Blinding with science

DOWN TO EARTH

I write this to provoke, not to insult. But it is increasingly important to understand that today the term "sound science" is becoming the choicest of insults.

Science is the tool, not to bring policy reform, but to delay, prevaricate and to dismiss. And scientists are the hired guns, used by various interests to intimidate with their superiority of knowledge and to disinform with their theories of complexity and uncertainty.

In the US, this is a fine art. President George Bush is a staunch believer in "sound science" "" from issues concerning climate change, to nuclear waste to arsenic in water.

The president makes sure that he is attentive to only what is "empirical" and "peer reviewed" information. It is another matter that this "sound science" is not so sound or that peer review simply means that we will delay taking action on what we already know.

Washington Post recently published an article on the origins of the term, "sound science" and tracked it back to the campaign of the tobacco industry to undermine what was indisputable: the connection between smoking and disease.

In 1993, the tobacco giant Philip Morris and its public relations firm created a non-profit group called the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition to fight regulation.

Since then the phrase has gained many friends. US Vice President Dick Cheney found it useful to invoke this god when he urged for the opening of Alaska for oil-drilling based on "sound science and best available technology". The pesticide industry has urged regulators in the US not to restrict toxins, saying, "sound science says pesticide sprays are safe and effective".

The latest in public policy fistfights is whether the consumption of excessive sugar is unhealthy. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has concluded that there is a link between junk food and obesity and that unhealthy diets are leading to a growth of non-communicable diseases like heart ailments, diabetes, bone fractures and so on.

But when this report was released last year, the US government went into overdrive to protect its powerful sugar lobby. It wrote to the WHO, in a letter that was subsequently leaked, that the report "fails to meet the standards of the US Data Quality Act, lacks external peer review and mixes science with policy."

But it is global warming that brings out the best in the believers of sound science. They use the obvious uncertainty in a phenomenon that the world can best predict and take precautionary action against, to argue that not enough is known and that what is known cannot be trusted. Bush used this classic excuse to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol "" the global agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Today, sadly, Indian scientists also get aligned against public interests possibly because of a force of habit. As scientific literacy is low, our scientists have tended to be much more contemptuous and arrogant than their counterparts abroad. By habit, they have built a caste system, which allows only a select few into the world of "sound science".

This, in our increasingly science-intensive societies, is a disaster. In the West, scientific issues are at least publicly debated and even Bush and his sound science caucus will get a run for their money as more and more citizens (including scientists) engage and put public pressure on policy systems to deliver. But not in India. Here scientists have taken silence to be their best insurance. And worse, arrogance, as their best cover.

When the issue of science of diesel toxic particulates was raised, Indian scientists were high-handed in their dismissal. Now when the issue of pesticide contamination is discussed, scientists argue, in closed policy-making circles, that these issues are still not understood and that the proponents for change are unscientific and not credible.

It is another matter that they who are responsible for integrating science into policy have never really succeeded in their own jobs and that today, the regulation of pesticides in terms of human safety is nothing short of a criminal offence.

To find ways of moving ahead we must comprehend why the Indian scientific establishment is losing its confidence to creatively engage in public concerns.

Then we have to build scientific literacy so that open debates take us to logical and rational conclusions on the state of knowledge and the need for action. In other words, the role of science in democracy must be revisited with new intensity.

But in all this, we must also realise that science is not the ultimate truth. Scientific uncertainty can never really be eliminated, even in the best of sound science. All conclusions involve some uncertainty and are creatures of the nuances of interpretation.

Therefore, science must guide policy. But ultimately societal values and ethics must underwrite that policy code. That is what we could call "sound science".