Scientists on trial

Last week my newsfeed blew up with reactions to the conviction of seven scientists for manslaughter. As I wrote about last summer, these scientists failed to predict an earthquake in Italy. Many people, especially my scientist friends, see this as an attack on science and scientists who, it seems from this perspective, should be let alone to do their work without political interference or, worse yet, fear of conviction. But as you might expect, I argue that we need to look at the social side of science. Scientists don't operate in a political vacuum  and as we see here, there are very real consequences from the muddled interaction between scientists and policy-makers. To re-paraphrase Sheila Jasanoff, "Scientists have become arrogant, and have not explained to the people why they deserve support... The Enlightenment was not a historical event. It is a process, a mission, a continuous duty to explain yourself.”

For another interesting perspective, check out Dan Sarewitz writing for CSPO's new blog, "As We Now Think."

Seed banking, 1979–1994

Seed banks, such as the so-called "Doomsday Seed Vault" have been in the news recently, and I think will play a big role in crop adaptation to climate change. As part of the Embryo Project at ASU, I've been researching the history of seed banks. I posted about Seed Collection, 1990–1979 last week.

In the early twentieth century, scientists and agriculturalists collected plants in greenhouses, botanical gardens, and fields. When scientists became concerned over the loss of plant genetic diversity due to the expansion of a few agricultural crops around the mid-century, countries and organizations created seed banks for long-term seed storage. Beginning around 1979, environmental groups objected to the limited access to seed banks and questioned the propriety of the intellectual property of living organisms. Because many of the seed banks were located in the global North yet plants were collected largely from countries in the global South, this caused prolonged controversy over the uneven flow of genetic resources. This movement of the so-called “seed wars” and the movement for biodiversity conservation intersected in ways that shaped debates over plant genetic material and seed banking. Several significant shifts in governance occurred in 1994, leading to the creation of the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute and a change in the governance of several important international seed banks. 

The International Board for Plant Genetic Resources (IBPGR), headquartered in Rome, Italy, oversaw many, but not all, seed banks around the world. Through the efforts of the IBPGR and different countries, plant germplasm collection exploded in the 1970s and 1980s around the world. Plant germplasm is the genetic material required for plants to reproduce, mainly seeds, but also including clones, or cuttings. As of 1993, the IBPGR had conducted more than 400 collecting missions in over 100 countries. Seed banks also proliferated during thus time. As of 1979, twenty-five seed banks for long-term storage existed in the world. By 1995, 129 countries held a total of 1061 germplasm collections.

A 1979 book by Pat Roy Mooney, Seeds of the Earth: Private or Public Resource?, set off a movement of protest against seed banking. Beginning at a 1979 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) conference, representatives from developing countries expressed discontent with the seed banking regime, citing Mooney’s arguments that genes discovered in the global South would be patented in the North, and consequently, that the plant genetic material would no longer be available to farmers in the South. Mooney and others have made the distinction between “gene rich” countries in the global South and “gene poor” countries in the global South, which nonetheless possess more resources for seed collection and storage. Erna Bennet, a scientist and FAO employee, sympathized with these concerns and advocated of farmers’ access to germplasm from her earlier work with the FAO. As a proposed solution, Bennet spearheaded a campaign for the FAO, rather than the IBPGR, to gain jurisdiction of the global seed banks. Bennet resigned from the FAO in 1983 because of unresolved conflicts.

By 1981 the issue of seed banking, and the connection between intellectual property rights and conservation, became a global issue. Developing countries feared that germplasm collected in their countries would be stored in developed countries, such as the US, and that they would be denied access to the genetic material, prompting the phrase germplasm embargo. These countries called for the principle of free exchange of plant germplasm. In 1983 the FAO held a meeting that established the International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources, a voluntary, non-binding agreement, as well as an FAO Commission on Plant Genetic Resources. The International Undertaking would establish standards for the international collection and storage of plant genetic resources. The FAO believed that jurisdiction of international seed banks should be in the hands of a publicly accountable intergovernmental organization. The FAO was accountable to the United Nations, but the IBPGR and their institutional host, the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) were accountable to their donors, including the World Bank. Thus the FAO attempted to establish a Global System on Plant Genetic Resources for food and agriculture that would ostensibly replace the IBPGR. The Global System would include not just seed banks, but also on-farm conservation efforts.

