On Friday, I participated in a briefing on Capitol Hill on the use of science in policy debates. Other panelists were Don Kennedy, editor-in-chief of Science magazine, Juliet Eilperin, environment reporter for the Washington Post, and David Goldston, formerly chief of staff of the House Science Committee and now a lecturer at Princeton.
In my presentation, I made two points that will not surprise long-time readers.
First, I argued that the scientific assessment process is the best way to determine what the scientific community thinks about a particular scientific issue.
The key to my argument is that credible scientific advice emerges from a credible process. Scientific results gain credibility by passing peer review, and then being re-tested and multiply verified by the scientific community. In that way, hypotheses are converted into "facts." Scientific advice to policymakers gains credibility by relying on peer-reviewed analyses and then going through multiple levels of peer-review -- as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports do.
As a result, the IPCC reports are gold-standard statements of what the scientific community knows about the climate and how confidently we know it.
The worst way to determine what the science tells us, as evidenced by Inhofe's last stand, is a Congressional hearing. There is no guarantee that what the "scientists" at those hearings say is true. There's no peer review of any statement, no fact checking -- it's a free-for-all. If you don't believe me, take a look at some of the statements trotted out by David Deming and Bob Carter. They are just flat-out wrong.
Second, when it comes to policy debates, arguments about science are often part of a strategy to induce gridlock -- what I've called the uncertainty agenda.
Arguing about science has several advantages for policymakers. First, it allows them to bury value judgments the general public would find unpalatable. For example, Joe Congressman might believe that the earth is better off with SUVs than polar bears, but he can't argue that because it's not a political winner. So instead, he argues that the science is unsound or fatally flawed.
Second, the general public finds it hard to separate bogus from legitimate scientific arguments, so arguments about science tend to induce paralysis. After all, if everyone is arguing about science, they're not arguing about what policy to adopt. In this way, arguments about "uncertainty" can be used to legitimate the status quo.
Finally, I should give a shout out to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Geophysical Union, American Meteorological Society, and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, who sponsored the event. Thanks!
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Comments
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Steve Bloom Posted 9:48 am
17 Jan 2007
On the subject of the post, it has always seemed to me that while it's extremely useful to educate policy makers and journalists about the tactic you describe, a complete regime change to non-scientizing honest brokers operating in the context of a recast UNFCCC (oops, there I go again about you-know-who) would do little additional good. As I think we have seen, after a while denialists who stray too far from the science will tend to lose credibility. Put another way, improvements in the science really are important to advancing appropriate policy. That will remain true even as we move forward into a policy debate that is much more about the relative value of mitigation vs. adaptation.
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Andrew Dessler Posted 10:45 am
17 Jan 2007
I agree that improving science is important. No argument there. But I stand by the idea that getting people to understand the "uncertainty" argument is crucial. It's a terrible argument, yet it's very effective.
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Steve Bloom Posted 2:19 pm
17 Jan 2007
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Bart Anderson Posted 3:26 pm
17 Jan 2007
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Liz Borkowski Posted 10:49 pm
17 Jan 2007
One thing I'm worried about is that industry groups seem to be creating their own parallel scientific assessment process -- there are some "peer reviewed" journals whose reviewers and editors appear to be dedicated to publishing studies showing no harmful effects from substances that other studies have linked to health problems.
Of course, these studies don't stand up to the re-testing and multiple verification that you describe, but when a lawyer from one of the big product defense firms shows a policymaker (or judge) a sheaf of studies and says they were published in various peer-reviewed journals, it can be hard for someone who's not familiar with captured journals to to know that these studies don't actually represent the work of the scientific community.
I imagine this is less of an issue in climate change (since it'd be tough to create a parallel IPCC), but it's a problem when it comes to substances like asbestos. Is this something policymakers are aware of and can deal with?
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Andrew Dessler Posted 1:18 am
18 Jan 2007
The credibility of the IPCC comes from the credible process that created it: written by scientists, peer-reviewed by scientists, based on the peer-reviewed literature, etc.
If a policymaker wants to know if an assessment is credible, they should look at the process that created it. Does it entrain a large fraction of the scientific community? Is it based on peer-reviewed literature? What kind of review process did the report go through? etc.
If they do that, I think they'd be well on their way to getting good scientific advice.
thanks!
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bookerly Posted 12:01 pm
18 Jan 2007
Great points Andrew.
We should also keep in mind the political value of "studying" an issue.
Most politicians are concerned mainly about the current election cycle. A study can put an issue into the next election cycle, thus removing it from being a threat to re-election, since they can claim to be "doing" something.
That is one of the real reasons politicians like hearings and uncertainty, it lets them move things into future election cycles. Which, from their points of view, are out of sight.
patrick
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