Science, Politics, and Advisory Report Writing
March 20th, 2006Posted by: admin
In the comments from a post last week, Sylvia Tognetti and David Bruggeman raise some very interesting issues and questions about the role of scientific advisory committees, and in particular that of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. In this post I’d like to highlight one important part of this issue, and that is the inevitable intermixing of science and politics in the process of writing government reports and those produced by science advisory committees. Consider the experience of Phil Clooney vs. Rick Piltz which was discussed on 60 Minutes last night (along with more from James Hansen).
For those who are unfamiliar with the issue, I discussed it in depth here last year, and here is a short synopsis:
The New York Times published an article last year identifying Phil Clooney, a former oil industry lobbyist, as an Administration official (then chief of staff for Council on Environmental Quality) who edited several government climate change reports — one titled Our Changing Planet (OCP, a summary of climate science programs under the U.S. Climate Change Science Program) — in ways that emphasized uncertainties. Upon being outed by the Times, Mr. Clooney resigned and took a job with ExxonMobil. Opponents to the Bush Administration highlighted this as an example of a non-scientist editing government reports related to climate science to support the Administration’s ideological and political agenda. And I believe that this charge is on the mark, if often overstated.
But what is often missed in discussions of this and related experiences is that the path from peer-reviewed science to advice for policy makers necessarily goes through non-scientists with political agendas. There is no alternative. And there are multiple legitimate routes from science to policy, given than science itself can compel no specific course of action over another. Policy making depends on many factors beyond science, and partisan politics or ideological predispositions are among them.
The most important question then is how this process is managed from the standpoints of maintaining the credibility of the science, the salience of the advice, and the legitimacy of the process. It is fair to criticize the Bush Administration on a range of counts for poorly managing this process, resulting in concerns about the credibility of their scientific advice and the legitimacy of their advisory processes. This is not limited only to scientific issues, see: Iraq War, justifications for.
But such concerns about credibility and legitimacy are often themselves determined in a politically expedient manner, which further damages the credibility and legitimacy of science as an input to policy making. Consider the online summary that accompanied the 60 Minutes story last night; it discussed the Piltz vs. Cooney affair as follows:
Dozens of federal agencies report science but much of it is edited at the White House before it is sent to Congress and the public. It appears climate science is edited with a heavy hand. Drafts of climate reports were co-written by Rick Piltz for the federal Climate Change Science Program. But Piltz says his work was edited by the White House to make global warming seem less threatening.
“The strategy of people with a political agenda to avoid this issue is to say there is so much to study way upstream here that we can’t even being to discuss impacts and response strategies,” says Piltz. “There’s too much uncertainty. It’s not the climate scientists that are saying that, its lawyers and politicians.”
The irony here is that Rick Piltz who drafted the reports has no formal training in climate science, and is a Democrat. His decision to characterize climate change in the report as more threatening obviously reflected considerations that go beyond science. There is no getting around that how one determines the amount of threat that climate change presents is a function of values and trade-offs, which are at their core political judgments. The initial writing of OCP was every bit as political an exercise as the subsequent edits. It does not lessen the Bush Administration’s ham-handedness to note that whatever filters Mr. Piltz was using to decide what to include in the Our Changing Planet reports, they were as deeply grounded in his first-hand knowledge of climate science as Mr. Cooney’s. The point here is not that Mr. Piltz was unqualified to be writing the OCP — it was after all a compendium of programs and summary of findings press-release style – but that someone has to write such documents.
The Bush Administration’s mistake, from their own perspective, was not the specific changes made by Mr. Clooney in his edits, which did of course seek to present the science in a way most favorable to Bush Administration goals, but their cavalier attitude toward the legitimacy of the process. After all, a NRC scientific advisory committee approved the CCSP strategic plan report after Mr. Clooney had made his edits. The Bush Administration could have very easily had someone else make those same changes but who had no connections to the oil industry and solid scientific credentials. The more general principle here is that science can be legitimately presented in a wide range of ways, and the choice of how to present science is determined in significant ways by political filters. How such choices are made is a function of who is in a position to make those choices.
So people from a liberal perspective will hold up Mr. Piltz as a hero speaking scientific truths, and those from a conservative position will identify Mr. Cooney as a hero for the same reason. And both will be right at the exact same time, from their own political perspectives. Piltz and Cooney were certainly not waging a debate over science, but politics clothed in the garb of science.
