Oct98. Theocharis
showed me these articles ten years ago. I felt very fortunate to have the
opportunity to meet Hiram Caton in London thereafter. Four of the people
present, Hillman, Caton, Theocharis, Catt, set up ICAF,
the International Committee for Academic Freedom. Nothing came of it.
Censorship remains pandemic right across science and other disciplines. In
particular, all of the most important disclosures are censored. http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x8cbwash.htm
. The key question to establish is whether it is getting worse, as I believe. -
Ivor Catt.
An evolved conspiracy. http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x56k.htm
Professor Pieraccini. http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x6611.pdf
Search:
The official publication of the Australia and New Zealand Association for the
Advancement of Science.
Vol
19 No. 5/6 Sept/Nov 1988, pp242-244
Truth Management in the Sciences
by Hiram Caton
Deprive the average man of his vital lie,
and you've robbed him of happiness as well (Henrik Ibsen)
By truth management I mean deception
practiced by scientists who use authoritative institutions to perpetrate a
distinct type of fraud upon some public. The fraud consists in representing a
specific and contingent interpretation of evidence as if it were unalloyed
truth enjoying the unanimous endorsement of the relevant cadre of scientists.
Truth management, then, is wanton abuse of scientific authority.
Some may be tempted to read the truth
management concept as a supposed conspiracy of experts. This presents a certain
difficulty in communication since we all know that conspiracies, collusions,
and machinations do not exist. These sordid activities are products of the
febrile imaginations of literary persons such as C. P. Snow, who opened his Godkin lectures at Harvard University by declaring that
'one of the most bizarre features of an advanced industrial society in our time
is that cardinal choices have been made by a handful of men: in secret' (Snow
1961).
As a historian I do not share Lord Snow's
perception of this situation as bizarre; to me it seems ordinary. Indeed, it is
because collusion is so ordinary - almost, one might say, a constant of
organisational dynamics - that it will open no window on the special phenomenon
of truth management. It is more promising, I believe, to follow the lead of
recent studies of self-deception, which suggests that this curious manoeuvre
lies deep in Homo sapiens' evloved psychology, and
that it has several distinct adaptive functions (Daniels 1983; Goleman 1985;
Mitchell and Thompson 1986; Gruter and Masters 1986;
Alexander 1987; Lochard and Paulhus
1988). In this way we may think of truth management as a 'vital lie' to borrow
Ibsen's phrase, fostered in specific institutional circumstances.
Saintly Science
To indicate that scientists are subject to
gross self-deception concerning matters with which they are thoroughly familiar,
let us examine the standard response to the phenomenon of fraud in science.
Fraud, the fabrication or manipulation of evidence, crosses the common
self-image of scientists in the most severe manner. This image pictures the
scientist as a sort of saint of truth (Mahoney 1976; Kohn 1986). He or she is
an impartial critic. scrupulously reports the experimental findings, carefully weight the evidence, readily acknowledges error, and openly
communicates with colleagues. Unlike lesser mortals, the scientist is not
motivated by the ordinary forms of avidity, but is led to the secrets of nature
by the gentle hand of curiosity. As for the larger purposes of life, the
scientist dedicates his or her labors to the
amelioration of the human condition.
this image is promulgated through countless
channels, including the heroic poetry of science idolatry. Let us sample it.
The respected Oxford philosopher of science, Rom Harre,
(1986), has written:
"In my view science is not just an
epistemological but also a moral achievement ... the scientific community
exhibits a model or ideal of rational co-operation set within a strict moral
order, the whole having no parallel in any other human activity ... [it]
enforces standards of honesty, trustworthiness and good work against which the
moral quality of say Christian civilisation stands condemned."
I call this poetry to draw attention to the
edifying tone which transports the author's imagination to a vision of moral
grandeur. he thrills to the discovery of an ethic so pure that it puts the
ethical performance of a world religion to shame. The poet experiences his ecsatsy illuminated by a vision of the world disenchanted
by science, yet redeemed by science; for if we have lost religion, we have
gained a new ethic superior to the old.
