One of the enduring myths of regulatory practice is that science
and policy can and should be separated. We see this fiction playing
out every day on the news as we get our daily COVID-19 briefings.
Is it any wonder the public is confused about who is making
decisions and whether decisions are based on science or on the
basis of non-science considerations? Of course, it is both and that
is the way it is supposed to be. Science, policy and politics
cannot be separated: they are inextricably intertwined.
Scientists often resent politicians or their senior advisers for
daring to question their science advice, for politicizing their
“neutral” science with non-science considerations. The
myth is that all decisions must be solely
“evidence-based” but this whole concept is flawed. It is
the legitimate and necessary role of elected politicians to take
the science-based risk assessment and then carry out the
policy-based risk management function by weighing the social,
political, economic, legal, ethical and environmental factors in
order to arrive at the appropriate regulatory decision.
And even the risk assessments are replete with non-science
considerations. As Covello and Merkhofer have clearly shown:
“in practice, assumptions that have policy implications enter
into risk assessment at virtually every stage of the process. The
idea of a risk assessment that is free, or nearly free, of policy
considerations is beyond the realm of possibility.” Scholars
such Harvard’s Sheila Jasanoff have long ago shown that
“studies of scientific advising leave in tatters the notion
that it is possible, in practice, to restrict the advisory practice
to technical issues or that the subjective values of scientists are
irrelevant to decision making.” This is especially true for
public policy issues where the science is uncertain and competing
with so many other value-laden factors. We regularly have what
Henrik and Jamieson have described as “the imprimatur of
science being smuggled into deliberations that actually deal with
values and politics.” That scientists should dress up their
science advice as pure “neutral” science is
understandable. As Roger Paelkhe has pointed out, “for those
with scientific expertise, it consequently makes perfect sense to
wage political battles through science because it necessarily
confers to scientists a privileged position in political
debate.”
And if the science is so neutral, the public wonders, how do you
explain duelling scientists? As I write this, the Declaration of a
very esteemed group of scientists is being described by an equally
esteemed group as “a dangerous fallacy unsupported by
scientific evidence.”
Politicians and their senior officials are often happy to
maintain this confusion and blurring of accountability, happy to
hide behind the myth that they are just slavishly following the
advice of their experts. Just as we have heard much about the fear
of politicization of science, we now have what I’ve called the
“scientization” of politics. I once had a Minister faced
with a tough decision that was his to make under the statute, say
to me (with apologies to the American comedian Flip Wilson)
“Ron, I don’t want to be seen as making the decision. I
just want to be able to say ‘It’s not my fault, the
scientists made me do it…the scientists made me do
it’.”
What should be the acceptable level of PCBs in farmed salmon?
What should be the appropriate mix of rules to prevent the
importation of BSE into Canada? What is the right regulatory regime
for the approval of genetically-modified traits in seeds? What is
the safe level of BPA in water bottles? How should the level of
salt in processed food products be regulated? Should it continue to
be illegal to sell raw milk? What should be the necessary rules for
the storage of high-level nuclear waste? These are just a few
examples of the kind of science-based public policy issues with
which I was directly involved in the last 30 years either as a
regulator or a lawyer acting for a regulated party. In all these
cases, the science was relevant but not determinative. And,
interestingly, in all these cases the parties argued that the basic
question was one of science: if only we could get the science
right, the public policy answer would follow. If only the world
were that simple.
My food science students seem genuinely unaware that
science-based health risk assessments are replete with policy
considerations, that in the real world of regulatory practice you
cannot separate science, policies and politics — yet, as we
have seen so often in this the year of COVID-19, so much of our
public discourse is dominated by the quaint Utopian view that they
can, and should, be strictly separated.
Originally published by Food in Canada
Read the original article on GowlingWLG.com
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