If we are to move beyond the scientization of the climate debate we must move beyond the notion that it is possible to state scientific truths in only one way in science advisory reports. More attention must be paid to the processes that put certain individuals in positions that allow them to control the content of scientific advisory reports. Partisans on both sides will I am sure continue to call for a narrow focus on “the scientific truths” as a Trojan Horse strategy of smuggling in their own political perspectives (“scientific integrity” and “sound science” seem to be the catch words). The reality is that Phil Clooney, Rick Piltz, me, and you each have strong political views. The best way to deal with that reality is to focus on developing legitimate processes for structuring, empanelling, reporting science advice. This is a challenge that the science policy community has yet to embrace, though there is a lot of knowledge of such processes to work with, see, e.g., the work of Sheila Jasanoff.
March 20th, 2006 at 1:06 pm
Roger
One of the inherent problems of scientific advisory committees in the UK (and, I’m sure, in many other countries) is that committee chairs and key members are appointed by government ministers.
http://www.ost.gov.uk/policy/advice/copsac/cop_01.htm#11n
This essentially guarantees that the government, via the civil service, remains in overall control of the terms of reference and the tenor of scientific advice. The selection of chairs and advisors itself can, at times and by its very nature, help to pre-determine the basic gist of a report.
In light of the politicisation of science, governments increasingly adopt the method of control-freakery by i) selecting ‘reliable’ counsel and ii) by excluding potential ‘trouble-makers’ (who may go public if their views aren’t taken into consideration in the final report).
In fact, here in the UK we have arrived at a situation where (on issues such as climate change) the government is increasingly following the recommendations by the Department of Trade and Industry rather than listening to scientific advice by DEFRA. Politics, it would appear, is the art of prioritising.
March 20th, 2006 at 2:08 pm
“There is no getting around that how one determines the amount of threat that climate change presents is a function of values and trade-offs, which are at their core political judgments.” This implies that it is perfectly legitimate relative to the science to say the threat is zero. Are you sure you really mean this? For example, is it valid given the present state of the science to say that the threat from rising sea level is zero, or that the threat from AGW-induced increasing tropical cyclone strength is zero? As a practical matter I think we can agree that at least in government circles this sort of denialism generally takes the form of “more research needed,” but the basic point remains.
March 20th, 2006 at 2:30 pm
“The Bush Administration could have very easily had someone else make those same changes but who had no connections to the oil industry and solid scientific credentials.”
Who?
It seems to me that much of the basis of the criticism of the Bush administration’s behaviour is spcifically that it goes well outside the range of what can be considered scientifically defensible.
March 20th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
James- This may be the case in some instances (e.g., abortion and breast cancer), but I do not think that Cooney’s edits fell outside the range of what could be scientifically defensible. After all, the NRC approved the CCSP Strategic Plan which included Cooney’s edits. They were much more about tone and emphasis rather than 2 + 2 = 5. Thanks!
March 20th, 2006 at 7:20 pm
Roger, again you deal seconds. The NRC clearly saw a threat to the program from political involvement. In the Executive Summary, they write:
“Involving high-level political leaders in CCSP management helps to provide the program with the resources that it requires, but also allows the possibility that the program’s priorities or scientific results could be influenced by political considerations. Either the reality or perception of such influences could serve to discredit the program unless independent evaluations of the program and its products are conducted on a regular basis. The CCSP should establish a mechanism for independent oversight of the program as a whole in order to maintain its long-term scientific credibility.”
March 21st, 2006 at 2:09 am
“The Bush Administration could have very easily had someone else make those same changes but who had no connections to the oil industry and solid scientific credentials.”
Who?
March 21st, 2006 at 6:26 am
James-
There are any number of political (and staff) appointees in the federal agencies who surely share Cooney’s agenda but not his resume. If you’d like to browse the possibilities, look here:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/plumbook/2004/index.html
March 21st, 2006 at 6:33 am
Eli- Ironic, no?
March 21st, 2006 at 7:01 pm
Roger, not really. The NRC committee knew what was going on with the political commissars, disapproved and commented on it by saying that it should be limited by strong external scientific review. You on the otherhand, in your reply to James said they accepted Cooney’s agenda. The quote I gave from the report itself showed that they did not.
March 21st, 2006 at 7:07 pm
Eli- More silliness
You guys are great.
1. Cooney (among others) edits report
2. Report goes to NRC
3. NRC approves report without contesting Cooney’s specific edits (The NRC committee _was_ the independent scientific oversight)
5. NRC accepted Cooney’s edits as being within the bounds of scientific acceptability
QED
March 21st, 2006 at 8:33 pm
Roger, that last comment of yours doesn’t quite make sense if Eli’s quote is accurate. To the extent that you’re correct that the NRC committee saw itself as providing that oversight, they obviously concluded that more was needed.
