Sarewitz in American Scientist
February 15th, 2006Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
Dan Sarewitz, director of the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes at ASU, is a close colleague and frequent collaborator. He is also one of our leading thinkers on science in politics and society. He has an essay in the March-April 2006 issue of American Scientist titled “Liberating Science from Politics.” It is relevant to frequent recent discussions on this blog. Below is an excerpt, but do read the whole thing:
”Wouldn’t it be wonderful if science—and scientists—were taken more seriously in the political process? Wouldn’t democracy be better served? And wouldn’t many difficult problems be more rationally resolved? Take the debates over protecting the environment. It certainly seems that, here, science should be able to cut through political controversy and enable beneficial action. Yet experience mostly shows the opposite: Controversies surrounding environmental problems as diverse as global climate change, genetically modified foods, nuclear energy, biodiversity, air and water pollution, and toxic wastes rarely seem to come to a satisfactory resolution. They are instead characterized by long-term intractability and periodic resurgence of bitter partisan dispute—all in the face of a continual expansion of scientific understanding.
Blame for this unsatisfactory state of affairs is usually assigned to the political process itself, especially to those who use science to advance particular ideological agendas. If only, the complaint goes, those (a) conservatives (b) liberals (c) environmentalists (d) industrialists or (e) ignorant members of the public would understand the facts, or stop manipulating the facts for their own political gain, we could arrive at rational solutions to the problems we face.
Yet this sort of complaint—which I have heard, in one form or another, from innumerable scientists—suffers from a profound misunderstanding of the relation between science and politics. The idea that a set of scientific facts can reconcile political differences and point the way toward a rational solution is fundamentally flawed. The reality is that when political controversy exists, the scientific enterprise is ideally suited to exacerbating disagreement, rather than resolving it.”
Read the whole essay here.
February 15th, 2006 at 9:48 am
One reason why science is often a misused tool on either side of a political debate is that scientists are rarely in universal agreement on any particular subject. If you are a politician you will have no problem finding a PhD to suggest that a)CO2 doesn’t cause global warming, b)CO2 is responsible for almost all global warming, c)nuclear power is safe, d)nuclear power is a great threat to all life on this planet, e)embryonic stem cells will cure everything from diabetes to cancer, f)ESCs won’t ever cure anything, g)life evolved from primordial soup of chemicals, h)life is so complex that it necessitates a designer, etc.
Two scientists can look at the same data and draw two different conclusions. As long as scientists are allowed to differ with the establishment (no matter what their reasons for doing so) science, and the contradictory opinions of scientists, will be used and abused to lead and mislead the public. This is democracy.
February 15th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
I really hope Dan picked that Florida2000 picture of the guy with the mag glass.
February 19th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
Isn’t this no more than the political “anti-government-nanny” argument that nobody cahn tell you what to do even for everyone’s good?
Lead, asbestos, chlorofluorocarbons, tobacco, mercury, particulates — lots of money got made before regulation, to produce enough statistics from the population to do science and understand problems with those industries.
Public health isn’t perfect but it’s been driving policy changes based on good science for as many decades as we’ve had good science. Yes science is very new as a source of push for political decisions. But the track record of using science to drive politics is pretty good. And the track record of using politics to ’steer’ science is dismal.
February 20th, 2006 at 10:09 pm
It strikes me that Saweritz’s arguments verge on deconstructionism and post-modern literary criticism. Nothing can be known, everything is perception.
February 21st, 2006 at 1:04 pm
Perhaps the point is simply that a statistical risk is not sufficient to allow any government regulation, and that a person’s freedom to take risks means the government has no role in limiting activities that, statistically, only raise any individual’s personal risks slightly?
To exaggerate the point, are we hearing all this climate argument as an expression of an underlying argument that, even if government can forbid shooting yourself or someone else, government if done properly can’t forbid you or your friends from getting together to play Russian Roulette (perhaps government can require that the number of players must be one fewer than the number of bullets in the gun)?
This would I think boil down to an argument against government involvement in many activities, perhaps based on pure capitalist market ideals?
The evidence, I suggest, is copious. Example:
http://m-i-n-a.org/fr080900.htm
“… the Defense Supply Center … found its inventory contained over 30 million “bogus”
fasteners and Army depots contained another 2.6 million counterfeit fasteners. Similarly, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) found substandard fasteners in space shuttle equipment and six of its fastener vendors were found to have inadequate quality control
systems.”
“As a result of the evidence presented at these hearings, Congress enacted the FQA in 1990…. the law requires persons who manufacture and sell fasteners covered by the Act to, among other things, assure that they meet applicable standards and specifications through laboratory testing. … ”
“… Major concerns over this law’s potential burden on the fastener industry delayed the Department of Commerce’s implementation of final regulations for nearly a decade.”
“A manufacturer’s costs for laboratory testing–on a per fastener basis–increase as the quantity of fasteners sold decreases….
And the problem persists today:
http://www.anl.gov/Media_Center/Argonne_News/2005/an050411.htm#story3
It seems to me to come down to whether something that’s only a statistical risk, not a certainty, is legitimately a risk people can try to control for themselves through government action.