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December 08, 2003 CONSERVATIVE LYSENKOISM....The growing conservative assault on scientific results that don't support their preferred ideologies has become a common topic recently, and today Chris Mooney reports on an obscure new regulation that's poised to have an outsized impact on scientific research in America. The Data Quality Act, inserted quietly into an appropriations bill by a Republican lawmaker near the end of the Clinton administration, contains what appears to be a benign requirement: government funded studies should be peer reviewed only by independent scientists. The problem is that "independent" means scientists who are not also funded by the government, and as Anthony Robbins writes in the Boston Globe:
The net result of the DQA is to reduce the influence of academic scientists and increase the influence of industry-backed scientists under the Alice in Wonderland notion that academic scientists are somehow less trustworthy. In plain English, scientists who work for tobacco companies ought to be the ones to review cigarette research and scientists who work for chemical companies ought to be the ones to pass judgment on environmental research. Lovely. Chris has more. UPDATE: For those who don't click through to read Chris' post, I've added a few words to clear up the origin of this act. It was drafted by industry interests and inserted into a massive spending bill by a Republican lawmaker. It was not a Clinton administration initiative, and at the time it passed it's likely that no one really realized the impact of the new rules. Posted by Kevin Drum at December 8, 2003 09:30 AM | TrackBackComments
What do you expect from the party of creationism and so-called Intelligent Design? Posted by: M. at December 8, 2003 09:40 AM | PERMALINKM. - I expect, under this act, biologists to have their work peer-reviewed by independent Creation "scientists". Posted by: lefty skeptic at December 8, 2003 09:50 AM | PERMALINKFolks, this was enacted under the Clinton administration. We can wonder what the Hell he was thinking, but I'll bet it had nothing to do with Creationism. Sheesh. Posted by: Registered Independent Joel at December 8, 2003 09:59 AM | PERMALINKJoel: I didn't point this out in the post, but this act was actually inserted into a massive spending bill by a Republican legislator backed by industry interests. At the time, I suspect that no one realized what it really meant, but in any case it certainly wasn't a Clinton administration proposal. Posted by: Kevin Drum at December 8, 2003 10:03 AM | PERMALINKJoel - Clinton, like any president, did not draft the laws he signed. From the article - "Buried in it [the legislation] was [a] brief section, drafted by industry interests and quietly attached by a Republican lawmaker". Furthermore, the law is not what defines "independent". That is defined by the guidelines set by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Do you think it was Clinton's OMB or Bush's OMB that chose to define "independent" in this ill-judged way? Posted by: lefty skeptic at December 8, 2003 10:04 AM | PERMALINK
George W. Bush, Nov. 14th, 1999, http://slate.msn.com/id/1006378/ Kevin and lefty, your points are well taken, but a couple questions come to mind: 1) Could Clinton have killed this with a line-item veto? 2) If not, why did he sign the bill? He could have made political hay with such a moronic item as this. Why didn't he? Posted by: Registered Independent Joel at December 8, 2003 10:08 AM | PERMALINKVigorous and continual peer review is a good idea since the history of science is one of the scientific establishment ( often government funded) defending the orthodoxy of the day against challenging viewpoints who later turned out to be right. ( Or righter than their critics. The Royal Society initially tried to make a laughingstock out of Isaac Newton.) Vested interests are no less vested because because they have paychecks signed by George W. Bush instead of William Gates. You don't like the current legislation ? Add some peer review you do find acceptable, don't try to roll back what exists. Doesn't anyone read Thomas Kuhn anymore ? Posted by: mark safranski at December 8, 2003 10:10 AM | PERMALINKDoesn't anyone read Thomas Kuhn anymore ? Unfortunately I don't think many do. Posted by: spc67 at December 8, 2003 10:14 AM | PERMALINKMark - The legislation and OMB guidelines aren't creating new "vigorous and continual peer-review", they're putting restrictions on existing "vigorous and continual peer-review". Republicans are the ones trying to "roll back what exists". Posted by: lefty skeptic at December 8, 2003 10:28 AM | PERMALINKPeer review is at the core of science. Here is a short argument that perhaps even philistines can grok: Open-source science drives technology which drives the economy. Thus any attack on science is essentially an attack on the USA's future. Here is argument for the pure of heart: There are only two ideas really worth dying and living for: You want to start a reverse brain drain? Bugger up science in America and watch the bunghole bleed... The test tube washers might stay...but the John Galts of the world aren't going to take their orders from obfuscators. They will seek out universities in countries which do not cage free discourse. Vested interests are no less vested because because they have paychecks signed by George W. Bush instead of William Gates. My god, is that the best you can come up with? Is there any evidence from the last 50 years that is the least bit true? Well, tobacco scientists claiming nicotine isn't addictive comes to mind. Oops! That's evidence against your assertion! So, there are never ulterior motives? Every agent on the planet always acts exactly the same no matter the context? You fucking astound me.
