#522: Political Science
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. POLITICAL SCIENCE .
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POLITICAL SCIENCE
Science is a process that allows people to reach agreement about
the nature of reality, no matter what culture they come from. If
I describe how to make a thermometer and you follow the recipe,
you and I will end up agreeing that, at sea level, water boils at
212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius). Not all of reality
is accessible to the scientific method but for those parts that
are, science allows us to reach agreement. Thus the scientific
method has enormous power for getting people together.
We read about 30 scientific and medical journals on a regular
basis. In recent years, a remarkable quantity of bad news for
humans and the environment has appeared in these and other
peer-reviewed journals. Because these results were gathered by
the scientific method, they are pretty convincing. On the basis
of this work, it seems safe to say that our civilization is
pulling the rug out from under itself. Business as usual is
relentlessly destroying the community of creatures and ecosystems
upon which our survival depends. On the other hand, business as
usual is enormously profitable for a small group of people, who
fiercely defend what they are doing and who now sponsor an entire
industry dedicated to denying that trouble lies ahead.
According to the NEW YORK TIMES, the business community has
developed a specific wish list for the new Congress: they want
less environmental regulation, and they want to curb the rights
of citizens to bring lawsuits against corporations for harms.[1]
It seems apparent that the long-term strategy for achieving both
goals is to diminish the power of science. The aim seems to be
to bring science out of the laboratory and turn it into more of a
street fight where the most powerful and ruthless adversary has
the best chance of winning. By this means, it seems apparent,
corporations intend to undercut the credibility (and therefore
the power) of scientific findings.
In these two arenas --the courts, and government regulations
--contradictory tactics are being pursued.
In the courts, corporations (and the representatives they paid to
install in Congress) are trying to limit scientific evidence by
excluding views they claim are outside the mainstream. For
example, the Republican Party's 1996 Platform contains a section
called "Restoring Justice to the Courts," which proposes to
"eliminate the use of 'junk science'... by requiring courts to
verify that the science of those called as expert witnesses is
reasonably acceptable within the scientific community..."[2] In
other words, testimony by expert witnesses would be disallowed
unless it represented the views of the scientific mainstream.
Scientists with new research findings and new information about
cause-and-effect would be effectively excluded from the courts
until their work had been absorbed into the mainstream of science
--a process that might take years or even decades.
On the other hand, in the arena of environmental regulation, the
same corporations (and their same representatives in Congress)
are working hard to undermine the credibility of mainstream
scientific views. In this arena, their goal is to boost the
standing and credibility of the scientific fringe --the handful
of dissidents who say that global warming is not harmful and may
even be beneficial; that the ozone hole is natural or has perhaps
been faked; and that dioxin is not nearly as poisonous as most
scientists say it is --and it may even be good for you.
The thread that ties these contradictory views together is the
goal of making science into something that confuses people and
thus drives people apart, instead of something that helps people
reach agreement about the nature of reality.
The effort to make science more political has been gathering
momentum since the election of 1994 when self-styled
"conservatives" gained control of Congress. During 1995, the
House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment held three public
hearings, one devoted to depletion of the ozone layer, one to
global warming, and one to the powerfully poisonous industrial
byproduct, dioxin. According to a recent analysis of the hearing
transcripts, a common theme emerged from the three hearings:
(1) Research funded by the federal government is not sound
science because scientists have an economic incentive to
exaggerate the importance of their work ("to shill for the
apocalypse," as one witness, Patrick Michaels, phrased it);
(2) Consensus science derived from peer review is not sound
science because it represents a conspiracy by the scientific
establishment to suppress dissenting views;
(3) Science which contains uncertainties in its conclusions is
not sound science;
(4) Science that is not strictly empirical (meaning based on
observations and not based on theories or models derived from
observations) is not sound science.[3]
Clearly, if these definitions of "sound science" were accepted,
most environmental science could not be considered sound, and
nearly all studies linking human health to environmental
degradation would be declared unsound. There is --and always
will be --uncertainty in our understanding of complex domains,
such as the environment and human health. Models are used in all
complex scientific studies--purely "empirical" studies, without
reference to theoretical constructs, are rare. Peer review is
how scientists find errors; without it, science could not
proceed. And much environmental science must be funded by public
agencies because the private sector has no interest in funding it
(and, indeed, often has a strong interest in seeing that it is
NOT funded.).
The effort to politicize science is proceeding outside the halls
of Congress as well. Individual scientists, science writers, and
scientific societies, are being intimidated by lawsuits and the
threat of lawsuits. Examples:
Last August, Bette Hileman, a veteran science writer for CHEMICAL
& ENGINEERING NEWS (C&EN), which is published by the American
Chemical Society, wrote an opinion piece titled, "Global warming
is target of disinformation campaign."[4] In it, Hileman
described "a systematic campaign of disinformation" being
conducted by a small group of scientists calling themselves the
Global Climate Coalition (GCC) whose work is funded by coal, oil,
utility, automobile, and chemical companies --the corporations
whose profits might decline if Congress took global warming
seriously.
A prominent member of GCC is Patrick Michaels, a faculty member
at the University of Virginia and a fellow of the libertarian
Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. Michaels often publishes
commentaries covering everything from global warming to the free
market and tax policy in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's newspaper,
the WASHINGTON TIMES.[5] In recent months, Michaels has been
attacking the work of Benjamin D. Santer of Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory in California. Santer wrote the final draft
of Chapter 8 of the latest report from the IPCC (United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Chapter 8 concluded
that "the balance of scientific evidence suggests a discernible
human influence on global climate" --a conclusion fully supported
by the IPCC but one that the coal and oil industries cannot leave
unchallenged. Hileman evaluates Michaels's attack on Santer's
work, concluding, "...[E]ither Michaels does not understand
Santer's work or he is deliberately distorting it." In the
normal course of scientific debate, such criticisms are routine.
