Battle of the Bunsen Burners - The science wars are here to stay
Reason ^ | January 6, 2006 | Ronald Bailey
Has science become politicized? A better question might be: When has
it ever not been? The Roman Catholic Church's prosecution of Galileo
is a famous example. Another is the Environmental Protection Agency's
decision to ban the pesticide DDT even though an EPA administrative
law examiner, after a seven month hearing of scientific evidence,
determined that it shouldn't be prohibited.
The problem is that scientific results always have an impact on
somebody, usually because they can be turned into newfangled
innovations that threaten old technologies. Consequently, lobbyists
and activists swarm Capitol Hill yelling about the advantages of their
new product and the horrors perpetrated by the old. On a mundane level
consider the epic battles between cable and broadcast television, and
between recording companies and file swapping utilities like Napster.
Do violent video games boost the teen murder rate? Do abortions
increase a woman's chance of getting breast cancer? If man-made global
warming turns out to be a big problem, emitters of carbon dioxide fear
that they will lose out to alternative power sources like wind and
solar.
On the medical front, pro-lifers sing the praises of adult stem cells
while pouring scorn on embryonic stem cells. They do so because they
think that producing embryonic stem cells is the moral equivalent of
dismembering infants for parts. Pro-lifers know that their ethical
arguments will only sway so many people, so they resort to scientific
arguments, claiming that adult stem cells are just as efficacious as
embryonic cells in order to convince the rest of us to abandon
research they believe is a moral horror. In fact, if they turn out to
be right, that would have an impact on federal funding and the
direction that thousands of stem cell researchers would drive their
work.
And then there is the vexed problem of funding sources. Surveys of
studies show that scientific reports sponsored by drug companies
generally find the supporting company's drugs to be safe and
efficacious, whereas independent studies often do not. Interestingly,
studies supported by the $132 billion in federal research and
development expenditures rarely occasion such scrutiny. Perhaps that's
because they are generally above reproach. But it is also true that
most academic research is funded by government agencies and it will
not help a scientist's career to bite the federal hand that feeds him
and his postdocs. I also suspect that most agency funded research
generally finds that what the agency guesses is a problem turns out to
be a problem.
In a liberal secular society in which traditional sources of
authority—the Church and the State—have eroded, science stands the
ultimate arbiter of truth. So, both the right and the left loudly seek
to claim that scientific findings justify their political goals.
Not surprisingly, when a scientific finding doesn't support their
policies or programs, both sides suspect that it has been
"politicized." In this case, "politicized" means disagrees with what
we good people want. Naturally to prevent politicization, both
Republicans and Democrats have sought to legislate scientific
objectivity. On the right, the Republicans are proponents of the
Federal Data Quality Act of 1999 (FDQA). The FDQA directed the Office
of Management and Budget (OMB) to "issue guidelines...that provide
policy and procedural guidance to federal agencies for ensuring and
maximizing the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of
information (including statistical information) disseminated by
federal agencies." Who could be against any of those good and true
things?
However, the Bush Administration's OMB issued controversial
regulations providing government-wide guidance aimed at enhancing the
practice of peer review of government science documents. Democrats and
various left-leaning activist groups object that the new OMB peer
review process largely excludes scientists who are agency employees
from serving as reviewers. Naturally, the Democrats and activists
believe that scientists working for the Environmental Protection
Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the
Food and Drug Administration are objective experts who, not
incidentally, will support their programs. Never mind the distorting
public choice incentives that pressure even honest agency personnel to
find evidence for the existence of the problems that their agency was
created to address. So last year Congressman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.)
submitted the Restore Scientific Integrity to Federal Research and
Policymaking Act (RSIFRPA), portions of which aimed to quash the new
OMB peer review regulations.
On the other hand, the Democrats can point to evidence that the Bush
Administration has censored scientific research and disseminated false
information. Consequently, Democrats and their ideological confreres
hope that they have put a stop to the Bush Administration's subversion
of science with the adoption of some portions of the RSIFRPA, which
were incorporated into the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services budget bill last month. The act prohibits federal employees
from tampering with or censoring federally funded scientific research
or analysis or directing the dissemination of false or misleading
information. Again, what person of good will could be against these
salutary goals?
What these efforts to legislate scientific objectivity really point up
is that science, as the chief arbiter of truth in our society, will
remain unavoidably enmeshed in politics. The government official who
ordered the ban on DDT despite the scientific evidence for its safety,
William Ruckelshaus, the first administrator of the EPA, brought
admirable clarity to the issue. In 1979, Ruckelshaus wrote to Allan
Grant, president of American Farm Bureau Federation president,
stating, "Decisions by the government involving the use of toxic
substances are political with a small 'p.' The ultimate judgment
remains political." What was true for the EPA in 1972, is even more
true for federal agencies today. The science wars are here to stay.
--
"The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing
their memory, or their backbone, but we're not going to sit by and
let them rewrite history." -- ***** Cheney 11/16/2005
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography" -- Ambrose Bierce
"America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy." -- John Updike
"Long term commitment in relationships is only necessary because it takes
so damn long to raise children. Marriage may well be some kind of trick
to keep the males around beyond sexual satiation." -- Captain Compassion
"Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.
--Will Durant
Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMverizon.net
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