Registered Independent Joel writes: Could Clinton have killed this with a line-item veto? No. There is no federal line-item veto. If not, why did he sign the bill? Possibilities: (1) Administration misunderstanding of what the provision required. (2) Administration failure to anticipate what an industry-friendly administration would do with the provision. Posted by: alkali at December 8, 2003 10:42 AM | PERMALINKIn the Wealth and Poverty of Nations, David Landes raises the interesting question of why an innovative society like China became quickly overtaken by Europe. Part of his answer was that China didn't value the free exchange of ideas among its scientists, which kept discoveries from being fruitfully exploited. I can't help but think this legislation is another nail in the coffin of The Enlightenment. Posted by: David the Obscure at December 8, 2003 10:44 AM | PERMALINKWell, tobacco scientists claiming nicotine isn't addictive comes to mind. Oops! That's evidence against your assertion! And more... Los Angeles Times, December 3, 2003 Three years later, as Exxon waged its appeal, a new line of research began to appear in several respected academic journals and Ivy League law reviews. Some articles challenged the competence of juries to fairly set punitive damages. Others suggested that such awards are ultimately bad for society. Exxon cited several of the articles in the appeal. What it did not say in court filings is that it had funded the research. Posted by: David the Obscure at December 8, 2003 10:48 AM | PERMALINKalkali wrote: "Could Clinton have killed this with a line-item veto? No. There is no federal line-item veto. If not, why did he sign the bill? Possibilities: (1) Administration misunderstanding . . . . (2) Administration failure . . . ." Bingo! Let's not just blame R's for this, OK? Posted by: Registered Independent Joel, from Lafayette, IN at December 8, 2003 10:50 AM | PERMALINKVested interests are no less vested because because they have paychecks signed by George W. Bush instead of William Gates. Actually, IME, no, that's false. More precisely, you have two related effects that combine to counter the above proposition. The first is that the vesting of the interests of government scientists tends to be relatively uninfluenced by the fact of their government funding, whereas corporate-funded scientists tend to be rather heavily influenced by their corporate sponsors. No government researcher with whom I've spoken, for example, has ever cited Congress or the NSF (arguably the "corporate sponsors" of government research) as anything other than a hurdle to be jumped to get the requisite funding for their research. There were no recommendations from on high about what to research, or what "the right results" might be; there were no expectations beyond a reasonable amount of progress in a reasonable amount of time. The few times I've spoken with corporate sponsors, the exact opposite has been the case: they made it clear to me that their corporate sponsors didn't just expect arbitrary results, but results which would directly benefit the company which was sponsoring their research. In cases without wider societal implications -- say electrical engineering -- this influence is irrelevant, and can be dismissed. In cases with wider societal implications where problematic results can massively impact the profitability of the company (or even industry) -- say, e.g., tobacco -- this is fundamental and cannot be ignored. [Added in proof: There are also concerns (of uncertain legitimacy, IMO) about potential selection bias in the awarding of grants for "unpopular" research, under varying definitions of "unpopular". I didn't mean to imply that the NSF et al. were completely indifferent to the nature of the research being conducted with their grants, only that their concerns didn't extend to the individual researchers.] The second is the alignment of the vested interests. From my experience in talking with academics, the interests in which they're vested vary highly from one individual to the next. Academic A might find it in his interest to support position X, while academic B might find it in hers to support position Y. The general indifference of the source of their funding allows them to take contrary positions and stick to them, even if they're unpopular. It's this spectrum of opinions, this range of vested interests, that makes peer-reviewing so valuable; consider it a crude form of genetic algorithm. Contrast that spectrum with the near-uniformity of, say, the tobacco scientists. Their vested interests all run in exactly the same way, namely profitability of the parent company and to a lesser extent the tobacco industry as a whole. Anything peer-reviewed from within the industry community will necessarily be exposed to fewer differing viewpoints, and a radically different (and I would argue, inferior) scrutiny, than anything outside it. [There's a third factor in here, namely the underlying motivation and philosophical milieu in which the research takes place, but this post is long enough already.] That's not to say that all corporate research is wrong, and all academic research is right. Far from it; academics are just as capable of being wrong as anyone else. All that said, however, it seems clear to me that corporate research is tainted in a way that academic research is not -- primarily in matters where unfavorable research could damage the company and/or the industry in which it works -- and that the degree of that taint is likely higher than that of peer-reviewed academic work. Addendum: The qualifier "peer-reviewed" there is essential; the mere fact an academic says something does not, unfortunately, render that statement immune to being BS. Add some peer review you do find acceptable, don't try to roll back what exists. Should a bunch of 12-year olds be allowed to peer-review the latest findings on supersymmetry and have their opinions weighted as much as experts in the field? Rank hyperbole, of course, but the principle remains: not all "peer review" is created equal, especially when the notion of "peer" is broadened to include people who -- whether they're uneducated or, more realistically, vulnerable to severe conflicts of interest -- probably ought not be reviewing. Posted by: Anarch at December 8, 2003 10:56 AM | PERMALINKBingo! Let's not just blame R's for this, OK? Be that as it may, given that a Republican lawmaker inserted the DQA into the appropriations bill (and that I haven't heard anything similar from the other side of the aisle) it would seem that they should bear more of the blame for this than the Dems... Disclaimer: I'm completely unfamiliar with the DQA, saving the links above, so if people know more please feel free to set me straight. Posted by: Anarch at December 8, 2003 11:02 AM | PERMALINKYeah, Joel, that provision didn't exactly add itself, now did it? Smells Republican to me. Are you sure you're an independent? Methinks thou dost protest too much. Posted by: scarshapedstar at December 8, 2003 11:08 AM | PERMALINKJoel, 1) To follow up on what alkali said, the federal line item veto was struck down by the Supreme Court in June 1998. The provision under question is Section 515 of the Treasury appropriations bill for FY 2001. 2) Section 515 seems fairly innocuous on its face; it merely instructs the Director of OMB to issue guidelines to "provide policy and procedural guidance to Federal agencies for ensuring and maximizing the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information (including statistical information)dissiminated by Federal agencies" pursuant to the Paperwork Reduction Act. As to why Clinton didn't veto the bill over this single section, this seems to be a harmless and even beneficial provision given a reasonably responsible OMB. What people are objecting to are the specific guidelines promulgated by the current administration. In addition, this is in the grab bag section of a massive appropriations bill. Section 514, for example, transfers parcels of land in Grand Rapids to the Gerald R. Ford Foundation, while Section 517 forbids spending on Kyoto Protocol implementations. Clinton was probably in a hurry to pass a "good enough" appropriation, especially because Title III of this bill appropriates the President's salary. http://workforcesecurity.doleta.gov/dmstree/pl/pl_106-554.pdf (warning: 712 page pdf) Posted by: morinao at December 8, 2003 11:15 AM | PERMALINKAll I can say is good god! how frightening. Posted by: lizette at December 8, 2003 11:16 AM | PERMALINKWhat people are objecting to are the specific guidelines promulgated by the current administration. Unless I miss my guess, the specific guidelines are located here. Clocks in at a mere 14 pages of impenetrable governmentese :) Posted by: Anarch at December 8, 2003 11:20 AM | PERMALINKI'm with Joel. Why didn't Clinton veto it? Or are you trying to say that Clinton was