This commentary from the Los Angeles Times by David Michaels, a professor at the George Washington University School of Public Health who served as assistant secretary of Energy between 1998 and 2001, discusses efforts by private industry and a cooperative administration to use the unavoidable uncertainty present in scientific results as a means of challenging and undermining the science supporting environmental and other regulations. This topic is discussed further here and it is noted that one explanation for this is rent-seeking behavior. The post links to a much longer and more in depth Scientific American article (June 2005) by the same author which argues that the current administration’s policies have made such behavior by private business more successful and hence more cost-effective. If so, then such behavior ought to increase in frequency:
Commentary, The Art of 'Manufacturing Uncertainty', By David Michaels, Los Angeles Times, June 24, 2005: To many scientists and policymakers in Washington, the revelation this month that Philip Cooney, chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, had rewritten a federal report to magnify the level of uncertainty on climate change came as no surprise. Uncertainty is easily manipulated, and Cooney — a former lobbyist with the American Petroleum Institute, one of the nation's leading manufacturers of scientific uncertainty — was highly familiar with its uses.
As an epidemiologist … I … must harness "natural experiments," collecting data through observation only … build models from this data, and use these models to make causal inferences and predictions, and, where possible, to recommend protective measures. By definition, uncertainties abound in our work; there's nothing to be done about that. Our public health and environmental protection programs will not be effective if absolute proof is required before we act. The best available evidence must be sufficient. … Of course, this is often exactly what industry wants … it has mastered the art of manufacturing uncertainty, of demanding often impossible proof over common-sense precaution in the realm of public health.
The tobacco industry led the way. ... An official at Brown & Williamson, a cigarette maker now owned by R.J. Reynolds, once noted in a memo: "Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of the general public." Toward that end, the tobacco manufacturers dissected every study, highlighted every question, magnified every flaw, cast every possible doubt every possible time. They also conjured their own studies with questionable data and foregone conclusions. It was all a charade, of course, because the real science was inexorable. But the uncertainty campaign was effective; it delayed public health protections, and compensation for tobacco's victims, for decades. The tobacco industry, left without a stitch of credibility or public esteem, has finally abandoned that strategy — but it led the way for others. Every polluter and manufacturer of toxic chemicals understands that by fostering a debate on uncertainties in the underlying science and by harping on the need for more research — always more research — it can avoid debating the actual policy or regulation in question. It is now unusual for the science behind a public health or environmental regulation not to be challenged. … Among themselves, these product-defense lobbyists and their clients make no secret of what they're doing. Republican political consultant Frank Luntz wrote in a memo, later leaked to the press: "The scientific debate remains open…. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly." Decades from now, this campaign to manufacture uncertainty will surely be viewed with the same dismay and outrage with which we now look back on the deceits perpetrated by the tobacco industry. But will it be too late?
