Defending evidence - an interview with Professor Anne Glover

Professor Anne Glover is a Scottish scientist who has had a remarkable decade.

As chief scientific adviser to the European Commission she incurred the wrath of environmentalists by supporting genetically modified crops. 

Then, on the day pan-European researchers successfully landed a probe on a comet last November, her post was controversially axed by incoming president, Jean-Claude Juncker, despite his claim he wanted to “make sure that Commission proposals and activities are based on sound scientific evidence”.

After returning to Aberdeen University as Vice Principal for External Affairs and Dean for Europe, in June Glover was included in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. She tells Holyrood it feels strange being called a dame.

“I think we all have a mental picture of a dame, and mine isn’t someone like me,” she laughs.

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However, when both women and science are poorly represented in honours lists – only five per cent of honours at all levels go to science, engineering and technology – Glover says it is “nice” to see recognition of the value of science. 

“What’s important for me is that at a very high level, the UK is recognising the importance of science, and that matters to other scientists,” she says.
Before her post at the EC, Glover was chief scientific adviser to the Scottish Government, a position currently vacant since her successor, Muffy Calder, stepped down last year.

In the interim, the Scottish Government has been accused of not consulting scientists before making a decision to opt out of European consents for GM crops. The ban would protect Scotland’s “clean, green status” in terms of food production, it said.

Glover says the statement is political. “Of course, governments are perfectly justified in making political statements. Where my concern was is that they implied, in what they said, that GM technology was in some way unproven, and particularly for me, that they described conventional agriculture as being ‘clean and green’. Actually, you have to accept that conventional agriculture in Scotland and elsewhere in the UK has widespread use of agrochemicals, which end up in our water supply, which cost a lot of money to make and to apply, and have a climate impact. I think it’s funny, saying that’s clean and green. I do think by turning our back on innovation in agriculture then we are at risk of being ‘old and dirty’.”

Critics have said the use of GM cannot be guaranteed to be safe, but Glover insists the safety of the technology is backed by a “global scientific consensus”. Younger generations accustomed to technology will be more open to the idea, she says.

“I mean, we grow potatoes in Scotland and we’re a big supplier of seed potatoes globally. Potatoes, to resist late blight, often have to be sprayed 15 times with fungicide during the season, to keep it at bay. Now, you can have a GM potato that does not require you to spray with fungicide. My personal opinion is I’d rather have that potato.”

She says she is disappointed to see a ‘not enough evidence’ line adopted by government, especially by a government she says has valued evidence in the past, such as through the introduction of the ban on smoking in public places. 

The other issue with which the Scottish Government is wrestling with an alleged lack of evidence is the extraction of unconventional gas, but Glover says there is a different “level of maturity” to the evidence base in the two areas. 

Although burning unconventional gas is less polluting than burning coal, it still presents problems to tackling global warming. “My worry is that if we are to maintain an average global temperature rise of just two degrees or below – but I don’t think we’d ever get below two degrees – we need to keep about 80 per cent of all fossil fuel in the ground. That includes unconventional gas.”
There are also apparent attendant risks in the technology, she says. 

“People talk a lot about seismic activity, pollution of water supplies, of aquafers, and fugitive methane release, methane being a very potent greenhouse gas.

“Germany relies almost entirely on aquafer water for its water supply, and has a big industry using its water, namely beer and brewing. For them, you would have to look very carefully, where with a very small level of contamination it might have a severe impact on the brewing industry or the water supply.” 

Any decisions made in Scotland would have to consider where the water supply is coming from and the country’s geology, she suggests. The argument about not having enough evidence, then, is “more legitimate with fracking”.

“It would be so refreshing if scientists, environmental groups and policymakers and politicians could get in a room together and discuss all these issues instead of having shouting matches. It doesn’t sound like rocket science, does it?”

Instead of “dragging science into the political arena” or “blaming science” for the policy on GM crops, Glover suggests a more valid position for government would be to explain the reasoning for the decision, such as a lack of public appetite for the technology. This, she says, would allow citizens to make an informed choice on the matter. 