a closet Republican? If the latter, I won't be able to stop laughing for a LLLLOOONNNGGGG time. Maybe he did not veto it due to the similar practice among academic peer reviewers skewing their results on topics such as global warming. Posted by: David Block at December 8, 2003 11:20 AM | PERMALINKWe have no reason to believe that government scientists are any less biased. Remember that industry scientists are the folks who brought us electricity, transportation, housing and clothing. Certainly, it would be a shame that the folks who build our houses might advise us on the cost/benefit issues of housing technology. God forbid that a government scientist, who buys his house from the private sector, would know more about housing technology than the folks he bought his house from. Posted by: Matt Young at December 8, 2003 11:21 AM | PERMALINKEverybody go look into the International Studies in Higher Education Act and the proposed changes to Title VI. Conservatives feel people in academics are insufficiently patriotic, and are pushing for more oversight to ensure that professors are more supportive of American foreign policy, especially in the Middle East. I've blogged about this about once a week, but there hasn't been much attention from the liberal world at large. The main conservative site running this is Campus Watch, which is really fun to fisk. Posted by: Brian Ulrich at December 8, 2003 11:22 AM | PERMALINKI remember when this was first passed. Many voices were raised in concern at the time. However, because of the way our government works, vetoing the bill would have been more politically harmful to Clinton than signing it. And so it goes. Hideously distasteful measures are inserted or tacked on to all manner of legislation in the hopes that the president will not dare to veto the popular main bill because of the distasteful little rider. Indeed, you can see that in action right at this very moment. The omnibus spending bill (that was supposed to have passed back in September) is now moving toward passage. In conference committee, Republicans re-inserted measures repealing overtime rights and protections for most workers (despite this very thing having been defeated on both the House and Senate), re-jiggered the media-ownership rules to allow Fox and Viacom to maintain their oversize holdings (despite both the House and Senate having passed lower ownership limits), and so on. It is worth noting that 1.) no Democrats were allowed in the conference committees, and 2.) actions such as these make a complete mockery of representative government. Posted by: Derelict at December 8, 2003 11:26 AM | PERMALINKLet me preempt the Republican response: "Derelict, if you REALLY want to see a mockery of representative government, look at... uh... CLINTON!" Posted by: scarshapedstar at December 8, 2003 11:32 AM | PERMALINKAlso, "Democrats are evil, traitorous communists and therefore don't DESERVE to have their voice heard in government, by way of having their elected officials, you know, write laws and stuff." Posted by: scarshapedstar at December 8, 2003 11:33 AM | PERMALINKOh, and Matt Young and David Block--thanks for two shining examples of willful ignorance. Block's assertion that Maybe he did not veto it due to the similar practice among academic peer reviewers skewing their results on topics such as global warming. would have to rest on the thesis that the vast majority of scientists around the globe are skewing their evidence. I'm sure Mr. Block can provide us with some solid evidence of this world-wide conspiracy. Mr. Young's assertion that industry scientists are the folks who brought us electricity, transportation, housing and clothing shows an ignorance so profound it is simply dazzling. Yes, it was famous industrial scientists like Faraday, Miliken, Herz, and even Ben Franklin who brought us electricty. And great industrialists certainly figured out how to tame horses so we could have transportation. And I'm sure that archeologists are just weeks away from unearthing the Nike factory that provided the first clothing some 1 million years ago. Dolts! Posted by: Derelict at December 8, 2003 11:35 AM | PERMALINKAdd this to the future research on the downfall of the USA. Posted by: MattB at December 8, 2003 11:42 AM | PERMALINKAm I the only one that thinks Kevin and Chris should be talking to certain liberal interest groups (Unions, Environmentalists) about challenging this interpretation? It seems Constitutionally overbroad and therefore an unqualified power grab. If a Congressional act demanding X regulation conflicted with their interpretation of the DQA, then it seems that Congressional act X must win by constitutional design, at least under Scalia's textualism which prevents the legislature from giving to the Executive the power to make what are ultimately legislative decisions. Posted by: Justin at December 8, 2003 11:43 AM | PERMALINKLooks to me as if anyone can peer-review the work put out by an agency, provided they're qualified and aren't being funded by that agency, plus a few other disqualifiers. What'd I miss? Posted by: Slartibartfast at December 8, 2003 11:44 AM | PERMALINKDeralict, you could also point out that while there's no conflict of interest in research for discovery of new technology, there is conflict of interest in reporting for the effects of their client's conduct. Which mean's Matt's point about clothing, et. al. is pointless regardless of the merits. Slart, the problem with the constitutionality of the DQA isn't "stand alone", by itself it is fine. The problem is when it conflicts with other legislation demanding that regulators regulate something. When they come back and say, "We can't because of our interpretation of the DQA", there's a constitutional conflict. Because legislative text overrules executive interpretation, the conflict must be resolved in favor of Congress. In effect, by using their iterpretation of the DQA to "pocket veto" Congressional acts, they would be violating the checks and balances system required by the Constitution. Posted by: Justin at December 8, 2003 11:56 AM | PERMALINKI have posted a very similar version of this at Chris' blog. I'm a physician scientist who does bench research on health matters, and I've served as a peer reviewer both for biomedical journals and for the National Institutes of Health. I'm looking at Chris' post and some other things now, but readers here should be aware of some aspects of current peer review. Peer reviewers for NIH programs almost always are already funded themselves by NIH. When I review grants for CSR (the part of NIH that reviews grants from scientists at universities), I do so while currently having funding from NIH (if I didn't, I wouldn't be a university biomedical scientist for very long). 99% of the other reviewers I'm with are in the same situation. We all sign a confidentiality statement and a conflict-of-interest statement, and the rule and expectation is that if you have a vested interest (scientifically, socially, financially, etc) in a particular grant being discussed at the meeting, you recuse yourself. I've done that myself on a couple of occasions. Further, the NIH administrator has conducted a prior review of the grants and your statements, and she/he may recuse you if she/he believes it to be proper (and there's no appeal so don't even try). But if you're not in conflict and aren't recused, you go ahead and do the review. Even if you hold a grant from the same division of NIH. How did I end up on the peer review committee? The NIH administrator running it, and the scientist chair of the committee, thought I would be a good choice. Who made that decision? They did. Perhaps if I was a controversial guy that might be a problem, but 99%+ of the time it isn't. Why the micro-lecture on peer review at NIH? Because, frankly, that's very likely how "peer review" under this new regulation will be handled. Example: let's say an EPA study concludes that a certain chemical ingredient in gasoline is a real environmental/health problem, and the EPA then proposes that the ingredient should be banned. The Evil Oil Industry™ of course is upset, and they demand some peer review. Sure, no problem, we'll have a system for that. Government scientists who work in areas deemed to be in conflict can't be on the committee. But neither can "industry experts" also deemed to be in conflict. And who will select the reviewers? Some part of EPA, or another agency, charged with doing that. They'll have rules, and they'll be accountable. Chris writes that the beryllium industry has sponsored a paper that was published in a peer-reviewed journal that had the opposite conclusions of a study done by CDC scientists, and are now using that to challenge a new regulatory rule. That probably won't work -- if you refer the issue to peer review, yes, the reviewers will have the industry paper in front of them. And also the CDC