“… in some instances there is incontrovertible scientific evidence …”

“The reality is that action is determined by many factors other than science, and continued efforts to compel action through science is an important factor in the politicization of science.”

— Roger Pielke, Jr. at April 27, 2005 08:23 AM

“Problem definition is a very political act. It shapes what actions are considered and which are not. Advocating that climate change be viewed as a problem is indeed overt political advocacy.”

— Roger Pielke, Jr. earlier in this thread

This is very sad stuff to read. It seems in the service of the prescientific people whose claims to understand how politics should work to be embarassed.

Yes, politicians do routinely do ignore science. And yes, they will gladly claim they’re hiring you as an “honest broker” to vet what’s brought into the political arena.

But that’s a failing of poorly educated and prescientific people practicing politics, not an ideal about how politics ought to work if actual success in the actual world is our criterion for a culture that’s succeeding.

Look at just one recent example and consider what ignoring the science cost:

The deregulation of the electric grid was done in frank denial of the physics of how electricity flows; the IEEE pointed that out, among others.

There was no one but the physicists who could tell the politicians that deregulation, as passed into law, assumed the impossible. On the ‘other side’ were the stockbrokers telling them it would be profitable. Enron, eh?

http://www.google.com/search?q=IEEE+deregulation+%22electrical+grid%22+physics

What’s wrong with the electric grid? – The Industrial Physicist
“… The solution advocated by deregulation critics would revise the rules to put them back into accord with the grid physics. … The system is not outdated, …”
http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-9/iss-5/p8.html

Can we claim to be, or to be becoming, a scientific culture? Not everyone wants that.

Remember, almost no culture in human history has been scientific. To bring science into culture means challenging history.

Sincerely,

Jaap C. Hanekamp

Yes, individual members of society are not all-knowing, tend to defer to others on areas that are perceived to be in the realm of such person’s expertise (which may be unjustifiedly broad), and may tend to cede moral authority to such persons as well. This is part of the nature of human society and has been going on for a long time.

It is true not only for scientists, but priests, politicians, clebrities and all those in positions of authority or higher status – and the wary citizen should be aware of it, as it is subject both to ready deliberate abuse and manipulation by special interests and to mistaken policy judgments.

I don’t see much grounds either for optimism that human nature or society will change to eliminate the problem anytime soon, or for pessimism that science or scientists as a whole will be gravely or fatally discredited. Hope and foolishness both spring eternal.

Of course, I agree with suggestions that it would be advisable – from the view of policy formulation and to reduce perceptions of the politicization of science – if scientists themselves try to make clear when they are describing science (from their expertise) and when they are adding their own value judgments in expressing policy preferences (as opposed to evaluating policy options from a scientific perspective). Perhaps it would also be useful if the National Academies could occasionally speak to this issue generally.

I certainly do not see that much will be gained if scientist as a whole were to disengage from personal engagement in policy matters, retreat to the ivory tower and lead the field of abusing the public trust to all the rest of the charlatans!

Scientist is a label. So are doctor, lawyer and plumber. We use these all the time to describe characteristics people might have.

The only problems I see with labels are that they may sometimes be false, they may be used as slurs or they may be used to support logical fallacies — specifically in the form of ad hominems. But generally, they are not used these ways. Labels are often simply descriptive.

And it seems to me that simply stating that there is such a thing as a political advocate, there is also such a thing as a scientist, and a person might be both at the same time is neither incorrect, pejorative, nor a slur.

Roger has raised the idea that there might be risk that public will hold scientists in lower esteem if they begin to advocate publically for certain political agendas. I think he is correct. I think the reasons for loss of esteem are represent the flip side for the current high esteem held by scientists.

It happens that the public places great confidence in scientist– particularly when scientists discuss their own area of expertise. This trust is based on public perception that, at least with regard to reporting scientific results in their own field, the scientist fosters the habit of setting aside their political and personal biases.

Generally, members of the public do not go to great lengths to test whether the trust they place in any individual scientist is warranted. Nevertheless, they do notice the way scientists answer questions, and discuss topics. They notice scientists often emphasize evidence based methods of testing truth. And generally, trust in scientists increases when scientist are seen to do these things.

But this trust could be lost if scientists change their habits vis-a-vis the public.

What is the public to think if they find a scientist has begun active political advocacy to promote government spending on research in their own field? (Climate science?) And what if the scientist begins to provide reasons for funding that are not-science based? (Bible recommended creation care?)

And what if scientists who embark on political advocacy publish papers including a large amount of non-scientific material? What if these papers appear in scientific journals — and then the papers fail to use standard scholarly citations practices of referencing ALL sources– not just those in scholarly journals? (e.g. An article containing a large amount of material that was supposed to represent a ‘case study’ of media response to a climate science topic, mentioned specific media responses to that incident, ‘analyzed them’ and failed cite the media sources. See Curry et al BAMS August 2006. Curry”>http://webster.eas.gatech.edu/Papers/Webster2006d.pdf“>Curry et. al [2006]. )

What if a member of the public enquires why peers permitted such a lapse in scholarly referencing standards? Can scientists provide an answer that seems scientific or scholarly to the public?

If things like this occur, why shouldn’t the public lose trust in scientific standards of objectivity? Or begin to suspect the scientists are willing to dispense with practices that limit both scientific and political bias — particularly when the scientific subject touches on areas where the scientist acts as a political advocates?

And to return to the labeling issue, in such a case, is it “labeling” someone who acts both as an activist and a scientist could cause the public to lose confidence? Or is it something else?

Just listen to radio, watch tele, read newspapers: How often do you hear or read a phrase like “Scientists say we should …”. There are two things “wrong” with that sentence.

