Adam’s posthaven

Lazy politicians like science because it means that they don’t have to ‘do politics’(see: Why stupid lazy politicians like science.) Science can save them from having to reconcile competing interests, make choices or show leadership. With science politicians can simply shrug and say ‘it’s out of my hands, it’s science’. Even better they can say, ‘you can’t argue with this, it’s science’. So lazy politicians are wont to stretch the definition of science to include ideas that aren’t actually science so these ideas can also benefit from the rhetorical power of science. Lazy, stupid politicians don’t even notice they are doing it.

Eventually we end up with the ‘The public relations definition of science', which says science is everything that’s right and everything that’s right is science. There’s room for just about everything in this view of science. But as a result, little remains of what makes science special. Once the public relations definition of science takes hold, genuine science, which really does give us reliable and robust knowledge about the world that can only be challenged with enormous effort, then looks just like any other opinion that can be easily dismissed.

Science is special – not universal – and don’t let any lazy politician tell you otherwise. The worst crime against science is to equate it with rationality because doing so robs science of everything that makes it special. Science is not truth or reason, and it is not ‘the world’. Rather, it is a system that allows us to be confident about some ideas about the world. There are other ideas about the world that we can be confident about for other reasons, but the particular way we can be confident about scientific ideas makes science unique.

According to the public relations definition of science, if it’s right then it’s science. This could not be more wrong. Right aint got nothing to do with it (if I told you that there is a planet larger than Mercury beyond the orbit of Pluto I might be right, but it’s not science.) Only a small set of ideas about the world can be considered scientific. Most rational thought is unscientific and that’s fine. Unscientific is not the same as irrational. There are very few occasions when 'unscientific' should be considered an insult. 

In The boundaries of science post I argued that science connects with other fields such as politics or the military through issues or institutions that reside between both science and the adjacent field and depends on both. An example of one of these ‘intermediate entities’ between science and the military is the atom bomb.

In the case of David Nutt and Alan Johnson the intermediate entity between science and politics is drugs. Having looked at many similar disputes I expected this to fit a familiar pattern, but it doesn't. If it were a 'normal' boundary dispute we would ask the following questions: do drugs belong to science or to politics? Where does the authority of Nutt end and authority of Johnson begin? In which directions might the boundary shift? But Alan Johnson's boundary work is of a different type altogether. It involves redefining science itself in such a way that he can claim to be 'arguing from nature' just as much as David Nutt.

I call it the 'public relations definition of science'. It is deliberately imprecise and allows you to borrow the connotations of science: rigour, confidence, impartiality, naturalness, etc. and attach them to anything you want. The public relations definition has two symmetrical parts: 1) science is any idea that is right; 2) any idea that is right is scientific. In the public relations definition both science's connection to the world and the social structure that validates it are glossed over. Its vagueness is what allows it to work in public relations. According to the public relations definition, everything should be scientific - it is an insult to suggest that something is 'un-scientific'. Although in the public relations definition science is inherently 'good', it devalues science by disguising the actual qualities that make it good.

Science is important in public relations for this reason: if something is 'scientific' it is its own justification - you don't have to make a case for it and others can't argue against it. If for instance you declare that your drugs policy is scientific then you don't have to explain your decision in terms of the interests it serves and nor do you have to explain the ways in which it is an improvement on alternatives. The implication of 'evidence-based policy' is that it is as natural as the law of gravity. You wouldn't try to argue the toss about the law of gravity (e.g. from now on, in the interests of public safety, objects will fall with an acceleration of 4.9 m/s² instead of 9.8 m/s²) and we are similarly inhibited about messing with evidence-based policy. Science has huge rhetorical weight and that is what lazy politicians like about it.

This is why Alan Johnson's behaviour worries me – it's lazy. He is seeking an alternative to political leadership. Rather than doing politics (his job) he's looking for the easy route, which is to argue from nature (claim that his policy is its own justification, like the law of gravity). When he is thwarted because nature won't conform, he responds by accusing his scientific advisors of being political. This is boundary work that works not by establishing the ownership of intermediate entities (drugs) but that works instead by replacing science with an impoverished pastiche of itself. 

Johnson knows that a ridiculous pastiche of evidence-based policy carries almost the same rhetorical force as actual evidence-based policy. He knows too that newspaper columnists and television journalists can't challenge him. But here's the scary part: it's not a conspiracy. Johnson himself can't recognise the poverty of the public relations definition of science. He has no firm understanding of where the authority of science comes from in the first place, just that it means he doesn't have to do politics. Politician’s incompetence in this area is regrettable in the case of drugs policy but catastrophic when it comes to climate change and other pressing issues.

In What is science and what is science taken to be? I argued that even if there are essential characteristics of science that distinguish it from other types of knowledge the definition of science still very flexible in practice. In this post I’ll briefly outline how the boundaries of science are maintained.