work. Scientists being who they are, they'll figure out what's credible and what isn't. But won't these reviewers be tainted if they're from industry? Perhaps, but who said anything about getting reviewers from the beryllium industry? And every reviewer will have to be screened for conflicts of interest and will have to recuse if there's a problem. I suppose evil people could twist this new rule, but I think there is less here than meets the eye. Does it bear watching? Yes, absolutely. What it may do in the end is force some government agencies to slow down in their rule making, if rules are to be based on scientific studies. That might or might not be a good thing. Posted by: Steve White at December 8, 2003 12:07 PM | PERMALINKThis is just another gift to industry from the best damn Democracy money has ever bought. Please see "The Insider" for further edification. "The Insider" is a movie about Dr. Jeffery Wigand’s trials and tribulations after he talks on "60 Minutes" about research in the tobbaco industry. Posted by: R at December 8, 2003 12:12 PM | PERMALINKFolks, I can't believe this is happening. You are truly blaming R's, and only R's, for bad legislation that was signed by a D. Of course it was wrong for the R's to insert this odious measure into an otherwise innocuous bill - but it was *also wrong* for a D to sign it. Even alkali acknowledged that it was either misunderstanding or failure on the D's part to let this happen. Let's spread the blame around appropriately, and not just criticize one side of this sordid mess. And Drum now says on his front page, " . . . at the time it passed it's likely that no one really realized the impact of the new rules." No one at all? Then no one is to blame. No one except R's? Then R's must be smarter than D's. Are you sure this is what you mean, Kevin? Posted by: Registered Independent Joel at December 8, 2003 12:16 PM | PERMALINKat the time it passed it's likely that no one really realized the impact of the new rules. Um, I suspect the quisling Congressman and his corporate owners did. Posted by: Basharov at December 8, 2003 12:19 PM | PERMALINKThere are scientific "whores" in all sorts of public and private employment positions. My wife is a scientist working for a state university. In the past, she worked for the federal government and for a non-profit research institution, where her clients included government agencies and private businesses. Her integrity didn't change based on the nature of her employer. BTW if the law requires peer review of a scientist "independent" of some federal agency, Kevin is buying the allegation that the independent scientist would have to work for a private corporation. Why wouldn't state employees and think-tank employees also qualify? IST the key isn't a the requirement of an independent review. The key would be the Administration's decision to utilize "whores." But the cited article doesn't offer any evidence that they have actually done so. Posted by: David at December 8, 2003 12:20 PM | PERMALINKJoel, you seriously don't see any moral difference in between intentionally making something happen and screwing up by missing something? Yes, Clinton should have realized the potential harm (although, when something gets tacked to a large appropriations bill, sometimes you just can't pick your fights), but this moral equivalency is crap. Posted by: Justin at December 8, 2003 12:25 PM | PERMALINKWe need to be very careful with this type of stuff. Scientists come to the US because it is a good place to do science. US scientists doing work here, along with foreign visitors, have a profound impact on our economy. If we make the US unattractive as a scientific center, not only will foreign scientists quit coming, domestic scientists might leave. I am a theoretical / experimental physcist wannabe. I love America. But I love physics more. If I can't do good physics here, I will leave. If we monkey around with short-sighted regulations to make the US scientific research community more in line with political interests, I will not be alone. America will suffer for it. Posted by: Timothy Klein at December 8, 2003 12:42 PM | PERMALINKJustin, let's reverse the roles here. Say a D legislator tacks on to a bill a rider that has the effect of requiring registration of all new handgun purchases. Let's say Bush misses this little thing, buried as it is in a 200+ page bill, and signs it. Would it be fair to blame the D who did this? Of course. But I would expect R's to blame Bush as well, since this thing couldn't have passed without his ineptness in missing it. (Maybe they wouldn't blame him, but they should.) So why aren't D's levelling at least some criticism at Clinton for his ineptness in signing this thing? It's kind of embarassing to have Clinton's signature on this law, after all. Posted by: Registered Independent Joel at December 8, 2003 12:42 PM | PERMALINK"You fucking astound me." The principle of self-referentiality in action. "So, there are never ulterior motives? Every agent on the planet always acts exactly the same no matter the context?" Here Tim manages to arrive at *the exact opposite* of the point I made which is that there are always other motives in play regardless of who is doing the research. Some of them are disinterested types of paradigm bias but that does not mean the lack of selfish motive is harmless at arriving at accurate results. I will tackle Anarch's thoughtful response later this evening
What no reporter has covered yet, as far as I can tell, is how there is the potential for right wing groups to attempt to delegitimize important and solid research – for example, already the right wing think tank The Competitive Enterprise Institute used the act and a federal suit to try (failed) to get rid of the largest U.S. body of research on global warming – that being the National Assessment on Global Climate Change (NAGCC). The suit was dropped when the government agreed to slap a label on the report saying that it didn’t meet scientific standards of the Data Quality Act. This now means that groups like the CEI, and anyone else can claim that this solid body of peer reviewed science is “junk science” (their words). You get the picture. I’m not an expert on this stuff, but I can imagine how this could be used as leverage in state and federal legislature/policy, as well as influence over Joe Sixpack. The next NAGCC is due out 2004 – should be interesting to see if the Data Quality Act corrupts it – certainly if the NAGCC follows the act, it will be corrupted. Posted by: dh at December 8, 2003 01:06 PM | PERMALINKJoel, as countless people have tried to tell you, if the President didn't agree with every single goddamn thing in every 200-page bill, it would be pretty hard to get anything done, wouldn't it? However, that doesn't make right to tack such things on to such bills. Posted by: scarshapedstar at December 8, 2003 01:33 PM | PERMALINKIt seems to me that two things need to be explored here vis-a-vis the actual implementation of the new rules: 1) How broadly the OMB construes the disqualifier of funding receipt, and 2) How broadly it construes the 'granting agency' As to 1), if the OMB requires, as Robbins worries, that a peer reviewer *never* have accepted any money from a government granting agency, then the pool of potential reviewers wll be small indeed, and somewhat abnormal, given that the vast majority of scientists recieve at least some government money during their careers. A more likely scenario is that the OMB will demand that a given scientist not be recieving money at the time of the review, or, more braodly, not be recieving money for something that concerns the research under discussion at the time of review. Again, however, this will severely limit the pool of possible reviewers, since, again, most scientists, especially those working in areas of interest to the government, recieve money from some government granting agency in their area of expertise (which is where we would expect them to be asked to peer review something). As to 2), well, given that the government has organized much of its scientific granting under two or three very large umbrellas (NIH, NSF, etc), if the OMB uses this high level descriptor of 'agency', then we will truly have a problem. However, if the OMB uses some more precise version of agency, then perhaps the problems will be mitigated somewhat. Either way, this ruling seems designed to limit the acceptable peer reviewers, under the guise of protecting against conflict of interest. But given this administrations hostility to science (global warming, evolution, stem cell research, etc) I worry very much about the undelying motive of the OMB et. al. Posted by: epist at December 8, 2003 01:33 PM | PERMALINKOr, rather, if the President refused to sign if he didn't agree with every single goddamn thing in every 200-page bill. Amusing side comment, the heroic Republicans have