On February 20, 2005 Gardiner Harris wrote in the New York Times about the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) deliberations that led to recent coverage about an advisory committee’s decision to support use of three drugs, Vioxx, Bextra and Celebrex. Gardiner’s article suggests that the FDA is moving toward a new culture of openness.

“Instead of certainty, the agency embraced doubt. Instead of presenting a united front, agency officials bickered openly. Instead of keeping secret its dealings with drug companies, the agency gave a public accounting of lengthy and contentious negotiations with the drug maker Merck… These changes were not voluntary. The FDA has been forced by a series of embarrassing scandals over the past year to transform its “Daddy knows best” culture… [Dr. Lester M. Crawford, head of the FDA said] “Our culture, which has received some criticism in recent months is not to alarm the public when we get a signal. That era is sort of past. What the public, we think, is demanding to know as soon as we know what’s going on. And they are fully prepared and adult enough to interpret whether or not this is a final decision.” To be sure, the changes so far have been relatively small. But the tentative steps made at this week’s meeting seemed to go well, and agency officials have promised more.”

Well, be careful what you wish for. Only 5 days later the New York Times reported,

(more…)

Author: Kevin Vranes (website. email)

The first shot has been fired in the post- Kyoto-in-effect-for-everybody-else United States. A new package of climate change bills (S.386, 387 and 388) was introduced last week by Senators Hagel, Alexander, Craig, and Dole, all of the R persuasion. Two eye-opening excerpts from Hagel’s floor speech:

“I rise today to introduce three pieces of legislation which I believe can help contribute to a new domestic and international consensus on climate change. This legislation builds upon three principles: the need for shared responsibilities between developed and developing countries; the linkages between environmental, economic, and energy policies; and the employment of greenhouse gas intensity as the best measurement upon which to build an effective climate policy.”

(more…)

The following is a "http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199900/ldhansrd/pdvn/lds05/text/50223-24.htm#50223-24_spnew0">statement
on climate change from earlier this week of http://www.dodonline.co.uk/engine.asp?lev1=4&lev2=38&menu=81&biog=y&id=2213"">Dick
Taverne,, a Liberal Democrat in the U.K. Parliament House of Lords.
The statement provides more evidence why it is important for the IPCC to
ruthlessly protect its position as an “honest broker” on climate policy.

Lord Taverne expresses concerns about the IPCC being “sexed up” and says,
“There is a sort of political taboo about the [climate] issue. If you
express doubts, you must be in the pay of the oil industry or a Bush
supporter. There is a slight whiff of eco-McCarthyism about.”

Some might respond to Lord Taverne with a barrage of science and
contextual emendations to the examples that he cites. This in my view
would be a mistake. Lord Taverne already expresses, “I support measures
to curb emissions of carbon dioxide.” The more effective response in my
view would be for the IPCC to view Lord Taverne’s statement as evidence of
the effects of the politicization of climate science on those who are the
desired audience for the science, and to take those steps necessary to
protect its role as an honest broker on climate policy. Looking to the
structure of its first assessment report would be a good place to start.

Here is Lord Taverne’s complete "http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199900/ldhansrd/pdvn/lds05/text/50223-24.htm#50223-24_spnew0">statement.

“My Lords, I have no very clear view about climate change. Indeed, I am
somewhat worried that many people seem to be so sure. The issue is one of
great complexity. There are so many factors that interact and have to be
judged over such a long timescale that it makes predictions hazardous.
About 75 per cent of experts-most, although not all, as some claim-agree
that man-made greenhouse gases are a significant factor in global warning
and everyone agrees that global warming is taking place. I feel that I
must accept that majority view about the contribution of man-made factors,
but how much warming will there be, how soon will it happen, what effect
will it have and what should we do about it?

(more…)

Last year a student of mine, "http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/homepages/edouard_h/">Edouard von
Herberstein, wrote a fantastic master’s thesis on the use of
catastrophe models in insurance and reinsurance decision making. It is
hard to find on our WWW site, so it is worth highlighting. Here is the href =
"http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/homepages/edouard_h/hurricane_risk_pricing/">abstract:

Hurricane risk pricing, catastrophe models, and data quality: Why it
matters and what should be done about it?

Over the past 20 years, the colossal increase in computing power has
allowed computers to simulate very complex systems that require millions
of calculations and operations per second. Simulation software is
frequently used to forecast weather, exchange rates fluctuations, stock
price movement, or global climate. In most cases, computer simulation is
the only available tool generating forecasts from complex models. Assuming
that the use of more information in more complex simulators reduces
uncertainty, decision makers often incorporate these forecasts in their
decision processes. In some cases, decision makers give simulation tool
results a very large weight in their final decision.

