Focus 580; Problems in Communication Between Science, Politics, and the Public

Science and technology affects all of our lives in very profound ways. And given the pace of developments in the field of science and technology there doesn't seem to be any sign of slowing down it's only going to get more and and more what I think concerns some scientists people in the public policy field is that often when we are thinking about adopting some new kind of technology we're talking about the effects of technology on society on the earth. There is very little discussion. We don't seem to think very carefully about how what we do affects the environment or if we're going to to use some new kind of product. Maybe it's something that newly engineered often the kind of reflection on whether or not we should do this thing is is very very small and that may in part be due to the fact that many people feel a little shut out of that discussion they somehow feel that they don't have the the background or the experience or the knowledge to

say whether the thing they think one technology is good or not. And so this morning we will try to take a look at how power people how the general public participates or doesn't participate in this discussion about science and technology. Some people would suggest that it is our fault. It is the media's fault because sometimes our coverage of science and technology is either sensationalist or shallow. Some people might suggest in part it's the fault of scientists people who do the research who may not be very good at talking to people who aren't scientists or that they aren't willing to take tough stands when those things are needed. And then of course there is the political leadership which seems always to want ironclad statements one way or the other. And they say well the scientists they don't like to give you ironclad statements so we're just waiting or we're waiting for more data. So we'll see if we examine all all sides of this business as we talk

with our guest this morning her name is Patricia Hines and she is director of the Institute on women and technology at MIT. She also teaches in the Department of Urban Studies and planning there. And this is a an area which she has thought about a lot and has written on. In addition to her experience at MIT She also worked as an environmental engineer at the hazardous waste division of the US Environmental Protection Agency and also served as chief of environmental management of the Massachusetts Port Authority for her work in EPA Superfund program she won the 1985 environmental service award of the Massachusetts Association of conservation commissions. She also in nine hundred eighty seven wanted German Marshall Fund environmental fellowship to do a comparative study of lead contamination and environmental policy in Western Europe and the United States and is also the author of many scientific papers and several books that deal with environmental and up policy topics in her books

include The recurring Silent Spring reconstructing Babylon women and technology and earth right every citizen's guide. And I'm sure that you can find them in a library bookstore if you'd like to go looking. We're pleased to have her joining us on this program today and as we talk and if you have questions comments you want to give us a call we welcome your participation in the conversation 3 3 3 W I L L as the local number we also have a toll free line. And that is eight hundred to two to WY. And thanks very much for being here. Thank you for inviting me. But perhaps before we start out examining the the points of this triangle here there were these these sort of three parties that were talking about the political leadership the scientific community and and the public and include the media in that before doing that maybe we should back up another step and ask why does it matter why. What's the problem with that. The lack of communication that you see we have now.

Ok I'll answer that by giving you some examples of where I have seen it matter when I worked as an environmental engineer at EPA in the hazardous waste program. And it was specifically the Superfund program I was responsible as were other environmental engineers for specific hazardous waste sites where we might have a landfill with toxic contaminants in it and the landfills leaching some of those chemicals into groundwater and perhaps a nearby town well as is contaminated I had a case like that. As we were studying the problem and then beginning to devise solutions for cleaning up the landfill the leach 8 and protecting the local town of water which in fact at that point was contaminated in the wells were shut down. It became apparent to me and to others working on their sites that. The local citizens the people whose well was shutdown the people who

were living in the area and who were concerned that maybe other water supplies would be contaminated the people who fished in nearby streams and swim in in a local lake. These people felt that it was their lives their community their water resources which were ruined by this hazardous waste site and that they should be part of the decision making process both in the design of the study of the problem so that they could make sure that the concerns that they had the understanding they wanted of the impacts of this landfill were also designed into the study. But even more so that they were involved in the decisions about the cleanup at the site so that they could make sure that they were satisfied that the actions that EPA would take or force the responsible industry to take were. Sufficient to not only. Cover up the problem which in many cases is what the types of solutions were in caps letting the waste and leaving it in place but that there were solutions that these people could then live with for