Returning to earth, I observe that this
eulogy to honesty is a lie if we, unkindly, read it as the factual description
it purports to be. Science, as sociologists know and philosophers of science
should know, is just another profession whose organisation, social
stratification, career expectations, and justifying mythology can be understood
without the supposition of a moral order uniquely its own or the supposition
that the pursuit of science builds character. Indeed, scientists, despite the
ethic of truthfulness, may be more subject to self-deception than other
professionals because reputation counts heavily towards success in status
competition. Reputation lives in opinion; and often reputation for achievement
substitutes for the thing. Reputation may be built up or diminished by bravado,
gossip, and other dubious means. Reflecting on the capriciousness of academic
status assignment, Donald Perry (1987) hit upon a thought in marked contrast to
Harre's eulogy:
"Now I would like to challenge a
simplistic value - that it is wrong to use unscrupulous means to advance one's
career in biology.
Before you steadfastly answer yes, look closely at some role models of the
profession ... why should less distinguished scientists be honest when
unscrupulous behaviour is rewarded with celebrated scientific recognition?
Science advances by finding answers to questions about nature. Whether or not a
scientist is scrupulous has no bearing at all on scientific discoveries."
Perry's thought may be enlarged by observing
that institutional science is adaptable to many values. Research may be
directed toward ends trivial or sublime. It may be made to serve profit, mass
annihilation, entertainment, and social control. There is no discernable moral order implicit in applications of
science.
Although these observations are commonplace,
the response of scientists to the fraud phenomenon invoked the image of saintly
science in its most unreflective form. When the first damaging cases came to
light about 15 years ago, leaders of science formulated a line that soon became
orthodox (Broad and Wade 1982; Kohn 1986). The line asserts that fraud is a
rare phenomenon. It is said that cheating offends the scientist's credo of
complete and veracious disclosure. Those sceptical of the restraining power of
conscience in the era of Watergate are assured that the credo is enforced by
two strong sanctions. One is that fraud is invariably detected; the other is
that disgrace is sure to follow. With fraud thus verbally confined to a minute
number, it remained only to find a suitable explanation of the atypical event.
The explanation proposed is that fraud is the irrational act of a disturbed
mind.
The utility of the psychiatric explanation in
helping to extricate scientists from tight spots may be seen in the case of
Eugene Braunwald, whose laboratory at the Harvard
Medical School was the scene of the most extensive fraud uncovered to date. Braunwald (1987) declared:
"I believe that many instances of
scientific fraud represent a form of unconscious self-destructive behaviour
which may have aggressive components directed against the perpetrator's
supervisors, colleagues and institutions; indeed, it mocks science as a
whole."
Braunwald did not substantiate his belief by citing clinical
evidence. As a medical scientist he presumably knows that psychiatric
explanations made in the absence of clinical examination are of no evidential
value. Nevertheless, Braunwald's diagnosis reveals
something about his own motives. Observe that he portrays himself, Harvard and
science itself as victims. In this way the scientist who presided over the
worst fraud uncovered hitherto deflects culpability by attributing it to a
chance, uncontrollable event - the subordinate John Darsee's
neurosis. This explanation directs attention away from the point at issue, Braunwald's failure adequately to supervise his laboratory.
The psychiatric explanation was snatched from
thin air in the early days of the scandal. It continues to be advanced but now
indirect evidence is offered. In his highly acclaimed study, False Prophets:
Fraud and Error in Science and medicine, virologist Alexander Kohn cited
some opinions of L.S. Kubie, a psychiatrist who
specialised in scientist clients (Kohn 1986). Kubie
found that his patients often suffered from unresolved neurotic anxieties which
in cases involved tampering with evidence. This information, nearly three
decades old when Kohn's book appeared, is his sole evidence for the neurosis
hypothesis. It suggests that some scientists are driven by neurosis to cheat,
but furnishes no information on whether persons until now detected in cheating
were neurotic.
"[i]n
practically every conversation I have had on this subject with heads of
laboratories, professors and terachers, they could
report attempted cases of falsification or cheating which they had exposed
early enough to get rid of the offending individual and bar his access to the
halls of science"
Winnowing is nevertheless not an effective
safeguard according to the New Scientist survey Kohn cites. The 1976
survey found that 194 respondents (n=201) reported knowledge of cheating.