thoughtfully prevented such scenarios from ever happening again from shutting out Democratic input on pretty much every bloated piece of pork they ram down our throats. Godspeed to them! Posted by: scarshapedstar at December 8, 2003 01:36 PM | PERMALINKHere Tim manages to arrive at *the exact opposite* of the point I made which is that there are always other motives in play regardless of who is doing the research. Some of them are disinterested types of paradigm bias but that does not mean the lack of selfish motive is harmless at arriving at accurate results. Huh? You said essentially whether gov’t or industry employed, the amount of “vested interest” will be the same. In other words for each their primary motivation or concern will be… well you didn’t explain what. But considering the topic it seems to be implied that either industry scientists will not be motivated by their employer’s wishes or government scientists will be motivated by… money somehow? Grants? If I’m wrong then explain how a privately employed scientist, whose well-being depends upon his employer, will not be influenced by his employer. Or, how a publicly funded scientist will be influenced by the government. See, I can’t understand why anyone would think a scientist employed by private interests, who is not doing pure research but rather doing something specific that effects the company’s bottom line, could be as objective as a publicly funded scientist, who is usually doing pure research. Again- how many scientists told us smoking wasn't addictive, for example? Please, explain how they’re both equal in terms of their vested interests effecting their objectivity.
Housing technology? Housing technology? Like, vaulted roofs? Posted by: Tim at December 8, 2003 01:46 PM | PERMALINKSurreptitiously inserting items into large appropriations bills is a sneaky but not uncommon procedure. It is done when the President has to sign the bill because it is late in the session and the agency is running out of money. In other words, riders are stuck on to "must sign" bill (and sometimes to a populat amendment to a must-sign bill) precisely because the bill has to pass and get signed. It is even more likely when the body gets a multi-hundred page bill a day before the vote. Sometimes (apparently like this one) it is a Trojan Horse waiting for the Repubs to get into power and write the regs. The real purpose of this is to use in court. Judges do not work on the same prenciples as scientists. Judges looking at two studies (or more likely two lawyers' versions of multiple studies) can easily be misled. Why do you think the industry funds the science in the first place? To get the regulations it wants and, barring that, to be able to overturn the regulations. So Steve White's comments may be apt in his field, but are off base in terms of what this provision was really designed to do. Make no mistake. This is part of a Republican assault on science and the scientific method. It is very serious. They are promoting the Fox News version of science. How any self-respecting scientist or techie-libertarian can support a party that uses these methods to increase profits and maintain power is beyond me. Posted by: Mimikatz at December 8, 2003 02:01 PM | PERMALINKThe War on truth, science, and objectivity should be one of the main assault lines in the elections of 2004. The platform needs to have positive, meaningful positions for change and leadership for now into the future. This should include, at the very least, electoral reform, health care reform, campaign finance reform, big media reform, and foreign policy reform. Along with that, you have to aggressively frame the behavior and ethics of the current Administration, and its allies, in a way to shifts the burden of proof, or legitimacy, or efficacy, onto them. Abuse of science and truth is one of them. Crony capitalism is another. Foreign policy arrogance and absurdity yet another. Attacks on our freedom here at home, without proper measurement of their effects (positive or negative), another. All of these can be woven together to show a pattern of abuse and dishonest privilege that is similar, in many ways, to the abuses of the Vietnam and Iran/Contra eras. Posted by: freelixir at December 8, 2003 02:04 PM | PERMALINKJoel wrote: "So why aren't D's levelling at least some criticism at Clinton for his ineptness in signing this thing?" Joel, you've already been given your answer, several times, in this very thread. You continue to ignore those answers and pretend confusion. To reiterate: 1. Because of the nature of omnibus bills of this type (a more recent example, as noted above, is the one currently wending its way through Congress, which Bush will almost have to sign despite the fact that there are quite a few provisions in it that are quite repugnant). 2. The wording of the clause seemed to be relatively innocuous. What has made it less so is the creative interpretation of that clause by the current Republican administration. You're beating a dead horse, Joel. Leave it alone and give it some peace. Odd. Luddites like Kevin Drum continue to beat away at the very private sectors that brought us most of what we call civilization. Perhaps Kevin would like the idylic socialist paradise of 1930's Communist communes where the private sector was abolished, although I don't see how that apppoach will house, employ, feed and cloth the hundreds of million or poor workers who have very little of the private sector left to offer them any home for a better life. More than likely, if we go along with Drum and abolish the private sector scientific establishment then most of those hundreds of millions of prro would l9iekly die, which is quite typically the result of socialist governments. Tim is an elitist, so is Kevin Drum actually. Tim thinks housing science is beneath his intellectual level. We might ask Tim if he thinks the billions of substandard housing around the workd will ever be repaired without private sector housing scientists. How many idiots really believe that Kevin's plan to turn all responsibility over to governemnt will cause more harm to the poor than good? Like many ideas which sound good initially, this one seems to have gone astray. Perhaps they should be peer reviewed by someone outside of the agency making the decision? Posted by: Sebastian holsclaw at December 8, 2003 02:40 PM | PERMALINKMatt Young, nice try. Before going into an ad hominem attack on Kevin Drum for being an elitist, utopian socialist, perhaps you would be better off addressing the abuse of science by this Administration and the private sector. Noone is calling for the abolishment of the private sector. But when the private sector seeks to influence science so it doesn't hurt marketing, and when the Bush Administration seeks to influence science so it doesn't conflict with ideology, shouldn't we be saying something about that? Our government is given power by the consent of the governed. Us. We need to ensure that this consent is informed, and not just PR manipulated on the basis of skewed facts and information. We can best ensure this by assuring a clear distinction between government and private industry. Between government-funded research and private sector R&D. The abuses are too easy to commit otherwise. The evidence is all there. The abuse of truth and science in the name of ideology and marketing. What's your position on that? Posted by: freelixir at December 8, 2003 02:52 PM | PERMALINKMy publication was obviously reviewed by people not in the USA. Maybe now I know why... Not to mention that government funding of private sector R&D would be a clear violation of neoliberalist economic free market policy. For in this instance, governments with large populations could be prevailed upon to tax this population higher and pipe this revenue into domestic corporations R&D. This would provide a massive and unfair enlargement of scale for these companies in competition with other companies around the world, and thus would lead to cutthroat efforts to be these "subsidized" companies. Meanwhile, smaller countries and the companies that compete originating from them would be forced to hunt for the scraps. Sounds less like a free market than a feudal market. Anyone? Posted by: freelixir at December 8, 2003 03:31 PM | PERMALINKfreelixir, You are spouting rhetoric, not substance. You recite a bunch of Hollywood mantras and claim that the abuse of the scientific principle is all on one side. Why bother to live if all you have to offer is a political mantra, and why do you let Kevin encite one political mantra against another, when neither political mantra is correct. The fact is that there is usually only one side given to Kevin Drum's little irritants. Science is a system of thought base on repeatability and controlled variables. If you are looking for biases scientific experiments, look no further than Kevin's biased analysis.
