Government Relations: Political Science?
By Mark F. Smith
As a political scientist, I share in the identity crisis of all social scientists: can my discipline be considered a science? Can the behavior of often-irrational human beings be explained through theories, models, and other tools of scientific methodology? Social theorist Richard Bernstein has characterized the last hundred years of social science as a series of "declarations that it has just become, or is just about to become, a scientific enterprise."
The political science debate in Washington, however, is not about political science's identity crisis but about the political compromising of scientific research. Several groups have criticized the Bush administration for allowing its political agenda to undermine the integrity of basic scientific research. The administration dismissed its critics as politically motivated themselves.
In 2003, Democrats on the House Government Affairs Committee issued a report titled Politics and Science in the Bush Administration, charging that "the Administration's political interference with science has led to misleading statements by the President, inaccurate responses to Congress, . . . and the gagging of scientists." Given the partisan origins of the report, it was rather easily dismissed as itself political.
This past February, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) issued Scientific Integrity in Policymaking. This report, prepared by distinguished scientists, found "suppression and distortion of scientific findings by high-ranking Bush administration political appointees[,] . . . a wide-ranging effort to manipulate the government's scientific advisory system to prevent the appearance of advice that might run counter to the administration's political agenda[,] . . . . [and] evidence that the administration often imposes restrictions on what government scientists can say or write about 'sensitive' topics." The report concludes that "the scope and scale of the manipulation, suppression, and misrepresentation of science by the Bush administration is unprecedented." Its signatories call on the "President, Congress, scientists, and the public to take immediate steps to restore the integrity of science in the federal policymaking process."
As a group of renowned scientists who cannot be dismissed simply as partisan opponents, the UCS represents a more direct challenge to the administration than the Democrats on the House Government Affairs Committee. Accordingly, John Marburger III, director of the president's Office of Science and Technology Policy, refuted the report with a point-by-point review of its findings. (See story.)
If the debate over the politicization of science is itself political, what is to be done? The Bush administration's actions reflect a strong attack on the validity of the traditional scientific paradigm. Part of this attack is a long-standing conflict between religious faith and scientific reason. The UCS report identifies the administration's attempts to discredit or suppress research into various aspects of human sexuality. In addition, there are still legislative efforts to undermine the hegemony of evolutionary theory in biological science, by mandating the teaching of "creation science" or "intelligent design." Those behind such efforts use the language of scientific methodology to question the traditional view of science.
A second type of attack on science is more pragmatic and involves an ideological effort to destroy the scientific rationale for government regulation of business. Attacks on scientific studies sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency, for example, often have the effect of permitting private, commercially motivated interests to develop resources that were previously off limits. A well-funded consulting industry exists in Washington solely to undermine the credibility of the scientific research used as the basis for rules and regulations.
Whether one accepts philosopher of science Karl Popper's contention that scientific statements need to be "falsifiable" or some other method of scientific verification, it is clear that the basic characteristics of science do not lend themselves to electoral solution. Economist Friedrich Hayek based his rejection of Marx and Freud on their "thorough-ly unscientific" nature. He contended that "they so defined their terms that their statements were necessarily true and unrefutable."
Scientists, and faculty members, need to reassert the independence of the scientific enterprise. They must champion peer review of scientific data and the unrestricted (or, in this troubled world, at least minimally restricted) flow of information. Decisions about scientific investigations need to be made by qualified scientists, whose work is available for review and critique by other scientists. Policy makers can then take that work and make policy decisions. To have policy makers predeter-mine the scientific basis for their decisions distorts the entire process, whether those policy makers work in the current administration, or worked under Soviet agronomist T. D. Lysenko, whose demands for scientific orthodoxy in the 1940s set back Soviet biological thought for decades.
Mark Smith is AAUP director of government relations.
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