the next 20 years. This insistence of being part of the decision making in hazardous waste sites was not easily and well received at first by the EPA. The first response was that scientists and lawyers at EPA would probably know better than an uninformed public or an educated or a science illiterate public about what to do with these sites so that at first there was resistance to it and then there was only a marginal inclusion of these people we would have a public meeting once all our studies were finished and our conclusions were set and we would hold the public meeting and present the conclusions to the people and call this public participation and gradually sort of through trial by error and. Baptism by fire. EPA I myself learned on the job as did others and we learned that public participation means involving those people who are impacted who are victims of these sites right up

front at the beginning and that holding educational sessions in which our scientists explain to people the genesis of the problem the potential impacts what cancer risks the words that are that you are able to then generate an informed public who could be partners with us in the decision making on the site. So what I what I am saying is that I think that science decisions around environmental issues which are issues that affect people's lives in which people live and work that they should be done in partnership with the public and that the media has a very important role in this process that the media is used by God again. It's. It's going to get I think. Of that.

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of. What I. Think. Both. A little bit of it's just a little bit up a bit a. Little bit. About I'll talk to you because it's just a bit by bit it's just it going to mean a bit of. A. Of the tests of the bit of the Beatles. Want. Political capital. To. Put it to. Its side. To to the discussion I mean that that's where they're going to get their their basic information and in a sense

the media is sort of like this the stand in them I guess because that's what we like to think that she is also we're representing the interest of the public we're the people who are there who have access to the officials and scientists and we are there asking questions. I think I think one has to be honest and say that there are many reporters who are poorly equipped to I don't hear that regular science coverage. Yeah and I think it's I mean I think one has to be honest and say I think and I'm sure you know not the first person to say it that people become journalists because they're writers and they don't do well with with stories science journalists are not and have not necessarily been trained in science. I certainly it's also true of of economic and business reporter as well let me suggest something. I think besides I'm using media in a very wide way here so I'm also talking about let's say television coverage of events as well as the written media so electronic and print media. But for example I've read and

analysis of the media coverage of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. I think there are things that media can do which do not require that they themselves have been trained in a particular background but that still enables them to give the kind of in-depth coverage that I'm talking about. MacNeil-Lehrer in in covering the Exxon Oil about the Exxon Valdez oil spill was criticized by environmentalists for assembling a panel of experts to comment on the cleanup of that spill. And that panel of experts did not include environmentalists from prominent organizations who had been very active in commentary and evaluation of what they thought about Exxon's efforts to EPA responsibility for that spill. So I think that the groups who are covering or journalists who are covering television which is covering a major event like that has a responsibility to at least assemble. A fair panel

of people and not just represent the industry side which was what happened on the McLean a MacNeil-Lehrer coverage of the Exxon Valdez spill which of course was more congratulating the industry for expending the amount of money that they did for the oil spill instead of criticizing them for being late in starting the clean up. And also environmentalists would have brought a kind of real listen to the situation of the oil spill relisten meaning that in the history of oil spills we have no history of the capability to contain more than 15 percent of oil spilled like that so that this fantasy of cleanup if we were just better prepared or act and acted more quickly or had double hulled ship which was portrayed in the media coverage of the oil spill and the subsequent sort of discussion and analysis of what better how much better could we clean up

the spills we were left two years later. In media coverage with the idea that it was human error which created that tragedy. Whereas in fact it's a mix of human error of course there was some human error there but also of a kind of institutional complexity in super transport a supertanker transport of oil which needs to be looked at in other words. Is it possible when you have a spill like that ever to clean it up we were left thinking that if there were not human error it would be possible to clean it up and left. Then with the kind of ho international transport of oil supertanker and dependency on fossil fuels somewhat intact because it was reduced to human error. Now that type of coverage I think. It can be undone if the correct Assembly of Experts the correct mix of experts those who are looking at the institutional issues that I'm talking