Whilst researching popular science some years ago I realised that discussion of science in popular contexts played a far greater role in shifting the boundaries of science than anyone had previously noticed. We think the boundaries of science are fixed by science itself or nature, or something, but actually they change all the time and it is in popular contexts including news reports where the change generally happens. Sometimes the shift is quite dramatic. In nineteenth century popular science, physicists argued that they should be consulted on crime policy and even that it should be a physicists' job to punish offenders. A similar suggestion today would cause bewilderment but for various reasons it made a lot more sense in the 1880s. The main difference between then and now is the intervening 'boundary work' - the process of defending or shifting the boundaries of science.

The boundaries between science and politics, art, economics, religion, or anything else are all subject to on-going boundary work. There is generally more riding on the location of the boundaries of science than, for instance, the boundaries between art and politics or religion and economics because science is taken to be a proxy for the world itself - the objective, independent context in which human affairs take place. In fact science itself is very human - perhaps the most human activity - but that's a subject for another post.

In my research I looked at the nineteenth-century physicists I mentioned above as well as debates over BSE in the 1990s and several other examples of boundary work. Usually boundary work involves something in-between science and politics (or whatever else science happens to bump up against). The atom bomb is an example of something that sits between physics and the military for instance - it depends on both. In the 1950s it was less clear than it is today whether nuclear weapons 'belonged' to physics or to the military. Was the bomb 'just' a weapon (which means that questions about their use do not come within the remit of 'science' even if scientists are involved in understanding the implications of their use) or was it a new kind of weapon, which meant that physicists would have to extend their remit and involve themselves in matters military and political?

After all the boundary work has been done it turns out that the bomb is just a weapon. Although it depends on both physics and the military it 'belongs' to the military. Nuclear war is not a branch of physics and both sides are happy with the arrangement. It seems simple and uncontroversial, but that's because boundary work tends to naturalise and de-historicise any outcome. Boundary work is not (usually) a conspiracy but it does nevertheless tend to cover its own tracks by naturalising and de-historicising the boundaries that emerge.
The current boundaries of science look eternal and natural to us and we assume they reflect essential and independent qualities of science (the essential characteristics I mentioned in the previous post) but this is an illusion. The boundaries seem natural in the same way that ideas about masculinity and femininity seem eternal natural and appear to reflect a deep truth – and indeed are informed by an independent reality even if it’s difficult to determine how, precisely. Nevertheless, the categories 'masculine' and 'feminine' change all the time and so does ‘science’.

Boundary disputes are not always about trying to gain territory as is clear in the case of physicists and nuclear weapons and also in the case of BSE. At the apex of the BSE crisis ministers tried hard to relinquish political territory to scientists, which left scientists rather confused. It was farmers and consumers (people with direct interests) who stepped in to do the boundary work to maintain the political territory and ensure the Government could not shirk responsibility. In the 1950s the bomb could have gone either way.

Further reading:
PhD thesis: The popularisation of physics: boundaries of authority and the visual culture of science (http://bit.ly/3ej2d3)
Boundary negotiations in popular culture: 'intermediate dependent entities' and the ideological context of science policy (http://bit.ly/t0HPA)

What distinguishes science from other kinds of knowledge?
Where does a scientist's authority and responsibility begin and end?
Where do the boundaries between science and politics lie?

These seem like rather philosophical questions, and indeed they are, but when a Home Secretary sacks his scientific advisor they take on a political significance as well. And here's the thing: events such the David Nutt affair play an important role in the philosophy of science. They are not merely subject to the philosophy of science - they help to determine what science is.

Most people assume that answers to questions like 'what distinguishes science from other kinds of knowledge?' reside in the logic of science itself. And they are not wrong; there are good reasons to believe there is a 'right' answer to the question – one that is not subject to negotiation. For some people the right answer to the question 'what distinguishes science?' is the idea that there is a 'scientific method' that guarantees progress towards 'truth'. For others (including me) the essential quality of science that distinguishes it from other forms of knowledge is the social network that validates scientific knowledge and allows us to have confidence about the conclusions we come to. Nevertheless, in almost all situations where questions like the ones above arise, 'what science is' matters less than 'what science is taken to be'.

Whether or not there are essential characteristics that ultimately distinguish proper scientists from charlatans, this does not mean that there will be no struggle over definitions. Even if there is a ‘true’ or ‘natural’ boundary between science and non-science, there is no way of discursively demarcating science that will be convincing in all circumstances. To put this another way: however necessary essential characteristics may be to science, they are not sufficient to explain scientists’ cultural authority.

Further reading:
PhD thesis: The popularisation of physics: boundaries of authority and the visual culture of science (http://bit.ly/3ej2d3)
See also: The boundaries of science

This is a delayed response to the Home Secretary’s sacking of Professor David Nutt, chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. The boundaries between science and politics used to be a research interest of mine. The Nutt affair reveals how poorly British politicians deal with any political issues that bump up against science. In the case of drug policy that’s regrettable but in the case of climate change it could be catastrophic. What follows isn’t a detailed account of what happened but an attempt to unpick how politicians can get it wrong and why it matters. The truth is I don’t know what happened in fine detail, but that doesn’t matter for the aspects of the affair that I discuss here.

