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Doug's avatar

The points about science policy going backwards and becoming less informed by the social sciences & humanities are really interesting. Suggests that excessive deference to scientists & technologists has become entrenched in UK policy.

Makes me wonder if there's an upstream problem about education/curriculum. Feels like the UK system establishes quite a hard & early divide between science & humanities which could then lead to a naive/crude 'scientism' i.e. "I'm from the humanities, I better not interfere with or question the science boffins"

Perhaps a more holistic approach would produce politicians/elites more able to question or critique science & technology in a nuanced way?

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Sam B's avatar

Perhaps this is only obvious in retrospect, but it's hard to see DSIT being anything other than a more-ist institution. Primary responsibility for many of the other important dimensions of a complete science and innovation policy sit with other departments (e.g. adoption is with Business, regional growth is HCLG etc).

The original idea might have been for DSIT to coordinate, or possibly even direct, across government, but UK government is pretty terrible at that even in the most propitious circumstances, and DSIT has few levers to pull (it even gives away most of its budget, to UKRI!) There's not much left for DSIT other than more-ism, indeed maybe this was why it was created in the first place.

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