Science as a public good
Academic opening address 27 September 2022
Dear students, Excellencies, Colleagues and friends of VUB, and also, dear family
I would like to start with a topical observation. We will not solve the energy crisis here and now, but... we are doing our best. After all, each person here emits about 100 watts more than they receive (at 12°C the figure is even a bit higher). So together we account for at least 200,000 watts, or 200 kW. There can no longer be any doubt: we are a warm university.
I also issue a warm literally call to our students to come to classes: you’ll help to make it nice and warm in our classrooms (and you will save on energy costs at home).
Dear VUB staff and all those who hold our university dear, and you do, I know,
I am immensely grateful to be able to address you here today. In an iconic place, in the heart of Kuregem. We are, and we will remain, an urban engaged university, connected to the city.
In unusual circumstances, too. This exceptionally hot and dry summer was also an exceptionally sad one for the VUB community. The tribute we have just paid to Paul De Knop and Caroline Pauwels should by no means be an end. We must cherish, guard and continue their legacy. And we will.
Caroline liked to quote Leonard Cohen: There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in. Scientia vincere tenebras. We saw the light of science shine during the Covid pandemic. We will need that same multicoloured light even more today and tomorrow. Climate change, the energy crisis, inequality, an ageing population, geopolitical tensions...
Policy thinkers sometimes use the acronym VUCA to describe the specificity of these times: volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous. We need to prepare for this new context. Fortunately, we know that out of chaos can come order. But it does take energy, and it requires openness (I'll come back to that in a moment).
So let's look on the bright side: there is work to be done for science, for researchers, for all of us. To use precisely this crisis as a lever for a better future in a sustainable, more just and open world.
Crucial to this are the questions: what science do we need today and tomorrow? What science does our world in transition need? Why do I believe we need science as a public good?
When we talk about science as a public good, we first need to clear up three major misunderstandings. More precisely, these are three contradictions that constantly crop up in the debate, but which are actually false and outdated.
First, when it comes to the finality of science, there is the contradiction between applied research and fundamental research.
In the words of renowned psychologist Kurt Lewin: "There is nothing so practical as a good theory."
And I also like to quote here one of the greatest scientists of all time, someone who won two Nobel prizes, saying in a speech in 1921, "Until radium was discovered, nobody knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. Let us not forget that. It was pure scientific research, and that proves that scientific research should not be judged from the point of view of immediate usefulness." Wise words from Marie Curie.
Just this month, I visited the Valhalla of physics, at CERN in Geneva. Well, while they were chasing the deepest secrets of elementary particles, they invented the worldwide web. It's what you call serendipity. Suddenly getting a great hunch, or suddenly finding something when you were actually looking for something else. Serendipity is a constant in scientific breakthroughs, and in breakthrough innovations. In any case: the two approaches fundamental and applied overlap and are thus apparent contradictions.
A second contradiction equally persistent is that between research driven by the researcher and research driven by a mission. We see how the European Research Council itself undermines this contradiction in the articulation of its mission. "The ERC's mission is to support investigator driven frontier research across all fields." But at the same time, the ERC "expects that its grants will help to bring about new and unpredictable scientific and technological discoveries the kind that can form the basis of new industries, markets, and broader social innovations of the future." Thus, researcher driven research does have a mission, an ultimate goal. Again, there is no longer a contradiction.
A third and final contradiction is that between research aimed at increasing the competitiveness of our companies so that Belgium and especially Europe continue to count economically and research that serves the public interest.
In the time of the Barroso Commission, not so long ago, research and innovation had to benefit first and foremost the competitiveness of European industry and the European economy. Today, Europe is betting on something else, on the so called twin strategy: green and digital. Research as a driver of the ecological and digital transition, and industry helping to make that transition happen and thus serving the common good.
By the way: research in industrial laboratories used to lead to scientific breakthroughs and Nobel prizes, and I would like to refer to the role the Solvay International Institutes have played and continue to play in the development of physics and chemistry. For five generations. This year we celebrate 100 years of the first Solvay Council for Chemistry, in 1922.
So research finality is far from a black and white story fortunately and we can conclude that research at universities, which enables innovation in industry and business, can perfectly serve the public interest.
The three major contradictions you often hear in discussions about knowledge are, as far as I am concerned, in fact not contradictions. More importantly, despite their wide use, they absolutely do not provide a useful framework today for thinking about what science should stand for. Namely science that benefits the community: science for the public good.
As scientists, as a university community and in the tradition of the Enlightenment, we must do everything in our power not only to secure the future, but also to ensure a better world in the years and decades to come.
But before we jump into action, we need to take a good look at the nature of the changes our world is currently experiencing. Le monde tourne mal, sings former VUB student Axelle Red. What does that mean in practice, a world that isn’t working, a world in transition?
I see three vast changes, three mega transformations that demand all our attention.
The first is the evolution of the planet into a so called anthropocene. What does that mean? In the anthropocene, humans and no one else have changed the climate and atmosphere. Our planet is no longer the backdrop a stage, so to speak that allows us as actors to do our thing. From now on, the whole world is a full part of the play, with the set as the main character. Climate change aptly illustrates this. If we do not succeed in turning the tide on a global scale, the earth's climate will change in such a way that the consequences will be incalculable. We too, as humanity, are an endangered species.
And even if the basic building blocks of the universe, matter and antimatter, continue to exist in the same proportions, if humans are squeezed, the fun will be over for physicists too.
Only by mobilising all our knowledge and expertise, sharing them on a global scale and, above all, acting on them, will we be able to achieve the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, the SDGs. The World Needs You is the VUB slogan. The world's need is growing every day. In the anthropocene, our commitment must also increase every day.
A second important development positive and negative at the same time is the increasing digitalisation of everything. Every technology opens new doors. ICT and artificial intelligence are setting humanity on a new path. After the invention of language and writing, this is the biggest communication revolution; it can and will change everything and make humans Homo Deus, the new human, according to Yuval Noah Harari, an honorary doctor of VUB. But according to Harari, it can also end badly. It depends on us. On the choices we make now.
Which is why, by the way, I am very happy that we are starting a Dutch language bachelor's degree in Artificial Intelligence this year. It’s not for nothing that the FARI institute that VUB and ULB have set up together is called Artificial Intelligence for the Common Good.
Never before has so much been possible. Without digitalisation, we would not have got through the pandemic Digitalisation is a blessing for science, but at the same time we have never before been so dependent on technology. We are merging with it. And never before has the temptation to express everything in numbers and metrics been so strong.
By the way, we are starting another new bachelor's programme this year, an English language bachelor's in Language and Literature, and of course I am also very happy about that.
And then there is a third transformation The world order is unravelling. In his book Tribalism: Why War is Coming (dd. 2019), Middle East expert and VUB researcher Koert Debeuf outlines that war is an inescapable consequence of the reduction of democracy worldwide. And of walls going up everywhere.
The fall of the Berlin Wall did not serve as an example for long. More walls stand today than ever. From Wall to Wall, then, is the title of colleague Jonathan Holslag's latest book. And in Europe, it is war. We all sense that this war is different from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. The fighting around Europe's largest nuclear power plant, in Zaporizhzhia, means that even a nuclear disaster is not unthinkable.
In any case, the world order is under pressure. It cannot be ruled out that a new order may emerge from geopolitical instability, where liberal democracies no longer set the tone. So here, too, there is work for us as adherents of the ideals of the Enlightenment, democracy and the rule of law.
Scientia vincere tenebras, overcoming darkness through science. Today we must take the VUB motto broadly: we overcome darkness through science and through everyone who believes in science.
The world needs each of us. But the question is: what kind of knowledge do we need to overcome the darkness and to arm ourselves for the great transitions? Earth warming further, humans changing with rapid digitalisation, and the old familiar world order threatening to go completely out of balance.
One thing is clear: as VUB, as VUBers, we want to be part of the solution. And maybe it won't be the solution, but we definitely want to contribute to a positive and necessary evolution. And four paths can contribute to that, four major changes to arrive at the science we need today and tomorrow. Science that the world needs.
Number one. Science for the public good is supposed to be open science. We saw the power of open science at work during the Covid pandemic.
Thanks to open science, thanks to the sharing of data, of knowledge and expertise, we made rapid, gigantic strides in fighting the virus. And yes, the patents and big pharma pocketing the profits unilaterally, that’s definitely not OK. Our alumna and fellow Els Torreele, who works for University College London, has rightly argued that without all the scientific research that has been publicly funded, big pharma would be nowhere. And that we should therefore consider vaccines collective property, as common goods. The legal battle over property rights between Moderna and Biontech/Pfizer repulses me when you know how much public funding this research and these and other companies have received from various governments. Just read Mariana Mazzucato's work on it.
Meanwhile, many in the South have only been able to vaccinate against Covid with long delays because we in the North have not been willing to share the knowledge and technology about the vaccines, or have not been willing to share them in time. Surely we should be able to do that differently.