about. The energy policy our energy policy and dependency on oil and not just add some technical fixes which if done could prevent this from happening again. So it isn't that you have to know all of this yourself. I think you have to know what needs to be now and who the mix of experts our people are to put them together so that you can have the kind of complex and thorough coverage of an environmental event that we need to have in order for the public to understand is the solution that came out of that which is being prepared to clean up more quickly than we did. Double hulled tankers adequate solutions for does that make super tanker transport of oil safe. We were left thinking that it will be safer in the future with no sort of historical understanding. Oil spills of the impossibility of cleaning up oil spills of of that magnitude. And when you understand that this sort of historical and institutional complexities you then begin to question. On another level

that kind of dependency on fossil fuels and on transport of oil that we as well as all of the industrial world is hooked into and the hazards the risks that the that we take in doing that for the marine environment. Our guest this morning is Patricia Hines. She's director of the Institute on women and technology and also teaches in the Department of Urban Studies and planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And we're talking about problems in communication communication of science and technological issues and why it is that the public that is the most precious the most directly affected doesn't doesn't have a way to participate more in the conversation. And in fact sometimes there's not really much of conversation at all. There's no invitation. Well yeah there's no into temptation. But let me give an example of another. Realm of decision making about technologies in which people are not invited to participate as they are

in making decisions about the cleanup of hazardous waste sites in their neighborhoods that is now written into the hazardous waste law that there has to be public participation in Superfund site clean ups and decisions about clean ups. But for example currently the Food and Drug Administration is deciding on registering a genetically engineered bovine growth hormone which will be injected into cows and which will make couse lactate add 10 to 25 percent the rate that they currently do so it will increase milk supply percale. This is a technology which has been developed by major companies like Monsanto Eli Lilly for major pharmaceutical companies chemical companies in this country. It's a technology which farmers dairy farmers do not want. Many in the Midwest small dairy farmer associations have organized against the. Poor man in part because it

made for them because there is a dairy surplus and they already have depressed dairy prices and they don't need more surprises so they'd see it as a technology they don't need. It is also being organized against on the part of animal rights people who feel and I agree that it is. It is a cruel technology for animals. It causes MEST itis heat stress and wears them out in two to three years rather than their sort of normal life. Now five years and it's also being criticized by health especially some health specialists who say that the milk that comes from those cows which are treated with this hormone will have some ingredients in it as a result of which we will then ingest humans consuming that milk will ingest which ingredients are different from the normal hormones that come into cow's milk and which we are not confident will break down in the human body and instead may pass into the blood of humans so that there are health experts who feel that there are certain

risks with this milk coming from genetically engineered cows cows injected with the hormone. So there are three groups. Representing citizens dairy farmers animal rights people representing animals and health experts on this all of whom have coalesced to say we don't want this technology but in fact the FDA approval process does not invite public participation in the process so that this this type of protest falls on deaf ears with respect to FDA and a criticism of the FDA that was made internally by a veterinarian working for FDA in charge of the decision. This particular decision on this chemical he was he publicly criticized FDA for being too pressured he felt and too allied with the industry that has manufactured this hormone. And he was fired from his job two years ago

and is suing FDA to get reinstated. But this is a very good example of the process of registering new technologies and new products in this country which basically has no citizen participation component so that we have nothing to say about the new technologies that come on the market. I think this is an arena in which people should have more say we should have at a panel which. Advises FDA which is comprised of citizens a mix of people and independent scientists and experts people from the dairy industry in this case but people who represent the interests who will be impacted by these new technologies coming on the market. So as I see it the approval process for new drugs new technologies has really shot out the majority of the public and that essentially they come on the market whether we want them or not whether we need them or not whether we feel that they are safe or not.

We have callers off with let's do that. Sure in our line number one. Hello. Very interesting to hear all of us as you say it's not reported. Press coverage of your preference for that. Yes there is an article written by Lee Solomon. There's a second author with him whose name I forgotten but it was published in a magazine for Environment Journal that came out about two years ago the article was published about two years ago Solomon and the co-author. Are journalists who work for a project I think the acronym is fair but it has to do with fair reporting in the media. I believe it's a west. What is it it's. It's Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. And I think I our two guys are the one guy's name is is Lee and Sol I'm sorry it is your right I collapse them.

