Efficient innovators

In 2011, the GII used 80 different indicators of innovation, grouped into seven categories, to rank countries according to inputs, outputs, and overall innovative performance.

Evidence from elsewhere

Some evidence is emerging from the Atlas of Islamic-World Science and Innovation — a three-year partnership between the OIC and the Royal Society in the UK, and several other donors — which is conducting in-depth studies of science and innovation in up to 15 Islamic countries.

Platform for deeper analysis

The outcome of the Innovation Efficiency Index throws open as many, if not more, questions as it can answer. While quantitative statistics provide easy comparisons, they have the downside of decontextualising the findings, so are little use to the policymaker.

The Muslim world and donors should use nongovernmental networks to nurture the dormant seeds of entrepreneurship, says Athar Osama.

Entrepreneurship and innovation may look like inherently Western ideas in the twenty-first century. Yet they have been part and parcel of Muslim societies even before the heyday of the earliest Islamic Empire.

Mecca, the birthplace of Islam, was long known as being on a major trade route in ancient Arabia. In later years, frontier cities of the rapidly expanding Islamic Empire became centres of commerce and learning, and it was at these meeting points of civilisations that scientific knowledge flourished for centuries.

The works of Muslim astronomers contributed significantly to the development of Copernican and Galilean theories; the Persian scholar Ibn-e-Sina (Avicenna) laid the foundations of modern medicine; Al-Haytham (Alhazen) made fundamental contributions to the scientific method and optics; and Al-Khwarizimi made significant contributions to algebra.

Then came the political decline of the Islamic Empire and as centuries passed, institutional decay and colonial dependency eroded the foundations of modern-day innovation and entrepreneurship.

But there has never been a more opportune time to reinvigorate these age-old values of knowledge and innovation with a new set of interactions between East and the West.

Starting from scratch and with a bootstrapped budget, GIST launched a business pitching competition titled GISTech-I in October last year. The participants were asked to upload short You Tube videos of their business ideas, and winners were announced based on the number of times the videos were viewed and ‘liked’.

The finalists presented their ideas at an entrepreneurship summit in Turkey in December 2011 — among them a 24-hour cardiovascular monitoring device, a cost-effective brain-controlled arm prosthesis and a technology for disinfecting drinking water.

In January of this year, GIST partnered with the MIT Enterprise Forum (MITEF) of the Pan Arabic Region — one of 28 MITEF chapters around the globe — to launch a business plan competition. It has also signed an agreement with MITEF Turkey to promote technology entrepreneurship in the country.

Thanks to this local ownership, a number of MITEF chapters have developed a reputation for tenaciously supporting the communities they operate in. In Pakistan, for instance, the local chapter has run the Business Acceleration Programme for five years in collaboration with the Organisation of Pakistani Entrepreneurs in North America (OPEN).

However, these efforts are still rudimentary and a lot more needs to be done to produce tangible results for scientific innovation. In particular, while entrepreneurship has received a lot of attention, science has received short shrift.

Funding by the US State Department has been one limiting factor — the US$2–5 million committed so far cannot really lead to serious change on the ground. But there are signs that USAID funds may be added to the pot to support scientific problem-solving behind the entrepreneurship.

One avenue that needs to be fully explored is the use of nongovernmental funding, from donors or US corporations doing business in the regions, for example. And the United States could use its ‘convening power’ to bring together regional leaders and stakeholders to invest in and take ownership of initiatives in their own countries.

Perhaps there is a need for re-packaging the basic ideas that GIST is seeking to promote — a more decentralised model presented in a compelling manner could catch people’s imaginations and create a virtuous cycle.

Take TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conferences as an example: getting people to organise more than 750 TEDx events and view millions of TED talks did not require the financial muscle or political backing of the world’s only super-power.

In 2010, AllWorld published the Arabia Fast Growth 500 and a new listing (Arabia 500 + Turkey) was launched last year. And just last week, the release of the Pakistan 100 seems to have brought relatively unknown companies into the limelight.