The most fun is in watching professed rationalists deal with internal ideological and practical contradictions. Real men of science and rationality junk their theories when proven contradictory to the facts, or seek to make them more amenable to the realities of the available information. The men of ideology do no such thing. For the theory and facts are in the service of the ideology, of the beliefs, and not the other way around. Posted by: freelixir at December 8, 2003 03:35 PM | PERMALINK"The men of ideology do no such thing. For the theory and facts are in the service of the ideology, of the beliefs, and not the other way around." You shouldn't be so hard on those who favor socialized control of large sectors of the economy. Posted by: Sebastian Holsclaw at December 8, 2003 03:38 PM | PERMALINKYou are spouting rhetoric, not substance. You recite a bunch of Hollywood mantras and claim that the abuse of the scientific principle is all on one side. Hollywood mantras? I am claiming a clear abuse of scientific principle by a particular ideological group, which happens to be in power right now. I didn't make assertions that there are not other groups, or "another side", that haven't done similarly. I will say the current bunch is extreme in this regard, and a threat to truth, science, conscience, and democracy therewith. Why bother to live if all you have to offer is a political mantra, and why do you let Kevin encite one political mantra against another, when neither political mantra is correct. The fact is that there is usually only one side given to Kevin Drum's little irritants Science is a system of thought base on repeatability and controlled variables. If you are looking for biases scientific experiments, look no further than Kevin's biased analysis. I wasn't aware that Kevin is a scientist. Kevin, you are a very bad, bad scientist. Shame on you. Seriously though Matt, the Bush Administration is not interested in science as a means of truth discovery, but as a ratifier and reinforcer of beliefs they already have come to. If you want to make the same case against previous administrations, be my guest. By asserting that everyone does it, though without evidence, you are implicitly conceding the point that this is currently being done. Whoever does it, is it wrong? I say it is, and have proof that the current administration are the worst and most egregious abusers to date. Posted by: freelixir at December 8, 2003 03:49 PM | PERMALINK"You are spouting rhetoric, not substance. You recite a bunch of Hollywood mantras and claim that the abuse of the scientific principle is all on one side. Why bother to live if all you have to offer is a political mantra, and why do you let Kevin encite one political mantra against another, when neither political mantra is correct." - Matt Young, 3:32pm "Luddites like Kevin Drum continue to beat away at the very private sectors that brought us most of what we call civilization. Perhaps Kevin would like the idylic socialist paradise of 1930's Communist communes . . ." Matt Young 2:33pm It's called projection. Replace "Hollywood mantras" with "GOP talking points" and "1930's Communist communes" with "1930's fascist Germany" and he could be talking to himself.
thumb, Thnks for the review. Don't expect me to defend the Republicans Communist Party. The US electorate has come a long way when it has to elect a socialist to get the communist out of the WHite House. Posted by: Matt Young at December 8, 2003 04:30 PM | PERMALINKI read the scientist's comment upthread with interest, then found it was signed "Steve White." It seems plausible, but I associate that signature with extreme GOP partisanship. People are of course welcome to have the same reservations with my first-hand and unsupported accounts of how something the Dems are doing is hunky-dory. I'd expect it. Steve White wrote: "I suppose evil people could twist this new rule, but I think there is less here than meets the eye." Perhaps, Steve, but this administration has already demonstrated a complete disregard for science and scientific principles. If you look at the record (the packing of the scientific advisory committees, the rejection of global warming science, the corruption of the EPA, the stem cell research lies and the resulting effect on research, etc.), you have some damn good reasons as to why there is, in fact, reason to fear the worst. When you add in the administration's ties to, and bending over backward for, various industries and businesses, you have additional reason to fear the worst. In short, Chris Mooney, in the article that Kevin linked to, is absolutely correct. Either that "interpretation" of that clause needs to be modified or the clause itself needs to be overruled. Posted by: PaulB at December 8, 2003 05:06 PM | PERMALINKMatt Young wrote: "You are spouting rhetoric, not substance." Coming from Matt, this is absolutely hilarious. Remember those economic debates some time ago where he simply reiterated various talking points over and over and over again and never once bothered to support any of his points with any actual research or facts? Note that he's doing precisely the same thing above? Thanks, Matt. I needed that laugh. Posted by: PaulB at December 8, 2003 05:09 PM | PERMALINKSurreptitiously inserting items into large appropriations bills is a sneaky but not uncommon procedure. It is done when the President has to sign the bill because it is late in the session and the agency is running out of money. In other words, riders are stuck on to "must sign" bill (and sometimes to a populat amendment to a must-sign bill) precisely because the bill has to pass and get signed. It is even more likely when the body gets a multi-hundred page bill a day before the vote. Sometimes (apparently like this one) it is a Trojan Horse waiting for the Repubs to get into power and write the regs. This is precisely the problem. This morning on NPR was a story about the huge spending bill going through the congress and one tiny little item that was put into the bill was that the Justice Dept must destroy any record of a gun purchase after 24 hours. Today the length of time they can keep this information is 90 days. This little gem is because although there is all kinds of things that people have to give up for terrorism, the Republican that put this into the bill (and backed by Ashcroft) is to "protect" the citizen's rights from overweening governmental intrusion. Do you think Bush should "veto" the bill if he decides that this particular item is out of line? And it is just one of the little stinkbombs inserted into the legislation because the sponsors know they can't get this crap through on its merits. I agree that if you screw up the science, this country will be headed back to the dark ages. This government doesn't believe in science, but that is probably because they have two gods: the god of the market place and the God who speaks to Bush telling him that his gut is a better judge than evidence. No need for pesky science getting in the way of your preconceived goals. Posted by: Mary at December 8, 2003 05:21 PM | PERMALINK"There are only two ideas really worth dying and living for: What? Not religion?