Catastrophe models are a good illustration of very complex computer
simulations that largely drive business decisions in the insurance and
reinsurance industries. But just as in global climate models, the
sensitivity and uncertainty in catastrophe models should not be overlooked
when using model output in decision-making. In this project ENVS graduate
student "http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/homepages/edouard_h/">Edouard von
Herberstein proposes a method to assess the sensitivity of insurance pricing methods to data quality and questions whether these pricing techniques efficiently use the information in hurricane loss models.

See Edouard’s complete report "http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/homepages/edouard_h/hurricane_risk_pricing/final_report.pdf">here.

I just returned from a meeting where I had a chance to discuss the role of “catastrophe models” in insurance and reinsurance. Upon returning I
thought that it might be worth revisiting an essay I wrote six years ago
for a newsletter that we used to publish called the WeatherZine. Here is
the "http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/zine/archives/1-29/14.html">essay
in full:

WeatherZine, February, 1999

The 1990s have seen the rise of the catastrophe modeling industry in
response to demand, primarily from the insurance industry, for
quantification of risk. Decision makers seek from catastrophe models some
estimate of the risk that they face due to extreme events like hurricanes
or earthquakes. A typical model will incorporate information on weather
(e.g., hurricane landfall and wind speed probabilities), insurance (e.g.,
the value of exposed property), and damage potential (e.g., engineering,
building materials, construction, codes). The model uses these data to
calculate things like probable maximum loss, annual expected loss, and
losses due to a specific event. Insured losses are typically much smaller
than total economic losses in a catastrophe. Catastrophe models have
become fundamental to the existence of financial products such as
catastrophe bonds and futures. Even the United States government has begun
to develop its own catastrophe models to aid its Federal Emergency
Management Agency response to disasters. Clearly, with so many decision
makers wanting to understand risk, the rise of the catastrophe model
industry should be applauded. But there is reason for hesitation: No one
knows how well the models actually perform.

(more…)

We have posted John Marburger’s (President Bush’s science advisor) prepared remarks (PDF) delivered at the University of Colorado on February 14, 2005 during our first science advisor symposium. Here is an excerpt,

“The advisory arrangements have changed relatively little since 1950. Presidential science advisors are still mostly physicists known to each other, and national security is still an important focus of science advice (with a new homeland security angle). Given the enormous changes that have occurred in the landscape of science and the technical infrastructure of society, this invariance of the government machinery for science is mildly surprising. It speaks, perhaps, to the wisdom of the postwar policy architects, but it should also awaken a concern that the structure and practice of science policy today may diverge from the functions it needs to perform in a dynamic society…”

Marburger quotes extensively from “two of his favorite articles on science policy,”

“Daniel Sarewitz’s 2003 essay “Does Science Policy Exist, and if so Does it Matter?” (available on the website of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University www.cspo.org). At the far end, on the leading edge of the dramatic leap in federal science funding in the early 60’s, is Alvin Weinberg’s 1961 article “Impact of Large-Scale Science on the United States” [Science magazine vol. 134, 161 (1961)].”

He read an extended quote from Weinberg, making the point that we continue to have, “the need to understand the likely impact on society of different patterns of investment. Here are Weinberg’s own words on the matter:

(more…)

A widely run Associated Press article yesterday by Paul Recer reminded me how difficult it is to get good analysis from the media (or anybody else) on the issue of the politicization of science. The article included the following,

“The voice of science is being stifled in the Bush administration, with fewer scientists heard in policy discussions and money for research and advanced training being cut, according to panelists at a national science meeting [AAAS meeting in DC]… Rosina Bierbaum, dean of the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment, said the Bush administration has cut scientists out of some of the policy-making processes, particularly on environmental issues… Under Bush, said Bierbaum, the questioning of the proven science has become more important than finding ways to cope with climate change. One result of such actions, said Neal Lane of Rice University, a former director of the National Science Foundation, is that “we don’t really have a policy right now to deal with what everybody agrees is a serious problem”…”

It seems to me that some important context was overlooked in this article. It should have noted that Rosina Bierbaum and Neil Lane were both political appointees in the Clinton Administration’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, with Lane serving as presidential science advisor and Bierbaum as one of his deputies. Of course, the following headline just doesn’t have the same zing, “Former Clinton Officials Criticize Bush Science Policies.”

