Nordic governments ponder benefits of expert input

The Nordic countries are increasingly using academic experts as members of government-appointed committees mandated to advise on research into economic, societal and environmental issues.

The extent to which this influences research policy issues, and political and strategic government choices, may depend on whether the appointments are short term and ad hoc or part of a long-term strategy for governing research policy.

The rector of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Professor Harriet Wallberg-Henriksson, last week suggested in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter that Denmark could serve as a model for Swedish research.

“Long-term investments in research are the key for successful research,” she said. “Swedish research is suffering from splitting and short-term measures.”

Danish reforms involving university mergers, reorganisation of the ministry and a coupling of research and innovation policy are now producing results, Wallberg-Henriksson said.

An analysis by the bibliometric group at the Karolinska Institute in June showed that from 1995-2011, Denmark had more research articles ranked among the world’s top 5% than the UK and Sweden.

Last year University World News reported findings from the Nordic research coordination organisation Nordforsk that Danish researchers are cited 27% more frequently than the world average, compared with 13% for Sweden, 11% for Iceland, 8% for Norway and 5% for Finland.

Long-term strategy needed

Wallberg-Henriksson wrote in the context of ongoing work on the Swedish government’s research White Paper for the next four years, to be presented in early 2013: “In Denmark the government has appointed a permanent research-political council, independent of the political parties, universities, or research councils.

“The council is mandated to work out strategies for research and innovation for considerably longer periods than four years.”

In Scandinavia, Finland and Denmark have established long-term government-appointed research and innovation councils. Finland’s includes the participation of the prime minister, up to six other ministers and six high-level research experts.

In contrast, Sweden and Norway use a combination of short-term advisory boards for specific mandated research-related issues, and policy advice worked out in research councils.

Norwegian Minister of Trade and Industry Trond Giske has appointed members of the Norwegian Technology Board (NTB) to advise on future opportunities in new technology, including IT, biotechnology and gene technology, starting on 16 August.

Established in 1999, the NTB is an independent body with a broad range of tasks related to assessment, counselling, dissemination and public debate on the opportunities and consequences of new technology. It has 14 members, most of them high-level academic experts.

The Swedish government last year appointed the Commission on the Future, headed by Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt with party leaders in government and nine members representing different areas of Swedish society, supported by a secretariat of eight full-time staff.

Their mandate is to make recommendations on the future of Sweden with regard to immigration, integration and work, and “to minimise social exclusion, and strengthen the collective spirit that defines Sweden”.

The commission will also consider strategies for coping with the downsides of globalisation and ensure sustainable and green growth, linking these processes to research, higher education and innovation before the summer of 2013.

Academics and experts respond

Daniel Guhr, managing director of Illuminate Consulting Group, said most European countries operate with expert-driven science and technology research policy mechanisms. A key differentiator is how effective the interplay is between scientists and politicians.

“Politics, especially on wedge issues, can lead to bad science policies, and scientists can occasionally forget that societies have a legitimate expectation of affordable and effective research.

“Scandinavia has historically done well with regard to research and education performance based on a highly integrated but also occasionally fairly static policy model. Whether this approach will yield the best possible results going forward remains to be seen.”

Professor Anders Flodström, of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and a board member of the European Institute of Technology, said perceptions of the value of research, especially publicly financed research, would change.

Currently, value is determined by how much the research is seen as ground-breaking, as perceived by researchers and measured by publications and citations in peer-reviewed journals.

“In the future the value will be more connected to the impact of the research from societal and industrial and economic growth viewpoints,” he said. “Today jobs change much faster than education and if we are going to benefit from more innovation we need new people with the right skills."

While Sweden is rated number one in Europe on innovation, this is based on input indicators, such as research funding, not on output or impact indicators.

“I like the impact approach,” Flodström said. "It also gives a natural role to social sciences and humanities, because we all know that when it comes to many of mankind’s challenges, they are often in more need of social or human innovations than technology.”

Professor Matthias Kaiser, director of the centre for the study of sciences and the humanities at the University of Bergen, said preparation of science and technology policies through the active involvement of scientific and technological experts is common practice in all Nordic countries. It is also customary for draft policy papers to be subjected to broad public hearings.

Furthermore, all Nordic countries have a range of more or less independent advisory bodies that routinely offer advice. Despite this, final priorities are set through political processes.

