The head of the UK government’s science body in the middle of a defamation scandal called for “creative dissent” and a higher standard of public discourse, with less polarization and blame between scientists and politicians.
Ottoline Leyser, the managing director of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), said that with so much at stake for the planet and given the need for science to drive a transition to a low-carbon economy, it is vital for policymakers, scientists and the public to be able to communicate.
“We need to work harder to build higher quality spaces for public debate and dissent, [for] engaged debate where people listen to each other,” she said in an interview. “[We need to] create environments, situations, where people feel comfortable being challenged, where disagreement is seen as a good thing. It is a high quality research environment. Creative disagreement is absolutely the essence of what we need.”
Leyser came under fire last year from Michelle Donelan, the science secretary, who on the social media platform X accused two academics – Prof Kate Sang, of Heriot-Watt University, and Kamna Patel, of University College London – of sharing extremist views. . Donelan expressed “disgust and outrage” at what they were appointed to an expert advisory group to Research England, which falls under UKRI.
The minister published a fierce letter to Leyser, which undertook an investigation in the accusations. The investigation found no wrongdoing and Sang took defamation action against Donelan. On Wednesday, while the Guardian was interviewing Leyser, news of the defamation settlement broke, with Donelan forced to to apologize and withdraw her comments. It also appeared that the taxpayer had paid the £15,000 costs of Donelan’s legal defense.
The distress this episode has caused Leyser is clear, but she stoically remains under fire and tries not to take it personally. “When you do a job like this, you wear a hat called CEO, and that’s the thing that people debate about,” she said.
What would she do to tackle the polarization? “I’m tempted to say ban Twitter,” she joked. “But that is certainly not the answer. It is important that it is easy for a wide range of voices to be heard.”
She added: “There is a serious element of it, which is the quality of public discourse, which is very much captured by social media as a means of interaction.”
That could cause problems, she said. “Social media is great, it’s a very empowering thing, but it makes it easy for people’s anger to amplify.”
People in the public eye should be able to debate better, she added, without singling out individuals. “If you’re academics, if you’re in business, if you’re in government, we’re actually all of us in really pretty privileged positions. In the context of research and innovation, we should have the tools to engage in these very constructive quality points of discussion, of disagreement.”
Leyser acknowledged that the relationship between scientific research and the governments that pay for it will always be fraught, but wants all involved to seek more constructive ways to approach problems.
“An organization like mine, which inherently has a role to sit at the interface between government and the research and innovation system, our job is to support a fantastic research and innovation system in the UK. That system has to be one be what everyone can contribute to and everyone benefits from,” she said.
“When you sit in that context, you can’t help but get caught up in a whole variety of blame stories of one kind or another, and polarized views. Parts of [the communities involved] is very, very angry. I understand why, and anger is a natural human emotion, but actually it’s not very easy to orchestrate change from a position of anger. It drives people away.”
Leyser, a leading biologist before taking up this role, will leave UKRI in June and the government is already looking for a successor. There was strong tips that this time ministers are looking for a businessman rather than a scientist. Some scientists have expressed concern that the government is seeking to fill the position with one of his supporters before the general election, in an echo of recent rows over other public appointments, including that of the chairman of the Climate Change Committee.
Leyser would not be drawn on the pick. “It’s less about whether you’re from an academic research background or a business background, and more about how you think about the collective effort [of innovation]. Businesses have a collective drive,” she said. “On the other hand, there is a complete flip side to that: research in an academic system is more open, precisely because it is not directed towards any specific goal, and is free-flowing. So you have the opportunity to be more disruptive.”
She was adamant on one point: whoever takes over will need to focus closely on the UK’s target of achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Around £800 million of UKRI’s annual spend of around £3 billion is devoted to green dots, although the figure is difficult to assess precisely as so many aspects of research are interconnected. Leyser sees huge opportunities in areas such as the role of AI in the transition to a low-carbon world.
She said it was wrong to think the UK might have missed the boat on being a leader in low-carbon innovation. “The great opportunities and the great necessity for innovation in everything we do [to reach net zero]means that there will be no boats to miss because so many boats will have to sail to make it work.”
