Scientific Discourse and the Common Good: how can the scientific method promote democratic values? a discussion with Jörg Lehmann

What are the conditions for success in science? The heavyweights of scientific progress are celebrated as unique geniuses whose breakthroughs were driven by their individual quests for knowledge, which went on to benefit the whole of society. In contrast, some other historical figures whose names live on in our institutions, public spaces and collective consciousness, despite being tarred by their involvement in past atrocities like the transatlantic slave trade, are said to have been products of their environment, hardly to be blamed for conforming to the standards of their time. Teaching and learning in many disciplines revolves around the revered names of pioneers, reducing colleagues and conditions crucial to their success to the background, and producing a distorted image of what, and who, achievement looks like. Open science seeks to promote practices of collaboration and sharing to optimise the benefits of research to society and some of these practices are changing the face of scientific progress. If we accept that an AI, rather than an individual scientist or even a team of collaborators, is responsible for breaking new ground, where does this take our thinking about how to recognise, value and stimulate contributions to knowledge? Might a more nuanced understanding of the principles of the scientific method re-centre the idea of the common good in scientific discourse, helping to reform approaches to the pursuit of knowledge to reflect democratic ideals, rather than power grabs for intellectual property?