Professor Sverker Sörlin, who was responsible for setting up the Stockholm Royal Institute of Technology’s environmental humanities laboratory, said there was a strong tradition of involving scientists in the strategic planning of publicly funded research in the Nordic countries, possibly more than in most European countries.

“It is also clear that politicians have always used their prerogative to take the final decision, and also to choose what issues to discuss with their advisors. There seems now to be a growing interest in a more long-term planning.”

Kaiser said it was important to note that the involvement of larger segments of the public is also widespread in Nordic countries, although perhaps more so in Denmark and Norway. Thus, science and technology are not restricted to high-level experts. The Norwegian Board of Technology in particular is required to seek input from the public.

“Ideally one would envisage a balanced dialogue between politics – that is decision-makers – experts and the public,” he said. “However, in my view the strong interest groups from diverse sectors in society still have a very dominating role, very much like in other European countries.”

Sörlin added it was crucial to insist on the democratic foundation of research and development policy, as with any other policy.

“However, this sphere of policy is special and needs to be long term and informed by strategic thinking about society's need for knowledge.

“For example, if the popularity of and confidence in research among the general population should rule, all research money would go to cancer and virtually nothing to the humanities and the social sciences. In that sense, we need expertise to deal with the issues.

“Precisely because of this, it is in fact good if long-term planning is carried out by a quite independent agency, which could then present its thinking to politicians. It would also spread responsibility for research and development to more parts of the government than the current situation when the department of education holds the strings to the research purse, which is the case in all Nordic countries, except perhaps Finland.”

Guhr doubted that participatory models accurately reflect current societies and their future needs. Most science and technology policy committees did not include young entrepreneurs or rising young scientists. As such, they run the inherent danger of representing yesterday's societal, research and innovation structures.

Said Guhr: “When setting policy, governance structures are often as important as policy design.”

Sörlin believes universities should be much more active as policy-makers. They have a tendency to lobby only for their own good.

“Ideally, universities should take on the role of saying interesting things about higher education, research and innovation and related issues, regardless of whether it is in their own special interest or not. That would enhance their respect in society, which has been waning in recent years.”

Source: University World News

Ecuador grants asylum to Assange, angering Britain

Ecuador granted political asylum to WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange on Thursday, a day after it said Britain had threatened to raid the Ecuadorean embassy in London to arrest the former hacker. By Mohammed Abbas and Eduardo Garcia.

Britain has said it is determined to extradite him to Sweden, where he is accused of rape and sexual assault. Assange fears he will ultimately be sent to the United States which is furious that his WikiLeaks website has leaked hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic and military cables.

Ecuador's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said his country feared for the safety of the Australian, who had lodged an asylum request with President Rafael Correa, a self-declared enemy of "corrupt" media and U.S. "imperialism".

Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague said that London would not allow Assange safe passage out of the country.

Patino told a news conference in Quito that Assange's extradition to a third country without proper guarantees was probable, and that legal evidence showed he would not get a fair trial if eventually transferred to the United States.

"This is a sovereign decision protected by international law. It makes no sense to surmise that this implies a breaking of relations (with Britain)," he said.

Even after Thursday's decision Assange's fate is still far from clear: Britain has said it could strip the Ecuadorean embassy of its diplomatic status, which would expose him to immediate arrest by the British authorities.

"The United Kingdom does not recognise the principle of diplomatic asylum," Hague said. "There is no ... threat here to storm the embassy."

Hague said the impasse could go on for a considerable time.

Assange has been holed up inside Ecuador's embassy in central London for eight weeks since he lost a legal battle to avoid extradition to Sweden.

WikiLeaks said Assange would give a live statement in front of the Ecuadorian embassy on Sunday, although it was unclear whether he would risk arrest by venturing out of the building or would simply appear at a window or by a video-link.

In a statement posted earlier by WikiLeaks on its Twitter page, Assange said Ecuador's decision was "a historic victory".

"It was not Britain or my home country, Australia, that stood up to protect me from persecution, but a courageous, independent Latin American nation."

EMBASSY PROTEST

Britain has said it could use a little-known piece of legislation from 1987, introduced in the wake of the shooting of a British police officer outside the Libyan embassy in London, to remove the Ecuador embassy's diplomatic status.