But that absolutely does not take away from the fact that open science does work and produces stunning results. Open science has saved us. As a physicist, I cannot resist referring to thermodynamics, where dynamic, living and evolving systems can only be "open". Later during the reception, I will be happy to explain more.
For me, the bottom line is: open science is simply better science. Open science goes beyond publishing a paper. Research data and methodology must also be openly available to everyone.
When we say open science, we think of science as a global ecosystem. This is how we should understand open science: as science without borders, as research that crosses borders. Within the EUTOPIA partnership of 10 universities, of which VUB is one of the driving forces, I will strive to play a pioneering role in the field of open science.
In practice, that means I propose to make our own research results freely accessible as much as possible. To ensure that open science is given a central place within EUTOPIA. And we extend this
openness across national borders to education. For instance, through connected learning communities, we work on the open exchange of teaching materials and courses, actively involving not only teachers but also students.
A second pillar of the kind of science we need has to do with a change in mentality. Let us bet on the non measurable. Indeed, there is a tendency to express everything in indices and figures. The danger is that we are guided only by what we can measure. As if we can derive the value of the Mona Lisa from the dimensions of the canvas.
More than scientists driven by rankings, KPIs or whatever metrics, we need science driven by need. Science that serves the public interest and is itself a public good.
Or as Caroline Pauwels put it:
"Now what is science if it is not there to make life of and on this planet better and future proof? What good are rankings if their purpose does not transcend our own mere existence and aspirations? What if it’s no longer humanism but accounting Excel files you know, 'excellence' that legitimise our existence? I would rather see a university that serves humanism through trial and error and careful scholarship than a university that becomes merely a University Incorporated." End quote. Vintage Caroline Pauwels.
Committing to the non measurable means trusting people: most scientists are intrinsically motivated, it comes down to creating conditions in which they can develop to their full potential.
A university functions precisely because of those things you cannot express in indexes and figures: people's commitment to their students, to the management of their group or faculty, to the university, to society.
Specifically, I propose to stop emphasising mutual competition and instead focus on trust. And that is why even more concretely I want a new recognition and appreciation policy at VUB, and for academic staff, a new evaluation and promotion system must be put in place, in which we take into account all the efforts made. The blueprint for this is already on paper.
Incidentally, a climate of trust guarantees the best science, because in such a climate scientists fearlessly dare to tread new paths. I spoke earlier about the importance of serendipity. You know, finding what you weren't looking for.
Alexander Fleming's discovery of antibiotics, for example, or how research into a new drug to lower blood pressure and treat angina led to something completely different but uplifting: Viagra. And a shining example I like to cite myself: the lightbulb was not invented by research into better candles, nor did laser come about by research into better lightbulbs.
Also telling is Faraday's answer when British Prime Minister Disraeli asked him in 1850 what the point of his research was:
"Sir, there is every probability that you will soon be able to tax it."
Incidentally, encouraging serendipity can be done in many ways, but one excellent method is to make use of a crucial invention: the coffee machine. Because the coffee machine is the place par excellence where chance is organised, so to speak. So colleagues, let's take more shared coffee breaks. Tell them the rector said so.
So one: open science. Two: more trust. And three: scale up. An efficient way to have impact is indeed joining forces. We are doing a lot, a lot, today. But, unfortunately, too often too much with too little.
With too few people and resources. Everything we do should always be in proportion to what we can effectively handle.
A late colleague once described VUB as a circus: first you sit in ticket sales, then you do your first circus act, in the break you quickly sell some drinks and after the break you then do your second act; after that comes the clean up. Now, I want to reassure you, by now we have become much more professional. But maybe it's because we are all very driven that we always want to do everything and so find it so hard to make choices. We see this phenomenon a lot: in the services, in the faculties, in the programmes, in the departments and research groups. We need to become aware that we perform too many tasks often inefficiently and do not achieve sufficient synergy through scale.
In a healthy ecosystem, large and small research groups should be able to coexist. But today, some research groups are really too small to function optimally, and certainly in such a way as to remain viable for those involved.
Increasing scale can be done in the first instance by pooling and clustering research groups, by thinking even more across disciplines, but also by working more closely with our colleagues at ULB, with EhB within the University Association, and certainly in the EUTOPIA partnership. The first ideas for international cross campuses have already been discussed by the 10 rectors.
So, very concretely, I propose to work on scaling up, on campus and off campus.
Besides open science, besides focusing on the non measurable, i.e. on trust, besides scaling up, interdisciplinarity and partnerships, there is a fourth and extremely crucial task. We must all defend science against those who attack it.