One-fifth of these cases were reported as having been detected, but only 10% of
offenders were punished by dismissal. He also reports a survey of 1309 scientists,
of whom 25% complained of having their ideas stolen or inadequately
acknowledged. One may conclude from Kohn's own data that cheating is the
ordinary practice of ordinary people.
Such evidence concerning the prevalence of
fraud, being largely anecdotal, is of limited value. More significant
indicators perhaps are where fraud is occurring and how it occurs.
* Fraud is not being detected in institutions
of low repute, but in the laboratories of eminent scientists holding
appointments at prestige institutions.
* Evidence does not support the view that the
detection of fraud is inevitable. Hundreds of papers reporting fabricated
research have slipped through the main line of defence, peer review, despite
tell-tale inconsistencies, some quite gross (Kohn 1986; Stewart and Feder
1987). Journal readers do not detect fraud either. Indeed, even the co-authors
of articles reporting faked data did not detect it in the articles they signed.
In the Harvard case, there were 100 publications involving 47 co-authors, yet
none detected cheating (Stewart and Feder 1987). Who did? A lab technician.
Despite all this, Daniel E. Koshland, Jr, editor of Science, recently stated
that 'we must recognize that 99.9999% of [scientific papers] are accurate and
truthful' (Koshland 1987).
This confident assertion exemplifies the ease
with which scientists fabricate data in good conscience. The impressive
certainty to four decimal places handily exceeds the precision possible in
social measurement. Even if this figment were of real magnitude, it could not
be obtained in the present case because the data requisite for a quantitive estimate of the incidence of fraud have not been
collected. Koshland's intoxicated certainty registers
the will to believe in the integrity of science regardless of evidence.
If the editor of Science furnished an
example of deception in the course of denying that scientists deceive,
Alexander Kohn has adduced a singular case of misconduct which strongly
suggests that it is pandemic. It is the case of Alexander Kohn himself.
Kohn's misconduct
In the Preface of the new edition of False
Prophets, Kohn states that he has withdrawn a chapter on the Samosa
controversy published in the first edition because Derek Freeman presented
evidence that certain facts and judgements in it are incorrect.
This brief acknowledgement scarcely hints at
what actually transpired. In Kohn's 1500 word account
of the controversy, Freeman detected 20 errors, most of which tended to
diminish Freeman's scholarship and reputation (Freeman 1987). So many errors
bespeak culpable failure to observe scholarly standards. But in addition, Kohn
groomed his evidence by altering a quotation to make it a substantially sharper
jab at Freeman than the original had been.
Kohn stated in response to Freeman's first,
exploratory letter that he intended, and believed that he wrote, an even-handed
account of the Samoa controversy (Kohn 1987a). Freeman's second letter was a
blistering indictment of Kohn's integrity, based on detailed demonstration of
the bias of Kohn's account and on an enumeration of errors. Kohn offered no
defence in response to this letter. He simply agreed to withdraw the chapter
(Kohn 1987b).
Kohn's investigation of the Samoa controversy
was superficial in the sense that undergraduate essays are superficial. He was
unaware that his balanced account merely reproduced the line taken by
Margaret Mead's defenders. The altered quotation seems damning, as Freeman
showed with devastating effect. Yet when the evidence is closely considered,
one is inclined to conclude that Kohn only practised the usual improvement of
data, free from malicious intent (Caton 1988).
This case is singular in that it poses the
question Kohn himself raises in the new concluding chapter of his book, Where does it end? If a respected virologist in a highly
acclaimed book professing to expose the roots of cheating is caught cheating
himself, who among the saints of truth is without sin?
The answer of course is 'none' or 'few'.
Either way, the Kohn case suggests that the prevailing approach to the cheating
phenomenon may be fundamentally mistaken. The prevailing approach focuses on
the worst case, fraud, with glances at other forms of cheating. It declares
fraud to be rare, and analyses the problem as an ethical deficit to be remedied
by the application of new safeguards and renewed exhortation.