Firstly, facts (science) and values (politics) are mixed, because strictly science can only predict what would happen if we do A or B; it cannot say that therefore we should do A.

Secondly, the scientist is placed in a position of authority. We should do this, because the scientist, who is smarter and wiser than we are, thinks it is the best thing for us to do. Scientists are thus placed in a position of moral authority, besides being experts.

In the olden days, priests used to combine moral authority with explaining how the world works.

That should be resisted.

Instead, some scientists seem to enjoy their power. The thread on Heidi Cullen provides another excellent example. Dr Cullen writes that she thinks it is her scientific duty to get people out of harm’s way, for hurricanes as well as global warming. She thus assumes the role of a priest; she knows what is best for us, and she knows how to solve our problems.

Scientists teaming up with priests is scary indeed.

Thanks for your comments.

What you describe is “interest group pluralism” in which different interests (“factions” according to James Madison) seek to restrict the scope of choice to their preferred outcomes. So in regard to the Iraq example, the Bus Administration wants to reduce policy outcomes to “stay the course” (or “a new way forward” – “surge” – whatever), while its opponents want to reduce the scope of choice in different way. The battle between different factions is the essence of politics. An assumption underlying this vision of democracy is that the ecology of interests will bring to political debate a full range of options.

But what happens if such political debate only brings to public debate a bunch of bad options? Here I argue there is room for another approach besides getting behind established and entrenched interests. My new books discusses this in detail.

You write, “When a scientist associates with others who are advocates, the scientist does not become an advocate himself.”

I am afraid that this simply doesn’t fly. The scientist who associates herself with advocacy groups is indeed acting as an advocate by lending their name and authority to the groups cause.

All of this is discussed in gory detail in my forthcoming book ….

Thanks!

Doesn`t this statement describe mankind generally? We could certainly see it at work in the Bush administration recently in its convictions on terrorism and democracy:

“they can’t tell their personal convictions from their scientific opinions. I think that many natural scientists in the climate debate are just a bit naive, and cannot tell fact from value.”

I agree with you that it is important for each of us to strive to separate our personal convictions from our views of science or other factual matters, but you just realize that our cognition systems just aren`t geared that way.

I certainly don`t see alot of evidence that scientists are viewed as high priests, though an escape into fundamentalism is very much in evidence. This is simply a reaction to globalization and to the breakdown of traditional societies.

Regards,

Tom

If we “stay the course” (in Iraq, with energy policy, whatever) and do not advocate for the policy to be reconsidered, then there are theoretically unlimited policy options by definition (since we arent considering them and therefore can’t count them, we can’t falsify the hypothesis that there are unlimited options). But practically, there is only one option, i.e. stay the course.

If, on the other hand, we warn that there may be risks associated with staying the course and suggest that these risks be assessed and the policies be reconsidered in light of these risks, then theoretically we are starting to limit options by enumerating risks and potential policy options to address these risks (i.e. whatever we enumerate will be less than the potential infinity of theoretically unlimited options). Practically, we are substantially increasing the number of options by enumerating risks and policy options.

Identifying risks and suggesting precautionary planning and strategizing does not limit options, it ultimately expands them.

With regards to scientists actually doing anything useful in the policy arena potentially jeopardizing science funding, the recently released NAS Decadal Survey is explictly organized around societally relevant themes (which was “ordered” by OMB: be relevant, or lose your satellites).

With regard to scientists being unwitting public policy advocates, I am having a hard time understanding how that is possible. Here is a definition of public policy advocacy:

“Public policy advocacy is the effort to influence public policy through various forms of persuasive communication. Public policy includes statements, policies, or prevailing practices imposed by those in authority to guide or control institutional, community, and sometimes individual behavior.”

It is difficult enough to try to be an effective policy advocate, I would argue that it is all but impossible to be an unwitting public policy advocate. Scientists warning the public of a risk are not public policy advocates (witting or unwitting). Period. When a scientist advocates for a specific policy or recommends a specific practice, then the scientist is being an advocate. When a scientist associates with others who are advocates, the scientist does not become an advocate himself (scientists are likely to interact with a diversity of people with a diversity of advocacy positions).

Your attempts to identify stealth and unwitting policy advocates is very misguided. Not only is it misguided, but such labelling generates distate in the scientiific community for participating constructively in the policy process. Surely this is not your objective?

One last issue that has come up on this thread, re scientists and “values”. My thinking on this is largely from Allchin 1998. The conception that science should be value free is misleading. The scientific process itself is based upon epistemic values and inevitably incorporates cultural values. Some of the values in science govern how we regulate the potentially biasing effect of other values in producing reliable knowledge. An individual’s cognitive resources are drawn from his culture, influencing what they contribute to science. Contrasting values can work like an epistemic system of checks and balances. On relevant issues, we often need to integrate scientific values with ethical or social values. Scientists can articulate when, where, and to what degree a risk might occur. But other values are required to assess whether the risk is acceptable or not or how the risk should be distributed. So what exactly is the problem here? I understand the problem with conflict of interest associated with medical researchers accepting money from drug companies. Exactly how are the cultural values of climate researchers (perhaps religion, concern for the environment, seeking economic prosperity, concern for the poor, or some combination) supposed to pollute the science and jeopardize our funding?

Extremely good points. You say:
“Science is the new religion, and scientists the new priests”

Just as you cannot tell a Catholic their religion might be wrong, you cannot tell some alarmists here their’s might be wrong.

Good lord, man, have you no sense of irony?? And you wish to represent yourself as high minded and even handed!

“In climate policy, the debate has polarised and the two sides are making so much noise that the sensible middle cannot be heard.”

This has everything to do with corporate owned media and nothing to do with scientists.