Steve White may be a common name. His post was reasonable-- I don't think he is an extreme partisan. Matt Young, however, is a total nut job. Posted by: Alex at December 8, 2003 05:24 PM | PERMALINKWell, I'm not sure about the "integrity of science" being to die for, but I definitely agree with freedom and liberal democracy. And if we do that right, freedom and liberal democracy, we shouldn't have to worry about the integrity of truth, should we? Posted by: freelixir at December 8, 2003 05:45 PM | PERMALINKMatty— Don't expect me to defend the Republicans Communist Party. The US electorate has come a long way when it has to elect a socialist to get the communist out of the WHite House. Sweetie, put down that bong and go outside for a walk in the fresh air. If you don't have a bong, go and get one. Using "housing technology" as an example of advances in science is an attempt to deflect the debate. In structural engineering, there are optimal solutions, while mistakes are obvious. If you don't make your wall stand at a right angle to the ground, it will fall down. I have the impression that fans of structural engineering and architecture (not the postmodern sort) tend to be right-wingers, even before HowThingsWork.com advertised the "Axis of Weasels" deck of cards. But medicine and basic biological research that lead to advances in medicine are quite different. Often we do not fully know -- or know at all -- exactly how a given biological process works, or the etiology of a disease, or what behavior will prevent or cure it. Furthemore, birth and death, health and sickness, are highly emotive concepts that drag in morality and religion. Take religion, the pro-life movement would like to smother all research that interferes with "natural" reproduction and that leads to the death of embryos (usually mere clusters of cells) that might have become babies . Stem-cell research has been blocked for this reason. In preventive medicine, we've seen already that despite overwhelming evidence that tobacco smoking causes cancer, the tobacco industry sponsored "scentific" studies to the contrary. No doubt the meat, sugar, and snack food industries have sponsored and are sponsoring "scientific" studies that a diet of hot dogs, cotton candy, and Fritos is actually good for you. People are right not to want such highly sensitive and personal matters to be controlled by religious fanatics or by industries whose overriding goal is to market and sell their products. This doesn't mean that those opposed to industry peer review are "communists." I'd like to see a free-marketer who happily agrees to smoke five packs of cigarettes a day, dine exclusively on Spam, and live in Love Canal. In fact, such people are just as likely (or more) as other Americans to sue when they fall ill, and they should think of it this way: the libertarian right to sue anybody and everybody will be impeded by the dominance of industry-sponsored peer review. Posted by: sara at December 8, 2003 07:03 PM | PERMALINKTo all: Has anybody bothered to ask WHY this (unamed?) Republican lawmaker felt compelled to insert this nonsense into the law of the land? To what possible end? None of the "defenders" here have addressed this point. I would say it is vital, what? Furthermore, it has been fun watching these very defenders turn into pretzels to defend this rather overt attack on what is generally (admittedly not always) disinterested scientific inquiry. Oh ye overly loud "defenders of freedom", your true colors are showing. Those aghast at this development are correct. The dampening effect this will have on scientific inquiry that conservatives find in any way to be "socially controversial" is all too obvious. Matt: Stubbornly hard headed as ever. We miss you at MaxSpeak! like a carbuncle. Come back to where you are truly loved. Throw out those Republican communists! Ah, memories. Posted by: bobbyp at December 8, 2003 07:32 PM | PERMALINKOne more time....... Tim wrote:"Huh? You said essentially whether gov’t or industry employed, the amount of “vested interest” will be the same. In other words for each their primary motivation or concern will be… well you didn’t explain what." and " Please, explain how they’re both equal in terms of their vested interests effecting their objectivity." Fine. For starters, I never said that the two types of scientific vested interests were * equal* or even the same *kind* of vested interest - just that in both cases there were vested interests. Admittedly, that lack of clarity on my part might be cause for confusion. All scientists, public or private, fall prey to a paradigmatic bias when they approach an experiment which leads them to overlook, screen out or not extrapolate data that runs contrary to commonly held assumptions in their field. In other words, what they already * know* to be true can create a mental lacuna that prevents them from seeing a problem from a different perspective that would allow them to avoid dead ends. This is why, for example, 19th century Newtonian worldview physicists were thrown by the relativity theories of Einstein or why Einstein might recoil from Heisenberg's. Additionally, private scientists may indeed fall prey to corporate pressure to justify a certain result - you raised the issue of big tobacco but insecure postdocs living from grant to grant would be under similar financial pressure to produce results even if the result itself was not specified. Rushing to a wrong answer ( or missing a right one) is just as factually incorrect in terms of results as falsifying your way to a wrong answer. Overall, I think most scientists value their intellectual credibility in the scientific community and avoid deliberately falsifying data. Most scientists after all move between universities, corporations and government agencies throughout their whole career and getting caught cheating once anywhere would be ruinous. Academic journals can be merciless even in the cases of honest error. Peer review is meant to catch such errors as well as further knowledge in the field Allowing or requiring wider peer review does no harm. Assuming Anarch's unlikely 12 year olds did peer review research that fit acceptable scientific standards there really is no reason why their results would not be worth consideration. The proof is in the pudding, not the chefs and in some fields like theoretical physics and math it is usually the junior folk in their twenties - the doctoral students, not the eminent elders, who make the breakthroughs they spend the rest of their careers fine-tuning and defending. Posted by: mark safranski at December 8, 2003 07:33 PM | PERMALINKRemember that industry scientists are the folks who brought us electricity, transportation, housing and clothing. Construction workers have peer-reviewed journals? Posted by: Anarch at December 8, 2003 07:35 PM | PERMALINKsara Gasp! That's bad for me? :-) But bobbyp ask the most interesting question. What was the need for this? A great bulk of scientific discourse in America is already peer-reviewed quite effectively. There was no pressing need for 'independent' review, whatever they meant. Why was it put in place? I fear it was for precisely the reasons stated by others: to allow decidedly non-independent (but not government) groups to peer review something out of existence when it was harmful to somebody's ideaology or bottom-line. Posted by: Timothy Klein at December 8, 2003 07:48 PM | PERMALINKmark sfranski Do you think there is a dearth of peer review now? Or just that more is