Objectivity and policy making

By Fred W. Weingarten
CRA Staff

The other day I engaged in an electronic debate over the proper placement of an article in CRN. Should it be carried as news or as commentary? At one point, the author used the word "objective" to describe the piece. "There is no such thing as 'objective' writing on public policy" was my almost immediate response.

Although the debate with the author was settled (probably to no one's satisfaction), I continued to puzzle over my response for several days.

Was I right? If so, was it a cynical comment on politics or on policy makers these days?

I do not believe that objectivity exists in any meaningful way in political discourse. And in the rare case it might exist, it is counterproductive to claim it. We can strive to be fair, nonpartisan and balanced. But we claim objectivity at peril. That conclusion is not based on some cynical view by voters on how decisions are made in this town. The reasons strike at a basic problem in translating science and technology to the policy arena.

As scientists, we are trained to deal with objectivity and pure facts--measurements on instruments, points of light on photographic film, theorems derived through rigorous logic from axioms. We build explanatory models to fit those facts and then, perversely, proceed to try to discredit them by finding new facts that do not fit. The results of these efforts are formally disseminated within the community according to equally rigorous channels subject to peer review and checks by reproducing experiments.

(Sociologists and historians of science have pointed out that even this supposedly objective process is fraught with fad and subjective choice--technology embodies the values of its creators. But let's stay focused on the ideal of the process, which is what researchers and engineers are trained to believe they do.)

Policy making develops from efforts to resolve conflicts of all kinds: conflicts among different self-interests, public interests, values, ideologies and ways of viewing the world. The debate is obviously improved by reference to facts. But here's the kicker: Facts usually assume value content when they become inserted into politics.

Any author or editor necessarily selects, filters and orders information, with some value system guiding that selection. Even a magazine's index page, with its seemingly random list of facts, can carry a subtle (or sometimes powerful) message.

Writing that affects policy debate must be done in language that communicates to a non-scientific audience. These people are not privy to the inside processes of scientific communication, to the little signals authors leave to indicate to their peers the certainty of a statement, measurement or conclusion. Authors must resort to more common English. A policy analyst I worked with used to say that in common English, "synonyms are not synonyms." What he meant was that every word is a landmine of intended and unintended connotation. The longer a policy debate wore on, the more encrusted the words became with historical meanings and values.

I once knew a congressional staff analyst who worked on privacy for many years. She developed writer's block on the subject. Because she had been so close to the issue for so long, every word choice became fraught with implications she did not want to convey. Crafting a single sentence became a tortuous, daylong enterprise. Despite her valuable experience and expertise, she finally had to leave the subject field.

Facts seem much less reliable now, at least to the outside world, and particularly in politics or the courts. You testified about a proven link between smoking and lung cancer? I will find a statistician to show your data is inconclusive. You claim to have found a greenhouse effect? I will find a physicist to say you found nothing of the sort. You want to teach evolution in high school science? I will find a Ph.D. biologist who will testify that evolution is a discredited theory.

No wonder politicians are skeptical of experts armed with facts. That skepticism has been fed not just by charlatans, but by too many cases of researchers overstating the significance or the certainty of their findings, either to prove a political point or to gain personal advantage.

In Congress, in the courts, in regulatory processes and certainly in the press, all views and facts tend to get leveled. A few years ago, when the Midwest experienced serious flooding, a major news network invited a senior government meteorologist to explain what was happening. The network set the interview up as a debate and invited a prominent apocalyptic prophet, who argued that the cause of the floods was not meteorological but the result of God's wrath.

The network probably was satisfied that it had not only enlightened, but provided a balanced view. But in fact, they had smoothed scientific knowledge onto the same horizontal plane as popular culture and superstition and missed an opportunity to teach the public something about climate and the science of weather prediction.

Faced with a policy environment based on values and processes so contrary to the ideals of the scientific method, it is not unexpected that members of the scientific community become frustrated and disillusioned.

Nor is it surprising that some members who do participate try to keep an antiseptic separation between their work and the debate by hiding behind the thin film of "objectivity."

Yet policy makers see that posture for what it too often is--a claim of intellectual and moral superiority and a sense that the writer is somehow descending to a lower plane of discourse.

Facts and analysis can add rationality to policy debates. As science and technology pervade ever more deeply the critical policy decisions, it is important that the scientific community participates. Above all, it is important that we set the following as goals: to be accurate, clear and nonpartisan.

We scientists must understand that when dealing with public policy, we are working in an arena that does not view facts in the same way we do and that asks us, just as it asks a big-time lobbyist lawyer, where we are coming from. "Nowhere" is not an acceptable or believable answer.

To understand this helps us to better appreciate the process we are trying to influence and tailor our work and participate more effectively. Who knows, it might even help us find the fun in democratic debate, a concept that seems to have totally disappeared from this town lately.