activities much more than in the past. Research must increasingly justify the resources that support their programs; additional funding is often linked to applied solutions for societal problems.
5.3.5.2 Uncertainties of the future
The present domination of NAE in generating formal new knowledge could be challenged. The growth of gross expenditure on R&D and R&D results in Asia is changing the relationship of NAE research with the rest of the world. This could result in new networks and increased competition among agriculture, industry and services.
Public funding of science and technology is insufficient to adequately address and provide solutions for agriculture that better fulfill the needs of consumers and better respond to the requirements of more sustainable natural resource management. Less AKST is available in the public domain, limiting farmers' choices and the achievement of sustainable agriculture and rural development. This also has a negative impact on partnerships with other regions of the world. Halting and reversing this negative trend depends on the will of governments. Reshaping intellectual property rights and other regulatory frameworks could also modify this trend. Questions concerning options for the future are:
• Will financial efforts and administrative measures break down barriers between the public and the private sectors where such barriers still exist?
• How will the increased productivity of industrial systems affect resources devoted to KST?
• Since budgetary resources are limited, should the public sector support technologies in areas of strength or, on the contrary, areas of specific weaknesses? Should the public sector leave the market and support targeted R&D firms through tax incentives, mobility, etc.? Should it fund most of the research and leave only accompanying measures for the private companies?
• Will Europe be able to mobilize extra financial and human resources for KST to keep pace with the United States and Japan or be taken over by fast-developing Asian countries? Will Europe become attractive for young researchers, irrespective of their country of origin, providing them with the resources needed to develop their full research potential and retain them in Europe? Will a pan-European approach for investing in high-quality frontier research be established?
• What kinds of relationships will North American and |
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European science and technology systems have with Asia? And with the less developed countries?
5.3.6 Attitudes towards science and technology: trends and uncertainties
The NSF Science and Engineering Indicators 2006 reports that although Americans express strong support for science and technology, most people are not very well informed about these subjects. The public's lack of knowledge about basic scientific facts and the scientific process may discourage government support for research, the number of young people choosing S&T careers and the public's resistance to miracle cures, get-rich schemes and other scams.
Americans have more positive attitudes about the benefits of S&T than Europeans and Russians. In recent surveys, 84% of Americans compared with 52% of Europeans (EU-25) and 59% of Russians, agreed that the benefits of scientific research outweighed any harmful results. Most Americans and Europeans know little about genetically modified (GM) foods and related issues. Although attitudes were divided, opposition to introducing GM food into the US food supply declined between 2001 and 2004. This was not the case in Europe. However, the majority of Americans believe that GM food should be labeled (NSF, 2006).
Relations between researchers and society have become stronger during the past few years. The development of a number of controversies in the public sphere has undermined the illusion, harbored by many, that science is able to eliminate all uncertainties.
Researchers can no longer be treated as a population subject to homogeneous organization, structured according to disciplinary divisions, with ties to the social world mediated by administrative and political authorities. On the contrary, they are now a multitude of groups that interact in varied ways, re-arranging or even partially erasing boundaries between disciplines and different forms of knowledge, science being only one of these forms (Akrich and Miller, 2007).
Future uncertainties:
• How will the "precautionary principle" affect scientific advances?
• How will religious fundamentalist groups affect the development of research and technology? How will social values influence interventions on nature?
• What role will civil society organizations play in the determination of research agendas? |