The collaboration between the CGIAR and FAO revealed tensions between the organizations’ missions. Tensions between the FAO and IBPGR, both still located in Rome, Italy, continued into the early 1990s. In 1991, the IBPGR became the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI), officially ratified by the Italian government in 1994, and part of the CGIAR network. Jurisdiction over the global system of seed banks was still unclear until the United Nations Convention for Biological Diversity in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In 1994, jurisdiction of the CGIAR’s twelve gene banks was transferred to the FAO.

The decisions of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992 had consequences for plant genetic resource conservation. The CBD framework allowed legal rights over natural resources to their countries of origin. The CBD did not extend to existing seed banks, which were at the time under the auspices of the CGIAR network, but it set a precedent for international governance of genetic material, and left a gap for governance of seed banks. The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) in 1994 further established international standards for trade of plant genetic materials. Over the next decade, the FAO developed an International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, widely adopted in 2002.

Seed banking allows long-term storage of plant germplasm, usually used for plant breeding experiments. To preserve germplasm, seed banks are kept at low temperatures and low moisture, which keeps the seed dry and stops samples from growing quickly. For long-term storage, seeds are stored in airtight vials at temperatures around -20 degrees C, and around 0 to -5 degrees C for medium-term storage. Thousands of seeds are stored for each plant variety. Samples can degrade over time, and especially in developing countries, the facilities may not be equipped for long-term storage. Most plants are stored as seed, but asexual or polyploidy crops such as potato, cassava and banana require different techniques for reproduction and storage. In the 1980s, seed banks experimented with techniques for storing these plants as tissue cultures, or “artificial seeds.” These varieties can also be propagated in test tubes for shorter-term storage. Cryopreservation, freezing seed in liquid nitrogen at extremely low temperatures, is another technique for long-term storage of plant material, but is not as widely used as it is in animal breeding and conservation.

Scientists often use the terms seed bank, gene bank, and germplasm collection interchangeably, although there are different techniques associated with storage of different plants and types of storage. Germplasm is all plant genetic material, which is limited to more than just seeds. Scholars Pistorius and Wijk assert that, in the 1980s, scientists began conceptualizing plant genetic diversity in term of individual genes rather than particular plants. The dominance of the term “gene bank” in scientific literature reflects this shift.

Sources

Busch, Lawrence, William B. Lacy, Jeffrey Burkhardt, Douglas Hemken, Jubel Moraga-Rojel, Timothy Koponen, and Jose de Souza Silva. Making Nature Shaping Culture: Plant Biodiversity in Global Context. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.

CGIAR. 1971-1996 Database: 25 Years of Food and Agriculture Improvement in Developing Countries. http://www.worldbank.org/html/cgiar/25years/25cover.html (Accessed February 11, 2012).

Damania, Abi D. “History, Achievements, and Current Status of Genetic Resources Conservation.” Agronomy Journal 100 (2008): 9–21.

Engels, J. M. M. and Hareya Fassil. “Plant and Animal Genebanks.” In The Role of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Human Nutrition, Vol. III., ed. Victor R. Squires, 144–174. Oxford, U.K.: Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems, 2009.

Fujii, Jo Ann, David Slade, Keith Redenbaugh, and Keith Walker. “Artificial seeds for plant propagation.” Tibtech 5 (1987): 335–339.

International Board for Plant Genetic Resources. Annual Report 1978. Rome, 1979.

Kloppenburg, Jack R., Jr. First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology, 1492-2000 (2nd Ed.). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.

Kloppenburg, Jack R., Jr., ed. Seeds and Sovereignty: Debate Over the Use and Control of Plant Genetic Resources. Durham: Duke University Press, 1988.

