PD Smith

The Man from the Ministry

09 June 2009 | Writing & Poetry | 16 comments

Twit­ter can be seri­ous­ly dis­tract­ing, espe­cial­ly when the Min­is­ter of Sci­ence keeps send­ing you tweets.

Yes­ter­day I saw a com­ment from sci­ence writer and broad­cast­er Col­in Stu­art (@skyponderer on Twit­ter):

“Any­one else wor­ried that sci­ence and defence are now inex­tri­ca­bly polit­i­cal­ly linked? with @lorddrayson doing both jobs!?”

Yes (I thought) that does sound wor­ry­ing and I tweet­ed it on my page too. With­in forty min­utes Lord Paul Drayson him­self replied (to me, note, not Col­in — per­haps the Sci­ence Min­is­ter does­n’t quite get Twit­ter?).

“What are you wor­ried about?” he asked me.

I have to admit I was sur­prised. Actu­al­ly that’s a seri­ous under­state­ment. I sat in front of the screen for a few min­utes won­der­ing if I was see­ing things. Don’t Her Majesty’s min­is­ters of state have more urgent mat­ters to attend to than deal­ing with com­ments on Twit­ter by authors? Per­haps it was a prac­ti­cal joke? A fake Lord per­haps?

But no, it real­ly was Lord Drayson — Twit­ter bio “Father of 5, Min­is­ter For Sci­ence and Inno­va­tion, Labour peer, car nut: http://www.draysonracing.com/”. Yes, that’s him.

So I replied: “You shd ask @skyponderer — but his­to­ry shows we shd all be con­cerned abt links between sci & defence.” (Excuse the abbre­vi­a­tions but you only get 140 char­ac­ters on Twit­ter.)

Then Col­in joined in (no doubt jus­ti­fi­ably peev­ed that the min­is­ter was ignor­ing him): “I agree with @PD_Smith, but I am also dis­ap­point­ed that sci­ence is under­val­ued enough not to need a full time min­is­ter…”.

At the same time, oth­er peo­ple began to con­tribute equal­ly use­ful com­ments — @DrLucyRogers, @dr_david_w, @joergheber, @imascientist etc. But there­after, silence — at least until this after­noon, when the Min­is­ter replied. Except he’s not just “one” min­is­ter, but two.

Lord Drayson is now (thanks to Gor­don Brown’s lat­est Cab­i­net reshuf­fle) two min­is­ters in one — he is both Sci­ence Min­is­ter and (revert­ing to a for­mer role) Min­is­ter for Defence Pro­cure­ment. Hence Col­in’s con­ster­na­tion, which I share.

This after­noon the two-in-one Min­is­ter again asked what was wor­ry­ing us. I got my response in first (I should have been writ­ing a review but was Twit­ter­ing instead):

@PD_Smith: “1. why does Sci­ence not deserve its own min­is­ter? 2. Are there not eth­i­cal issues re uni­fy­ing sci + mil­i­tary under 1 min­is­ter?”

This time @lorddrayson answered imme­di­ate­ly: “In my view the more the sci min­is­ter is con­nect­ed to wider roles in govt the more influ­ence sci­ence has to the whole agen­da.”

@PD_Smith (two tweets in a row this time): “The log­ic of that is that you’ll soon be tak­ing on more port­fo­lios? Sounds to me like a reduc­tion in the import of sci. And what about com­bin­ing sci + defence pro­cure­ment? Does it send out the right mes­sage in an age of nuclear pro­lif­er­a­tion?”

In reply, the Noble Lord fired off five tweets in quick suc­ces­sion: “Sci­ence deserves a min­is­ter at the cab­i­net table. Thats key. Tick. Sci desrves a cab­i­net com­mit­tee. Thats key too. Tick.”

“But, many min­is­ters have dual roles.. it real­ly helps depart­ments work togeth­er bet­ter. Silos in white­hall are not help­ful.”

“Many sci­ence issues are cross-depart­men­tal. Take GMES as an exam­ple. MOD / DECC / BERR / DIUS all had a view on earth obser­va­tion”

“Re eth­i­cal issues. You have a point. I have to be absolute­ly clear on the sep­a­ra­tion between the 2 roles. Civ­il ser­vice r key.”

I was pleased to have got him to at least con­cede that there was an eth­i­cal issue involved here (although also slight­ly con­fused by the idea that there might be silos in White­hall. Nuclear bunkers I’d heard about, but mis­sile silos?).

