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What a surprise – at long last Prime Minister John Major is showing
signs that he recognises the importance of science. At a press conference
at the British Embassy in Tokyo last week he said that ‘science and the
application of science’ had been undervalued in Britain ‘over the last twenty
or thirty years’.

News of his discovery came at the end of a tour of joint Anglo-Japanese
scientific projects on display at the embassy. Apparently, Major lingered
so long at some of the exhibits that the officials responsible for his schedule
began to panic. Was his sudden rush of enthusiasm for science inspired by
the work he saw?

Alas, it seems the answer is no. Although Major’s speech is believed
to be the longest he has ever made on science, his conversion appears to
owe much to ‘the view expressed by many of the businessmen that I have
met over the last two or three years’. And it seems that nothing new is
to be done for science beyond the plans in the White Paper (see This Week).

One of those plans – for a Technology Foresight programme – occupied
a significant chunk of Major’s speech. The Prime Minister stressed how much
Britain had learned from the successes of Japan’s own ‘Delphi’ programme.

Some of the Japanese in the audience must have been a little surprised.
When New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ’s reporters visited Tokyo in the summer to prepare this
week’s special issue on Japan, the officials who have been using Delphi
for over twenty years said that they had had no contact with the British
government. They had not received any requests for information or advice,
or for their report on the effectiveness and problems of this method of
technology forecasting. In fact, they did not even know that Britain was
planning a technology foresight exercise – although they said they would
welcome a chance to help.

That places Britain way behind Germany, which has almost completed its
own technology forecast survey after three years of working with the Japanese
group.

Bill Stewart, Major’s chief scientific adviser, was to stay a few more
days in Japan after his boss left, and William Waldegrave, the minister
for science, was due to arrive soon after. Let us hope that between them
they manage to tap into Japan’s enormous experience in technology forecasting
– this time in reality rather than in imagination – and think about working
together.

A collaboration could produce some really authoritative facts and figures
on science for the next incumbent of Downing Street. Maybe then it won’t
be necessary for a prime minister to learn about science from passing businessmen.