The founders of the AllWorld Network call this ‘Visibility Economics’™ — a nifty term for the fact that visibility is critical to success in the marketplace by attracting customers, investors and partners. The idea has caught on, but it remains to be seen what, if any, benefits it might bring.

Regardless of the outcome, initiatives like GIST, the MIT Enterprise Forum and the AllWorld Network are important missing pieces in the entrepreneurship toolkit of the Islamic world.

The seeds of entrepreneurship and innovation to solve local problems have always been present in these societies. But they have been informal, lacked visibility, and lacked a supportive ecosystem to flourish. This needs to change.

Engaging nongovernmental partners and diaspora networks — traditionally underused — is important. Often, a passionate champion can deliver where a government cannot.

Athar Osama is a London-based science and innovation policy consultant. He is the founder and CEO of Technomics International Ltd, a UK-based international technology policy consulting firm, and founder of Muslim-Science.com.

Specialist R&D funds levied on business must build organisations that offer short-term benefits through a clear strategy, says Athar Osama.

Just under a decade ago countries in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) signed a science vision 1441 (which coincides with year 2020). Collective spending on research and development (R&D) in the Islamic World was a mere tenth of what the developed world spent. Since then, some progress has been made to increase investment.

But the strong political will needed to undo science under-funding in the Muslim world has been extremely hard to find.

Most OIC members suffer resource constraints that are exacerbated by policy instability, poor governance, and endemic corruption. Faced with the challenge of choosing between the ‘real’ needs of healthcare, literacy, and social welfare, and the ‘promised’ benefits of science, the latter has often cut a sorry figure.

For some time now, several countries have been experimenting with using dedicated R&D funds to get around this problem. But the funds’ performance leaves much to be desired. It’s time for a re-think.

Pot of money

These specialist funding vehicles ‘ring fence’ (assign) a certain portion of a country’s tax revenues for investment in R&D.

Perhaps the oldest such instrument in the Islamic world, created in 1976, is the Kuwait Foundation for Advancement of Science (KFAS). It receives 1 per cent of annual net profits from all Kuwaiti shareholding companies. In 2008, total assets stood at 580 million Kuwaiti Dinars (US$2 billion).

KFAS has invested in promoting science and research in areas such as water, energy, and environment by organising a host of grants, prizes, and conference programmes. The Kuwait Prize, for example, awards a US$100K prize, a gold medal, and a shield to two recipients each year.

The KFAS has also sought to initiate international collaborations with institutions such as the US Massachusetts Institute of Techonology, and the UK’s Oxford University, and London School of Economics.

In Pakistan, similar funding vehicles have existed for some time now. In 2005, the government established a dedicated fund for information and communication technology (ICT) — the National ICT R&D Fund — through a tax contribution equal to 0.5 per cent of gross revenues from telecommunications companies in the country.

With the telecommunications boom during the past decade, the fund has acquired a sizeable kitty for investment in R&D. In a country where research funds have often been in short-supply and research effort sub-optimal, this could make a difference.

A similar initiative in UAE — the first of its kind in the Arab world — created the National ICT Fund requiring the two cellular phone providers (Etisalat and du) to contribute 1 per cent of net annual profits.

Governance challenges

While creating these dedicated funds solved the problem of political will, they created their own challenges and questions — about governance and strategy.

It is here that both Pakistan’s National ICT R&D Fund and the UAE’s ICT Fund have faltered. Both funds initially struggled to find the right management to execute the vision but also, more importantly, to determine what that vision should be.

In Pakistan, for instance, a founding CEO was hired without a proper strategy in place. As a result he quickly found himself ensnared with organisational politics and bureaucracy.

The fund started with a ‘scatter shot’ approach to project selection, and took upwards of a year to set up and streamline a peer review process, losing credibility as a result. And no real strategy to deliver demonstrable results was in sight even when the first CEO’s three year tenure ended.

The fund hit rock bottom a couple years ago, when it was left without a CEO for more than a year, lost more credibility with key stakeholders, and was sued by contributors.

