Dan Hicks

Dan Hicks is a postdoctoral researcher in the Data Science Initiative at the University of California, Davis. His research focuses on “public scientific controversies”—cases like climate change, vaccines, or genetically modified crops, where there is both technical and political disagreement involving scientists and/or members of the general public.

The following interview was transcribed from spoken word and edited for clarity. All views and opinions are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of any other organization or entity.

 

1. What type(s) of civically engaged or public philosophy work do you do?

I am a philosopher of science and science and technology studies (STS) researcher. I got my PhD in 2012 at Notre Dame, spent three years in various postdoc positions, and then spent two years (2015-2017) in the US federal government as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Technology Policy Fellow. This fellowship places PhDs, primarily STEM PhDs, in the government for up to two years. I spent my first year working with a toxicology research program at the Environmental Protection Agency, and my second year working with a robotics program at the National Science Foundation.

I was hired in the government as a researcher. Much of my personal research deals with the role of values in science—but it’s not like I had my research but also this other thing, my day job. The work that I was doing for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and then the National Science Foundation (NSF), it was my research. Specifically, I was drawing on ideas from science and values, from STS, from feminist philosophy, to help think about what I was seeing in government. What does scientific integrity mean? How are government scientists and regulators pursuing different ends? How are regulatory scientists managing inductive risk? How do regulators manage proxy scientific disputes?

Day to day, I spent a lot of time reading reports and media coverage of my host programs to try to understand things like the concerns of the scientific community about new toxicology research, or how people were thinking about robotics as an area of emerging controversy. I also observed interactions between government scientists and regulators, and high-level policy meetings. I wrote internal reports describing my analysis, and turned a few of them into journal articles. I also did a lot of quantitative analysis, looking at the research portfolios of my host programs.

If I had stayed in environmental policy—or if I go back to it in the future—I would have started to do more substantial work on chemical safety testing and policy. Not many people are trained to think about the politics of science, and it’s a perspective the EPA badly needs. Unfortunately, my time ran out back in August 2017, and the current administration is more interested in dismantling EPA than bringing in new kinds of expertise.

 

2. Give an example of a successful project.

This is a little tricky, because my time was so limited. It’s really hard to do anything in government in just a year. And there have been a lot of changes at EPA, so a lot of the things I did kind of evaporated.

But here’s one example. The EPA has external science advisory panels. I read reports from three of these panels—300 pages of technical criticism of the research done by my host office. And I created a taxonomy of the different kinds of scientific concerns. I found evidence that certain kinds of concerns were going to come up, always, even if they weren’t relevant. For example, these new methods are based on test tube studies, not live animals. So there are a lot of concerns floating around about extrapolating from test tubes to organisms. Reviewers would raise these concerns, even if they were asked about something like assay validation. I suggested that EPA could direct panelists’ attention: “Talk about this irrelevant issue now, get it out of your system, and then let’s focus on the relevant questions.” I wrote up this report, and presented it to a few different offices, right before I left the EPA. This report isn’t publishable as a journal article. But I consider it a success because it developed a useful framework for advisory panel discussions.

 

3. What motivates you to do this work?

Like a lot of philosophers of science, I came into philosophy late. I was a math and political science major and even started grad school in math, and only then decided that I wanted to do a philosophy PhD. So I’ve never really seen philosophy to be valuable in itself. It’s always been a way for me to pursue other goods, personal but especially political. I identified as a socialist a decade before I identified as a philosopher. And if you remember Karl Marx’s eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, you know what socialists think of the value of philosophy. Feminist philosophy has also been formative, and feminist philosophy has always been driven by feminist activism.

There are advantages to being outside of academia. It’s not impossible to have an academic career that’s also socially engaged, but it’s hard to combine the two: The incentives don’t line up, especially in traditionalist fields like philosophy. Especially the kind of work that I do, which is very politically engaged, empirical, more and more quantitative. You know, “Why is this philosophy?” I have more important things to worry about than “why is this philosophy?”—fascism, environmental injustice, the housing crisis here in northern California. If I someday find a philosophy department that lets me work on those problems, then great. There are also certain advantages to being in academia. But it’s not the only place I can do the work that really matters to me.

 

4. In what ways does the work inform your research (or vice-versa)?

A lot of the people at EPA are scientists, and most scientists don’t have the conceptual tools to even ask questions about values in science. Recent PhDs, especially, mostly work with the value-free ideal and the forcing function of knowledge. Their thinking is typically, “If we do unbiased science then everyone will agree on the best policy.” Or more cynically, “We’ll do unbiased science but then the lawyers take over.” There will be moments when more sophisticated ways of thinking show up: Inductive risk is a good example here—I’ve encountered that more than once in risk assessment guidelines. But scientists don’t have a name for inductive risk, and they mostly haven’t thought through the implications. So it’s just a momentary flash of insight, you’ll get something inconsistent on the next page. But if I’m in the room, I can point it out, name it, talk about the implications. My training in philosophy of science gives me a distinct, important perspective on how science and policy fit together.

 

5. If someone wanted to take on civically engaged work like yours, what steps or resources would you recommend?

If you want to do science policy specifically, then it’s a good idea to get at least a master’s degree in STEM. Without the right degree, you won’t even be able to apply for certain kinds of jobs. This is less of a requirement for NGOs, but often they’re still looking for “scientists,” and won’t take you seriously without a master’s. Similarly, if you’re interested in, say, international development, a degree in economics, politics, or law would probably be helpful.

Beyond the credentials, policy fellowships are a great way to get in the door. Besides AAAS, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) has a policy fellowship that’s open to humanities PhDs. AAAS is mostly for STEM and science policy, ACLS is designed for humanities. There’s also something called the Presidential Management Fellowship, which in some ways is better than AAAS or ACLS but is more competitive. Thirty years ago, the APA had a policy fellowship, but that only lasted for a few years.

If you’re reading this and Trump is still in office, you might think DC is a pretty dismal place to be right now. And that’s true, but only to an extent. The resistance to Trump isn’t just outside the government. There are members of Congress and staff in the agencies who are working hard to do good. They need your help. There’s also a lot of exciting activity at the state level, especially in places like California and Massachusetts, precisely because of the way the federal government is right now. California has its own policy fellowship, inspired by AAAS. You might see if your state has one.

 

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