“It could be ethical, there are lots of reasons governments make decisions, but I feel they’re letting us down. I feel let down as a citizen if they start being not crystal clear about why they’re rejecting the evidence, and they start to blame the evidence.”

Of course, as chief scientific adviser for Scotland, Glover has experience of political decisions as part of the gathering of credible evidence to inform policy.

“If you have a chief scientific adviser in government there’s bound to be interaction with politics. Political decisions will sometimes override evidence, and I can think of many examples, I’ve given you one, where it’s perfectly valid, but what you need to be is honest.”

Could the Scottish Government’s difficulty in attracting a new CSA derive from a murky image around evidence, then? The appointment of members to the Scottish Scientific Advisory Council has also been delayed so the new CSA could have some input.

“I don’t know why they’re having such trouble, I really don’t,” she says, revealing she has just spoken to a peer who was considering applying for the CSA post.

“I said to that person, and I’d repeat it to you, that it was one of the most rewarding things I ever did in my entire life. I loved almost every single minute of the time I was chief scientific adviser in Scotland, because our science is amazing, our community is amazing, and actually, the government were amazing. 

“The civil service, my colleagues there I worked with, I have huge respect for. I had had no idea there are people of quite such quality and commitment working in government on our behalf, the citizens’ behalf. Also, I met many ministers and MSPs and cabinet secretaries and so on whilst I was there, both under the Liberal-Labour coalition, initially for six months and then the SNP government after that, and I always got the feeling with every minister or cabinet secretary I spoke to they understood the value of science, science education in the early stage and they understood it’s something that if it were in our nature, we could justifiably brag about on the world stage.”

That reputation is something over which Glover is clearly very passionate. “I commissioned two reports, and both of them said the impact of the research done in Scotland is number one in the world relative to our GDP. It’s not what people would think. They’d think that must be Germany, or maybe the UK at large, or the USA or something. No. It’s Scotland. It’s unbelievable.”

She predicts the government will not be short of applicants. “I would hope very much government appoints quickly. It does them no credit that it’s taken them this length of time, when Muffy Calder gave I think at least three months’ notice. It’s not so difficult to put an advert out, put together a selection committee and make an appointment.”

While Glover’s findings on the impact of Scottish research were backed up by the results of the last international Research Excellence Framework, funding remains a concern. 

Research and development funding mostly comes from UK-wide research councils, but Scotland receives between 12 and 20 per cent compared to a population share of just eight. However, there is concern among senior academics and MPs in the House of Commons’ science and technology committee that Chancellor George Osborne will cut funding or replace it with loans as part of his spending review at the end of the month. Government departments have been instructed to make cuts of around 30 per cent. 

Glover insists science should be seen as an investment not spend. “We can’t be a successful country if we don’t invest in knowledge generation,” she says.

As an example, she remembers speaking to the vice-president of the car manufacturer Volvo, shortly after the start of the economic downturn in 2008, who told her the company would not cut “a single penny” from their research and development budget. 

“I said, ‘why not, surely you could have made some savings?’ He said, ‘absolutely not. We will get through this recession and Volvo needs to be in a position that we can immediately accelerate off into the future of new development and so on. We want to retain our competitiveness and be successful. For that we need R&D.’”

Glover uses the business agency Scottish Enterprise, of which she is a board member, as an example of how taking risks in investment can grow the economy in the long term. 

“I would argue our successful sustainable economy isn’t going to be built on making cheap widgets, because someone else, somewhere else in the world, will make it cheaper than we do. The thing we have which others find it hard to compete with is the fact we’re awfully smart. We generate the most excellent high-impact knowledge, and that is an incredibly valuable commodity. You have to nurture it, you have to talk about it, you have to support it and you have to invest in it,” she says.

Knowledge generation, of which there is “bucketloads” in Scotland, is translated into new jobs, services and solutions to problems, argues Glover.

“Sometimes when I get talking about it, I get quite frustrated because you hear ‘oh Scotland’s a small country’ but actually, in global terms and in our science, we’re a great big country in terms of the impact we have.”

Glover witnessed how others view Scottish science during her time in Brussels.

“I’d imagined people would have referred to me as ‘this Brit coming over to take up this role’ but they didn’t. They always referred to me as a Scottish scientist, because that means something to them.