Also, is it the case that Piltz wrote those drafts without feedback from the scientists? If the scientists OK’d his language but then complained about Cooney’s edits, trying to put the two on the same level seems to be straining too much.
March 21st, 2006 at 9:05 pm
Roger, you appear to be reading a very different report than I am. The NRC committee was NOT referring to itself. It was advising the CCSP to set up an independent advisory group. Referring to the revised plan they state that:
“The CCSP should establish a mechanism for independent oversight of the program as a whole in order to maintain its long-term scientific credibility. This committee still believes (as in its first report) that establishing a standing advisory body charged with independent oversight of the entire program will be more effective than using a number of ad hoc external advisory mechanisms. Maintaining scientific credibility is especially important for the synthesis and assessment products designed to summarize and evaluate the implications of the program’s cumulative knowledge for scientific research and policy formation. The CCSP should ensure the credibility of synthesis and assessment products by producing them with independent oversight and review from the wider scientific and stakeholder communities throughout the process.”
and later…..
“In its first report, this committee recommended that the CCSP establish a standing advisory body charged with independent oversight of the entire program. The CCSP considered this recommendation (see Box 3-1), but decided that it would provide independent program oversight through “a number of external advisory mechanisms, including periodic overall program reviews by the NRC or other groups, rather than a single body” (CCSP, 2003, p. 175). The committee still believes that an independent, standing advisory body for the entire program would be the most effective way to maintain the long-term scientific credibility of the program. Such a group should include highly respected scientists and other stakeholders spanning the broad range of topics addressed by the program. This group would supplement advisory groups already established for many CCSP program areas. Whatever mechanism is chosen, the committee believes that independent program oversight will be essential to maintaining the long-term credibility of the CCSP.
Recommendation: The CCSP should establish a mechanism for independent oversight of the program as a whole in order to maintain its long-term scientific credibility.”
The entire report is at http://fermat.nap.edu/books/0309088658/html and is mostly concerned with the management structure of the CCSP and the research goals of the program. It was very critical. To claim that the NRC panel issued Cooney a persilschein (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persilschein) is really stretching the rubber band.
March 21st, 2006 at 9:22 pm
And, oh yes, one other thing, although you mention that Phil Cooney went to work for ExxonMobil after he resigned, somehow the fact that he was a lawyer and “climate change leader” for the American Petroleum Institute before being appointed to the Council on Environmental Quality went down the memory hole. Inconvenient that.
March 22nd, 2006 at 11:58 am
Eli, you forget that there are two sides to this debate. Given that, we must place an imaginary line between them and treat each side as exactly equal. That we can do this without any reference to the facts is the best proof of our own objectivity. Any who dare criticize this paradigm shall be deemed “silly.” So there.
March 22nd, 2006 at 9:03 pm
Roger,
Re Piltz… via his new site:
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/
“From 1995 until resigning in March 2005 [Piltz] served in senior positions in the office of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP), the program that coordinates support for climate and global change research by 13 federal agencies. From 1991-1994 he was a professional staff member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, supporting the committee’s oversight of climate change and energy technology issues.”
I know you are not trying to beat up Piltz… but I don’t think it is fair to put him on the same level as Cooney, just because he is a Democrat. What experience does Cooney have that would qualify him to review scientific information?
Also, does NRC really make many final edits after reports pass through the White House? I mean, if they did, would that trigger a new round of edits, etc? Regarding that EPA report that came out in the summer of 2003, I recall that the White House was very demanding about retaining certain language to the point that the EPA chose to publish the report without chapters on air quality and climate change because they had been altered so far beyond recognition by the White House. It’s certainly possible that the White House intimidated NSA into retaining their edits to Piltz’s work. I don’t know… but I would like to know… in light of their record on this sort of thing.
Either way, a better review process seems in order… I’ll agree with that!
Best, Mitch
March 22nd, 2006 at 9:27 pm
Mitch- Thanks.
I know Piltz (I interned for House Science in 1991), but not Cooney. I have no basis for evaluating their knowledge of climate science, other than the large-picture perspective that neither is trained in science. Since the documents in question were not climate science products, but administrative documents, I am happy to assume that each were perfectly qualified for their jobs. As I suggested the context of the edits (or the writing original report) are not the most important inssue here.
If the NRC committee found some scientifically unsupportable statements in the reports I doubt it would remain silent. Here is an example of what happens when the White House plays too heavy a hand with the NRC:
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/health/000315nrc_perchlorate_repo.html
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