conditions of uncertainty. If no uncertainties are acknowledged and if the expert
advisers provide seemingly precise monolithic and prescriptive advice, then policymakers only have to rubber-stamp the advice, so excusing them from taking
responsibility for policy decisions. There is also often a market for such spurious
precision from those interest groups that stand to benefit from the resulting
policies. If there are no, or few, uncertainties attending the efficacy and safety of
your products then the adoption and retention of those products will be relatively
uncontroversial.
Profound uncertainties of the types discussed above create the conditions in which
broad ranges of scientific assertions can be made; nonetheless, some protagonists
try to maintain that they are in possession of a uniquely authoritative scientific
understanding (thereby understating or even ignoring the uncertainties), while others
emphasize or even exaggerate the uncertainties. The tactics adopted often reflect
the interests and beliefs of the particular protagonists as well as the distinctive features
of the issues at stake. Abraham has characterized the tactics often adopted by
representatives of the pharmaceutical industry, when commenting on the efficacy
and safety of their own products, and those of their competitors, as opportunistic
and ‘consistently inconsistent’ (Abraham, 2008). Such practices are, however, not
confined to that industrial sector.
One of the most familiar tactics adopted by incumbent authorities in both public
and private sectors, when confronted by an unwelcome assertion that prevailing
practices or proposed innovations may pose risks to environmental or public health,
or some other ecological parameter(s), has been to claim that science has robustly
established the absence of risks. Those claims have often been problematic because
the relevant sciences have been too uncertain to justify such confident assertions.
In many cases, not only had the science not provided sufficient evidence robustly
to support such reassuring narratives, but the relevant sciences were not yet
sufficiently sensitive, reliable and precise for such claims to be established.
Examples of this tactic are often encountered in the context of regulatory policymaking on some aspect of protecting environmental and/or public health, and this
chapter will discuss several examples. The approach has also often entailed
understating or even completely denying policy-relevant scientific uncertainties,
and portraying the judgement of the official advisers as definitive, and based on
the most well-informed expert judgements on the available evidence. As van
Zwanenberg and Millstone have explained, that approach could most readily be
deployed within closed technocratic institutional regimes (van Zwanenberg and
Millstone, 2005). The advantage of a closed regime, at least to those operating
within the system, is that the secrecy (or as they prefer to call it ‘confidentiality’)
of the system serves to protect it from scrutiny, and in particular helps to conceal
scientific uncertainties and contestable assumptions that guide, in particular, the
selection and interpretation of evidence. Regimes of that sort prevailed in the USA
prior to the passage of the 1966 and 1976 legislation of Freedom of Information,
and in the UK and many other European countries until the BSE crises of the late
1990s (US Congress, 1966, 1976). In those contexts, power was exercised in part
46 Erik Millstone
advisers provide seemingly precise monolithic and prescriptive advice, then policymakers only have to rubber-stamp the advice, so excusing them from taking
responsibility for policy decisions. There is also often a market for such spurious
precision from those interest groups that stand to benefit from the resulting
policies. If there are no, or few, uncertainties attending the efficacy and safety of
your products then the adoption and retention of those products will be relatively
uncontroversial.
Profound uncertainties of the types discussed above create the conditions in which
broad ranges of scientific assertions can be made; nonetheless, some protagonists
try to maintain that they are in possession of a uniquely authoritative scientific
understanding (thereby understating or even ignoring the uncertainties), while others
emphasize or even exaggerate the uncertainties. The tactics adopted often reflect
the interests and beliefs of the particular protagonists as well as the distinctive features
of the issues at stake. Abraham has characterized the tactics often adopted by
representatives of the pharmaceutical industry, when commenting on the efficacy
and safety of their own products, and those of their competitors, as opportunistic
and ‘consistently inconsistent’ (Abraham, 2008). Such practices are, however, not
confined to that industrial sector.
One of the most familiar tactics adopted by incumbent authorities in both public
and private sectors, when confronted by an unwelcome assertion that prevailing
practices or proposed innovations may pose risks to environmental or public health,
or some other ecological parameter(s), has been to claim that science has robustly
established the absence of risks. Those claims have often been problematic because
the relevant sciences have been too uncertain to justify such confident assertions.
In many cases, not only had the science not provided sufficient evidence robustly
to support such reassuring narratives, but the relevant sciences were not yet
sufficiently sensitive, reliable and precise for such claims to be established.
Examples of this tactic are often encountered in the context of regulatory policymaking on some aspect of protecting environmental and/or public health, and this
chapter will discuss several examples. The approach has also often entailed
understating or even completely denying policy-relevant scientific uncertainties,
and portraying the judgement of the official advisers as definitive, and based on
the most well-informed expert judgements on the available evidence. As van
Zwanenberg and Millstone have explained, that approach could most readily be
deployed within closed technocratic institutional regimes (van Zwanenberg and
Millstone, 2005). The advantage of a closed regime, at least to those operating
within the system, is that the secrecy (or as they prefer to call it ‘confidentiality’)
of the system serves to protect it from scrutiny, and in particular helps to conceal
scientific uncertainties and contestable assumptions that guide, in particular, the
selection and interpretation of evidence. Regimes of that sort prevailed in the USA
prior to the passage of the 1966 and 1976 legislation of Freedom of Information,
and in the UK and many other European countries until the BSE crises of the late
1990s (US Congress, 1966, 1976). In those contexts, power was exercised in part
46 Erik Millstone