I like to quote Maarten Boudry here: "Many people believe that ‘critical thinking’ is a kind of bidding for doubt. The more overwhelming the evidence, and the broader the scientific consensus, the more ‘critical’ it is to oppose it. This really must be the misunderstanding of the century."
I would also like to refer to what Alicja Gescinska has just said in her speech. We absolutely need a Caroline Pauwels Academy of Critical Thinking.
Science is under attack.
That is why we must take responsibility. Through more and better science communication, through science popularisation and through our teaching, we must immerse people and convince them of the importance of the scientific method and the principle of free enquiry: these are tools they can use throughout their lives.
Not only is the world under threat, but so is science itself. Science itself is being questioned. As are many other things.
A section of people have turned away from politics, especially from politicians in governing parties. These are increasingly large groups, with us, in Europe, in the world. Look at the Italian elections on Sunday.
After the executive and the legislature, the judiciary was next to come under fire. More and more people no longer trust the judiciary, with judges accused of activism.
The next power to suffer was the fourth power: journalists and independent journalism have never come more under attack than in the past decade. And yes, even when we ourselves become the subject of investigative journalism, we are not allowed to shoot the messenger.
And now, now it is also the experts who have to take the brunt, the knowledge itself.
The Dutch physicist and VUB honorary doctor Robbert Dijkgraaf I had the honour of being his proximus when he was awarded an honorary doctorate, and it is wonderful that he will deliver the first major lecture for the Caroline Pauwels Academy of Critical Thinking Robbert Dijkgraaf says in a recent interview with New Scientist that since the pandemic, that confrontation has been visible to everyone.
And I quote him: "You see that there has been a reaction, not so much to the scientific knowledge, but to the measures that follow from that knowledge. People think they can undermine the measures by attacking the knowledge. This has complicated the role of science." End quote. I myself would add that the role of the scientist has also become more complicated.
Conspiracy thinking is not free enquiry, it is actually the opposite. Here in Anderlecht, they know this because in this municipality there is a Free Examination Street, a Rue du Libre Examen.
So very concretely, I propose to put much more effort into science communication, to spread the scientific method as widely as possible. And this is why our scientists need to speak more publicly Some already do, and some do it very well, but more scientists need to join them. We want to explicitly reward these efforts in our recognition and appreciation policy. Because it is important. Science is not just another opinion.
And yes, I am aware that scientists who take positions in the public debate can come under fire. And I am not talking about the critical public debate, which of course should always be there, but about abusive tirades and threats. That can reach unacceptable levels, especially on social media. We will always be there to support and defend our scientists, including through legal means if necessary.
Dear students and colleagues, dear friends and partners, this is an appeal to all of you to be ambassadors of science. Defend free research, pursue openness at all times, work connectively, pursue sustainability in everything we do.
"The world needs you" is not just a VUB slogan, it is a cry for help today.
Indeed: different and better does not apply when it comes to our planet, our future and our society. There is no planet B. Peut être le monde tourne mal, but the world does turn, with or without us. The common good, the common and the public good, are accompanied by challenges that are planetary and require a global approach. And it is not too late. For as my other great predecessor Paul De Knop always emphasised: Optimism is a moral duty. Science must take the lead in cherishing the pale blue dot that puny speck in the universe that is Earth as the home of humanity. The only home we have, as aptly put by American astronomer and inspired science communicator Carl Sagan. His work was continued by Ann Druyan, in turn a brilliant disseminator of knowledge about the cosmos. Ann received an honorary doctorate from our university just last year.
Well, we are ready to use science better than ever for the global common good, driven by our humanist values.
We are aware of the big changes: the anthropocene, digitalisation 2.0 and geopolitical instability.
With open science, with trust instead of competitiveness, with economies of scale and interdisciplinarity and with broad support for the scientific method, we must succeed in doing the science that the world in transition will need today and tomorrow.
Dear students, colleagues and friends, The start of a new academic year always makes us all, myself included, a little nostalgic and takes me back in time, to 1981, when I myself very young and anxious started university. Back then, too, the context was tricky: sky high youth unemployment, the Cold War booming with the missile question, the huge national debt, even then.
But today, it all seems a bit more thrilling to me, at once more urgent and more exciting. The challenges are greater, but there are also so many more opportunities.
Looking it all over, we can only come to one conclusion: there is no better time than now to study, no better time than now to do research, no better time than now to engage. Now it must happen and now it will happen. It’s up to you. It’s up to us
I thank you.