Contents - IADR/AADR

POLITICS, PRIORITIES, AND PUBLIC HEALTH
JOHN B. MACDONALD, D.D.S., PH.D.
EXECUTIVE VICE-CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE OF PRESIDENTS, UNIVERSITIES OF ONTARIO, TORONTO, CANADA
I can best introduce my subject by quoting Sir Eric Ashby: "Have you ever thought that a scientist will
go to great trouble to train himself, or to get assistants trained, to program computers, but only mechanical
computers? Now politicians and administrators are walking computers. How much trouble do scientists take to
program politicians and administrators? This is an art just as complicated as programming a large Atlas
computer, and I do not know of any formal training given in this art. . . . There is another side to this, namely,
that politicians and administrators have not learned how to program scientists either. I think if anything they are
less good at it than we are at programming them, because we want to get money out of them and they do not
quite know what they want to get out of us." 1
The quotation is relevant because it tells us in a few words that one of the problems of science policy is
the difficulty which scientists and politicians have in understanding one another. It tells us too that science
policy is not the exclusive domain of scientists. Quite the contrary—many of the most crucial decisions
involving the future of science will be made by politicians. This is a fact that is often at the root of
misunderstanding. Michael Polanyi said: "Any attempt at guiding scientific research toward a purpose other
than its own is to deflect it from the advancement of science." 2 Although scientists may applaud Polanyi's
statement, it is not the same thing as saying that scientists have a right to be responsible alone for their own
destiny. They do not, and it is to the difficult relationship of politics and science in generating policy that I wish
to address my remarks.
There is no escape from the necessity of examining the activities of scientists in the light of public
interest. There is no prospect of recapturing the comfortable past when research was the preserve of a few
individuals fortunate enough to have a patron and the opportunity to indulge their curiosity for the sheer
INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR DENTAL RESEARCH (IADR) – THE FIRST FIFTY YEAR HISTORY PAGE 283