Moore, Gerald and Witold Tymowski. Explanatory Guide to the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. Cambridge, UK: International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Environmental Policy and Law Paper No. 57 (2005).

National Research Council. Managing Global Genetic Resources. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 1993.

Pistorius, Robin. Scientists, Plants and Politics—A History of the Plant Genetic Resources Movement. Rome: International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, 1997.

Pistorius, Robin and Jeroen van Wijk. The Exploitation of Plant Genetic Information: Political Strategies in Crop Development. New York: CABI Publishing, 1999.

Plucknett, Donald, Nigel Smith, J. T. Williams, and N. Murthi Anishetty. Gene Banks and the World’s Food. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987.

Powledge, Fred. “The food supply’s safety net.” BioScience 45 (1995): 235–243.

Raustiala, Kal and David G. Victor. “The Regime Complex for Plant Genetic Resources.” International Organziation 58 (2004): 277–309.

Scarascia-Mugnozza, G.T. and P. Perrino. “The History of ex situ Conservation and Use of Plant Genetic Resources.” In Managing Plant Genetic Diversity, eds. Johannes M.M. Engels, Ramanatha Rao, and Anthony Brown, 1–22. New York: CABI Publishing, 2001.

What is Golden Rice?

This semester I'm taking a class where I'm learning to write encyclopedia-style entries for ASU's Embryo Project. The Embryo Project focuses on anything related to embryos and embryo research, including the history of evolution, birth control, and stem cells. But since I don't really work on that stuff, they're letting me write about plants! My first article is on the history of Golden Rice, which I'll share a bit about here. My next three articles are on the history of seed banks and the movement for conservation of plant genetic resources. I'm including things like the history of plant patents and the biodiversity movement, which is part of why it's taking 3 articles.

So what is Golden Rice? Golden Rice is a technology that comes at the intersection of scientific and ethical debates that extend beyond a grain of rice. Golden Rice was the first crop variety engineered for micronutrient fortification with the intention of improving human health. Golden Rice has an engineered multi-gene biochemical pathway in its genome. This pathway produces beta-carotene, a molecule that becomes vitamin A when metabolized by humans. The inventors of Golden Rice were Ingo Potrykus of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Peter Beyer of the University of Freiburg, Germany. The Rockefeller Foundation supported their collaboration. Scientists first succeeded in expressing beta-carotene in rice in 1999, and the results were published in 2000. Since then, Golden Rice has improved through laboratory and field trials, but as of 2012 is not commercially grown.

Golden Rice is named for its color, which is caused by beta-carotene. Normal rice, Oryza sativa, does not express beta-carotene in its endosperm—the starchy, biggest part of the rice seed, which is usually an off-white color. Beta-carotene is part of a class of molecules called carotenoids, one of hundreds that are naturally produced in plants, and it has a yellow-orange hue. Carotenoids are an essential human nutrient because they are precursors to molecules needed in metabolism. Beta-carotene (also known as pro-vitamin A) is transformed in the human body into vitamin A, necessary for production of retinal and retinoic acid. When populations lack access to foods containing beta-carotene­­—by eating mostly cereal crops such as rice, wheat, or sorghum—they are at risk of blindness and disease.

Rather than planning to commercialize their invention, the inventors, especially Potrykus, worked to legally secure Golden Rice as a humanitarian project. They licensed Golden Rice to Syngenta (formerly Zeneca), a Swiss biopharmaceutical company. Potrykus and Beyer soon established a “Golden Rice Humanitarian Board” to oversee the development of the technology and grant noncommercial licenses to public research institutes. These national and international research organizations would adapt Golden Rice to local environmental and climate conditions. The International Rice Research Institute gained a license for use from the Golden Rice project in 2001, aiming to spread Golden Rice throughout Asia.

Both inventors credit Syngenta’s Adrian Dubock with helping them navigate the complex intellectual property legal system around agricultural biotechnology. Neither Potrykus nor Beyer anticipated the Intellectual and Technology Property Rights and material transfer agreements required for production of Golden Rice. These licenses protect inventors’ rights to genetic material, scientific techniques, and exchange of seeds for research. A legal assessment of Golden Rice in 2000 showed that it contained over seventy patents, but patents vary country to country. Many of the patents do not apply to the developing countries at which Golden Rice was targeted. For the licenses that were required, these were obtained over a few months at minimal cost.

