Copyright Law

In a recent issue (15.11) of Wired, Clive Thompson argues that in order to combat anti-evolution sentiment, scientists ought to be less tentative in their language and refer to scientific consensus as law not theory.  The assault against scientific reason is in full swing and it?s necessary to step up the battle tactics. 

The Bush Administration represents the nadir of a slow descent into the abyss of abuse against scientific truth in policymaking.  Whether it is imposing ideological litmus tests on scientific advisors, such as a proposed appointee for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, restructuring or eliminating advisory panels like the Energy Research Advisory Board, selectively editing reports on environmental hazards, rejecting scientific consensus on climate change in favor of spurious alternative scientific studies, or lying about the availability of stem cell lines for research, it is not surprising that the Union of Concerned Scientists got 44 Nobels, 62 Medal of Science winners, 135 members of the National Academy of Sciences and thousands of others to sign a report against the widespread and unprecedented ?manipulation of the process through which science enters into its decisions.?  It is not without a hat tip to this hypocrisy that Barack Obama calls for a democratic, progressive administration to move away from the era of ?junk science? a term more often leveled by the Right against the Left.

Chris Mooney in his book, the Republican War on Science, persuasively makes the case that the marriage of big business to the religious right to create the support base of the Republican Party has resulted in a systematic abuse of science in regulatory decision-making. What began during World War II as an intimate relationship between science and politics, the flames of whose passion were fueled by the competitive jealousy of the Cold War and the attentions of an intellectually-inclined Kennedy administration, that love affair has now waned.  The rise of conservatism spurred a movement to create alternative sources for scientific information in its own interest.  Hiding behind the skirt of science, anti-evolution and anti-abortion politics create pressure to distort science to serve political ends.  At the same time, the motivation of big business to undermine scientific research that might impel the need for expensive environmental and consumer regulation further contributes to a distortion of the use of science in policymaking.  Mooney readily acknowledges that the Left as well as the Right make decisions on the basis of values rather than facts.  Whereas Democrats, he contends, sometimes do politics in spite of science, Republicans dress up politics as science and attempt to couch their positions, such as ?creation science? behind the veneer of scientific legitimacy. 

Why does this matter?

When the data is fundamentally flawed or incomplete, the resulting decision is ultimately incorrect.  So whether it is a regulatory proposal about the environment, transportation, health or safety, if government is to make a decision in the public interest, it needs to be based on some kind of factual reality and not the economic interests of companies seeking to avoid regulation.

More important, flouting scientific consensus undermines the legitimacy of science and erodes public trust in the mechanisms of decisionmaking.  How can we place any trust in democratic institutions that reject truth in favor of ideology?  It?s one thing to make a decision based on values ? a decision with which not everyone will agree.  It?s another to pretend that the political position is supported by scientific method.  When the truth comes out, which it invariably does, the luster of our institutions is tarnished.

Claims for strict adherence to scientific truth as opposed to science?s best guess (the scientific theory that Clive would want us to call law) that are designed to delay the regulatory process and throw stumbling blocks in front of regulators represent an abuse of process.  Administrative law scholar, Stephen Johnson, (Junking the "Junk Science" Law: Reforming the Information Quality Act, 58 ADMIN LAW REV. 37 (2006))
like Chris Mooney, vehemently rejects the notion, for example, that the Information Quality Act was designed to do anything other than allow companies wishing to avoid regulation to challenge its scientific basis.

Whether the cause is ideological or economic self-interest of simply a blameless lack of information on the basis of which to make policy, there is much that can be done to improve the quality of decision-making.

If one cares about the environment, the economy, education, crime, or any issue, it is important to get the practices of how we make decisions about these  topics right.

We must ensure that regulatory officials:

• disclose the full and complete basis for their decisions;
• provide an opportunity for the concerned public to critique that information and to submit alternatives online;
• articulate clear and transparent standards and methods by which data quality can be challenged (so that such challenges cannot turn into a form of ?holdup suit.?);
• move away from closed-door peer review practices to open practices;
• use new technology to provide opportunities for critique and analysis of data used in decision-making;
• maintain free, open and transparent channels of communication between scientific and governmental experts;
• recognize that enthusiasts are often as good at critiquing data quality as professionals.

Policymaking is not necessarily the equal sum of the two parts of scientific information and values.  We recognize that some decisions will fly in the face of science.  And sometimes science turns out to be wrong and so-called scientific information is later falsified by new empirical evidence.  Nonetheless, why allow ourselves to conflate science and values interchangeably lest we do grave harm to legitimacy of decision-making?