“That’s a nice description, to call somebody a Scottish scientist, much better than calling you a Brit, who don’t have such a great reputation in the EU, I’d have to say. People admire us. They know we’re good, yet it’s almost like they know we’re good and are talking about it, but we ignore the fact at home. That’s a little disappointing. We could be a little less modest, I think. It might help.”

Glover comes across as a modest person in herself, though. Asked about the promotion of women in science, something she has been a prominent advocate of, she says she regards herself a “benchmark for normal”, then asks why the statement elicits a laugh.   

“Honestly, I’m dead normal. I like having fun. I do all sorts of things other people do. The point I’m trying to make is I hope a young woman looking at me would think ‘yeah, I could do that if she can do it. She looks perfectly normal. She just really likes what she does,’” she says. 

The “unfortunate barriers” for women, particularly in science, engineering and technology can be tackled by having visible women in prominent positions. “It’s always been my experience if you improve the workplace so it’s friendlier for women, it will be friendlier for men.”

Furthermore it is more than an issue of fairness and equality, she says. “If you take a country like India, the top one per cent of people with the highest IQ in India is more than the entire population of the UK. So if we ignore 50 per cent of our brain capacity in the UK or in Scotland, I don’t know how we’ll compete. We must get the best brains, and that includes the best female brains as well as the best male brains. Diversity adds real strength, and it’s important we do that.”

After having had such prominent and influential positions, worked in Brussels and travelled around Europe, Glover insists coming back to Aberdeen has not been a bit of a comedown. 
“I love being back in Scotland. And on a personal basis, I like living with my husband,” she laughs, revealing when she did make it back she’d be arriving on a Friday evening and leaving again on Sunday morning. “It’s not a weekend. So I now get euphoric on a Friday evening thinking, wow, I’ve got a whole weekend I can do things.”

Support from the University of Aberdeen has been “magnificent” over the last ten years, she says. “I spoke to my principal here at the university before coming back to say, ‘look, I know you said ‘leave of absence’, but that was three years ago. Things change, maybe you don’t have a job for me’, and I said ‘it’s OK, you just need to tell me. Give me six months and I’ll be fine.’ He said ‘absolutely not’, and he said a wonderful thing: ‘If institutions like our great universities in Scotland cannot support people like you to do what you’ve done, and have an impact for all of us, then there’s no point in having such institutions.’ That made me very proud of my university. I’ve spent my whole research career here, and I feel very attached to it, because it really has done an awful lot for me in my whole research career, and then latterly in this rather odd direction that I took.”

Glover’s travelling days are far from over, though, and she reveals she has just spent a week in Ghana with the African Agricultural Technology Foundation, of which she is a trustee. Some of the technology used is genetic modification. When the African population is set to double to 2.4bn by 2050 and around 80 per cent of African farming is done by smallholders, Glover insists GM can be transformational.

Also, the Scottish Government’s position on GM could have “unintended consequences” in an area which regards Scottish science highly, amid “cultural and historic ties”, she warns. “I am sure they did not intend this, but many nations in Africa look to us and say, hang on a minute, Scotland is banning this, maybe we shouldn’t do it. We have the luxury of banning it in Scotland, and they don’t have such a luxury in Africa, yet they are very influenced by our decisions.”

Our relationship with the EU, too, needs to be protected, says Glover, who is on the advisory board for ‘Scientists for the EU’, a campaigning group set up ahead of the referendum on EU membership. 

A Brexit would threaten the funding, partnerships and access to research infrastructure offered by European research initiatives like Horizon 2020, she warns, pointing to the example of Switzerland who were excluded from the European Research Area after narrowly voting to restrict immigration in a referendum last year. 

“Overnight that happened, and I can remember visiting Switzerland for some engagements and speaking to the scientists and the academy of science there and they were all in shock, saying, ‘we never even thought to campaign. We never thought to tell our population how important it is for us to be part of Europe and how much we rely on attracting excellent scientific brains from the rest of the world.’”

Glover hopes Scottish scientists won’t similarly “sleepwalk into disaster” after her decade of dedication.