@PD_Smith: “I’m v glad to hear you accept there has to be sep­a­ra­tion. But I still say it sends out a mixed mes­sage to the rest of the world.”

Side-step­ping that, @lorddrayson con­tin­ued: “How­ev­er, many sci­ence break­throughs orig­i­nat­ed in defence research: ultra­sound, radar to men­tion 2”.

@PD_Smith: “That’s unde­ni­able. But sci­ence should, and can be, about so much more than mil­i­tary hard­ware.”

“I agree,” @lorddrayson replied. “Defence is but a small part of the whole. “Sci­ence so what; So everything”.…will con­tin­ue from BIS… @sciencesowhat”.

And with this rather hand-wav­ing allu­sion to the grandeur of sci­ence and a website, @lorddrayson moved on to deal with oth­er peo­ple’s ques­tions on this issue. As an exer­cise in gov­ern­ment engag­ing with the pub­lic I give him full marks. Indeed, let’s have more of it. But it did­n’t real­ly cast much light on the ques­tion as to why this gov­ern­ment thinks a full-time sci­ence min­is­ter is not need­ed, let alone deal with the eth­i­cal issues raised by lump­ing sci­ence and defence togeth­er under one min­is­ter. Maybe he will dis­cuss these mat­ters in more detail in the opin­ion piece the Times High­er Edu­ca­tion Sup­ple­ment offered him after­wards.

I have to say, chat­ting with the Min­is­ter for Sci­ence & Defence Pro­cure­ment is one of the most intrigu­ing Twit­ter expe­ri­ences I have had to date. But I hope it does­n’t hap­pen every day. It’s very dis­tract­ing. And I have work to do.

16 comments so far:

  1. Science minister’s question time | 09 June 2009

    […] Sophia Collins at “I am a sci­en­tist. Get me out of here” and PD Smith have blogged on the exchange – read Smith for a con­cise account of the dis­cus­sion, and Collins […]

  2. John Self | 09 June 2009

    Great stuff — just as busi­ness­es can do valu­able (if minor) cus­tomer ser­vices inter­ac­tion via Twit­ter, so it seems can gov­ern­ment min­is­ters pro­vide a small degree of account­abil­i­ty. Good work PD!

  3. PD Smith | 09 June 2009

    Thanks John!

  4. Karen James | 09 June 2009

    I can’t believe I missed this. THanks for writ­ing it up, though — I almost feel like I was there!

  5. Clare D | 09 June 2009

    Aha, this makes it much more read­able. A Twit­ter land­mark, I think! Very excit­ing.

  6. Paul Halpern | 09 June 2009

    Wow, sounds like you’ve made Twit­ter his­to­ry. Amaz­ing that he tweet­ed back. I would cer­tain­ly be shocked if some­one offi­cial respond­ed to any­thing I wrote. Inter­est­ing dia­logue.

    I can imag­ine a new tele­vi­sion series emerg­ing from this: a com­bi­na­tion of the clas­sic series “Yes Min­is­ter” and “The Pris­on­er” along with ele­ments of a mod­ern inter­ac­tive real­i­ty series. It would be called “Yes Sci­ence Min­is­ter” (changed in the sec­ond sea­son to “Yes Sci­ence and Defence Pro­cure­ment Min­is­ter”)

    I pic­ture some­thing like this:

    A vin­tage Lotus Sev­en race­car zooms through the streets of Lon­don, wind­ing its way at top speed past famil­iar land­marks. The dri­ver looks very deter­mined. Near White­hall the car enters a tun­nel. The dri­ver exits the vehi­cle and walks down a long mys­te­ri­ous cor­ri­dor. He pass­es sev­er­al mis­sile silos and then final­ly enters a small cir­cu­lar room.

    Sud­den­ly the door clos­es behind him and a chair ris­es from the floor. Sit­ting in the chair is the Prime Min­is­ter. The PM speaks:

    PM: Why did you resign? We need infor­ma­tion! Infor­ma­tion!

    Dri­ver: I beg your par­don, sir, but I didn’t resign. I am very loy­al. That’s why I raced over here.

    PM: You didn’t resign? I’m sor­ry… I just assumed… Every­one else has quit … In that case, as we are a bit short of staff, may I inter­est you in a new com­bined port­fo­lio: sci­ence and defence pro­cure­ment.