Greater oversight by the fund’s board has now begun to address these issues and, hopefully, produce a more streamlined solicitation and decision process. However, bigger strategic questions still remain.

Crucial ingredients for success

So what should these specialist funds be doing in the first place? They need to focus on near-market opportunities — research that is likely to find commercial applications in one to three years.

Rooted in a culture where private sector funding for basic and applied research is minimal, the contributors simply may not have the patience to wait for longer term investments to deliver. However demonstrable benefits in the short-term might create a self-perpetuating cycle of success.

The funds could create a portfolio of instruments — from university–industry partnerships to incubation and seed programmes — but with a very tight measurement and evaluation framework to demonstrate results. Doing so could stave off criticism that benefits are lacking, and create broader support for scientific investment in these societies.

Above all, to become successful, special funding vehicles need four key ingredients which are interlinked: a clearly defined set of objectives, and a structure geared towards achieving them; a realistic strategy, including in-depth technical understanding; a leader with relevant experience; and systems and processes that allow the fund to achieve its objectives without getting bogged down in bureaucracy.

Creating an evidence-based case for greater investment in science is not a one-shot game of securing the political will to do the right thing, but a slow and painstaking process of creating an institution with all the necessary ingredients to deliver the goods.

Athar Osama is a London-based science and innovation policy consultant. He is the founder and CEO of Technomics International Ltd, a UK-based international technology policy consulting firm, and founder of Muslim-Science.com.

Published in SciDev.Net on 27 January 2012

One year after Egypt’s revolution, enthusiasm and prospects for science are high — but still need translation into a fully functioning system.

It is difficult to believe, given the optimism and vitality of current debates about science in Egypt, that less than two years ago a UNESCO report described science in the Arab world as being in a “vegetative state”. [1]

This week Egypt celebrates the first anniversary of the momentous events in Tahrir Square, and elsewhere, that brought down the autocratic regime of President Hosni Mubarak. These events showed both the promises and the challenges in achieving economic prosperity and social development.

The promises lie in the fervour for democratic control that continues to sweep the country, combined with growing public enthusiasm for science. They point to a widely-held desire to modernise Egypt’s social and economic institutions in ways that directly address the needs of its people.

But turning fervour into an achievable political programme — one that ensures the achievements of last year’s revolution are permanent — remains a major challenge. This is as true for the institutional reforms needed to genuinely transform the country’s science infrastructure, as it is of the broader changes demanded of the newly-elected Egyptian Parliament.

Attendance at public events, such as lectures run by organisations such as the Science Age Society [2], has been high. And part of the discussion has been around how individuals can support scientific development, for example by becoming scientists and engineers. Frustration at a lack of employment opportunities for even qualified graduates was a major factor behind the revolution itself.

The media reflects this increased recognition for scientific research. Many newspapers, both new and old, now devote a special section to science — something that few would have considered before the revolution.

Government support for scientific research and the technological innovation sector has been impressive over the past year. An increase of about 35 per cent for the research budget has already been approved. And promises of further investment look set to end the chronic underfunding of science in Egypt.

Scientists and academics are now enjoying higher salaries and much more freedom than they had previously. They are more optimistic about the prospects of developing a system of scientific research that will meet both their, and the country’s, needs.

Progress in scientific and socioeconomic development will depend on individuals being recognised for their talents and contribution, rather than their political or family connections. As Princess Sumaya bint El Hassan of Jordan, one of the most articulate commentators on the challenges facing Arab science, notes in an interview with SciDev.Net, meritocracy is essential since it allows good ideas to prevail regardless of their origin.

Achieving such a transformation in the country’s scientific culture is one of the major challenges that lie ahead.

A research strategy must be agreed to ensure the promised budget increases are used appropriately. One year after the revolution, and despite all the upbeat talk, such a strategy has yet to be announced.

And new ways of supporting scientific research, such as by creating a Supreme Council of Research Centres, are still in the early stages, and will need a lot of time, effort and commitment.

