VOICES JENNIFER RUBIN
Antibiotic use is a subject close to Rubin’s heart, and is the example she cites when asked to name a favourite research project. She was involved in the O’Neill Review on Antimicrobial Resistance – a growing problem which threatens the effectiveness of much modern medicine. She led a study that drew out scenarios for the cost of antimicrobial resistance to the year 2050. This approach, she says, “Allows us to see that the problem is not just a medical or clinical one.” By keeping people away from work, or preventing operations from being carried out, it can have broad effects for
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Above: Why spend billions on a new antibiotic without seeking to understand and improve how GPs prescribe and patients use it? Opposite:
Anthropological research proved valuable in
understanding the Ebola epidemic.
Trust in science and scientists
remains much higher than for most others involved in policy debates
social wellbeing and on the labour market. The conclusions were graphic: even in the base case, not the worst case, the human and financial costs are likely to be massive. The findings have been presented in the UK and around the world by Lord [Jim] O’Neill, chair of the review, and by Dame Sally Davies, chief medical officer for England. Global ambition
In recent years, ESRC has grown its
international reach. Rubin recognises the importance of continuing this reach in the coming years. In her view: “The UK is presently one of the big winners from EU research funding, and our people are highly sought as collaborators.
24 SOCIETY NOW WINTER 2018 ”
I hope to find ways to continue and strengthen these relationships. She regards NORFACE, the European funders’ body for the social sciences, as one of several possible future mechanisms for doing so. She is also keen to work with partners beyond Europe, naming Japan and the US as prospects. Rubin says: “I have met researchers and funders from Germany, the US and Australia who are anxious to work with us, and I am finding a lot of goodwill for UK social science. I am confident that we’ll find ways to continue to be closely involved in the EU research landscape.” The basic products of research funding are new knowledge and the people needed to develop and use it. Rubin is conscious that she joins ESRC at a time when both expertise and experts are sometimes discussed as objects of suspicion rather than deference. “Let’s be empirical about this,” she says, “trust in science and scientists remains much higher than for most others involved in policy debates, and has not fallen. While we are in turbulent times with respect to political attitudes, the data does not bear out the (often misquoted) suggestion that most people have ‘had enough of experts’.” However, she does see the need to rethink how research is communicated in the context of social media. “The research people are hearing about may be brilliant and accurate, but it might not give the whole picture.” As an example, she points to the way in which economists have come under fire in debates on immigration. Of course, economists tend
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