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countries and produce fewer inequalities as just indicated? This is a question
that has increasingly occupied social scientists.
The knowledge network approach advocated in the Human Development
Report assumes an appreciation for joint learning. Joint learning means:
common authorship of the insights obtained. Some examples may clarify
this point.
When Dutch soil scientists in Vietnam discovered a certain type of soil
deterioration, they described it and were the first to publish the findings.
When I asked how they had found out about the phenomenon, it became
clear they had followed a farmer’s tip about the process. They had described
the process, not discovered it. Was the farmer’s name included among the
authors of the publication?
When a Dominican plant pathologist discovered the incidence of a blue
mould on tobacco in the late 1970s, her peers and the public widely (and
rightly) hailed her. When I asked how she had found out about it, she acknowledged
the tips she had received from the growers. She had ‘certified’
the disease, but had not discovered it.
These examples are indicative of a more general phenomenon: how to
acknowledge the contribution of non-professional scientists to such
knowledge networks. In traditional science the case is simple: the scientist
or group of scientists who first publish can claim primacy. The technologist
who first patents an invention can claim the proceeds. In the emerging mode
of knowledge production this becomes much more complicated. Especially
for the type of knowledge that is the subject of international co-operation
arrangements.
This problem needs to be tackled for both pragmatic and ethical reasons. If
science is not a world unto itself any more and involves non-professionals,
then these non-professionals have a right to profit from the prestige or the
profits. This argument applies to the soil scientist in Vietnam, but also to the
pharmaceutical company that has engaged in ‘gene hunting’ and has appropriated
a particular substance through the involvement of tropical farmers.
It is striking to note how little formal science has acknowledged these
types of insights, which are often gained through informal knowledge networks.
The phenomenon has been well known throughout the history of
science, the distinction between ‘scientist’ and ‘dilettante’ being a fairly recent
one.
Learned societies would have both categories among their membership,
and stimulate their scientific curiosity. Anne Record (1994) studied the contributions
of so-called artisan-entomologists, zoologists and botanists in early
19th century Britain. She shows that these artisans, or working men, had
extensive correspondence networks. Their letters provide “tangible evidence
of their scientific skill and signalled acceptance by a wider community of
their right to practise natural history”. With the professionalisation of science,
distancing has occurred between the two categories. Therefore, the