Despite the improved climate for research, 400 researchers still left Egypt’s National Research Centre in 2011 to work in countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia — talent that Egypt can ill afford to lose.

And innovation in the private sector remains low, reflecting continued uncertainty over where the country’s economy is heading. There is, therefore, no cause for complacency.

One year after the revolution, the optimistic and supportive spirit that surrounds science in Egypt still needs to be translated into the concrete activities required for real development. A law on science and technology, due to be considered by the Egyptian Parliament later this year, is one tangible action that could set the country on the right path.

It would be a tragedy if this opportunity is missed, and the country’s science reverts to previous habits of relative inertia and low productivity.

David Dickson
Editor, SciDev.Net

Published on SciDev.Net on 18 January 2012

[CAIRO] Scientists have been reflecting on the astonishing gains that the Egyptian revolution has delivered them, as the first anniversary of Egypt’s Tahrir Square uprising approaches next week (25 January).

Over the past year, the science budget has increased by more than a third, salaries have risen and plans have been made for a science and technology city.

“Change has begun on both financial and administrative levels,” Maged El-Sherbiny, president of the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (the government body responsible for funding research in Egypt), told SciDev.Net.

All the research centres affiliated to different ministries will be gathered under the Supreme Council of Research Centers, and the scientific research budget, which jumped 35 per cent in 2011−12, is likely to increase in 2012−13, said El-Sherbiny, with a government target of one per cent of gross domestic product to be spent on science.

The sharp increase in funding stems from a widespread perception that investment in science is crucial for the future of Egypt.

Ashraf Shaalan, president of the National Research Centre (NRC) ―the largest research centre in Egypt ― said that this surge of national fervour for science, as well as increased funding, had motivated Egypt’s scientists.

For example, it has sparked interest in getting research published in international journals, he said. Output rose by a quarter to about 2,000 in 2011, he claimed.

The NRC won about US$13 million from the National Science and Technology Fund in 2011 to fund 80 research projects, he said. But, despite salary rises, the centre lost 400 researchers in the brain drain last year, especially to Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

The private sector has not fared so well post-revolution. The Nile University, the first private non-profit research university in Egypt, came under threat because of links to the former fallen regime. The university had moved into new accommodation just before the revolution and was then told by the new government to move out because they were on government land.

“Such stumbles are expected after revolutions,” said Tarek Khalil, president of the Nile University.

“We started the year after the revolution not knowing if we would continue but, by the end of the year, the minister of scientific research had assured us that we will be continuing our efforts in our university.”

Nile University will now be part of the new Zewail City of Science and Technology.

Abol-Enein said there were plans to harness the new public enthusiasm by establishing a fund to finance research projects, to which the public can donate.

But other leading scientists have expressed caution about how enduring Egypt’s scientific changes might be.

Alaa Idris, chairman of the scientific research committee of the science-supporting foundation Misr El-Kheir, said: “Egyptians are still more concerned with issues such as increasing wages [and dealing with] street children and slum areas”.

Idris said that, for real change to occur, the new Egyptian constitution should acknowledge the importance of scientific research and a law on science and technology should be passed next year.

Some Muslim countries’ powerful financial incentives to make quick progress in research could backfire, cautions Athar Osama.

Over a decade ago, several governments in the Islamic world woke up from decades of slumber to begin investing heavily in science and innovation. A funding boost helped set up new universities, enhance research grants, and send thousands of students to do PhDs in the developed world.

The regulators and ministries that rolled out these ambitious efforts cautioned against judging their effectiveness and viability too soon, pointing to the limited scientific capacity in these countries. It was popular to say, ‘let’s build a critical mass (quantity) first and worry about raising the standard (quality) later’.

But there was clearly something amiss: some policies seemed either deficient or simply wrong-minded. And evidence of this is beginning to pile up.

Evidence of misguided priorities

The picture emerging is one of a mindless race to secure international publications and increase university rankings using ‘shopping sprees’ for highly cited academics, plagiarism and even outright academic fraud.