The Ecuadorean government has bristled at the warning: its foreign minister said Britain was threatening Ecuador with a "hostile and intolerable act", comparing the action to Iran's storming of Britain's Tehran embassy in 2011.

"I don't think they will dare to infringe international law ... Diplomatic headquarters cannot be broken into, we can't imagine that happening," Patino told the state-run news website El Ciudadano after the announcement.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Washington did not intend to get involved in whether Assange should receive asylum in Ecuador.

"This is an issue between the Ecuadoreans, the Brits, the Swedes," she said. Asked whether Assange faced persecution in the United States, she said: "With regard to the charge that the U.S. was intent on persecuting him, I reject that completely."

Outside the Ecuadorean embassy, supporters relayed the announcement about his asylum request over a loudspeaker to cheers and clapping from protesters.

A Reuters reporter saw at least three protesters being dragged away by police after tussles with police before the decision was announced.

It was unclear how long Assange could stay in the small embassy - housed on the ground floor of an apartment block - which is under 24-hour surveillance by British police.

His mother, Christine Assange, told Reuters her son was "geared up for the fight". She said: "He knows that he's got justice and right on his side. He's done nothing wrong, nobody in the world has charged him."

Britain's threat to withdraw diplomatic status from the Ecuadorean embassy also drew criticism from one of its own former diplomats.

"If we live in a world where governments can arbitrarily revoke immunity and go into embassies, then the life of our diplomats and their ability to conduct normal business in places like Moscow where I was and North Korea becomes close to impossible," Britain's former ambassador to Moscow, Tony Brenton, told the BBC.

SEX CRIME ALLEGATIONS

Swedish prosecutors want to question Assange over accusations of rape and sexual assault made by two female former WikiLeaks supporters in 2010 but have not yet charged him.

The lawyer for the two Swedish women who made the allegations said his clients deserved justice.

"It's an abuse of the asylum instrument, the purpose of which is to protect people from persecution and torture if sent back to one's country of origin," Claes Borgstrom told Reuters.

"It's not about that here. He doesn't risk being handed over to the United States for torture or the death penalty. He should be brought to justice in Sweden."

Assange says he fears Sweden could send him on to the United States. His supporters have said U.S. authorities want to punish him for publishing diplomatic cables which laid bare Washington's power-brokering across the globe.

"The reaction he has is that he wants to underline that this (asylum) is a measure that is aimed at the U.S. and not against Sweden," said Per E Samuelsson, one of Assange's lawyers.

"He has sought political asylum in order to eliminate the risk that he will spend the rest of his life in prison in the United States," he said.

Ecuador said it had tried to get assurances from Britain and Sweden that Assange could not be extradited to a third country but that no assurance was given. Under European law, neither Britain nor Sweden could extradite anyone to a country where they might face the death penalty.

Source: Daily Maverick

CIA rendition flights stopped by Swedish military

An acute diplomatic crisis broke out between the United States and Sweden in 2006 when Swedish authorities put a stop to CIA rendition flights, according to the latest revelation from Wikileaks.

Daily Svenska Dagbladet wrote Sunday that Swedish Military Intelligence posed as airport personnel and boarded one of the two controversial extraordinary rendition flights during a stopover at Stockholm’s Arlanda International Airport. The suspected prisoner transfers were confirmed.

A few days before the incident US charge d’affaires at the American Embassy in Stockholm, Steven V. Noble, was summoned by the Swedish Foreign Ministry and questioned about the planned stopover. The Swedish military also set down rules for stopovers.

Steven V. Noble wrote in cables reveled by WkiLeaks that the Swedish government reacted strongly because rules had not been followed.

A spokesperson from Säpo, Swedish police Intelligence Service, confirmed parts the newspaper report, adding that there have been no more extraordinary rendition flights landing in Sweden since.

The U.S. rendition of two Egyptians from Sweden in 2001 was exposed a year later by an investigative TV pogramme and slammed by Swedish officials, international organizations and human rights groups after reports the prisoners were abused.

Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al-Zery, two Egyptians who had been seeking asylum in Sweden, were arrested by Swedish police in December 2001. They were taken to Bromma airport in Stockholm, had their clothes cut from their bodies, suppositories inserted in their anuses and in diapers, overall, handcuffs and chains put on an executive jet with American registration N379P with a crew of masked men.

