Defending science against distortions

Guest post from Alan Randall:

Science has become the target of various attempts to undermine its authority, including litigation aiming to raise barriers to science-based regulation and a continuing campaign to politicize science and reduce scientific discourse to an ordinary cultural quarrel.  

Some case law has accumulated, addressing the issue of what constitutes authoritative scientific evidence.  In a series of 1990s US cases, plaintiffs challenged environmental and safety regulations on the grounds that regulatory authorities have acted without adequate scientific evidence.  In Daubert and Kumho Tire, courts affirmed the admissibility of expert scientific testimony, ruling that there are some hallmarks of what is credible in scientific testimony (the evidence and the methodology have been tested, the results have been peer reviewed and/or published, the potential rate of error is known, the evidence is generally accepted in the scientific community), and courts should look for these in judging admissibility.[i]

While Daubert and Kumho Tire were thought by some commentators to raise relatively high barriers to science-based regulation, the Cellular Telephone court endorsed the legitimacy of regulation despite scientific uncertainty.  To justify regulation, the court wrote, scientific evidence of a threat does not have to be overwhelming: the requirement is “not a preponderance but more than a scintilla of evidence”.[ii]  Furthermore, scientific evidence at odds with majority scientific opinion may be taken seriously – the World Trade Organization Appellate Body (in the EC – Asbestos case) ruled that member states are not obligated automatically to follow what, at a given time, may constitute a majority scientific opinion, but may rely in good faith on scientific sources which at that time may represent a divergent but qualified and respected opinion.  It seems to me that the courts are getting it roughly right – which is as well as they could reasonably be expected to do.   

Manifestations of the political campaign to reduce science to a cultural quarrel include “muddying the waters” and “manufacturing uncertainty”, that is, attempting to create scientific controversy and manufacture or exaggerate uncertainty about the scientific evidence; charges of “junk science” (junkscience.com); and promoting a false sense of balance, so that it seems only elementary fairness that “both sides” should be respected in the law and taught in the schools (“teaching the controversy”).[iii]  This sort of thing is familiar in the public discussion of evolution and climate change, but it appears also in ordinary regulatory disputes.[iv] 

Scientists should feel comfortable in actively defending science from this sort of stuff.   To do so is a far cry from allowing a policy agenda to drive science or, worse yet, scientific conclusions – one can defend science by reasserting the strong evidence it can bring to well-founded conclusions, while painstakingly and persistently demolishing the arguments of the culture warriors.

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[i] Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, 509 U.S. 579 (1993); and Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael (97-1709) 526 U.S. 137 (1999).

 

[ii] Cellular Telephone Co. v. Town of Oyster Bay, 166 F.3d 490 (2^nd Cir. 1999).

 

[iii] One way to think about false balance is that it is a fallacious application of the argument from ignorance – if we can list the potential outcomes, but we know nothing about their probabilities, then it makes sense to suppose that each is equally likely.  The fallacy is that merely posing an alternative to a well-accepted scientific theory does not make the two equally likely.

 

[iv] The Junk Science website has its roots in the Coalition for Sound Science, a since-disbanded advocacy group that initially was funded in large part by tobacco companies seeking to undermine the science relating tobacco use and health.