A recent article published in Science highlights a practice, prevalent in at least a couple of Saudi Universities, of engaging prolific academics on so-called part-time contracts that pay handsomely in exchange for spending a couple of weeks on campus — and, critically, on condition that the university name is added to their ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) index profiles. The index is one of the factors included in world university rankings.

This results in an artificially higher number of papers published by that university, and hence a higher ranking.

The article notes that this practice is similar to UK universities ‘shopping’ for prolific scientists just before research quality assessments, in order to ensure a higher evaluation and funding for future research.

But there is a fundamental difference: while one may question the timing of UK universities hiring a prolific scientist, it is not a fraudulent practice in and of itself. But claiming credit for a scientist who does not engage in meaningful research with researchers at the university in question, or using work unaffiliated with the university to bump up rankings, is certainly suspect.

Plagiarism and academic fraud

Seemingly sensible policies — such as encouraging academics to publish more — can also backfire if they are badly designed or implemented.

In Pakistan, a strong emphasis by the country’s Higher Education Commission (HEC) on a “publish and get paid” policy has created a culture of plagiarism and academic fraud, according to preliminary evidence that appeared recently in the Pakistani press.

Writing in a reputed English language national daily, Isa Daudpota, a senior administrator at Air University in Islamabad, alleges to have collected evidence of a fraudulent publishing racket that involves “international” and “peer-reviewed” journals, most of which are electronic. [2]

Although many are based in Africa, among other places, in reality they were created and run by Pakistani academics and their ‘friends’ abroad, says Daudpota.

These fraudulent journals may contain suspect or even fictitious names on their editorial boards, or may use names without permission. And participating academics can publish or even review their own work by nominating a non-existent professor as a reviewer.

Analysing the CVs of HEC-approved professors, Daudpota finds preliminary evidence that some professors (mainly having done their PhDs at local universities with relatively lax standards) are more likely to publish in such journals. But so far, the HEC appears to be treating these revelations as isolated cases rather than a systemic problem.

Financial incentives also lead to more publications in the industrialised world. But research by Franzoni and colleagues suggests they encourage submissions regardless of quality, while career incentives improve the quality of scientific papers. [6]

In the developing world, where the norms of quality and integrity have yet to take root, policymakers have a responsibility to enforce scientific integrity and ethics.

First, instances of misguided use of financial incentives, plagiarism, and academic fraud must be tackled with zero tolerance and exemplary punishments to individuals and institutions. This would set a precedent and send a message that it does not pay to cheat.

And rather than being treated as isolated instances, such cases should be probed for systemic problems that may tarnish a country’s academic reputation in the long term.

Second, future policies aimed at promoting scientific research must consider unintended consequences. Quality must come first, even if quantity and speed of reforms are compromised, and intrinsic motivators such as the satisfaction of creating new knowledge must be preferred over financial rewards.

Many aspiring governments in the Muslim world are eager to invest in science, and naturally, expect to reap rewards. But they must realise that there is no shortcut to joining the world’s scientific elite.

There are many things money can buy overnight, but the ability to carry out quality scientific research is not one of them.

Athar Osama is a London-based science and innovation policy consultant. He is the founder and CEO of Technomics International Ltd, a UK-based international technology policy consulting firm, and founder of Muslim-Science.com.

Published on 25 January 2012

It has been a year since the start of Egypt’s revolution 

Flickr/rouelshimi

Oil-rich countries could help the whole Arab region develop 

Flickr/potomo

 

Arab Spring revolutionaries turning to governance must adopt knowledge and innovation as barometers for progress, says Athar Osama.

As revolutions swept countries and shook governments across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region this year, they created opportunities for greater public voice in governance. Tunisia, for example, recently went through an election, and the Egyptian people are in the process of electing an assembly whose job is to write a new constitution.