Supporters of President Bush would be unlikely to point out this obvious conflict of interests because by doing so they would draw attention to some real concerns associated with the president’s handling of scientific issues (e.g., see here). Opponents of the president are even more unlikely to point out this conflict because the article was obviously written to score political points.

In 2003 I wrote an essay about the politicization of the politicization of science. Here is an excerpt,

(more…)

Nature reported last week that a lawsuit is underway to force researchers to reveal the original data that was used in a study that was used to justify a recommendation that all Americans cut back on their salt intake.

“As early as this summer, for example, a US Court of Appeals will judge a plea from the Virginia-based Salt Institute, which represents salt producers. The institute wants direct access to the data behind a study that linked salt consumption to high blood pressure. The trial, funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), studied the impact of dietary sodium intake on blood pressure and the results were published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine and The American Journal of Cardiology. They showed that reducing dietary sodium lowers blood pressure in most people, and this led the government to recommend that Americans consume less salt. Researchers in the trial say that they have released all the data the Salt Institute could want or need — and that it is misusing the act. “It is trying to slice and dice the data set so it finds a group that seems not to have a blood pressure that’s responsive to reduction in salt,” says Lawrence Appel, a physician at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, and one of the trial’s principal investigators. “That’s blatantly inconsistent with a scientific approach to analysing clinical data.” Last month, the Salt Institute and the US Chamber of Commerce asked the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a decision by a lower court in Virginia. That court had ruled that the NHLBI was within its rights in refusing to release the data that had been requested.”

(more…)

Author: Kevin Vranes (website. email)

The recent 2/14 WSJ article (“Global Warring…” by Antonio Regaldo) addresses the debate that most readers of this site are well familiar with: the Mann et al. hockey stick. The WSJ is still asking – and trying to answer – the basic questions: hockey stick or no hockey stick? But the background premise of the article, stated explicitly and implicitly throughout, is that it was the hockey stick that led to Kyoto and other climate policy. Is it?

I think it’s fair to say that to all of us in the field of climatology, the notion that Kyoto is based on the Mann curve is utter nonsense. If a climatologist, or a policy advisor charged with knowing the science well enough to make astute recommendations to his/her boss, relied solely on the Mann curve to prove definitively the existence of anthropogenic warming, then we’re in deeper trouble than anybody realizes. (This is essentially what Stephan Ramstorf writes in a 1/27 RealClimate post.) And although it’s easy to believe that national and international policy can hinge on single graphs, I hope we give policy makers more credit than that.

But maybe we are in that much trouble. The WSJ highlights what Regaldo and McIntyre says is Mann’s resistance or outright refusal to provide to inquiring minds his data, all details of his statistical analysis, and his code. The WSJ’s anecdotal treatment of the subject goes toward confirming what I’ve been hearing for years in climatology circles about not just Mann, but others collecting original climate data.

(more…)

Over the past year or so, Berkeley linguist George Lakoff has received a lot of attention because of his writing on the framing of political issues and their significance for shaping debate and discourse. (We discussed Lakoff here.) I’ve thought of framing as I’ve noticed the apparent increased use by scientists of the unique term “harbinger” to characterize the relationship of contemporary climate events and expected future climate changes. Consider the following examples:

17 Feb 2005 – “Scott L. Schliebe, head of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Polar Bear Project in Anchorage… said “We are seeing harbingers of change which are dictated by climate… It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that [the changes] could affect polar bears…”

3 Feb 2005 – “Steve Schneider from Stanford University, California, said there was clear proof that species were reacting to the 0.7 degrees centigrade warming of the atmosphere that had already taken place over the past century. “This is a harbinger — nature is already responding,”"

7 Nov 2004 – “Four hurricanes in a five-week period could be a harbinger of things to come,” said Dr. Paul Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School.”

21 Oct 2004 – “[Kevin] Trenberth said, “But the evidence strongly
suggests more intense storms and [the] risk of greater flooding events, so that the North Atlantic hurricane season of 2004 may well be a harbinger of the future.””

23 Sept 2004 – “University of Colorado at Boulder researcher Ted Scambos said… “As temperatures crossed the threshold of melting in the summer months, ice shelves in the area rapidly disintegrated… While the consequences of this area are small compared to other parts of the Antarctic, it is a harbinger of what will happen when the large ice sheets begin to warm”"

(more…)