A/HRC/55/44 B. Right to participate in cultural life includes the right to participate in science 20. Considering science as an element of culture leads to anchoring the right to access to and participation in science in cultural rights. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has therefore observed that the right of everyone to take part in cultural life includes the right of every person to take part in scientific progress and in decisions concerning its direction.23 21. That does not mean that everyone should be recognized as a high-level scientific researcher and their views received with the same attention. People might do research in their own fields and in relation to their own concerns and aspirations, using knowledge and refining it for their own personal development. There are many ways in which people can participate in science without undermining the expertise of scientific professionals, complementing it in many ways and demanding that science respond to their needs and those of the wider society. Farmers, for example, are not mere performers implementing guidelines and instruction manuals but are full participants, observing, being creative and practising science, adapting it and improving it. Science is not performed only by professionals. It is hence not only professionals who have the right to participate in science. 24 C. Avoiding exclusionary processes through the definition of science 1. Defining science 22. Science is defined in the Recommendation on Science and Scientific Researchers of UNESCO as the enterprise whereby humankind, acting individually or in small or large groups, makes an organized attempt, by means of the objective study of observed phenomena and its validation through sharing of findings and data and through peer review, to discover and master the chain of causalities, relations or interactions; brings together in a coordinated form subsystems of knowledge by means of systematic reflection and conceptualization; and thereby furnishes itself with the opportunity of using, to its own advantage, understanding of the processes and phenomena occurring in nature and society (para. 1 (a) (i)). In addition, the term “the sciences” signifies a complex of knowledge, fact and hypothesis, in which the theoretical element is capable of being validated in the short or long term, and to that extent includes the sciences concerned with social facts and phenomena (para. 1 (a) (ii)). Therefore, science does not include only the physical or natural sciences but any discipline, practice or activity that includes the above elements. 23. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, while resorting to the UNESCO definition, has added to the definition of science by stating that knowledge should be considered as science only if it is based on critical inquiry and is open to falsifiability and testability.25 Importantly, both of those definitions distinguish science from belief or faith but also protect it as a common good from ideological, political or commercial interference and from misinformation and disinformation. 24. Responses to the questionnaire show that, in many countries, defining science does not seem to be a problem. Some respondents reported a reliance on the UNESCO definition, although sometimes unofficially. Others adopted an approach based not on defining science by describing methods but rather by describing its purpose, for example as a serious, planned attempt to determine the truth,26 to create objectivity based on verifiable facts and coherent arguments27 or by obtaining and applying new knowledge.28 23 24 25 26 27 28 GE.24-01813 General comment No. 25 (2020), para. 10. Ibid. General comment No. 25 (2020), paras. 4 and 5. See contribution from Lutz Möller, German Commission for UNESCO. See contribution from Patrice Meyer-Bisch, Observatoire de la diversité et des droits culturels. See contribution from the Russian Federation (in Russian). 7