It's Lee in Solomon. They work for the acronym is fair. The group that they work for on the West Coast. And they actually this is part of a larger article in which they analyze the media coverage of the environment and they have a nice analysis of the techniques they used by media techniques such as treating the environment as a model system rather than a complex system and in the case of this bill what they meant was that this bill is covered separately from energy policy for example split from it. But that article came out about two years ago in a magazine. So it's a new issue could be the first year that it was published so I think you can find it pretty easily. OK. They also did the study I'm now aware of that show that. That's right. Yes for a period of four months they didn't have one environmentalist. Yes on them. They're the ones that cited that right a specific thing on the bounties didn't double Hoang tankers get written into the law.

Yes it did. I think that was probably their primary. If net effect of all of the public discussion and political discussion about what should be the follow up to this bill in order to improve the safety record of the industry and as I recall I think double hulled tankers was probably the major change in industry that is something that was written into the law and I imagine it will be for new tankers being constructed. So we have all these others that need to be retrofitted some way. That's right and building a lot right now. So anyway. Just if you're interested in this issue of supertankers and oil spills give you another reference which I think really rounds out the picture and that's Charles Perot's book he's a sociologist at Yale and his book is normal accidents. He has a section in there on the oil transport industry supertankers in particular looking at the history of accidents looking at built in sort of risks which see these one by one safety efforts in attempts like double hauled

tankers and better quicker response time in terms of clean ups and spills. He analyzes how those can never make up for and do the systems of risks and inefficiencies built into the elements or risks inefficiencies built into the system a super super tanker transport. We could do well by importing less. That's the point right. It was refreshing to see this. An astonishing Academy Awards to see this. The documentary short documentary award go to an attack on Shia. I didn't call you to tell me about it. Nuclear weapons and our environment. One producer signed off by saying boycott it was an NBC thing. Well one of the points that Lee and Solomon also make is is how much of the major media is now owned by major corporate polluters and is one of the points that that

they made. I think it was interesting it was very evident to me without knowing specific ownership around Earth Day 1990 it was very evident to me how much of major media both television as well as magazines like Newsweek Time U.S. News and World Report that. All of the major polluters were carrying full page ads featuring themselves as good corporate citizens in all of the major media is who is is clear it's both that they depend on their money for ads and sponsorship but also that there's encroaching ownership of these companies of the media by these companies. Every day is Earth Day with nuclear power. If you were in the EPA during the Superfund scandal where he was or anything. Yeah during the Reagan experience are going to hear anything you like say I'm going to during a fit of the resigning from inside of it. I don't know I'll just give you my overview of EPA which is why I was asked this last night in

speaking that we now have almost 12 years I would say you know we have 12 years at this point the Reagan administrations in the Bush administration and I think that clearly there has been an erosion of the original vitality the mission. I think it started out as a very idealistic agency somewhat independent in its mission of the legislative and executive branch and that that has genuinely been eroded in the past 12 years so that it is dictated to by the executive office at this point and I think that you still find that there are good people attracted to work in it and it's it has the same sort of pyramid structure as every other hierarchy so that at the base you do have quite well-educated well-intentioned idealistic attorneys and engineers. But that they are thwarted by middle and upper level management which has been silenced I mean genuine gag order I think on that agency by the executive office with respect to whatever issue they choose to gag

them on this past year it was wetlands. I think in the coming few years it's going to be bio technology policy. The White House the Council on Competitiveness is dictating the parameters of regulation that EPA is currently writing on biotechnology to ensure that the regulations do not inhibit the entry of commercial products onto the market. So I see EPA as being creasing they kind of tied up by its its relationship to conservative government that are essentially sets up industry against environment and when it has to favors industry over environment and somehow put in the middle of that. Consequently I think that. That kind of mission to protect the environment that EPA originally started out with has been taken over by nonprofit profession very professional nonprofit environmental groups who now hire the Qadr of attorneys engineers scientists that used to be attracted to work for

EPA that they're more attracted to work for these other organizations who are kind of kind of taking over the vacuum of environmental mission of environmental protection not diluted by a protectionism towards the economy that is currently stifled by this morning our guest is Patricia Hines. She's director of the Institute on women and technology at MIT She also teaches and apartment urban studies and planning there. And we're talking about why it is that often the public is not a participant in discussions of new technologies and scientific issues and how perhaps we can improve that situation and get people more involved given the greater voice and a greater role. If you have questions comments we welcome them 3 3 3 W I L L eight hundred two to two W while there was the numbers. We have someone else to talk with someone on our toll free line.

