I always knew the current administration was anti-academia. It is
certainly anti-science. Here is an article on the 'sabatoge of science.'
<http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/29/7963/>
Published on Saturday, March 29, 2008 by The American Prospect
The Manufacture of Uncertainty
by Chris Mooney
The sabotage of science is now a routine part of American politics. The
same corporate strategy of bombarding the courts and regulatory agencies
with a barrage of dubious scientific information has been tried on
innumerable occasions — and it has nearly always worked, at least for a
time. Tobacco. Asbestos. Lead. Vinyl chloride. Chromium. Formaldehyde.
Arsenic. Atrazine. Benzene. Beryllium. Mercury. Vioxx. And on and on. In
battles over regulating these and many other dangerous substances, money
has bought science, and then science — or, more precisely, artificially
exaggerated uncertainty about scientific findings — has greatly delayed
action to protect public and worker safety. And in many cases, people
have died.
Tobacco companies perfected the ruse, which was later copycatted by
other polluting or health-endangering industries. One tobacco executive
was even dumb enough to write it down in 1969. “Doubt is our product,”
reads the infamous memo, “since it is the best means of competing with
the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the minds of the general public. It is
also the means of establishing a controversy.”
In his important new book, David Michaels calls the strategy
“manufacturing uncertainty.” A former Clinton administration Energy
Department official and now associate chair of the Department of
Environmental and Occupational Health at George Washington University,
Michaels is a comprehensive and thorough chronicler — indeed, almost too
thorough a chronicler, at times overwhelming the reader with information.
But there’s a lot to be learned here. Even most of us who have gone
swimming in the litigation-generated stew of tobacco documents (you can
never get the stink off of you again) don’t have a clue about the extent
of the abuses. For the war on science described in Doubt is Their
Product is so sweeping and fundamental as to make you question why we
ever had the Enlightenment. There aren’t just a few scientists for hire
— there are law firms, public-relations firms, think tanks, and entire
product-defense companies that specialize in rejiggering epidemiological
studies to make findings of endangerment to human health disappear.
For Michaels, these companies are the scientific equivalent of Arthur
Andersen. He calls their work “mercenary” science, drawing an implicit
analogy with private military firms like Blackwater. If the companies
can get the raw data, so much the better, and if they can’t, they’ll
find another way to make findings of statistically significant risk go
away. Just throw out the animal studies or tinker with the subject
groups. Perform a new meta-analysis. Conduct a selective literature
review. Think up some potentially confounding variable. And so forth.
They can always get it published somewhere. And if they can’t, they can
just start their own peer-reviewed journal, one likely to have an
exceedingly low scientific impact but a potentially profound effect on
the regulatory process.
All of science is subject to such exploitation because all of science is
fundamentally characterized by uncertainty. No study is perfect; each
one is subject to criticism both illegitimate and legitimate — and so if
you wish, you can make any scientific stance, even the most strongly
established, appear weak and dubious. All you have to do is selectively
highlight uncertainty, selectively attack the existing studies one by
one, and ignore the weight of the evidence. Although Michaels focuses
largely on the attempts to whitewash the risks that various chemicals
pose to the workplace and public health, the same methods are also used
to attack the scientific understanding of evolution and global warming.
And it happens virtually every time the government even dreams of
regulating a substance. People know what’s going on, but they respond as
if they’re simply shocked, shocked, to find science being tortured. And
so the outgunned federal agencies that must consult science to take
action — the Occupational Safety and Health Administration,
Environmental Protection Agency, and Food and Drug Administration, among
others — repeatedly capitulate to corporations that effectively purchase
science on demand.
We used to have a regulatory system — that was the dream, anyway, of the
1960s and 1970s. But in significant part due to the
manufacturing-uncertainty strategy, we now have the bureaucratic
equivalent of clotted arteries. And mercenary science hasn’t just
blinded federal agencies. It has also blinded the courts, where the same
tactics apply. Indeed, recent changes to the role of science in the
federal regulatory system and the courts have worsened the situation by
making corporate sabotage of scientific research easier than ever.
The 1998 Data Access Act (or “Shelby Amendment”) and the 2001 Data
Quality Act, both originally a glint in Big Tobacco’s eye, enable
companies to get the data behind publicly funded studies and help them
challenge research that might serve as the basis for regulatory action.
Meanwhile, the 1993 Supreme Court decision in the little-known Daubert
v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals case further facilitates the strategy,
unwisely empowering trial court judges to determine what is and what
isn’t good science in civil cases. Under Daubert, judges have repeatedly
spiked legitimate expert witnesses who were otherwise set to testify
about the dangers demonstrated by epidemiological research. Often juries
don’t even hear the science any more because the defense can get it
thrown out pre-trial.
It’s all about questioning the science to gum up the works. The
companies pose as if they are defending open debate and inquiry and are
trying to make scientific data available to everyone. In reality, once
they get the raw data, they spend the vast resources at their disposal
to discredit independent research.
Michaels ends by proposing a series of reforms. He suggests giving
citizens more access to the courts (since the regulatory agencies are
broken), requiring full disclosure of all conflicts of interest in
science submitted to the regulatory process (and discounting conflicted
studies), getting rid of rigged reanalysis by promulgating scientific
standards that forbid it, and returning to the practice of using the
best available evidence to protect public health, rather than waiting
for a degree of unassailable certainty that will never arrive.
With his extensive chronicling of just how many times the
manufacturing-uncertainty strategy has been used to make our world more
dangerous, Michaels has performed a great service. Moreover, because
he’s a scientist himself and has seen these abuses up close in
government, he can go much further than muckraking journalists who have
often sought to expose this kind of malfeasance. (Full disclosure:
Michaels cites my own book The Republican War on Science and mentions me
in his acknowledgments.) I support Michaels’ regulatory solutions — his
“Sarbanes-Oxley for Science” proposal, as he calls it — and would like
to see them enacted into law or put into effect by administrative
action. But if there’s a problem with Doubt is Their Product, it’s that
Michaels is, in a way, too much of a scientist. Let me explain.
Michaels chronicles a long litany of outrageous abuses, nothing less
than the undermining of reason itself from within. Yet despite just how
vulnerable the book shows science to be, Michaels continues to have
faith that the solution lies in science. No matter how many times we
have seen the facts lose, he still writes as if he thinks the facts
alone will win.
So Michaels slices and dices all the misinformation, as he’s ideally
equipped to do. Anyone who grasps the nature of science well enough to
follow him will not only be convinced but also deeply angered by what’s
happening. But other readers will just feel dizzied by the complex
analyses, confused and ready prey for the science sharks whom Michaels
has worked so hard to expose. The manufacturing-uncertainty strategy
works because it buries you in the facts, loses you in the woods of
science. Sometimes, arguing back within that arena only makes it worse.
And so, while eminently rational critiques of the abuse of science have
their place — and Michaels’ is excellent — I worry that the defenders of
science sometimes delude themselves into thinking rational criticism is
enough. It isn’t, however, because scientifically grounded argument will
only persuade those inclined to defend science in the first place. In
order to be protected from the kind of assault it now faces, science
must do more than convince its own. Science needs the allied power of
outrage, political will, and a fundamental commitment to fighting back
that, as of now, simply doesn’t exist. So enough of being shocked,
shocked. It’s time for the merry, rampaging science-abusers themselves
to be shocked as the sleeping giant of American science awakens and
finally decides it isn’t going to take it anymore.
Chris Mooney is a Prospect senior correspondent and a freelance writer
living in Washington, D.C.
© 2008 The American Prospect
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