Political Encroachment A Certainty
The National Academy of Sciences, leading dispenser of advice to the U.S. government on science issues, has been released from federal law demanding “political balance” in all committee deliberations.
Fearing political encroachment on science decisions, the academy challenged this law, the Federal Advisory Committee Act, all the way to the Supreme Court. But it lost.
The academy then asked Congress for an exemption from the act, declaring it wouldn’t appoint committee members who would violate the act’s requirements.
Acting with unprecedented speed, Congress approved an exemption for the academy. The exemption was drafted by Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California. Waxman noted, “We put the emphasis on making sure we get an objective and unbiased panel and the panels are not subjected to a lot of requirements that would have hampered their independence.”
Both the academy and several public interest groups have said they welcome Waxman’s legislation.
E. William Colglazier, executive officer of the academy, said the legislation “will strengthen public confidence in the academy’s processes.”
Let me offer a demurral. The authors of the Federal Advisory Committee Act called for political balance precisely because they believed that balance could no longer be taken for granted in academy committees.
Despite lip service given to fairness, objectivity and independence, science has been affected by political fashions.
For example, AIDS cannot be discussed as a public health problem requiring identification and controls on communicability. As a result of homosexual advocacy, any inquiry into those possessing the disease is regarded as a civil rights violation.
While feminists have been quite successful in bringing to the public’s attention the scourge of breast cancer and in generating public funds to address this disease, prostate cancer, which is responsible for more deaths than breast cancer, has not received anywhere near the attention or funding.
Despite the Reagan administration’s devotion to “Star Wars” technology as a defense against nuclear weapons and despite developments in this field, as well as a decrease in the expense of this “shield,” deployment has been delayed by generally one-sided debates within the academy.
Surely, the academy is a self-electing group of the nation’s most distinguished scientists. It operates a system of some 500 committees to advise government on everything from arms control to pest control. But it is not inoculated against political pressure.
Increasingly, the line between politics and science is blurred.
Assertions about the greenhouse effect are often related to a political agenda. Similarly, clean-air targets are sometimes a function of political lobbying and the interests of advocacy groups.
While one might glibly recite the need for independence among scientists, a recitation I would endorse, recent history argues for confirmation in addition to trust.
Scientists can be as biased as their colleagues in the soft disciplines. The very fact that Henry Waxman, a congressman with an unambiguous political agenda, drafted the legislation should give one pause.
Reliance on words like “unbiased” comes with the scientific territory. But those words are often betrayed in practice.
While I ordinarily reject formulaic responses to complicated issues, an effort at political balance on academy committees serves the public interest more effectively than the assertion of high-minded principle. This was the view of the federal District Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court.
In a rush to judgment, Congress overturned this decision. Many congressmen on both sides of the aisle probably didn’t understand either the opportunity or what is a stake.
This exemption for the National Academy of Sciences is yet another loss in the culture wars that afflict every crevice of American life.
Rather than strengthen public confidence in the academy, this congressional action undermines hope that science will be neutral in the cultural battles ahead.
xxxx