And as revolutionaries turn to governance, they will have to address the socioeconomic and cultural challenges facing tens of millions of people: poverty with no prospect of prosperity, a burgeoning young population, poor employment opportunities, a culture of entitlement, and growing radicalism. These will be the real test of their leadership.

Science and innovation must feature high on their agendas. There are promising signs, such as Tunisia’s $16.5 million science and technology boost, and the pronouncements of Egypt’s caretaker government that it will open Zewail City of Science and Technology, a new science city named after Egyptian Nobel Laureate Ahmed Zewail.

But the capability of the revolutionaries and their countries is questionable in one key area. Can they nurture the science needed to create entrepreneurial opportunities and jobs?

Deploying science and innovation to bring prosperity will require deep and long-lasting changes in the way society views science and conducts everyday business.

Looking back

MENA countries are sailing through troubled and uncharted waters, and a peek at other countries’ histories could bring some useful insight. The recent experience of post-war Iraq is one example. There, a revolution led from outside has sapped the resources needed to invest in science and innovation.

And there is the not-so-recent experience of neighbouring Iran, where a political revolution created an Islamic republic that allows science to flourish — as evidenced by a 2011 report, produced by the UK’s Royal Society, that found Iran had the world’s fastest-growing number of papers published in international journals.

Pakistan’s history could provide the best model. Between 1989 and 1999, the longest period of civilian rule in Pakistan’s history, research and development funding as a percentage of GDP declined from 0.27 to 0.11 per cent. It then increased from 0.11 per cent in 1999 to 0.59 per cent in 2007 under the military rule of General Pervez Musharraf.

While a complex set of factors may have led to these results, it is clear that science and technology flourished more under stable military rule than volatile and populist civilian governments.

The revolutionaries in the MENA region must learn from this. Rather than depend on the benevolence of a dictator to fund science, they must create mechanisms to build grassroots support and secure political buy-in for the policies, institutions and governance that will generate science-based solutions for social problems.

A scientific revolution

Ultimately, a scientific revolution of sorts will be needed to redeem the promise of prosperity through science and knowledge. This can co-exist with religion, but it must embrace certain crucial elements of a society that values scientific knowledge and learning.

Writing in the journal Science, editor-in-chief Bruce Alberts, who is also one of Barack Obama’s science envoys to the Islamic World, identified a strong culture of meritocracy as one such element.

As Alberts points out, at the very heart of the dysfunction in Muslim societies is a lack of accountability, undue deference to age or social standing, and using one’spersonal connections as professional currency.

To bring about a scientific revival, the Muslim world must start by developing a culture that permits — and in fact encourages — critical inquiry, free thinking and questioning of authority. It must create the conditions for evidence-based and open debate — not blind subservience to religious, political or scientific orthodoxy.

The newly ‘liberated’ societies of the MENA region cannot hope to benefit from knowledge, science and innovation unless their barometers of progress are not who you are and who you know, but rather how much you know and how innovative you are.

However, there are potential pitfalls, such as high-powered incentives — payment for publishing papers, for example. A carefully crafted policy must also seek to balance this kind of stimulus by appealing to the intrinsic reward of producing quality science.

Another step in the right direction would be more emphasis on creating institutions. For too long, a preference for personality cults over institution-building has stifled meritocracy and open discourse in Muslim societies. The MENA revolutionaries could do much good by making a deliberate attempt to seed institutions with appropriate safeguards that nurture these attributes.

Creating such a scientific society will require a much deeper sociocultural and political revolution than anything we have seen so far — perhaps a different kind of Arab Spring that will lead to the flowering of knowledge and innovation. The work, however, must begin today, with small steps in the right direction.

Athar Osama is a London-based science and innovation policy consultant. He is the founder and CEO of Technomics International Ltd, a UK-based international technology policy consulting firm, and founder of Muslim-Science.com.

By: Athar Osama

Published on SciDev.Net on 10 November 2011

The Islamic World Academy of Sciences has been challenged to build bridges. The hardest may be between disciplines, says Athar Osama.