The effect of this approach is to scapegoat a
few hapless individuals. Their punishment creates the impression that science
is putting its house in order. This effect has already become clear in the
pattern of institutional response to fraud: the low ranking postdoc who faked
the data is ruined, while the eminent supervisor is merely admonished (Perry
1986, 1987; Kohn 1986); or, as seems to be the latest fashion, the supervisor
is actually praised by the review board in bringing the postdoc to book (Palca 1988). This adaptive strategy will come as no
surprise to Sir Fred Hoyle (1986), who states that 'fraud, provided it is
directed to what is considered a worthy cause, is never seriously punished.'
These remarks have I hope furnished a
critical framework for the self-images of scientists as heroes of truth. their
feeling of moral excellence stems no doubt in part from the euphoria of success
in the rigours of professional competition. Sportsmen and businessmen boost
their self-esteem for similar reasons. The valorization
of this delusion serves a multitude of public relations functions tending to
support the public credibility of science. In this it is like the self-images
of other professions, which function as professional conscience and define the
profession's norms relative to its public. While professional norms are
subjectively and sociologically significant, they must not be mistaken for
actual behaviour.
(The sequel to this paper will review studies
of science publishing that throw light on what actual behaviour is.)
References
Alexander, R.D. (1987) The Biology of Moral
Systems, Hawthorne, N.Y.: Aldine.
....
....
Hiram Caton, Division of Humanities, Griffith
University, Brisbane, Qld 4111.
Contradiction? No. “Pursuit
of truth” is not “claiming to have the truth”. There is no justification for
teaching a lie. http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x8cktony.htm
, arguing that there is no truth.
The belief that there is only one truth and
that oneself is in possession of it, seems to me the deepest root of
all that is evil in the world. - p. 230, also in My Life and Views (1968),
p. 183 – Max Born
·
Variants (these could
be paraphrases or differing translations): The belief that there is
only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest
root of all evil that is in the world.
The belief that there is only one truth, and that oneself is in possession of
it, is the root of all evil in the world.
Search: The official publication of the
Australia and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science.
Vol 20 No. 1 Jan-Feb 1989, pp 24-26
Product
Control in the Truth Industry
Hiram Caton, Division of Humanities, Griffith
University, Brisbane, Qld. 4111
Uncompromising, indefatigable pursuit of
truth, then, is the hallmark that distinguishes science from the charlatan. It
constitutes the indispensible ethic of modern
science. (Max Born)
Max Born's motto 'uncompromising,
indefatigable pursuit of truth' expresses the will of an earlier phase of
science in which there was a linkage of feeling between the arduous effort to
clarify the mind and the political struggle for freedom and justice. That era
is past. With the institutionalisation of science on a large scale, truth has
triumphed. By collective fiat, the individual scientist is deemed to be among
the elect; any serious deviation from the consensus, as may happen should he
discover something new and profound, accordingly marks him as unsound and
wayward.
Thus the young scientist who today took Born's dictum to heart would seriously handicap his career.
His list of publications would be too short to warrant promotion, because he
would attend to non-trivial problems, shun the rush into print, and reject
honorary authorship. However deferential he might be to seniors,
his independence would be noticed and make him suspect to the guardians of
right thinking. Should he make a discovery that unsettles the consensus,
damaging rumours would make those who formed a good opinion of him think
carefully about the cost to themselves of continued loyalty. Cabals would
sabotage the symposium he wanted to organise; grant panels would question the
validity of the research he proposed; and peer review would purge his best
ideas. If despite these penalties he refused to compromise, the ultimate
sanction, ostracism, would likely be imposed.
The powerful conformist pressure in the truth
industry can be read from its organisation of the mode of production. A
scientist's quality is measured in the first instance by the quality of his
output. Number of publications is a handy index for grant panels whose members
do not have the time to read the applicant's research. This is not an arbitrary
judgement. Quantity of publications means that the individual has been
certified by numerous peers to be a reliable producer of approved words. It is
therefore probable that he will continue to produce approvable words and will
shun discoveries that force a revision of what all know is right and true.