Critics of Golden Rice include the environmental group Greenpeace. Greenpeace has staged public protests against Golden Rice, and is systematically opposed to all genetically modified organisms. Greenpeace claimed that the amount of beta-carotene in Golden Rice is so small, that one would need to consume massive quantities of rice to reach an effective dose. While it can be difficult to measure the ingestion of vitamins, a team of scientists from Syngenta introduced “Golden Rice 2” in 2005, which produced increased levels of beta-carotene by substituting the original daffodil genes with similar genes from corn.

As of early 2012, Golden Rice was still in field trials. The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), partnered with Hellen Keller International, plans to introduce Golden Rice in Bangladesh and the Philippines by crossing it with local, high-yielding rice varieties. While IRRI has been involved in the Golden Rice project since nearly its invention, Hellen Keller International joined the project to support the public health benefits of vitamin A. The Golden Rice project at IRRI is supported by Rockefeller Foundation, the United States Agency for International Development, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation became a supporter of the Golden Rice project in 2011. Bangladesh approved field trials of Golden Rice, and as of 2012 estimates that varieties will be available for consumption by 2015.

More to come... but this is for some background, and I hope you found it interesting! My sources are available upon request.

Ethics and Science: Climate Adaptation, Bird Flu, and Vaccines

Next week I'm giving my first lecture to undergraduates on "Sustainable Development: Climate Change and the Ethics of Adaptation." I'm trying to narrow down the three main themes I want to get across, while teaching the students something about the nuances of adaptation, resilience, and vulnerability. I'm going to focus on Bangladesh, gender, and agriculture, since I have a background in these things and they make a great case studies. While I'm working on that, take a look at these three science policy blog posts that I really enjoyed this week:

Adaptation or Development? (via the CGIAR's CCAFS blog). This post surprised me at first, because typically this blog promotes straight-up climate-proofing development and technological fixes. It looks like the guest author is a policy researcher. This reminds me of some of the work of Jessica Ayers, a young scholar who I've been reading a lot of lately.

When we think of climate change adaptation in agriculture the first thing that comes to mind is improved crop varieties. Water harvesting and irrigation schemes may also be high on our list. Perhaps too is crop diversification. But on a recent trip to western Kenya, one agricultural community reminded us that sometimes the interventions that can most improve the adaptive capacities of small-scale farmers may not occur on or even near the farm.

Publish or Perish (by my friend Jessie, a Lyman Briggs graduate and medical researcher). Jessie writes about the ethical conundrum in publishing a scientific report about a more virulent strain of bird flu, and the implications for scientific governance.

One result of a global biomedical research field is that there exists no single regulatory body to dictate publication ethics in cases like these. Instead, there is an amalgam of various institutional, professional, local, state, national and international governmental and regulatory bodies which come together to dictate first ethical laboratory practices, allocation of research monies, and finally what happens with research-driven revelations.

The Vaccine Controversy (by Michael, an ASU colleague/my favorite person). This week we brought my former professor, Mark Largent, to ASU's campus where he met with the graduate students and gave a talk on the vaccine debate. Michael's write up hits the key points of his talk, which is about how the vaccine controversy is a case of scientized politics: a very Pielke/Sarewitz-esque argument.

But parents, looking for absolute safety and certainty for their children, aren’t convinced by scientific studies, simply because it is effectively impossible to prove a negative to their standards. A variety of pro-vaccine advocates, Seth Mnookin and Paul Offit among them, have cast this narrative as the standard science denialism story, with deluded and dangerous parents threatening to return us to the bad old days of polio. This “all-or-nothing” demonization is unhelpful, and serves merely to alienate the parents doctors are trying to reach.

