Science and Research Committee on Dec. 12th, 2024

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you both for being with us today, especially after the frustration of our last meeting.

I'd like to start with Professor Kitcher.

When I heard you were coming, I went online and watched your McFarland Center lecture with great interest. I wish we had more time to go into some of the broader details of science and society.

I'm not sure if you know this, but here in Canada, the government is trying to develop an umbrella agency over what we have now, our three major research-funding organizations. One is for the natural sciences and engineering, one is for social sciences and one is for health. They would like to have what they're calling a capstone organization over top of that. Part of the reasoning is to make it easier to develop and fund mission-driven science projects.

I think you touched on the need to have science that is mission-driven to help the broader public with urgent needs. My question to the government on this is: Who will choose what missions we take on?

Could you perhaps comment on that, if you were developing such an agency?

[Philip Kitcher]

I think what you need to do is get a list of priorities of people's needs in your society that might be accessible to scientific technology if research of various kinds were done.

However, mission-directed science is by no means everything. There has to be a basic understanding of things. That's the way great projects develop. We wouldn't have contemporary molecular medicine had it not been for the fact that in the early 20th century, instead of going straight ahead with trying to use genetics to do something about human health, Thomas Morgan investigated fruit flies.

Mission is not everything.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Exactly.

I don't think this organization is meant to replace basic curiosity-driven science; it's to add another layer that could direct our mission-driven science in a better way. I just wanted to explain that.

This comes back to the question of who's developing the priorities, who should be involved in that conversation and how.

[Philip Kitcher]

It has to be an interaction between representatives of the general public—constituencies that can be identified in advance as having problems—and scientific researchers. If you're trying to match research projects with human needs, you'll need to know what the scientists envisage they are going to be able to do and what the public needs.

I've written at some length about this. Chapter five of my book Science in a Democratic Society is about what I call “well-ordered science”. That is when this match is worked out and tries to come together.

That's the best I can do in a minute or two.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I want to give you some time to react to Dr. Robson's statements about how government-supported universities and research mould students' minds, and how we have to get away from that. He doesn't want the federal government to pay for research; he wants provincial governments to pay. I'm wondering how that would work. You would think the provincial governments would then mould students' minds. If we went to private universities or private companies, they would then be moulding students' minds. The job of universities is to give students a good education.

Could you comment on the broader question of how we provide that education in an open, transparent and fair manner?

[Philip Kitcher]

The first thing I want to say is “Hurrah,” because universities are all about training and educating people and broadening their perspectives.

I have taught at three public universities in the United States and, finally, at Columbia College, which is, of course, a private university. I have not taught at a university where I felt the students were indoctrinated.

I feel that in all of the universities that I entered, many different perspectives were offered to the students. It's especially evident at Columbia College, where students have to take a course that covers a whole broad range of voices from not only the western tradition but other traditions as well. Within the western tradition, the voices include conservatives and liberals, people who are highly radical on both ends of the spectrum, and I think it's a wonderful thing to offer students that huge, rich menu of options for their thinking.

I have not seen what Dr. Robson has seen. I think, if I had seen a lot of that, I might well be as skeptical as he is about indoctrination, but I think that's not a fact.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Thank you. That's our time.

Now I turn it over to MP Tochor for five minutes to kick off the second round, please.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Thank you.

I turn my attention to Dr. Kitcher. No one's disagreeing with the intent of DEI, just with how it's been rolled out in circumstances that marginalize people. The morally bankrupt factor is that it is indirectly doing what it's apparently trying to stop, which is a little hypocritical. Could you unpack a bit more about how DEI can be morally bankrupting if used improperly?

[Philip Kitcher]

I didn't catch the first part of your question. I think you seemed to want me to say something about how DEI, if done properly, would become morally bankrupt.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

No. It's if it's done improperly.

[Philip Kitcher]

Okay. I think that what DEI has encouraged, as it's actually been done, is a policy of exclusion, and the concern that originally started it was to try to train, educate and help people who had been marginalized, whose resources had not enabled them to participate fully in various parts of society, including the higher academic sphere and scientific research.

They should have been given opportunities to do that long ago. Those opportunities were belated, and when they came, they suddenly contributed to the idea that only people from certain perspectives can investigate certain kinds of things, and that was a terrible blunder.

To prove this—

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Thank you for that.

I'm going to split my time now with Branden for the remainder.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Tochor. I'd like to start with Mr. Robson.

I will echo some of your comments, as someone who has been to university rather recently, compared to many of my member of Parliament colleagues here.

There is—and for Mr. Kitcher's experience—absolutely much indoctrination that happens in universities. In fact, I was almost terrified to share any of my conservative views in classrooms, until I grew enough confidence to do so and proudly stood up, but most people get shouted out of those rooms and are terrified to express anything other than what the so-called mainstream belief among university students is.

However, I am in no way actually opposed to basic research or some of the more technical research. Mr. Kitcher, you mentioned things like genetic research. I come from an agricultural background. The development of CRISPR technology is going to be an absolute game-changer in terms of agriculture and potentially for pre-existing human conditions that we could help prevent—with those ethical boundaries, certainly, being respected.