They were flown to Egypt, where they were imprisoned, beaten, and tortured according to reports by Swedish investigative pogramme "Kalla fakta". The Swedish ambassador visited them only six weeks later.

In 2008 AL Zery was awarded 500 000 dollars in damages by the Swedish government for the wrongful treatment he received in Sweden and the subsequent torture in Egypt.

Source: The Swedish Wire

Assange said to be hiding in Britain

An international manhunt is under way for WikiLeaks supremo Julian Assange, who is believed to be hiding in Britain. Interpol issued a “red notice” for the internet whistleblower who is wanted for questioning by police in Sweden after two women accused him of rape and sexual molestation. The 39-year-old Australian was added to the worldwide wanted list amid growing fury in Washington at the mass release of more than 250 000 classified US communiques.

Mark Stephens, Assange’s British-based lawyer, has questioned the timing of Interpol’s warrant, saying his client was being persecuted. But On Wednesday Scotland Yard launched a probe into the fugitive’s whereabouts after it was claimed he was holed up in a secret location in Britain. If he is held in the UK, he could face proceedings to extradite him to Sweden.

Assange lives a rootless life, has hardly any possessions and uses his Australian passport to stay with friends in various countries. Prosecutors in Sweden want to question Assange over alleged attacks on two women during a visit to Stockholm to give a lecture to the Social Democratic Party in August. He is accused of attacking one woman in Stockholm and then sexually assaulting another woman in the town of Enkoping, about 60km from the capital, three days later.

Stephens said his client had repeatedly offered to meet Swedish investigators either at the Swedish embassy in London or a UK police station. “The allegations against him are false and without basis,” he added. “In 28 years of practice I have never come across a prosecutor, whether in the third world or even in a totalitarian regime, where there has been such casual disregard by a prosecutor for their obligations. “Given that Sweden is a civilised country I am reluctantly forced to conclude that this is a persecution and not a prosecution.” He highlighted the fact that the Interpol alert was issued just two days after the WikiLeaks first release of US diplomatic cables.

An adviser to Canada’s prime minister Stephen Harper has suggested Assange could be assassinated. Professor Tom Flanagan said Barack Obama should “put out a contract and maybe use a drone or something” to rid the world of the Australian. Although he later rowed back from the remarks, it shows the growing anger in North America. Former US presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said Bradley Manning, the US army private thought to be behind the leak, should be executed. Manning is in military detention.

In other news, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Wednesday hit out at a “slanderous” leaked cable that described him as Batman and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev as the comic book hero’s sidekick Robin. Putin - widely believed to be the real power broker in the Kremlin - took exception to America’s portrayal of him as being the one in the political tandem who called the shots. Speaking to CNN host Larry King last night, Putin said the caped crusader portrayal was “aimed to slander one of us”. It is the most high-profile condemnation of the leaks. The combative Russian leader hit back after one secret US document released by Wikileaks described him as an “alpha-dog” and another said Russia was a “virtual mafia state”. He said US Defence Secretary Robert Gates was “deeply misled” in saying, according to the cables, that “Russian democracy has disappeared”.

Source: IoL

SOVIET ANNOUNCES NUCLEAR ACCIDENT AT ELECTRIC PLANT

The Soviet Union announced today that there had been an accident at a nuclear power plant in the Ukraine and that ''aid is being given to those affected.'' The severity of the accident, which spread discernable radioactive material over Scandinavia, was not immediately clear. But the terse statement, distributed by the Tass press agency and read on the evening television news, suggested a major accident.

The phrasing also suggested that the problem had not been brought under full control at the nuclear plant, which the Soviet announcement identified as the Chernobyl station. It is situated at the new town of Pripyat, near Chernobyl and 60 miles north of Kiev. The announcement, the first official disclosure of a nuclear accident ever by the Soviet Union, came hours after Sweden, Finland and Denmark reported abnormally high radioactivity levels in their skies. The readings initially led those countries to think radioactive material had been leaking from one of their own reactors.