Good morning. Whatever happened to the creosote scare. Quote against Kerr-McGee were seen as contaminated by nuclear and weather was dust or whatever it was and the government is actually the biggest polluter of anyone in the United States especially to all these Army and Navy and Air Force installations. There's hundreds of thousands of acres that been polluted that will probably never ever be couldn't be contaminated. I watched a program in the Rocky Mountains how it's been all the water and everything else the earth has all been polluted. We're going to pay a terrible price for what we've done to our environment in the last 25 years. And who's going to take care of all these people after they came down come down with these diseases. You know the hospital. Very expensive.

I agree with you in terms of the extent of contamination from military facilities. I think that I want to link this back to the Persian Gulf or last year I think that people which you know so many people suddenly rallied around in a kind of an understandable way. I think that people do not fully understand that the legacy of war and military buildup that we have been involved in for decades is a thoroughly contaminated country. The Department of Defense and Department of Energy are now known to be the major polluters in the United States as a result of contaminated military facility sites Army Navy and Air Force. And this is something which is kind of civilian counterpart of war elsewhere that we through war destroy other countries and other peoples but actually in this kind

of quiet invisible way which has never been acknowledged until the past few years we have contaminated our own country more than all the industry in the United States defense facilities have left their waste in groundwater in soil in people. What is the answer. Well the federal government has to take responsibility for cleaning up their sites they know the sites now they've been listed they were taken on the responsibility. To clean up their own waste anything they take responsibility for work very well. I mean I think if they could redirect their capacity for militarism back to cleaning it declare war on waste for example that perhaps they would be more successful in cleaning it up. I mean turn these people who are trained to do war into who are basically cleaning up the military defense sites your graduates from West Point cetera. I mean it is possible. We know that it is possible to do we have the technical knowledge it is a

question of political will. We don't have the money then of course trillion dollars to redirect defense spending into cleaning up into war in the environment. I really don't think there's any hope. Because you know in the last hundred years we've been quoting motion and now it's start in effect and the co-author of the paper. Probably these are the new diseases that we're coming up with today. How do we know the from of those who aren't actually started way back. I know we don't know that. I like this distinction though that has been made by Herman Dahlia an economist who works at the World Bank. He says that while he is not optimistic about the way humans live on the earth and pollute the earth in particular this this government and military none the less not being optimistic he's hopeful that he has not lost hope and I do think that I

like that distinction because I think there's nothing to be optimistic about but that at the same time that we must have hope that that's a quality of the heart. Thank you. Sure thank you for the call. Other comments or questions are welcome. Three three three. W I L L toll free 800 2 2 2 w. while we we have not talked. We talked about the media we've talked some about government we haven't really talked very much about the scientific community there their side of the triangle that we start talking about you know I think that that we talked about the fact that there are a lot of journalists who end up covering scientific stories that aren't very well equipped and I think you know one of the things that you will hear from reporters is that it's not always very easy to talk to scientists. That that reporters you know they're trained to want the bottom line they want the bottom line and the scientist for sometimes for good reason don't have a bottom line to give. And I think it is sometimes frustrating not only for reporters but I think for the

Republic generally that that scientists sometimes take an attitude that says look my job is to supply the data. Here is the data. There it is. And what they would like is for scientists to say more of a stand of House of interpret Yeah interpret to draw a conclusion from it and then say you know. Right. Yes. And that all too often the scientists to this cleans they are between science and public policy that I was talking about. Right. Well I know what you have just portrayed is a kind of stereotype and you did that deliberately which has of course some truth in it otherwise we wouldn't even have a stereotype. I would like to point out some. What contradictions are examples of scientists who have actually gone very far with data that was not yet complete Rachel Carson being one of them when she wrote Silent Spring. On the one hand she said that when she did her research on DDT she found she started in 1058 that since

