machine-envy

I was back at the ICA last night for a brilliant talk on Open Access science. Four panel members - Tim Hubbard, Ian Gibson, McKenzie Wark and David Bodanis - thrashed out the finer points of the future of science funding and publishing, with Fiona Fox from the Science Media Centre acting as chair.

Tim Hubbard, who leads the Human Genome Analysis Group at the Sanger Centre talked about how open source models of production in science are continuously competitive. His interpretation of the open source model - as a number of groups working on a project in parallel and reporting back to a central body - could be, he said, an excellent model for government IT projects within the NHS.

He also believed the model could stretch to the production of therapeutic drugs.

When making the argument for decoupling research from sales within the drugs industry, and instead allowing drug R and D to be centralised, he pointed out that nations around the world spend an average of 1% of annual GDP on medicines. Assuming 10% of drug company revenue goes back into research, Hubbard suggested that if countries could prove they were investing 0.1% of GDP into drugs research, they could be exempt from TRIPS. This would permit them to produce generic versions of drugs under patent. For a more detailed explanation of Hubbard’s ideas, read this paper.

Next up was Ian Gibson, chair of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee. He admitted he found Hubbard’s ideas fairly idealistic (he hadn’t heard McKenzie Wark yet!), and concentrated on the need to liberate scientific publishing and open it up to the wider public.

“Why should the public get their information on science from the front pages of the Sun?”, he asked. He also pointed out that drug companies can access public research whilst they keep their own research hidden from view. Although he admitted with some disdain that the Labour government is far too friendly with industry, he seemed convinced that drugs companies would be coming under increasing pressure from the state to change their ways. You can read his report to the House of Commons here.

McKenzie Wark, author of The Hacker Manifesto, was next to speak. It was him I’d come to see - amid all the furore over Bill Gates calling copylefters “communists” here is a man that relishes Marxist innuendo. I’d read version 4.0 of his manifesto, so was surprised by his wit - “That’s all very well in practice, but what about in theory” was his opener, which immediately warmed the crowd. He stressed that science belonged to everybody, and that unless scientific work was open and easily accessible to the public, not just to peers and industry, then it could not properly call itself science.

Wark outlined what we were up against - the “philosophy of the commodity”. Picking up on the situation with HIV/AIDS in Africa, he characterised this philosophy as “we have to let people who need not die, die, in order to preserve the incentive (for drug companies) to produce other drugs which might possibly save other lives at some unknown point in the future”.

Popular Science author David Bodanis was last to speak. Although he professed his agreement with much of what the previous speakers had outlined, he warned that “you can take a good idea too far”. In particular, he thought that the creative industries needed the protection of an intellectual property framework in order to create. He was also concerned that a model as outlined by Hubbard, where centralised, state-controlled funding bodies took responsibility for all scientific research and development, could lead to “technocracy gone mad”.

An impressive crowd had turned up to hear the speakers. When questions were taken from the floor two main concerns were revealed. Firstly, there was some cynicism as to the public’s ability and willingness to engage with scientific research. And a couple of people were concerned that the ideas we’d heard were unrealistic, in light of the current race to strengthen IP legislation across the world.

Hubbard answered this second complaint with a wary optimism, citing the genome project as “an example of where we won” and pointing to various encouraging developments, including Poland’s last minute intervention on the EU software patent vote, and the development of WIPO away from focussing on intellectual property and towards the advancement of knowledge, as witnessed at last year’s meetings in Geneva. He also mentioned the development of Science Creative Commons, currently on Larry Lessig’s drawing board.