But no longer. Now S. Fred Singer --a former colleague of
Michaels and a frequent author in the Reverend Moon's WASHINGTON
TIMES --has threatened a lawsuit against the American Chemical
Society: "The American Chemical Society may well be courting one
or more libel suits," Singer writes in the Moonie TIMES November
13, 1996, referring to Hileman's opinion piece.[6]
Singer is himself one of the fringe scientists who appeared as a
witness (as did Michaels) at the 1995 Congressional ozone hearing
described above. During the hearing, Singer tried to establish
his ozone credentials by claiming to have published several
peer-reviewed papers in which he presented his current theories
about why the continent-sized ozone hole over the South Pole
isn't a problem. However, when Congressional staff checked his
references, they found that Singer's only published work on ozone
depletion during the past 20 years had been one letter to the
editor of SCIENCE magazine, and two articles in magazines that
are not peer reviewed.[7] And of course his many articles in the
Moonie WASHINGTON TIMES, where Singer is a regular blowhard
columnist--the scientific equivalent of Rush Limbaugh. In fact,
Limbaugh says he gets his information about the ozone depletion
nonproblem from sources that have been traced back to Singer.[8]
The assault on science doesn't stop with threats aimed at
intimidating journalists. The LOS ANGELES TIMES reported (Nov.
22, pg. A3) that U.S. Ecology --a corporation trying to build a
huge nuclear waste dump at Ward Valley in the California desert
--has threatened to sue two scientists who were commissioned by
the U.S. Department of the Interior to study the safety of the
proposed dump. In a letter to the two scientists, U.S. Ecology
wrote, "Should you continue your participation in Interior's
ill-advised project, please do so based on the knowledge that
U.S. Ecology intends to seek compensation from any persons or
entities whose conduct wrongfully injures its interests in this
manner."
The two scientists --hydrogeologists Martin Mifflin and Scott W.
Tyler --are employees of the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory and are both members of the National Academy of
Science's panel on Ward Valley.
The U.S. Ecology tactic is working. The two scientists have said
they must stop work on Ward Valley until the federal government
agrees to pay their legal costs, if they are sued. A Department
of Interior official called U.S. Ecology's tactic "disgusting"
but said under law the government cannot indemnify contractors,
so the Ward Valley safety analysis has been put on hold.
The message is unmistakable: if science is standing in the way of
corporate goals, then the methods of science will be discredited,
modified or discarded, and individual science writers and
scientists, and even scientific societies like the American
Chemical Society, will be threatened and intimidated.
It seems clear that the root cause of these problems is a
corporate form run amuck. This legal form, which limits
corporate owners' liability yet provides full Constitutional
protections for corporate actions, is providing legal cover and
nearly unbounded resources for continuing unprincipled attacks on
our most important social institutions, including courts,
elections, and the scientific method itself. Now would be an
appropriate time to examine the corporate form, and modify it as
necessary, to make corporations once again subordinate to the
will, and the general welfare, of the American people.
--Peter Montague
(National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981/AFL-CIO)
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[1] Robert D. Hershey, Jr., "The Election Changes Little;
Business Can Live With That," NEW YORK TIMES November 15, 1996,
pg. D1.
[2] Republican platform quoted in Representative George E. Brown,
Jr., ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE UNDER SIEGE: FRINGE SCIENCE AND THE
104TH CONGRESS (Washington, D.C.: Office of Representative George
E. Brown, Jr., October 23, 1996), pg. 7, note 16. Brown is the
ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Science.
[3] George E. Brown, Jr., report cited above in note 2, pg. 15;
see also the rest of Brown's report, including the appendices.
[4] Bette Hileman, "Global warming is target of disinformation
campaign," C&EN August 19, 1996, pg. 33.
[5] Michaels writes regularly in the Reverend Moon's WASHINGTON
TIMES; see, for example, March 30, 1994, pg. A14; October 18,
1993, pg. A16; March 17, 1993, pg. G3; February 5, 1993, pg. F1;
and December 15, 1992, pg. F1. The WASHINGTON TIMES was founded,
and has been subsidized to the tune of a billion dollars since
its founding, by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. See Daniel Junas,
"The Washington Times: Who Pays the Bills for the Right's Daily
Paper?" EXTRA! (March/April, 1995), pgs. 15-16. EXTRA! is
published by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 130 West 25th
Street, NY, NY 10001; phone: (212) 633-6700.
[6] S. Fred Singer, "Disinformation about global warming?"
WASHINGTON TIMES November 13, 1996, pg. A15.
[7] George E. Brown, Jr., report cited above in note 2, pg. 11,
note 26, evaluates Singer's recent publications.
[8] See Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, BETRAYAL OF SCIENCE
AND REASON (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1996), pg. 41.
Descriptor terms: science; courts; corporations; junk science;
regulation; dioxin; global warming; ozone deplation; congress;
lawsuits; slapp suits; bette hileman; patrick michaels; cato
institute; sun myoung moon; banjamin santer; ipcc; fred singer;
washington times; american chemical society; u.s. ecology; ward
valley; radioactive waste; george e. brown, jr.;
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--Peter Montague, Editor
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