From commodification to the common good

Hans Radder’s book ^[1] can be seen as a critical account of the current status of science, technology, and society. Taking a range of standpoints from synthetic philosophy and social philosophy on science and technology, he critically assesses the issues and at times proposes some rather radical recommendations on how to change the status quo. For Radder, commodification is a significant pattern in the relationship between science, technology, and society. He describes it as “an increasing impact of economic interpretations, assessments and policies on scientific and technological practices” (Radder, 2019, p. 4). He is not afraid to adopt a normative position and argue that commodification is undesirable. He proposes an alternative pattern of common good (public interest).

Radder begins his book with a chapter on the relationship of science and technology. He states that thus far no attempt to provide a clear definition of science and technology has succeeded. Science, technology and the relationship between the two can only been defined by contrasting their similarities and dissimilarities. Although they are conceptually and empirically interrelated, science and technology cannot be easily merged or clearly separated. This special relationship between science and technology is central to his key hypothesis regarding public interest. Radder builds on his argument that technologies are inherently normative and defines technology as “an artifactual, functional system with a certain degree of stability and reproducibility” (Radder, 2019, p. 45). People who interact with technology should therefore behave in such a way that they enable, rather than disrupt, the workings of that technology.

Radder sees the existence of large technological systems as a precondition for the creation of public interest in science and technology. Public interests are usually general, nonlocal, and can be extended to novel future situations. Public interests can be seen as values that point toward a desirable positive state of affairs. It is on this basis that Radder constructs his methodology of analysis and assessment of public interests. He argues that the question of degree is important and we should be able to assess whether one particular feature makes science more or less in the public interest than another. He proposes two kinds of criteria: the degree of inclusiveness of the relevant public and the relative quality of the democratic support. The former tells us which part of the affected public has been taken into account. The latter relates to the extent of its electoral and deliberative support.

Radder identifies three interconnected structural problems (commodification, bureaucratization, and hierarchical forms of administration) but deals mainly with the first. He argues that scientific institutions have responded to the commodification of academic research by creating various normative codes of good scientific conduct based on the social ethos of science formulated by Robert K. Merton in 1942. He thereby modifies Merton’s notions of universalism, communism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism, focusing instead on science’s openness to talent, the refusal to patent the outcomes of public academic research, separating doing science from doing business, and a thorough reflexivity of scientific research. This then becomes the starting point for his critique of patenting scientific research. He lists the various problems: the inability to truly grasp the relationship of science and technology, incompatibility with a Mertonian ethos of science, and the failure to distinguish adequately between invented and protected items, which means the patent often extends beyond the scope of the invention to eventually cover both concept and product. His critique of the privatization of scientific concepts is based on the notion that scientific knowledge constitutes a common good only when it is nonexhaustible and in the public interest.

Perhaps the most interesting part of Radder’s book, from a science policy perspective at least, is his application of two criteria to six topics in his endeavor to define their public interest, especially since he does not shy from controversial conclusions. In relation to environmental research, Radder analyzes the problem of the safe and permanent storage of radioactive waste. After applying the precautionary principle, which says that there must be justification for pursuing harmful human activity, he concludes that we should abandon the production of nuclear energy as the associated social conditions and interests of future generations are ignored. When discussing basic science, he provides another argument to support his claim that academic patenting is undesirable: the complexity of the problems science faces are such that they require a plurality of perspectives. His position is that basic science should tackle the current and future complexity and uncertainty, while scientific theories should not be patented as they are potentially applicable to a great range of situations. He then considers diversity in science and argues that the human sciences should be a specific science in that it has to deal with the double hermeneutic – in the human sciences the object of study is humans, who, unlike other research objects, have their own interpretations of themselves. This adds another piece to the picture of knowledge as justified true belief. The pursuit of diverse scientific approaches and practices leads to better quality knowledge.

Radder’s critical approach is clearly illustrated in his assessments of public funding, open access, and the Dutch research agenda that involves citizen consultation. He notes that publicly funded science is no guarantee that it is in the public interest. He then states that open access publishing acts as a barrier to scholars as it favors science and more developed countries. Moreover, it leads to a pay-to-publish model which has a negative effect on public interest in science and technology. Similarly, he is very critical of the Dutch citizen consultation process aimed at determining topics for scientific research. It is problematic because of insufficient stakeholder inclusion, an inadequate bottom-up approach, the non-methodical clustering of input questions, and the lack of reflexivity.

The table below provides a better overview of the findings of Radder’s analysis and his assessment of the six selected topics and offers a summary of his main conclusions. Sometimes Radder provides an unambiguous score, but on other occasions he draws only tentative conclusions (in brackets below).

Radder adopts an openly normative approach that some readers may find discouraging, especially his controversial statements on patenting, open access, and nuclear energy. His arguments are well-constructed but his conclusions could have benefitted from more self-reflection. Radder bases his assessment of the public interest on the question of degree, but this can be misleading: for example, he rejects nuclear energy but does not properly analyze what that would mean for society. He briefly suggests alternatives (energy saving and renewable energy), but does not spend enough time assessing them. He simply assumes they are better. Nuclear energy is a topic in its own right, but it is analyzed within a section on environmental research that is not properly explained, and consequently some readers may find it confusing. Some aspects of nuclear waste storage are very different from other areas of environmental research; one may therefore doubt whether this simple logic can be extended to assessments of the potential dangers to humans and society at large.

Overall, Radder’s work is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in public interests in science, technology, and society. He poses important questions in his attempt to shed light on the hot topics in science policy today, especially patenting, open access, and citizen engagement. He employs a broad interpretation of science and offers his own particular take on the tensions between autonomous (academic) science, commodified (entrepreneurial) science, and science that is in the public interest (general value). In the final chapter, Radder adopts a more self-reflective stance. He points out that his goal is to make science more in the public interest by eliminating the features he criticizes and by making normative recommendations about a more desirable future, and it is this that distinguishes his work from naturalistic and constructivist approaches. To conclude, his book is a great example of what critical philosophy can offer us in our endeavors to resolve our current problems, and it should be taken into account when tackling questions of science, technology and society.