Enjoy and have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Genetically modified foods and public engagement

A great blog you should check out this weekend is Jack Stilgoe's "Responsible Innovation." My grad colleagues and I recently enjoyed discussing his "'How' technologies and 'Why' technologies." An excerpt:

Some emerging technologies are defined by how they do things. So called ‘platform-technologies’ or ‘enabling technologies’ like synthetic biology provide new ways of doing a whole lot of different stuff.... Geoengineering, on the other hand, is defined by its intentions (I wrote about this here). Its target is a future in which we are able to influence the climate. This doesn’t mean that geoengineering researchers desire this future. Many of them would despise such a prospect. But they are interested in it. So while nano and syn bio are defined by the how, geo is defined by its why. This invites different sorts of governance and difference sorts of public engagement.

But his recent post that really intrigued me was an interview with Stilgoe on engaging the public in dialogues about genetically modified (GM) foods. Stilgoe discusses how going into a public dialogue about GM foods is different than with a more politically-neutral, or less entrenched, topic (see my previous post on GM and risk; also see my post on public dialogues). He also talks about "upstream engagement," which means involving the public in science throughout the research process, rather than just dealing with the possible consequences of the results. On engaging with stakeholders:

[Q:] The report speaks of engagement with both stakeholders and the public. In the case of GM, what do you perceive to be the difference, and do we need a different approach for each? 

[Stilgoe:] Absolutely we need a different approach for each. When you are engaging upstream, everyone is a potential stakeholder; yet at the same time there are no obvious direct stakeholders because there isn’t anything yet for people to have a stake in, except researchers and the people who govern that research. In a downstream discussion like GM, there are clearly established stakeholders: farmers, regulators, politicians, interest groups, supermarkets, and animal feed companies who all need to find a way to thrash things out in a fairly old fashioned way. I think that confusing this activity with public engagement is unhelpful and puts far too large a burden on public engagement. 

I think there’s another important set of lessons that need to be learnt which we didn’t cover in the report, particularly about how to engage with stakeholders. These more controversial issues involve direct action, lobbying and engagement in ‘uninvited spaces’ that government is not controlling and is less comfortable with. With an issue such as GM, working out mechanisms for this form of engagement may be more important than convening a formal public dialogue.

Really interesting stuff to think about! Have a good weekend!

Pika politics and climate change

Look at the cute little pika! So cute! So... controversial??? One of my professors at Arizona State University studies pikas, little critters that are found in both North America and Central Asia, and is entrenched in an unusual debate between environmentalists and the government. I'm going to paraphrase a bit from a presentation he gave to our lab group and then discuss the science policy behind it.

North American pikas are a focal point of the climate change agenda among conservationists in the American west. This is because pikas live in the mountains, and with rising temperatures due to climate change, it is feared that they will soon run out of habitat at high enough altitudes to stay cool. Seems pretty straightforward, right? Not so, according to my professor. While the conservationists are lobbying for pikas to be listed as endangered, he believes they are using shaky science.

In the advocates' claim for [endangered species] listing, Andrew Smith of Arizona State University sees a case of going overboard, and extending implications from limited studies. 

In his own work in Bodie, Calif., begun in 1969, Smith said he found pika capable of adapting to temperature swings by haying at night, instead of during the day, if it is too warm. He also has found the animals at low elevations, where they were not documented previously, complicating the theory that pikas are being chased relentlessly upslope. 

"We really think pikas are at risk, and we should learn more about them, and be monitoring them at lower elevations," Smith said. "They should tell us an incredible amount about climate change. But they are not endangered." (Seattle Times, 2009)

He thinks that environmental groups have picked the pika as a poster child for climate change based on values (such as conservation ethics) over scientific fact, and that they repeatedly cherry-pick data that supports their cause rather than the broader scientific consensus. While the lobby groups claim that pikas are disappearing before our eyes, others note that the western mountains are literally crawling with pikas. Scientists are working to take censuses of pika populations, but this is arduous and can reflect changes other than climate. So the question is, what will happen if the pikas don't disappear? Will we give up on climate change mitigation policy? Will science lose credibility? These are familiar questions to anyone who studies scientific controversies.

