally published on the STEPS Centre blog.

With so many self-appointed pundits (like me!) currently locked down with their laptops, the present rush of commentary on how to pivot the coronavirus crisis is hardly surprising. Beyond the general news and commentary, scores of articles are exploding across the media, diagnosing what this global catastrophe means, and prescribing how it can be turned to variously-held positive ends.

Understandably, dozens of these contributions focus on renewing – or reversing impeded – action on climate change. But other strongly-pursued aims include reforming academic orthodoxies; reimagining universities, enhancing scientific collaboration; de-globalising infrastructures; accelerating energy transitions; building resilience; advancing conservation; mobilising political movements; improving social justice; reducing consumption; achieving the Sustainable Development Goals; rejuvenating democracy; reorienting capitalism; restructuring the economy; building a greener world; resisting ecofascism; and generally steering possible futures to save the planet. All eloquently voiced, several of these agendas coincide. I would strongly support many of them.

But there is another point that also emerges. In many cases, the changes that authors assertively prescribe specifically in response to the coronavirus pandemic, look very similar to those they would have advocated beforehand. In this particular sense, for all the transformational language and ambition, it is ‘business as usual’.

So, if some of this effort is not to risk being seen later as opportunistic – or inadvertently (in its familiarity) potentially reinforcing of lock-in – then maybe there’s a need for as much dislocation, surprise and reorientation inside the commentaries, as many rightly call for in the outside world?

After all, the main significance of this pandemic lies not in lofty platforms for pre-entitled, indulgently-curated identities. The issues are instead about many very real further devastations of already-vulnerable lives and livelihoods, of those without the same chances to air their views. If this is ignored, then even where motives are laudable, this colossal juncture risks becoming captive to just another campaigning message, media trope, academic vanity, or expediently manipulated ‘policy storyline’. The implications are far too important to be reduced to these baubles in the usual salons.

In fact, there really seems only one clear truth so far, amidst the ever-present – now brutally-revealed – uncertainties. Incongruously neglected in the many confident pronouncements and predictions, this truth is that nobody knows the historic implications of this moment. A radical diversity of futures are possible. In each of these futures, a plurality of views will likely clash as much as they do now.

For whatever happens next, what is already evident is that: expert advisers and scientific institutions found themselves so wrong; commentators and policy-makers so short-sighted; affluent societies so poorly resourced; macho demagogues and plutocrats so indecisive; and democracies and autocracies alike so ill-prepared.

There is of course no shortage of apparently effective instruments available to seemingly controlling ‘cockpits’: dispassionately assured experts; precise scientific metrics; rigorous technical models; massive hierarchical agencies; apparently all-seeing monitoring; seductively informative graphics; compellingly captivating dashboards; reassuringly evidence-based plans; commanding policy levers; invisibly nudging techniques; formidable military capacities; all presided over by our ‘natural leaders’ in the same old ‘seats of power’. But in reality, what the pandemic already seems to show is not only that there is no pilot… but that the ‘cockpit’ itself has been built largely in our imaginations.

After all, what else can reasonably be concluded when even the most powerful, respected and self-confident authorities in the world manifestly fail so badly not only to control, but even to predict, even a single parameter of one specific disease? With this understood, how much harder is it to believe other hubristic aspirations to anticipate, let alone heroically lead, entire collective futures?

So, if this unruly open-ended indeterminacy of the world cannot be acknowledged at a time like now – when the gyres of history are turning most tumultuously – then when can it ever be recognised? And the salience of all this bites doubly hard, not because of some further confident projection of what this all will mean, but in light of what can (from many sides) already be seen to be unravelling.

However things pan out – and whatever modesty-preserving fig-leaves are later hastily installed – at least one global hegemonic casualty has already surely been revealed. This involves not just a single specific certainty of how the world is – or should be. What is now becoming devastatingly undermined, is the general credibility of any confident performance of predictive control.

This unsettling tremor cuts across many (contrasting and contending) political, cultural, religious and corporate tectonic plates. With it are subverted the shaky foundations of multiple familiar kinds of assertiveness – including those with which any of us (any ‘we’) might identify. Comforting certainties and commanding actions are not how the world is ‘controlled’: they are stories through which contingent forms of privilege that are actually unable to control, nevertheless maintain their status.

Take, for example, the repeated mantras of ‘evidence-based policy’ – and ‘science-based decisions’. Evidence is of course crucial – but it is necessary, not sufficient. Actions cannot be purely ‘based on’ data or analysis, only illuminated by it. That these well-worn claims are so ironically false, is about as informative as evidence gets. ‘Control by science’ is an expedient fiction in service of power.

What the pandemic shows, then – in short – is that in the wider, long-run ‘real world’ of human affairs, control does not exist. And this is not a criticism. It is simply a fact. To criticise for lack of control is to be as misguided as to claim it.

But doesn’t this fly in the face of common sense? Control seems undeniably important. It is a potent experience, for instance, in our relations with machines. Where these work, people around the world have become very familiar with what it can mean (at least before gremlins, rust or wear take their toll) to control something – like a light switch, a water-pump, a bicycle, a mobile phone or a laptop.

As an example of control: a car steering wheel turned lightly to the left determines this single aimed-for effect and no other. The windscreen wipers don’t come on. The wheels don’t fall off. Nobody by the wayside faints. We know very well what control feels like: fully achieving the particular intended result, and only this. This is how control is imagined in the core cherished paradigm of Modernity.