The Soviet announcement, made on behalf of the Council of Ministers, after Sweden had demanded information, said in its entirety: ''An accident has occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant as one of the reactors was damaged. Measures are being taken to eliminate the consequences of the accident. Aid is being given to those affected. A Government commission has been set up.'' The mention of a commission of inquiry reinforced indications that the accident was a serious one. United States experts said the accident probably posed no danger outside the Soviet Union. But in the absence of detailed information, they said it would be difficult to determine the gravity, and they said environmental damage might conceivably be disastrous. The Chernobyl plant, with four 1,000-megawatt reactors in operation, is one of the largest and oldest of the 15 or so Soviet civilian nuclear stations. Nuclear power has been a matter of high priority in the Soviet Union, and capacity has been going into service as fast as reactors can be built. Pripyat, where the Chernobyl plant is situated, is a settlement of 25,000 to 30,000 people that was built in the 1970's along with the station. It is home to construction workers, service personnel and their families. A British reporter returning from Kiev reported seeing no activity in the Ukrainian capital that would suggest any alarm. No other information was immediately available from the area. But reports from across Scandinavia, areas more than 800 miles to the north, spoke of increases in radioactivity over the last 24 hours.

Scandinavian authorities said the radioactivity levels did not pose any danger, and it appeared that only tiny amounts of radioactive material had drifted over Scandinavia. All of it was believed to be in the form of two relatively innocuous gases, xenon and krypton. Scandinavian officials said the evidence pointed to an accident in the Ukraine. In Sweden, an official at the Institute for Protection Against Radiation said gamma radiation levels were 30 to 40 percent higher than normal. He said that the levels had been abnormally high for 24 hours and that the release seemed to be continuing. In Finland, officials were reported to have said readings in the central and northern areas showed levels six times higher than normal. The Norwegian radio quoted pollution control officials as having said that radioactivity in the Oslo area was 50 percent higher. Since morning, Swedish officials had focused on the Soviet Union as the probable source of the radioactive material, but Swedish Embassy officials here said the Soviet authorities had denied knowledge of any problem until the Government announcement was read on television at 9 P.M.

The first alarm was raised in Sweden when workers arriving at the Forsmark nuclear power station, 60 miles north of Stockholm, set off warnings during a routine radioactivity check. The plant was evacuated, Swedish officials said. When other nuclear power plants reported similar happenings, the authorities turned their attention to the Soviet Union, from which the winds were coming. A Swedish diplomat here said he had telephoned three Soviet Government agencies - the State Committee for Utilization of Atomic Energy, the Ministry of Electric Power and the three-year-old State Committee for Safety in the Atomic Power Industry -asking them to explain the high readings over Scandinavia. All said they had no explanation, the diplomat said. Before the Soviet acknowledgment, the Swedish Minister of Energy, Birgitta Dahl, said that whoever was responsible for the spread of radioactive material was not observing international agreements requiring warnings and exchanges of information about accidents.

Tass, the Soviet Government press agency, said the Chernobyl accident was the first ever in a Soviet nuclear power plant. It was the first ever acknowledged by the Russians, but Western experts have reported at least two previous mishaps. In 1957, a nuclear waste dump believed related to weapons production was reported to have resulted in a chemical reaction in the Kasli areas of the Urals, causing damage to the environment and possibly fatalities. In 1974, a steam line exploded in the Shevchenko nuclear breeder plant in Kazakhstan, but no radioactive material is believed to have been released in that accident. Soviet authorities, in giving the development of nuclear electricity generation a high priority, have said that nuclear power is safe. In the absence of citizens' opposition to nuclear power, there has been virtually no questioning of the program. The terse Soviet announcement of the Chernobyl accident was followed by a Tass dispatch noting that there had been many mishaps in the United States, ranging from Three Mile Island outside Harrisburg, Pa., to the Ginna plant near Rochester. Tass said an American antinuclear group registered 2,300 accidents, breakdowns and other faults in 1979. The practice of focusing on disasters elsewhere when one occurs in the Soviet Union is so common that after watching a report on Soviet television about a catastrophe abroad, Russians often call Western friends to find out whether something has happened in the Soviet Union.

Construction of the Chernobyl plant began in the early 1970's and the first reactor was commissioned in 1977. Work has been lagging behind plans. In April 1983, the Ukrainian Central Committee chastised the Chernobyl plant, along with the Rovno nuclear power station at Kuznetsovsk, for ''inferior quality of construction and installation work and low operating levels.'' Donald T. Regan, the White House chief of staff, said today that the United States was willing to provide medical and scientific assistance to the Soviet Union in connection with the nuclear accident but so far there had been no such request.

Source: New York Times