For hundreds of years, science has operated with a social contract: science develops knowledge that improves the human condition and expands the range of what is possible while society provides public funds, infrastructure, and institutional support. Sustained investments in research have paid dividends to society, in the form of inventions and discoveries, new technologies, and more innovation in general.
Today, this contract is being strained. Governments are increasingly demanding measurable returns from public investments in research while public trust in institutions is reducing. As a result, science can no longer afford to remain an activity conducted largely for society but without society. The next phase of scientific progress must involve citizens as beneficiaries and taxpayers as well as as partners in deciding which questions science should address and how scientific knowledge should be used.
Patrons of science
Curiosity-driven research often produces unexpected discoveries that eventually transform society. Yet governments, as major patrons of science, are increasingly asserting their right to determine where research money should go. There are legitimate reasons for this. Governments are obligated to resolve national priorities because public resources are finite. But governments misstep when their policy-driven management becomes intrusive.
When funding decisions are mainly influenced by short-term political priorities or economic returns, research areas that are not easily measurable, such as parts of the social sciences, humanities, climate research, and fundamental science, become vulnerable to being seen — unjustifiably — as producing too little bang for the buck. Yes, science must serve society, but science also works better when it retains the intellectual freedom required to challenge prevailing assumptions and explore questions whose value may not be immediately apparent.
Governments, as the patrons, are entitled to establish broad priorities and expectations, but they should not use science policy as an excuse to politically micromanage research. But the answer is also not to isolate science further from society. Instead, the answer is in the middle: scientists must build a broader constituency for science by bringing society into the research process.
To achieve this, scientists need compelling narratives about why research matters, and allies across communities, civil society, industry, education, and public institutions.
What citizens know
Inviting citizens into research does not mean replacing scientific expertise with popular opinion. A scientist trained in epidemiology knows considerably more about disease transmission than the average citizen. A climate scientist understands atmospheric processes in ways that a farmer may not. However, the reverse is also true. A farmer may possess knowledge about changing soil behaviour and crop resilience that a scientist in a laboratory may not. A forest-dwelling community may possess detailed knowledge of medicinal plants, forests, and biodiversity that is absent in formal databases.
Scientific knowledge and community knowledge are different — and they can be complementary. The challenge is to bring them together. This is particularly relevant to a country like India, which is one of the world’s most biologically and culturally diverse countries. Indeed, India is too geographically vast and ecologically diverse for professional scientists alone to be able to understand every landscape by themselves. A network of citizens can provide observations across locations and seasons that conventional research is not designed to capture. For instance, a school student studying a butterfly or a birdwatcher recording a migratory species can contribute to ecological knowledge. Citizen science can transform the relationship between the public and scientific institutions.
India’s long tradition of community-based conservation reveals another aspect of this argument. Sacred groves, community forests, germplasm conservation, traditional systems of resource management, and so on demonstrate that local communities have often developed sophisticated ways to understand and protect ecosystems. One of the key success metrics in research is observation, which many local communities excel at. So instead of merely entering a village to collect traditional knowledge and leaving with a publication, researchers can, and should, establish long-term partnerships with communities. Local knowledge bearers should participate in framing research questions, identifying species, help interpret the findings, and decide how knowledge is documented and used.
Rebuilding trust
Under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme, citizens from numerous countries participated in developing research priorities. Here, while expert-led foresight exercises tended to emphasise technological advancement, citizens placed greater emphasis on strong communities, health and well-being, education, and local economies. A similar approach in India could have significant implications. Research priorities relating to groundwater, urban pollution, agricultural resilience, coastal erosion, public health, biodiversity, nutrition or climate adaptation, for example, can be developed through structured dialogue among scientists, policymakers, and the most affected communities.
Another compelling reason for citizen participation is trust. Specifically, public trust in governments and institutions is becoming increasingly fragile. Scientists and universities are sometimes portrayed as distant elites disconnected from the concerns of ordinary people. At the same time, misinformation spreads rapidly through social media and emotional narratives can compete successfully with carefully established scientific evidence. The instinctive response is often to communicate more science. But perhaps the deeper problem is a lack of participation and ownership.
People are more likely to support a process when they believe their voices have been heard. They may not agree with every conclusion but they are more likely to accept decisions when the reasoning is transparent and their concerns have been seriously considered. This is particularly important for contentious issues such as climate change, vaccination, genetic modification, artificial intelligence, and biotechnologies. Science cannot promise that every citizen will agree with every scientific conclusion — nor should it. But it can promise a fair opportunity to question, participate, deliberate, and understand.
Humility from scientists
At present, many researchers are trained to design experiments, analyse data, and publish papers but not necessarily to build long-term relationships with communities. That must change. Community engagement should be integrated into research training. Academic recognition should extend beyond publications and citations to include meaningful societal engagement and co-produced research. Funding agencies should also encourage researchers to explain, wherever appropriate, how communities will participate in setting priorities, conducting research, interpreting results and disseminating findings.
To be sure, not every laboratory experiment requires citizen participation. The objective is also not to impose participation mechanically. Public involvement should instead become the default expectation for research with significant societal implications, with researchers explaining why participation is inappropriate when it is not used. Should an emerging technology be deployed rapidly or cautiously? How much privacy should society sacrifice for technological convenience? How should the benefits and risks of artificial intelligence be distributed? How should climate-transition costs be shared? Such questions can benefit enormously from community engagement.
This transformation also requires some humility from scientists. Scientists must learn to listen, be willing to hear uncomfortable questions, acknowledge uncertainties, and recognise the values embedded in their own recommendations. At the same time, the public must recognise that scientific evidence cannot always provide simple answers to complex social questions.
Biju Dharmapalan is the dean, Academic Affairs, Garden City University, Bengaluru, and an adjunct faculty member at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru.