Politics and Science

Just a quick note: I have been invited to post at BTC News (there's a link on the left column). So if one post a day isn't enough, go there for your fix. There's a lot of good stuff from other people there too. I guess you can consider this a cross-endorsement.

My wife likes to tell me that as a Political Scientist, I'm not much of a scientist. I am at least familiar with the the forms of scientific investigation as well as the nature of politics. I believe this gives me some authority to speak to the question raised by Roger Pielke in the New York Times: should political considerations be admissable when organizing a White House scientific advisory panel? Pielke takes the eccentric position that the politics of scientists is relevant criteria, while most of the scientific community thinks that it isn't.

Pielke argues that the divison between science and politics is an artificial one, most particularly when you are attempting to invoke science in political disputes. He believes that there are two sides to every issue, and the organizers of science advisory panels need to make sure that these opinions are represented.

These are feeble arguments. The statement that there is no sharp division between science and politics (or the world generally) is either boring or bizarre, depending on how he means it. If Pielke intends to say that, at the epistemological level, we can have no clear distinction between what we know about science and what we know about human relations, then fine. So what? But if he is saying that the scientific method is indistinguishable from the forms of contemporary political debate, then he is either a very poor scientist, a very naive politician, or both.

The scientific method relies on empirical evidence to test hypotheses and to construct theories. Political discourse is a matter of persuading the citizenry, which in practical terms requires framing reality in a way favorable to your position. Science deals with objective reality and political argument with human belief. These are profoundly different approaches.

The objection to the Bush Administration's policy of using political criteria to decide scientific questions is that the purpose of these panels is to provide an objective grounding of fact when debating matters of scientific import. What the Bushies are doing is the opposite of science: they have decided their conclusions and are looking around for evidence to support it. Anything which supports their position is good evidence, anything that refutes their position is bad evidence. This is scarcely science, and perverts the basic mission of the scientific panels.

From the perspective of critical philosophy, of course people cannot stand outside themselves, to abstract themselves from their beliefs and experiences. But from the point of view of ordinary human relationships, we expect people to do this all the time. We operate in various roles (friend, husband, brother, employee, manager) and are expected to behave in a manner consistent with the essential nature of those roles. Whenever we blur those roles, say if I as an employee start treating my boss as I would by wife, we are confusing the situation (to say the least).

So when we hire scientists to evaluate evidence and present conclusions, we are asking them to act as scientists, not as politicians. We need to respect the integrity of that role, and trust that the many sides of the question will be fairly represented. Once the scientific conclusion is reached, the politicians can then use the evidence in the contexts of political debate. We do this so that there is an objective grounding to our conversation. What we should not do is decide that all scientists, because they use things called "facts" and "logic" are somehow all closet Democrats and that therefore science must be massaged.

Unless you think that Republicans really are all a bunch of liars, hypocrites, and fools.