Asking Smart People Dumb Questions: The New Role of Challengers at Davos – Andrew Maynard

Andrew Maynard is guest blogging for the Forum.  He is Director of the University of Michigan Risk Science Center, and chair of the WEF Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies.  Twitter: 2020science

My high school physics teacher used to tell me there’s no such think as a dumb question.  It’s a lesson I’ve carried with me through my professional career as a scientist.  But it’s a philosophy that might be just about to come back and bite me.

This year at Davos, a number of sessions are including formal “challengers” – people officially sanctioned to pose those dumb questions everyone else is thinking, but are too afraid to ask.  And guess what – I’m one of this years’ challengers.

I will be challenging some of the best and brightest minds in the business as they talk about the science agenda for 2011.  Stating their case will be Francis Collins – Director of the National Institutes of Health and famed for his leadership of the Human Genome Project; Rolf Heuer – Director-General of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN); Ray Johnson – Senior Vice President and CTO of Lockheed Martin; and Christopher Viebacher – CEO of Sanofi-Aventis. 

These are people who know their stuff, and will undoubtedly present a compelling and inspiring case for science and technology that leaves few opportunities for probing questions.

As if that wasn’t enough, this is my community.  I’m one of them.  But by challenging them, I risk setting myself apart as a trouble-maker, a contrarian, or worse – a Luddite!

Yet the role of challenger is a vital one.  Because without sober reflection, it’s all too easy for experts to become disconnected from the broader context in which their work has relevance.  And more often than not, it’s those “dumb” questions – the ones no-one dares ask – that most effectively help re-ground the conversation in reality.

So despite some trepidation, I’m looking forward to being the middle man here, and challenging four very smart people to think critically about what their work means in a broader social, economic and political context.

Will I pull it off and still be able to show my face in public?  I hope so.  Because when it comes to science in particular, it is vital that we learn to more effectively integrate the awe-inspiring stuff in the lab into everyday stuff that changes lives. 

And the first step to better integration is to ask the right questions – no matter how dumb they might seem.