The preference for triviality in the truth
industry appears from the production statistics. There are 40000 scientific
journals with an output of 2800 articles per day. This mighty deluge of truth
is however apparently not consumed. Studies of readership indicate that the
average scientific article has less than one reader - 0.6 to be artificially
precise, based on citation counts. Half of all reading is in less than 1% of
journals, indicating a steep status gradient on the pyramid of approved words
(Mahoney 1987).
Authorship is also compacted. Fewer than 10%
of scientists account for 50% of publications (Cole and Cole 1972; Cole 1979;
Mahoney 1987). This productivity is not necessarily an indication of brilliance
or quality (Lindsay 1987; Garfield 1979). It is just as likely to indicate
skill in penetrating or organising Associations for the Curriculum Vitae
expansion. These networks arrange what is politely called 'honorary
authorship', or sometimes 'sham authorship'. Bibliographic multiplication on
individual CVs is sanctioned by the convention that the slightest connection
with the subject reported in an article justifies co-authorship. Leading
journals do not scruple to accept 10 or more co-authors on a 2000
word article, or 25 co-authors for long articles, say 4000 words. The
reward for this 'insatiable greed for CV expansion (Perry 1986) is not only the
increase of assets; co-authorship greatly enhances collaborators' standing in
the citation index sweepstakes. If each of 15 co-authors cite their publication
in five other publications, they score 75 citations - an impressive showing. It
also enables a minority of scientists to dominate publication, thanks only to
their skill in manipulating the word-certifying process. Authorship in the
truth industry therefore does not mean what the noramtive
image of scientific integrity would have it mean, namely, that each co-author
warrants the validity of the information contained in the article. The Harvard
scandal, and a similar one at the University of California, revealed that
co-authors might not have seen the article prior to submission for publication;
or if they did, failed to read it with sufficient care to detect obvious
discrepancies (Perry 1986; Stewart and Feder 1987).
The success of techniques for CV expansion is
a commentary on the value of the quality control mechanism, peer review. The
objective of peer review is the production of information sufficiently reliable
that it may be used as building blocks for the accumulation of knowledge. But
to be usable as a building block, the proffered information must fit whatever
design is currently in fashion. It must, in other words, conform to
expectations of how consensual information should look.
Studies of peer review have detected some of
the criteria reviewers use to judge the good looks of truth. Douglas Peters and
Stephen Ceci set out to test whether institutional
prestige of submitting authors influenced referee judgement. They selected
numbers of articles published by persons at prestige institutions and
resubmitted them, slightly altered, to the same journals, disguised by
fictitious names of authors and institutions. The interesting result was that all
the previously published articles were rejected. The most often mentioned
criticism was that the methodology was defective. Thus, the same article whose
methodology was judged to be adequate when submitted from Yale was judged to be
defective when submitted from North Dakota. Institutional prestige, then , was one criterion of the good looks of truth. Another
criterion is positive experimental results that support a current theory.
Psychologist Michael Mahoney conducted an experiment to test this hypothesis.
He altered the conclusions of previously published articles from positive
evaluation to inconclusive or negative evaluation. All these articles were
rejected by reviewers on methodological grounds (Mahoney 1987).
These two experiments do not encourage
confidence in referee reliability. Not only was the same data oppositely
evaluated in the two experiments, but 92% of the editors and 87% of referees
failed to detect plagiarism, even though the articles were resubmitted to the
same journals within 18-36 months of publication (Peters and Ceci 1982). Admittedly, these experiments were based on
very small samples. But the results are consistent with studies of referee
reliability based on large samples (Cicchetti 1982). Their telling effect is
indicated by the response of seniors when the results of the experiments were
disclosed. Peters and Cecci were ostracised, support
services were withdrawn by the department chairman, and one of them was denied
tenure (later revfersed) (Mahoney 1987). The Stewart
and Feder study of the Harvard scandal was held up for 3 years by threats of
defamation. When it finally went into print in Nature, the editors
published a disclaimer (unprecedented?), and they altered certain statements of
the authors (readers were so advised).