The main point of contention between Professor Nutt and the Home Secretary was the classification of cannabis and ecstasy. There are many advantages in having a classification of drugs that is based on an objective measure of harm. However, there are also good reasons for being more flexible about classification. Here's the thing: when you change the system of classification from one that is ostensively objective to one that is politically flexible, don't pretend that it's still objective.

My MP, Kerry McCarthy told me "the decision of whether or not to re-classify the status of cannabis was not [...] a wholly scientific matter". She’s right and that is precisely why the lack of leadership shown by Alan Johnson is so regrettable. What Alan Johnson would have liked from his scientific advisors was license to say: 'this is evidence-based policy'. Being able to say that would have saved him from having to balance competing interests. He could instead have said, 'it's out of my hands - this is policy based on independent, objective facts'. (More on this in The public relations definition of science, and Why it’s OK to be unscientific.)

Unfortunately for Alan Johnson, the evidence-based policy that emerged wasn't the policy that he wanted. At this point leadership was required. He should have said: 'There's more to this issue than mere epidemiology. I'm basing the Government's policy on wider criteria'. He didn't do that. Instead, he said of Professor Nutt:

"He has a view on relative harms, which I do not share; he has a view on ecstasy, which I do not share; and he has a view on cannabis, which I and the majority of the House do not share." (See Hansard: http://bit.ly/5IzQhG)

Alan Johnson accused Professor Nutt of straying into politics, when actually it is Alan Johnson who has strayed onto Professor Nutt's territory. In contrast to the policies for alcohol and nuclear power that he cites, Johnson failed to make any case whatever for broadening the issue beyond the expert's remit. No doubt there are very good reasons for broadening drugs policy development, but Johnson didn't actually get round to broadening it. (Here's David Nutt making a similar point on Sky News: http://bit.ly/5VadVI.) Nutt was accused of 'campaigning against the government' when all he was doing was pointing out the difference between his advice and government policy. Pointing out the difference between the scientific advice and government policy was something that Alan Johnson should have been doing himself, and would have been doing if he had any political integrity.

What the Home Secretary wanted was the expediency of evidence-based policy combined with the consolations of a popular policy. Rather than 'doing politics', Alan Johnson suggested that the advice he'd been given was simply wrong, and that his own take on the science of relative harms was right. He got away with it because the distinction between 'evidence-based' and 'right' is one that is too subtle for most journalists and for most voters and politicians too. (See Why it’s OK to be unscientific.)

To be clear about this I'm not saying Alan Johnson's policy is wrong or that it's right - just that it is not evidence-based. If pressed though I’d have to say that it is indeed totally wrongedy wrong wrong! I think it is craven and irrational and not a good way to send signals about cannabis. It doesn't affect me directly but it will affect criminals (to their great advantage) and drug users (to their detriment) and it will give readers of the Daily Mail a warm glow. Other than that, its impact is limited.

But there are other issues where understanding the complex relationship between science and policy is absolutely essential, and getting it wrong could result in the deaths of hundreds of millions of people. Climate change and pandemic influenza are but two examples. As Kerry McCarthy rather patronisingly told me, "the actual decision-making in a democracy is a matter for politicians who have to look at all sides of the debate". My point is that when science is involved there is a lot more to 'looking at all sides of the debate' than merely valuing expert advice. It's up to politicians to understand how science can and can not inform policy and to explain this in the policies that emerge, but I see very little evidence that the current government has the first idea about the relation between science and policy.

My real problem with Alan Johnson, with the rest of the Government, and with Members of Parliament is that it seems that they don't care if they end up with a good drugs policy or a bad one as long as they make enough voters believe that they've done the right thing. What I expect of politicians, on the other hand, is genuine leadership, which means explaining policy that might initially be unpopular or counterintuitive.

Today I’m putting up short series of posts that have been prompted by the sacking of Professor David Nutt by the Home Secretary Alan Johnson. What was that all about? I’m supposed to be an expert on the boundaries of authority in science (‘boundaries of authority’ is in the title of my PhD thesis) so I should be able to tell you ☺.

The short answer is Alan Johnson is a lazy stupid politician who thinks the role of science in policy development is to save him from having to actually do politics. He’s by no means alone in his view of science. He wanted the expediency of an evidence-based policy with all the advantages of a popular policy. When the evidence-based policy didn’t deliver what he wanted he should have said: 'There's more to this issue than mere epidemiology. I'm basing the Government's policy on wider criteria'. He didn't do that, maybe because it would have required leadership.

I had forgotten that I gave a damn about the role of science in policy development – I thought all that was behind me – but watching politicians screw up the response to climate change as completely and utterly as they have has forced me to re-visit the topic. Never has it been more important to understand what science is. Stupid, lazy, arrogant, unimaginative politicians will probably never get it.

The following posts cover some of the points that the David Nutt affair has brought up for me:

Why stupid lazy politicians like science
What is science and what is science taken to be?
The boundaries of science
The public relations definition of science
Why it’s OK to be unscientific