The Islamic World Academy of Sciences (IAS) was established in 1986 as the Academy of Sciences for 57 Islamic member countries of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

The academy has three important functions: to promote the values of modern science by recognising scientists and disseminating scientific findings; to be a forum for debating science and scientific issues; and to be a repository of the history of science in Islamic civilisation. Over the years, it has addressed these functions with varying degrees of success. Now, it must meet a new set of challenges.

The event provided an excellent opportunity for the scientific elite of the Muslim World — the elected fellows of IAS — to mingle with each other and with representatives from some of the leading science academies from the rest of the world.

Gatherings such as these, where representatives of the world’s scientific communities can meet under a decidedly internationalist banner — but without the ‘supervisory’ presence of the diplomatic corps — have been rare in recent years. So they are all the more welcome, particularly when addressing topics that concern science across the Islamic world.

In its simplest form, building bridges, particularly between the East and West, is a much used cliché. However, the IAS conference heard of — and was challenged to start — a much more ambitious bridge-building agenda. And some of the hardest to construct may not be between the East and West.

Work in progress

Mohammed Hassan, the former Director of the Academy of Sciences of the Developing World (TWAS) and currently a vice Chair of the Inter Academy Panel (IAP) outlined four types of ‘bridges’ IAS might consider building: between countries, nations, and regions; between disciplines and multiple communities of practice; between scientists and policy (or decision) makers; and finally bridges across society-at-large by developing grassroots support for science through better communication and community engagement.

Hassan noted that the developing world is adequately addressing only the first of these, pointing to organisations such as IAP, TWAS, as well as the model provided by the International Centre of Theoretical Physics (ICTP).

Others are still works in progress. For example, efforts to better link the scientific and policy communities have not taken root in the developing world, in contrast to well-established norms in the developed world (such as publications by National Academies of Sciences in the United States, and in Britain those produced by The Royal Society).

It is certainly true that the IAS has, over the years, adopted a somewhat cautious approach to engaging with policymakers. Despite generating a steady stream of scholarship and conference proceedings, none have created a significant debate within the policy or media circles.

Admittedly, part of the challenge facing the IAS is the lack of a unified policy audience within the Islamic World.

But, some of the blame must also go to the academy’s apparent reluctance to engage in tough societal and policy debates — even considering that it operates in a social, cultural and political environment that is not very supportive of critical discourse.

Yet, travelling this unfamiliar road of policy engagement and open discussion is something that the scientific community in the Islamic World owes to future generations of scientists and citizens.

It will be difficult to mobilise the support and resources to make this happen. Fewer than half of OIC member countries have national academies to start with, and those that do exist are usually poorly resourced and equipped to meet the challenges facing their national communities.

And even better equipped ones have still not gone beyond experimenting with ways to achieve both impact and relevance — in other words, to speak truth to power.

Multidisciplinarity may be a more difficult target for the scientific community to achieve than policy engagement. It requires that academies, which are currently limited to the natural sciences and engineering, open up to a more diverse set of views and ways of thinking and problem solving. Academies have often struggled with embracing change, for example resisting greater participation by women and younger scientists.

Hassan may have not meant to be as expansive in his interpretation. But others at the conference took up the call.

Rudiger Klein, executive director of the Federation of National Academies of Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA) in 40 European countries, addressed the meeting and said that science academies must incorporate other disciplines, such as social sciences and even humanities, if they want to remain relevant and to engage with society’s problems.

It will not be easy. “Academies of sciences in the Islamic World are far from embracing this reality,” says Ishfaque Ahmed, former president of The Pakistan Academy of Sciences (PAS), who once tried unsuccessfully to persuade the PAS to admit social scientists as fellows.

But the Islamic Academy of Sciences, as a multinational standard bearer for the national academies in the Islamic World, must step up to the challenge and provide leadership for this nascent movement.

Athar Osama is a London-based science and innovation policy consultant. He is the founder and CEO of Technomics International Ltd, a UK-based international technology policy consulting firm, and founder of Muslim-Science.com.