Reviewer reliability is apparently better in
the physical sciences, but not that much better. The editor of the prestigious Physical
Review and Physical Review Letters states that referees score only 10-15%
agreement on acceptance the first time round (Lazarus
1982). In medicine, one editor rates two-thirds of the referees reports he
receives as unreliable (Horrobin 1982). 'What constantly astonishes me,' he
says, 'is the intemperate language in which many reports ... are couched. The
lack of sound judgement among the people who have the fate of science and the
lives of others in their hands is appalling.'
Another bias factor in peer review is the
editor. The editor of the American Anthropologist, H. Russell Bernard,
expressed what everyone knows when he declared: 'It is really quite simple for
me as editor to guarantee that an article will be killed by referees. All I
need to do is to select referees I know can be trusted to clobber a particular
manuscript' (Bernard 1982). bernard uses a randomised
reviewer selection procedure to prevent this happening.
It might seem that a review process made
porous by the chance effects of inattention, ignorance, bias, and favoritism, would be a poor tool for imposing orthodoxy.
This does not appear to be the case. Editors as well as students of peer review
agree that whatever else they do, referees bring to
bear a strongly stereotyped set of requirements. Among them are: proper
grooming (the right mix of co-authors, the right mix of citations, the best way
to present data); the right sort of conclusion (one that confirms average
expectations); a show of originality strictly confined within current beliefs
(Mahoney 1986; Lyttleton 1979; Armstrong 1982).
Many editors have independently observed that
its effect is to level the average. Their thought was voiced by medical journal
editor David F. Horrobin when he said that 'the referee system as it is
currently constituted is a disaster. What is most disastrous is its built-in
bias against highly innovative work' (Horrobin 1982). Editor estimates are
confirmed by the testimony of many creative scientists. Among them are Thomas
Gold (pers. comm. 1987), who in a recent reflection on his career had this to
say:
"I have had to face a large amount of
opposition in virtually every case in which I have produced anything of
novelty. In 1948 when we proposed the steady state theory of cosmology, Bondi, Hoyls and I found all the official astronomers extremely
hostile. My theory of hearing was totally ignored and now 40 years later, when
it has been found to be correct, the original paper on the subject is mostly
forgotten. In the meantime someone who espoused the
opposing and incorrect theory received a Nobel Prize for it."
Astrophysicist R.A. Lyttleton diagnoses the
problem as a mass of bad coins driving out the good. 'Science journals today abound,'
he says, ' with elaborate theories of alleged phenomena quite inadequately
established other than by often intemperate asservation,
and before the prime requirement of any theory has been found, namely an engine
or cause of the phenomenon.' He likens scientific information exchange to a
club that aggressively excludes those who do not adhere to the creed or please
those whose egos require constant grooming. Of peer review he says:
"it is ... short-sighted to leave the
management of the production of the end-product, which is the publication of
results for general dissemination, in entirely irresponsible hands answerable
to no one beyond their immediate coterie for their conduct, or in some cases
hands concerned with commercial success. Unrestrained censorship goes on in all
directions, but the system [of peer revue] is widely
regarded as one of freedom when it is really no better than anarchic
suppression to keep in countenance manifest rubbish claimed to represent
scientific research.' (Lyttleton 1979)
Unrestrained censorship? Retaliation? This is
beginning to sound like a Mafia theory of science. Perhaps. Sir Fred Hoyle, who
has been involved in many controversies, and who resigned as director of the
Institute of Theoretical Astronomy after 'certain academic maneuvering
took place,' had this to say about his fellows:
"Political rivalries are small passions
compared to the hatred the average solid scientist has for the heterodox,
hatred that has surely not been equalled in its fury since the days of the
Spanish Inquisition ... Pressures are so great towards orthodoxy that it is
unwise for a young scientist to report an observation or experiment should it
happen to favour a declared heresy.' (Hoyle 1986)
This assessment may be somewhat overdrawn.