Environmentalists have long held a tenuous relationship with science- they both distrust it, and use it to their advantage in legal battles. Science has the power of legitimacy, and making visible the invisible. The case of agricultural biotechnology (GMOs), and how environmental advocates use science, is strikingly similar to the pika controversy. Small degrees of scientific uncertainty become major points of contention, and unfortunately the environmentalists and scientists seem to be speaking directly past each other. I will refer you to my past post to highlight this point. Roger Pielke Jr. would call this a politicized scientific debate. As he argues in The Honest Broker, we should use science to highlight a range of possible policy options, rather than a narrowly defined, predetermined political position. Implicit in the entire pika debate, as with the polar bears, is that in order to save the pikas, we must limit our carbon emissions.

Should scientists speak up and advocate against the environmental lobbyists? Or aim to provide a more robust understanding of the science and policy implications of climate change on animal populations? Can conservationists promote their own agenda without using dubious science?

Until next time, check out this new blog by some of my former MSU professors.

5) Science communication and climate change

Image Source.

A topic that frequently comes up between me and my colleagues at Michigan State University this summer is of science communication. At the Science and Democracy Network meeting that I attended last week, one of the most contentious topics was over climate change science and communication, and what is our role as scholars to clarify (or "complexify," as is usually the case) the discourse.

So I thought I'd put together a resource list of blogs and papers on the subject of science communication, from an STS perspective (and particularly about climate change). First, Alice Rose Bell has a great blog on science communication, and even already has a helpful resource list! My other favorite climate change communication blogs are Dot Earth by Andy Revkin, Age of Engagement by Matthew Nisbet, Open the Echo Chamber by Edward Carr, and The Intersection by Chris Mooney. While I don't always agree with the partisan positions of many of these bloggers, I find myself enraptured by their interesting reflections on the latest research and controversies in climate change science and communication.

One of the contributions of STS research to science communication studies is of reshaping the "deficit model" of science communication into more nuanced views of public understanding of and participation in science. The deficit model is similar to both the "loading dock" and "linear model" of science and policy, in that it upholds scientists as disconnected experts, and that the public is an "empty vessel" to fill with objective knowledge. Some great papers on new models of science communication are "Do Scientists Understand the Public?" by Mooney (2010) and "What's next for science communication?" by Nisbet and Scheufele (2010).

So why did I open this post with a political picture? Because there is solid evidence that despite levels of scientific knowledge, political affiliation is the biggest determinant of whether U.S. citizens believe in climate change (summary here, full article by McCright and Dunlap (2011) here). I was lucky to take a class with Aaron McCright during my undergrad at MSU, and this really sparked my interest in the science politics of climate change. Since I took that class two years ago, I've been following the climate change communication literature. To start off, a classic article you need to read is "Making climate hot" by Susanne Moser and Lisa Dilling (2004). Communicating climate change is inherently difficult because of the high-level science as well as framing of risks and uncertainties, but Pidgeon and Fischhoff (2011) have some advice on framing climate uncertainty here.

And if you're interested in the whole "climate skeptics" debate, you need to read Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway's book, Merchants of Doubt. Also, my new favorite blog resource is "Skeptical Science," which does a really good job at clearly communicating the science behind climate change, and addressing skeptical claims. Finally, Chris Mooney once again comes through with some commentary and a list of resources. Interestingly, even in the case of climate skeptics, the deficit model proves false. More scientific knowledge does not automatically make people "believe" in climate change. People's political orientations have a strong impact on what information we will use to support our own values. And overwhelmingly, even in the face of "Climategate" and uncertainty, the majority of Americans trust scientists and believe in climate change and support energy policy.

