Green Groups Go To War On Scientific Reform In Europe
By Trevor ButterworthOriginal Link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/trevorbutterworth/2014/07/30/green-groups-go-to-war-on-scientific-reform-in-europe/
It is, perhaps, not the best of times for Greenpeace. Many of its supporters are angered at the revelation that a senior executive has been commuting some 500 miles roundtrip to work by plane, which makes a mockery of the group’s campaign to reduce our collective carbon footprint; and there is now revolt inside the organization with over 40 staff signing a letter calling on Pascal Husting, the executive in question, to resign. “If you keep your position… we cannot repair our loss of credibility,” said the letter, published in the Dutch paper Volkskrant. “If Greenpeace does not walk the talk, why should others do so?”
It’s a fair point. “Do as I say, but not as I do” is the most visceral of all hypocrisies, while commuting to work by plane is such an unambiguous excess it can jolt even those weary of climate change and its discontents. Nor did it matter that one might be able to forgive Husting his predicament: a new job but no easy way to get there until he could move his family; once the detail emerged in a story about financial mismanagement in the Guardian newspaper (millions lost in currency trading), Greenpeace’s critics had a symbol and a cudgel.
But all of this is a distraction from a much more unpleasant and significant hypocrisy, which Greenpeace has signed onto, along with eight other environmental groups: a campaign to abolish the position of Chief Scientific Advisor to the President of the European Commission.
The position was created in 2011, and filled by Anne Glover, Chair in Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of Aberdeen, and former chief scientific advisor to Scotland. Glover told a recent meeting in Europe (as reported by the news site EurActive) that she only agreed to accept the position if she was given complete independence from political concerns in order to focus on the evidence, which was agreed.
But in assessing how scientific evidence drives European policy making in general, she found that it was often subordinated to the political imperative—find me the evidence to support my great policy idea!—and, as a consequence, became prey to confirmation bias. You found or commissioned the science to support your position, not the other way around. As Glover saw it, there was little incentive to report back to a politician that the best available scientific evidence does not support your idea, your reasoning, your policy.
So Glover proposed a reform plan that would have the Commission create a new system that would disconnect scientific research on questions of policy from the political imperative, while making the process completely transparent for everyone involved. The position of chief scientific advisor would evolve into an agency with the resources and protection to give evidence without fear or favor. If politicians still wanted to reject the advice, so be it; but they won’t be able to blame it on partial evidence—in both senses of the word. In a “painstaking” demonstration of walking the talk, Glover established a pan-European network of science advisors, which met for the first time in June.
What could be so wrong with this that environmental groups want to trash Glover and have her office abolished? She is “intransparent” (sic) in her advice to the President, their letter says. Well, that’s the way the job was set up, but now that she’s figured out how the whole system of scientific advice isn’t working in Europe, she appears to have a solution that places transparency at the center of evidence-based policy advice. Why not support that?
Glover’s position “concentrates too much influence in one person, and undermines in-depth scientific research and assessments carried out by or for the Commission directorates in the course of policy elaboration,” the petition continues. But she has identified a signal weakness in this process, while laying out a process that will expand the role of science. Glover is, in effect, arguing for the devolution of whatever power she has into an independent institution that can give much greater voice to the scientific consensus.
In short, this attack makes no sense—why would Greenpeace and the other environmental groups want to destroy someone who is proposing one of the most significant reform agendas in Europe, one that could liberate policy decisions from imperfect evidence and bias? Don’t they want science to be protected from political meddling and behind-the-scenes lobbying? In a rambling, appearance on BBC radio’s flagship news show, Today, Greenpeace UK’s Chief Scientist hedged, arguing for more transparency through a return to a pre-Scientific Advisor era, when there was less. We should, in other words, promote scientific transparency by destroying an office that has provided Europe with the best chance of getting it.
After such arguments, it is hard not to conclude that political self-interest is really at work here, given that the NGO petition ends with an attack on Glover for arguing that Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) are no more of a threat than conventionally bred plants. In that she is simply reflecting the position of numerous scientific academies, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the World Health Organization, one can only assume that Greenpeace assumes an independent scientific agency would do the same, and so make environmental organizations’ lobbying on the issue that much more difficult. One can only wonder what would have happened had a coalition of pro-business groups demanded Glover’s head on the grounds that she believed climate change to be threat. Would Greenpeace concur on the same principles it now advances?