But whatever instruments of control are directed at it, this is manifestly not how this pandemic is playing out. In country after country, initial reactions – whether of authoritarian suppression or complacent exceptionalism – have proven either highly ineffective or problematic in other ways.

And the story is still far from over. Unintended side-effects of control are, to some, already looking potentially even more serious than the disease. What will be the economic impacts on health? What other presently-unknown factors may yet become evident? How will the virus itself bite back? With so much already going wrong, falling short, happening by mistake, or yet to emerge, we’re very far from the familiar experiences of ‘control’ that current failing efforts are claimed to emulate.

But despite these lessons (not only from the present crisis, but from a multitude of earlier ones), the idea of control still shapes the globalising imaginations of Modernity. Just as a hammer can condition its holder to see every problem as a nail, so unfolding Modernities around the world are ironically enslaved by their perennial aspirations to control.

Indeed, once you start looking for them, imaginations of control drive every aspect variously recognised to define ‘Modernity’ itself: control by individuals of their lives; control by governments of nations; control by ‘the people’ of politics; control by bureaucracy of organisations; control by science of reason; control by industry of production; control by capital of labour; control by colonialism of empires; control in ‘the Anthropocene’ of an entire world. This is why the resonance chimes of ‘taking back control’!

And it is in each of these spheres that control has also not only failed to live up to expectations, but yielded so many perverse kinds of backlash as to often be seriously counterproductive. So what is distinctive about this global pandemic is not its novelty, but its intensity. A familiar cycle of disappointment has unfolded over weeks rather than centuries. The spectacle is too acute to ignore.

However it plays out, what this pandemic already shows is that (outside comforting machine-like moments) the ‘real world’ tolerates no control. Events appear orderly for a while. And, like a bull in a china shop, impacts can surely be exerted. But what history also teaches well is that, no matter how massive the effects (on lives or the Earth), these are always less exacting than control. Beyond and between the domesticated interludes lies an under-determined nonlinear mess of cause and contingency; intention and accident; influence and reaction; association and surprise; and collateral effects, feedbacks and shocks.

So what conclusions to draw from this diagnosis? Is it a counsel of despair? Does the coronavirus pandemic simply herald a new intensification of already-overgrown fatalism, cynicism and nihilism?

Or are the signs exactly the opposite? Is the present cacophony of over-confident prescriptions more important for its vigour and diversity than for any specific strand of content (including this)? Perhaps each of this multiplicity of energetic visions constitutes a ‘necessary fiction’, provoking into life dormant political hopes and critical faculties that have been lulled into complacent acquiescence by burgeoning electoral oligarchies?

Perhaps this collectively-enacted murmuration is more important than any individually-stated aim? (Indeed, is this why ‘murmurations’ have always linked distributed dissent with exuberant flocking?) Perhaps this is why the word ‘moment’ has always quietly signalled an axis of possible movement?

Perhaps this is how ‘the medium is the message’ – when encompassing actions speak louder than any ostensibly controlling words? If so, then now is a time, less for the blinkering tethers of ‘evidence based policy’, and more for an emancipating politics when knowing is doing, and it is the doing that makes the knowing?

If ratcheted well, perhaps even these fictions, fallacies and fantasies of control may themselves be inflected in new – less hubristic – directions? After all, where driven by values of peace, equality, or the environment, urges to change the world are not just commendable, but deeply necessary. Here, perhaps it is the very futility of control that can be positive, offering – in its inevitable failure – a ‘civilising hypocrisy’ to provoke something far more modest, caring – and serious about the real world?

Again, the answer has to be that no-one really knows. What the coronavirus pandemic might mean is not a matter to be diagnosed in advance, but to be struggled for in its aftermath – and beyond!

My main concern, then, about some of the current commentaries with which I began, lies not in any particularity of the changes they variously call for. It is that so much of this apparently critical discourse reproduces such a similar style to the incumbent interests that are ostensibly challenged.

In ways that also clash starkly with the little that we do know so far about the coronavirus crisis, many of the critics are as single-mindedly certain, as confidently predictive, as assertively prescriptive and as aspirationally controlling as any incumbent technocrat, autocrat or demagogue. And it is through such tacit support for the underlying mythology of control, that progressive intentions can nonetheless inadvertently reinforce the regressive status quo.

This is why the challenge is not to drown out with alternative certainties, the present vacuous claims of a control-beguiled Modernity. The pathologies of control could hardly be more reinforced, than if they snare even critics into their own controlling efforts. No! The responsibility is not to control Modernity – to stop it, replace it, erase it – but to revolve it in new directions. And here, for the controlling emperor even so briefly to be seen without imaginary clothes is arguably a pivotal moment in itself.

Either way, whatever futures may struggle into being, the present pandemic suggests these will likely turn out better if shaped in opposite ways to this failing reflex of control. This recasts ‘democracy’ not as a codified intermittent managerial procedure, but as multiple continual struggles for ‘access by the least powerful to capacities for challenging power’. So (also inevitably grounded in its own pre-existing enthusiasms!), it is in this spirit that another voice can join the clamour– directly challenging the pervasive control culture of Modernity.

What is needed now is more: humility (not hubris) about what is known; hope (not fear) about what is possible; diversity (not singularity) in what is held to count; mutualism (not hierarchy) as ways to organise; equality (not superiority) as driving values; precaution (not calculation) to protect the vulnerable; flourishing (not growth) as guiding aims; and care (not control) as the means by which so many kinds of better – but preciously unknown and uncontrollable – worlds may yet be realised.