1958 documented in science journals was the fact that DDT was now being found in the food chain that it was in mother's milk and that was being transmitted to infants at levels that were higher than were allowable in commercial food. As she read this she said how is it that scientists have published this in journals but that the public in the government does not know. And she concluded that the scientists but she said especially she found professional men as she was one of the only women in science at her at the time that she was working in writing all her colleagues were male but they were reluctant to say something with certainty or say something until they felt certain about it that there was an unnecessary reticence and caution on their part. On the other hand she was trained as a scientist she was marine biologist and she wrote Silent Spring with in certain sections of it especially the human toxicity of. What she what she did

there was take what was not yet certain and say that if this is the case it's what we're doing with global climate change models currently. If it is the case that this will cause an increase of cancer then we have cause for alarm. So she wrote Silent Spring with some knowledge intact. That is that robins were dying of eating worms that had biodegraded leaves that had pesticides on them the food chain phenomenon. At the same time the full impact on humans and the capacity to sort of document human cancer because it takes so long for that to be the case. She did not have that evidence in hand but that she did not back down from making very tough arguments against the use of potentially cancer causing chemicals in the food supply. So we have the example with her of a scientist who is willing to go farther without full certainty of the effects and also risk being criticised by the science community for for not for not being sufficiently

reticent with things that were not yet proven today. As I pointed out in my talk last night there is a similar situation that I see which is it is global climate change scientists who are working at top levels in government and at universities who have models in which they are trying to predict possible increases in temperatures as a result of carbon dioxide emissions for one and you are saying that even without full certainty that we should operate on a precautionary principle in public policy. That is our government's industrial countries government should be committing to a policy of conservation energy conservation. Turning to renewable resources moving out of dependency on fossil fuels etc. so they are actually pressing the federal government to to declare a national policy on the use of fossil fuels as well as conservation. This is unprecedented virtually unprecedented where the scientists without full

certainty operating with a high probability but not full certainty who are calling for a different principle of public policy that public policy should be made in this case with a precautionary principle that is if the likelihood of this if there is a likelihood that we will see global climate change a probability of it. And if the risks of of that are sufficiently great then we should act with precautions so that whether we have certainty or not we should take we should take action to reduce the causes of global warming. That's coming from the science community it is not coming from from the politicians who are running the country it's coming from selected legislatures in Congress but certainly not from the executive office of the United States has been the most lackluster industrial nations in terms of committing to energy efficiency to reduction of the U.S. dependency on fossil fuels to investing in alternative energy.

There's a very stubborn. Head and head in the ground. Protectionist policy that this government is engaged in under the rubric or Aegis and I think it's actually a fake excuse of protecting industry. Everybody knows that energy conservation would actually help industry. It's cheaper to run. If you put in cost cutting measures energy conservation or cost cutting measures you've been pollution prevention measures. You actually save money per unit of product. So I think it's a kind of hoopers that this country has enjoyed and being above being told what to do by the rest of the world especially countries from the south so that this can this government has deliberately ignored even the collective wisdom of other industrial countries which are committing to energy efficiency in the industrial and domestic sectors because of being concerned about the likelihood of global warming. But to get back to your

point that actually is coming from the science sector. Now a point that I also would like to follow up with here is that. I think that scientists and scientists are not a homogeneous group. The scientists are constrained not only by the caution inherent in the method and by the habit of not drawing conclusions until they are absolutely certain I think that's been one constraint. But I think an additional one which is which is an increasing constraint is that most scientists are not independents that they depend on research money increasingly from industry but also that the Department of Defense has been a major source of research monies for scientists. And therefore if two thirds forfeits nine tenths of scientists are captured by defense money or federal government money and or federal money Deo Imani or by corporate money then they are constrained they feel constrained to both do the