I want to conclude by saying that none of this is simple. Sometimes when I'm telling people about my research, I avoid the topic of climate change because I don't want to get into a debate. But while working at MSU this summer and last, we've noticed that when you sit with people face to face, and don't impose your own views but rather ask about their own thoughts and experiences, it leads to a more productive conversation. And having worked in a lab during my undergrad, I know how hard it is to "get out there" and communicate science- but there are a few easy ways, from working with student groups of all ages, to writing an effective op-ed, to learning how to present your research in a way that's accessible to non-scientists. An insightful comment on Alice Rose Bell's blog states, "if you want to reach young audiences, stop thinking of them as audiences and don’t merely involve them: work out what’s central about your project and invite them to do that."

Risk, uncertainty, and value judgements in science policy

Yesterday my colleagues and I at Michigan State University and Kellogg Biological Station had a reading group to discuss Pielke's The Honest Broker. We read chapters 4-6 for today, which are titled, "4) Values; 5) Uncertainty; and 6) How science policy shapes science in policy and politics."

We talked about whether science is a good tool in making decisions. Certainly it can be good for informing decisions, such as if there's a tornado coming and you need to know whether you should evacuate. Unfortunately, as we saw in one of my previous posts, sometimes scientific assessments of risk and uncertainty do NOT translate well into action. Pielke agrees with this perspective. He thinks that science just adds smoke and mirrors to debates that are really about core values. So unless the situation under debate is one with low uncertainty and highly shared values (a tornado is coming, we should evacuate), we need more recognition of the underlying values of a debate (see: the climate change debate).

Pielke repeatedly refers to two works by Dan Sarewitz, who is one of my professors at Arizona State and regarded by many as a science policy guru. The first article is "How science makes environmental controversies worse" (2004). The second is "Science and Environmental Policy: An Excess of Objectivity" (2000). Both are worth a thorough reading: one thing I've discovered in grad school is that I sometimes read the same article months, or a year, apart, and find revelatory new nuggets of knowledge each time I read it.

The "Excess of Objectivity" book chapter is an insightful commentary on how science can actually impede the political process, by focusing on always disputable and uncertain facts while ignoring underlying value conflicts in highly politicized environmental issues. The “excess of objectivity” refers to the incompatibility of multiple fields of science, and how while each field claims objectivity, they drive controversy and muddy the political waters.

"How science makes environmental controversies worse" makes the same core argument, using a set of different examples from the 2000 election results, to climate change, to genetically modified food (another good case study is the debate over nuclear waste: see this editorial). This discussion reminded me of an article I read during my first weeks of grad school, "Value Judgments and Risk Comparisons. The Case of Genetically Engineered Crops" (2003) by Paul Thompson, who is an environmental and agricultural philosopher at MSU.

I wrote up an analysis of it that I think highlights the issues of value, risk, and uncertainty in environmental controversies pretty well: Thompson focuses on the inherent value judgments that scientists make about genetically engineered (GE) crops and environmental risk. He aims to identify the values behind the GE debate, rather than taking a philosophical or scientific position in the debate. He focuses on a relatively small aspect of this debate, which are claims for and against a comparative evaluation of the environmental risk of GE vs. traditional (non-GE) crops. This is the standard metric used by scientists and federal agencies to assess the risk of GE crops. Thompson’s argument is that risk assessments are inherently based on value-based judgments; the science itself cannot settle a claim about environmental risks.

He shows that the current regulatory system ironically puts the burden of proof on anti-GE activists, who are “in the position of needing to justify special treatment for this class of plants” (emphasize added, Thompson, 2003, p. 11). This gap charges the largely non-scientific public with demonstrating the scientific credibility of their value system, against the grain of the values held by the scientific community, which of course causes further problems on multiple levels. Thompson identifies several other challenges in the regulation of GE crops based on the current framework.

Risk assessments, especially environmental risk assessments, depend on value-based judgments of how much and what types of risk are “acceptable,” despite attempts to scientifically quantify this risk. The definitions of risk by the scientists and activists are essentially incompatible for comparing the risks of GM vs. non-GM crops, or even defining the concept of environmental risk. This highlights very clearly that science, rather than aiding the decision-making process, can complicate and add uncertainty to political debates.

On a related note, I'm headed to Boston today to attend the Science and Democracy Network conference! I'm really excited to talk to like-minded scholars about our work, and make some great connections.