My question is, to start with Mr. Robson, how do we evaluate? I think there's the technical and economic-driven research, and Mr. Kitcher mentioned..... How do we measure that? I think we need to look at how much commercialization happens, how many patents emerge and how many jobs are created out of this, versus some of the studies that my colleague Mr. Tochor.... There are numerous ones, and yes, there's only $37,000 here and there, but they are ridiculous studies. How do we do a better job of prioritizing research that's actually going to make a difference to society and to our nation, versus some of these...? I don't even know what you call that type of research.

[Dr. John Robson]

To be honest, I don't think you can. As I was saying earlier, you have other things that you need to be doing.

On this idea of trying to track what the economic, social and cultural impacts of some piece of scientific research will be a decade down the road, nobody knows that, but nobody needs to know it. Scientists are curious people. They will do fundamental research. It isn't something you have to be concerned with. If it turns out to have commercial applications, companies will take advantage of that. There will be useful collaborations. All kinds of things happen under a system of spontaneous liberty that do not happen under a system of political control.

I think having the federal government trying to put a committee on top of three committees to tell scientists what they ought to be doing in the interest of the economy is to misunderstand what you're capable of and what the situation actually requires. If scientists are given jobs, they will go and do research. They want to know what the heck's going on in the lab.

The other thing—

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Robson. I'll turn it over to Mr. Kitcher, because I did mention a couple of points that he made there. Then I'll give you an opportunity to further expand.

You mentioned “track records”, I believe. Who holds the data that would be the best way to measure the track record of previous research and compare it going forward? How does whoever is deciding where this research funding is going best measure where it will likely be successful in the future for human development?

[Philip Kitcher]

I think if you go to the biomedical community, they know quite a lot about which kinds of programs have been successful and what kinds of things have not worked out very well. I think scientists are actually sometimes extremely good at measuring this.

If I may, I will say one thing in response to one of your other points. For many years I have taught courses in contemporary moral problems. I have had students in those courses who have held views far more conservative than mine. I've also had students who have sometimes held views far more liberal than mine. None of those students has ever felt intimidated or unable to speak up in class. I mean—

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

You are a very nice man, so I suspect that may be the case, but not every professor fits that scenario.

[Philip Kitcher]

No, no. Lots of—

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Perhaps I'll go back to Mr. Robson, just quickly—

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

I'm sorry. We're actually over our time.

Thank you so much.

I will now turn it over to MP Blanchette-Joncas for two and a half minutes.

No. I'm sorry. I lost the papers. It's MP Longfield.

You have the floor for five minutes of questions.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

That's great. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses. It's good to have diverse opinions and discussion in our committee.

I'll be directing my questions to you, Dr. Kitcher.

I'm currently doing a master's in leadership at the University of Guelph. I would have loved to have you around for the ethics course we did a couple of courses back. We were studying Joshua Greene's book Moral Tribes and the tragedy of the commons, which has many meanings, or double meanings, for me. Every time I'm reading, I'm thinking of how tribalism gets in the way of good decision-making.

I think some of what we're talking about here is the tragedy of the commons. We have limited resources being shared among researchers and we are trying to look at how decisions are made to be equitable to researchers, whether they're from small or large schools or from different ethnic backgrounds, cultural backgrounds or language backgrounds, making sure that in Canada, French research is being recognized and accounted for in our decisions.

Could you maybe give us a quick snippet on the tragedy of the commons as it pertains to research funding?

[Philip Kitcher]

I think you're dead right, actually. I do think that because you have limited resources, you tend to find that people look around for allies. They form groups. Those groups become tribes. Then you're really off to the races.

I think you've offered a very good answer and a very good diagnosis to some of the things that were said by earlier speakers and some of the questions that were posed. When they were talking about what has gone wrong with DEI, it is perhaps in large measure the fact that when you have a movement to try to compensate some people who have been historically marginalized, those people are hungry and eager for this to happen quickly. They want to consume a larger share of the resources than is being prepared to be given to them. They form alliances. Then what you start to get is a competition that can easily turn internecine, and this is not good.

This doesn't come out of simply the lack of resources. There are occasions on which groups of people, realizing there's a lack of resources, can do better than that. I think what is needed, always, is the ethical perspective. There needs to be a place where ethical discussion happens among people, where people reach compromises and where they agree to share and take away less than what they had originally thought they needed.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you. It is great to have a professor emeritus in the room.

With your experience, you've seen different generations of research going away from the humanities and into the sciences. Ignoring social sciences is one of the key areas, and critical thinking is under assault, especially with social media.

Could you comment on the importance of also having diverse funding in the streams that include social sciences?

[Philip Kitcher]

Social science research is very important. It's also very hard to do. There are also fads in the social sciences, unfortunately, and when fads get identified, there's an unwillingness to continue funding in that kind of area, so cash funding starts to seep away.

I have seen in my academic lifetime a considerable number of movements, some of which have been remarkably successful and remarkably profitable, while some have withered, even after quite a lot of money was invested into them.

That is something I think one has to come to terms with in research. Not everything is going to succeed. Scientists...social scientists will not always know what the profitable directions are. It's natural to be disappointed when money is invested and nothing comes out of it, but I think you have to look at the large picture.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

In my notes from last time, your first meeting with us, I see that you said you have to be patient.