research to get the results that that their donors want them to get but also never to speak out on policy that may oppose the directions of the technologies that they're doing research on. I'm not excusing or defending scientists I mean I think they need courage and they need to free themselves from the kind of loyalties that this type of money fetters them to. But I'm saying that that's the condition of most scientists at this point so it is not just science method I think it's the source of funding. That silences them when coming to the point here we have just about six or seven minutes and I do have a couple callers I want to try to get at least one maybe both before we end up at a time so let's do that let's go to line one. Hello. Yes I thought you may be your guest good and did several years ago I lived in Springfield Illinois why and you want to create parallel to that count how people which don't have a creek in a private home. Great call I'll ask them and I state my name

it's right at the our gate and he had large boulders pale blue with cracked I grant that specific can be code for putting in the barrier and then not have to be put on the label and that's why again on the half hour you can quite can because that does include food and good luck. Thank you. OK. Is that something that you can cut and maybe not the specific issue that was good enough and it's OK let's go on to someone else. Lie number two is next. A little boring yes. Oh my requests. I wonder. You're guest feels about the evolving relationship between universities and the corporate sector I know hair and and champagne with the Beckman Institute out of private industry such a lily and large corporate concerns coming in and being intimately involved and in cutting edge type technology using supercomputers

and you know coming into an area where of the universities which used to be kind of a pure science influenced type of thing and it seems with money constraints and all this that are much you know we're losing some of the pure science and not becoming and flown by big dollars and things. Do you ever. Yeah I mean I think you are in a sense have answered your own point but I'll just add a couple of things to it. I know that some critics feel that science is completely compromised when money is taken from industry and then the purpose of science is developed commercial or patentable products. I don't have that absolutist position on science that it's it is automatically sullied when it's engaged in technology development for commercial purposes. I think our country has always operated that way. But science has always been done in support of technology. It's more overt

now with these monies coming into universities. However one problem that I see is that. When scientists take money from industry that it does end up as I said earlier silence silencing them in the sense that it becomes almost impossible to stand against let's say a technology development that this scientist may not believe in that. That's one problem. The other problem I see is that the the mainstream directions of technology are shaping science so that it is almost impossible for scientists to do alternative types of science in mechanical engineering for example in any department across the country. There is very little if any money for wind power when dynamos for example or solar energy money that was there in the 70s and consequently scientists mechanical engineers genuinely interested in creating a different future

for energy technology simply don't have the funding either from the federal government or the commercial sector to do it. My concern as much as that money shapes the money that comes in shapes the technology and science that's done and a lot of that is problematic. That's one problem I have with it it's not money itself. It's the type of technology it shaping. The second problem I have is that it has become impossible to do science without money and so the types of science directions or technology directions we feel the country should go in in order to do sustainable agriculture in order to do alternative energy public transportation systems over the car. We simply don't have the research going on because there's now either public or private monies to support that research. So that deficit of proper science research which is not funded either by the private or public sectors icey is equally problematic as as the one that you were addressing when we we're almost out of time we have perhaps about a minute

or or so we really have I suppose we have talked about maybe indirectly about about the government side of the triangle and I suppose one one wonders with some sense of frustration how it is that we might get government to be a little bit more visionary. And a little less. Plotting in responding to some of these. I'll give you simply want example the USDA gives research money to land grant universities which I'm sure this university also gets. And that research money from USDA currently favors biotechnology research in agriculture. It could shift in priorities so that the majority of the money would go into sustainable agriculture integrated pest management the type of science that's needed in order to prove that sustainable agriculture is commercially viable. We know it's commercially viable but it needs additional research. USDA funding priorities are really shaping the direction that

agricultural research is going in. So if citizen participation into that process of who gets money for what kinds of research could shift the priorities so that the majority of research money from USDA was going into sustainable agriculture that's a very good example of how can we use government to. And able us to shape the kind of future society that we would like. But we do need to work for I think an increasing Democratic voice and which is not simply electing someone president that representative democracy that obviously has failed in this country. We need genuine participatory democracy and I think that at this point it's only coming from grassroots activism around environmental animal rights consumer issues that we need to coalesce and develop a strong grassroots voice that then enables us to be citizens and participants in the democratic process here.

Well there is where we leave it I want to thank you very much for being here. You're welcome thank you. Our guest this morning Patricia Hines teaches in the Department of Urban Studies and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology She is also director of the Institute on women and technology there at MIT.