All of this underscores why, to the politician and lobbyist, science is often no more than an ally when convenient, and disposable when not. Evidence is simply a figure of speech rather than something that emerges from the scientific method. And this is why there has an impassioned response to Greenpeace’s letter from scientific organizations, scientists, teachers and students across Europe. As the counter petition from the British charity Sense About Science puts it “Policy makers or lobbyists who seek to remove scientists because they don’t like their findings or advice do so at the peril of their citizens.”
This is not just a European issue simply because policy decisions taken there have ramifications here and elsewhere; the complex problems we all face demand more evidence based policy analysis, not less. We all need more independent scientific advisors, not fewer—and certainly not zero. We all need more transparency—we need to know how the research was done, how it should be understood, and why it should command our reasoned consideration. Professor Glover is speaking to politicians and citizens everywhere; her voice needs to defended and amplified; her role expanded, not strangled.
Trevor Butterworth is in the process of launching Sense About Science USA
It’s a fair point. “Do as I say, but not as I do” is the most visceral of all hypocrisies, while commuting to work by plane is such an unambiguous excess it can jolt even those weary of climate change and its discontents. Nor did it matter that one might be able to forgive Husting his predicament: a new job but no easy way to get there until he could move his family; once the detail emerged in a story about financial mismanagement in the Guardian newspaper (millions lost in currency trading), Greenpeace’s critics had a symbol and a cudgel.
But all of this is a distraction from a much more unpleasant and significant hypocrisy, which Greenpeace has signed onto, along with eight other environmental groups: a campaign to abolish the position of Chief Scientific Advisor to the President of the European Commission.
The position was created in 2011, and filled by Anne Glover, Chair in Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of Aberdeen, and former chief scientific advisor to Scotland. Glover told a recent meeting in Europe (as reported by the news site EurActive) that she only agreed to accept the position if she was given complete independence from political concerns in order to focus on the evidence, which was agreed.
But in assessing how scientific evidence drives European policy making in general, she found that it was often subordinated to the political imperative—find me the evidence to support my great policy idea!—and, as a consequence, became prey to confirmation bias. You found or commissioned the science to support your position, not the other way around. As Glover saw it, there was little incentive to report back to a politician that the best available scientific evidence does not support your idea, your reasoning, your policy.
Left – Anne Glover, Chief Scientific Adviser to President Barroso; Giles Merritt, SDA Director. (Photo credit: Security & Defence Agenda)
What could be so wrong with this that environmental groups want to trash Glover and have her office abolished? She is “intransparent” (sic) in her advice to the President, their letter says. Well, that’s the way the job was set up, but now that she’s figured out how the whole system of scientific advice isn’t working in Europe, she appears to have a solution that places transparency at the center of evidence-based policy advice. Why not support that?
Glover’s position “concentrates too much influence in one person, and undermines in-depth scientific research and assessments carried out by or for the Commission directorates in the course of policy elaboration,” the petition continues. But she has identified a signal weakness in this process, while laying out a process that will expand the role of science. Glover is, in effect, arguing for the devolution of whatever power she has into an independent institution that can give much greater voice to the scientific consensus.
After such arguments, it is hard not to conclude that political self-interest is really at work here, given that the NGO petition ends with an attack on Glover for arguing that Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) are no more of a threat than conventionally bred plants. In that she is simply reflecting the position of numerous scientific academies, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the World Health Organization, one can only assume that Greenpeace assumes an independent scientific agency would do the same, and so make environmental organizations’ lobbying on the issue that much more difficult. One can only wonder what would have happened had a coalition of pro-business groups demanded Glover’s head on the grounds that she believed climate change to be threat. Would Greenpeace concur on the same principles it now advances?
All of this underscores why, to the politician and lobbyist, science is often no more than an ally when convenient, and disposable when not. Evidence is simply a figure of speech rather than something that emerges from the scientific method. And this is why there has an impassioned response to Greenpeace’s letter from scientific organizations, scientists, teachers and students across Europe. As the counter petition from the British charity Sense About Science puts it “Policy makers or lobbyists who seek to remove scientists because they don’t like their findings or advice do so at the peril of their citizens.”
This is not just a European issue simply because policy decisions taken there have ramifications here and elsewhere; the complex problems we all face demand more evidence based policy analysis, not less. We all need more independent scientific advisors, not fewer—and certainly not zero. We all need more transparency—we need to know how the research was done, how it should be understood, and why it should command our reasoned consideration. Professor Glover is speaking to politicians and citizens everywhere; her voice needs to defended and amplified; her role expanded, not strangled.
Trevor Butterworth is in the process of launching Sense About Science USA