Halton Arp was allowed to continue in his heresy (that the red shift is not a
measure of cosmological distance) for two decades before his colleagues
excluded him from the Mt Wilson telescope (Arp 1987; Burbidge 1988).
nevertheless, the evidence I have collected suggests that the value of
knowledge for its own sake has been swamped by values attaching to power,
reputation, and money. The Arp case illustrates where the priorities lie when
these values come into competition; research of great theoretical significance
was dismissed as valueless, and his standing was degraded. Not long ago such an
incident would have occasioned an outcry. Today we prefer not to notice. We
have learned that what counts is not ideas but institutional power. The growth
of the sciences since 1945 has been accompanied by an enormous increase of the
institutional power exercised by scientists. Truth management is the
consequence.
Truth Management
The occurrence of truth management may be
identified by the following observation. Consider some question of public
moment that significantly involved science - the AIDS epidemic, for example.
This disease is complex in its etiology,
transmission, and effects on public health. Many uncertainties have surrounded
it from the beginning and continue to do so. Devising a strategy to protect
public health involves the weighted estimate of unknowns and a host of value
judgements that assign fiscal, legal, social, and health priorities. Imperfect
knowledge together with the latitude of choice implies a variety of policy
responses, and the logical contingency of them all.
Given these initial conditions, the
expectation of reasonable presponse is that
scientists and public health authorities would present governments a variety of
policy options. We might also expect the experts to conduct an on-going airing
of differences about the scientific facts and about public choices. Yet this is
not what we observe in the American AIDS policy. Scientists and health
officials present a united voice for a single policy option, which they
vigorously advocate as the only rational and humane policy (Institute of
Medicine 1986). This was done with such energy that public debate between
experts never occurred.
An important effect of this process is the
pre-emption of public choice by experts, although in a democracy that choice is
supposed to lie with elected officials. Politicians have not particularly
resisted the pre-emption and in some cases have abetted it. The reason is that
the political process cannot cope with the deep divisions in modern society on
a number of questions. Politicians have been happy to transfer the power of
decision and policy enforcement to bureaucratic authorities and courts, which
are not accountable to the public.
That in these circumstances the truth conveyed
to the public is likely to be heavily managed may be read from the
organisational configuration. Characteristically, research, policy formulation,
and policy implementation are amalgamated under central control, usually
operating from a government agency. This configuration subordinates research
and policy advice to the exigencies [of] policy implementation. The reason is
this. A prime requirement for policy managers is certainty, especially in
dealing with issues as complex and anxiety-ridden as atomic energy, exotic
weapons systems, or AIDS. It is deemed to be vital that the public be
indoctrinated in a single point of view and that all others be branded with
epithets that intimidate and marginalise opponents. Practically, it comes down
to good guys and bad guys, leaving no grey areas that critics might use to
assault the citadel.
Are there remedies? It might be proposed to
make it a formal requirement that alternative scientific and policy models be
developed and vigorously argues in documents available to the public.
Governments aren't likely to embrace this idea, for reasons already mentioned.
Even if one did, the minority view, as it would soon come to be known, would be
easily tamed by bureaucratic power, as happened with Freedom of Information acts
and ombudsmen.
Remedies, if we are to have them, will need
to be applied where the deficiency essentially lies - with the individual. This
is a long march but in the end the only one likely to
be of enduring value. Some steps have already been taken. Hiroshima registered
with atomic scientists that they have responsibility for the consequences of
their research. The environmental movement considerably extended and
legitimated the sense of science citizenship. Perhaps it is not idle to hope
that the sting of fraud will goad scientists to restore knowledge for its own
sake to first place in their lersonal table of
values.
Postscript
After completing this script, I learned that
the Harvard Medical School has promulgated guidelines intended to prevent recurrence
of the misconduct that came to light in the Darsee
case. They include criteria for assignment of authorship, proposals for the
supervision of laboratory personnel, suggestions regarding the preservation of
experimental data, and limitation on the number of publications reviewed for
faculty appointment or promotion (Angell and Relman
1988). The National Institutes of Health and the Association of American
Medical Colleges are also developing quidelines.
These are encouraging signs. That they come 7 years after Darsee
shows that the wheels of reform turn slowly and that vigilance must not be
relaxed.
References
Angell, M., and Relman,
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