    (Aside to the audi­ence) Now the part you’ve all been wait­ing for: the inter­ac­tive por­tion of the pro­gramme. I urge view­ers at home to phone in or tweet your opin­ions about this move. Our tweet staff and min­is­ters are on call. Don’t be shy! We are the par­ty of the peo­ple after all.

  7. PD Smith | 10 June 2009

    That’s bril­liant Paul! You’re clear­ly a very per­cep­tive observ­er of the British polit­i­cal scene. Indeed, it would­n’t sur­prise me if this comes true soon­er than you think…!

  8. PD Smith | 10 June 2009

    BTW, for oth­er views of what hap­pened see the fol­low­ing blogs:

    Times Online

    The Great Beyond (Nature)

    2020 Sci­ence

    I’m a Sci­en­tist Get Me Out of Here

    Just a The­o­ry

    The Sci­en­tif­ic Activist

  9. Peter Rowlett | 10 June 2009

    “The Man from the Min­istries”, pre­sum­ably 😉

    Inter­est­ing post. I had a slight­ly scary moment a few months ago with “Lord Drayson is now fol­low­ing you on Twit­ter”. “What? Who? Eek!”

  10. Just A Theory » DIUS, bias and twitter to the defence… | 10 June 2009

    […] yes­ter­day on twit­ter. One of the con­trib­u­tors to the online dia­logue has a help­ful run­down of it here. And as my col­league Col­in Stu­art (@skyponderer) tweet­ed, “Hats off for the chance for […]

  11. Jesse Wells | 11 June 2009

    The “Silos” he was refer­ring to are not the mis­sile bear­ing kind, but a type of social struc­ture that often blocks com­mu­ni­ca­tion and the gain­ing of results in orga­ni­za­tions.

    Think of it in terms of the peo­ple or per­son in con­trol of each “silo” believ­ing that they know best, because their work is the most impor­tant. So they ignore or even active­ly work against the goals of the oth­er iso­lat­ed “silos”.

    http://www.conversationsmatter.org/2008/06/10/the-impact-of-organizational-silos-on-social-media/

    This is a large part of the rea­son Cal­i­for­ni­a’s state gov­ern­ment is so messed up, believe me, this Yan­kee saw it from the inside.

  12. PD Smith | 11 June 2009

    Thanks for that — very help­ful. I have to admit I was being a bit cheeky there…!

  13. Michael | 16 June 2009

    I can vir­tu­al­ly see him sit­ting in a bor­ing meet­ing of the sci­ence com­mit­tee, or of the musi­cal chairs cab­i­net, hap­pi­ly tweet­ing away. The impor­tant thing to know about him is though, that as a co-founder of Pow­der­ject, he got extreme­ly lucky — with­out ever reach­ing its orig­i­nal goal (bring­ing nee­dle-less injec­tion to mar­ket) the com­pa­ny made its founders incred­i­bly wealthy. So he can very hap­pi­ly indulge in his plea­sures from car rac­ing to tweet­ing, from sup­port­ing sci­ence to buy­ing bat­tle­ships for the gov­ern­ment, safe in the knowl­edge that he does­n’t actu­al­ly have to work ever again. what a lucky b******.

  14. PD Smith | 17 June 2009

    Yes, lucky indeed. Although if I had as much mon­ey as he does, I can think of bet­ter things to do with my time than sit­ting in Cab­i­net meet­ings! I guess it’s all about pow­er though…

  15. WeBlogScience » Blog Archive » SciCom Links 23/6/09 | 23 June 2009

    […] » Lord Drayson engages with the mass­es on Twit­ter » Just a The­o­ry; 2020 Sci­ence; I’m a Sci­en­tist; PD Smith […]

  16. Luis Sancho | 04 July 2009

    Well it seems to me very con­se­quen­tial, 2/3rds of sci­en­tif­ic bud­gets go to physics world­wide and 2/3rds of physics research is on weapons, now dis­guised of ‘peace­ful research’ and ‘reli­gious mar­ket­ing’ such as CERN look­ing for the God’s par­ti­cle, aka hig­gs, which is in fact the already found top quark as per nam­bu.
    In oth­er words a hoax, rel­ic of the old mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al com­plex of ‘atom­ic can­nons’, a quark can­non that after the dumb hole made at haifa which did­nt evap­o­rate, will prob­a­bly do black holes that wont evap­o­rate… all this and more…
    not to bore… makes very rea­son­able mr. Drayson’s posi­tion
    carpe diem