better? And would the law provide more, or simply different, and quite possibly inferior or even hostile, review? What would really bug me is this situation. If I write a paper on my latest findings in sonoluminescence, after doing research with my government grant, I have to have it peer reviewed by the team at Bose or some such other acoustical outfit, simply because all of the actual experts in the field are payed by the government in some fashion, and thus disallowed from reviewing my work. So I could be left with some scientist who does research for better speaker designs for a living, who has to look up what the hell sonoluminescence is, and then try to review my paper. Rather than having the resident genius in the field at CalTech review it. At that point, 'independent' peer review has ceased to be better peer review. And that leaves aside completely the thorny issue of actual efforts to suppress something. The law just seems like a really bad idea to me. Posted by: Timothy Klein at December 8, 2003 08:04 PM | PERMALINKTimothy Klein- It isn't that more is so much better that wider peer review allows for some slightly different perspectives that might possibly have something worthwhile to add. Scientists collaborate across disciplines in emerging fields for this very reason, right ? I have nothing but respect for a resident genius at Caltech or MIT but assuming that a scientist who labors over sound speakers is therefore, as a result of that employment - a priori *not* a genius or unworthy of being heard - strikes me as, well, unscientific. Many pioneers or innovators have the air of the eccentric or unorthodox - Szilard, Tesla, Godel, Nash, Newton to name a few who might be looked askance at under your standards. Investing authority in the status of the peer's employer rather than in the methodological quality of the review is a logical error. Mark S., In response to Tim K's query you engage in evasion. How does this Republican rider to an omnibus bill (and the latest interpretation thereof by a Repub admin.) enhance "wider peer review"? You do not say. How? How? How? Spit it out. Stop prevaricating. Stop dissembling. A clear concise direct answer, please. Posted by: bobbyp at December 8, 2003 09:04 PM | PERMALINKAssuming Anarch's unlikely 12 year olds did peer review research that fit acceptable scientific standards there really is no reason why their results would not be worth consideration. Of course... but who determines acceptability? The key point about this kind of objective research is that "objective" results are subjective approximations towards an objective ideal. It's certainly conceivable that an, uh, "unlikely" 12-year old (great choice of word, btw) could be sufficient knowledgeable on the subject matter to count as an expert, in which case I'd have no problem with them doing peer-review. It's likewise the case that should our unlikely 12-year do research sufficiently good to survive peer-review by other experts, the research should stand as strong as any other. The analogy breaks down, however, when you posit a generic 12-year old doing peer-review. They're not a "peer" in any meaningful sense of the word; and to weight their opinion the same as those who are experts in the field (or, returning to Earth ever-so-briefly, those who suffer fewer conflicts of interest) does inflict harm by diluting our approximation to the objective ideal. Again, let me emphasize that I'm not saying that academic peer-review is bulletproof, nor that all corporate research is necessarily bankrupt. I am maintaining, however, that adding corporate researchers into the peer-reviewed mix -- especially when eliminating those who might normally be part of the peer-reviewing mix due to IMO irrelevant considerations of funding -- induces a fundamental, systemic problem that cannot be dismissed by merely claiming that one is "widening the pool". the doctoral students, not the eminent elders, who make the breakthroughs they spend the rest of their careers fine-tuning and defending. Speaking as a doctoral student, and not as an eminent elder... well, thanks, I think. Although, just so's you know: I'm not making any breakthroughs any time in the near future ;) Posted by: Anarch at December 8, 2003 10:03 PM | PERMALINKInvesting authority in the status of the peer's employer rather than in the methodological quality of the review is a logical error. It's a logical error to automatically infer a probelm in the review, yes. This isn't well-modeled by 2-valued logic, however, and it's hardly an error -- and frankly, it's more or less common sense -- to question the viability of a review if it comes from a possibly-tainted source. That's especially true if the direction of the taint is closely aligned with the profitability of the sponsoring party. Posted by: Anarch at December 8, 2003 10:07 PM | PERMALINKI think the Republican record on scientific research and knowledge is clear. As some have mentioned, the obvious question is why wasn't this measure brought to the floor and debated? It never would have survived the light of day. It's sponsors - industry - would have been exposed. Instead, it's dropped in an Omnibus Bill that everyone has some interest in passing. It's fucking ridiculous, and pisses me off. This whole parliamentary procedure needs to be banned. If these congresspeople insist on getting raises all the time, then they damn well better start freakin' working, and debating, singular items on their merits. Either that, or allow the membership to vote indepedently on each measure, or allow the president to veto independently each measure. I don't think these are effective however. Instead, we need to reform parliamentary procecure. We need to encourage debate and rigorous review of each measure. How many new laws do we need a year anyway? I thought we had too many to begin with...so it shouldn't be too hard to get some transparency, accountability, and debate on any new legislation, right? Posted by: freelixir at December 8, 2003 10:21 PM | PERMALINKMark Safranski: I'm with bobbyp, you haven't answered Tim K's question. Frankly, if you worked in biology, or geophysics, or some other outside field, you would almost certainly prefer to have you work peer reviewed by someone inside the field than by Szilard, Tesla, Godel, Nash, or Newton. That's not simply because you trust that your colleagues at MIT or CalTech are smarter than those guys, or their contemporary equivalents, or folks who don't have academic jobs. It's because you also think they know more about the field, are more likely to understand the points you are trying to make, and are more likely to provide useful feedback. I take it that you have submitted an article or a monograph for peer reveiw at one time or another. If you are some sort of social scientist, would you prefer that the peer review be done by someone inside your own field, or would you prefer that colleagues receiving government funding be excluded from the pool of reviewers? The latter would seem to narrow, rather than broaden the reviewing process, with results that are detrimental to you, your work, your readership, your publisher, and any other interested parties. Other than that, it's not such a bad idea... Posted by: Keith at December 8, 2003 10:21 PM | PERMALINKMark S. I wasn't implying that an acoustical physicist at Bose who was researching new speaker designs was not a genius: indeed, he/she should be a genius in that field. When I mentioned the imaginary genius at Caltech, I was thinking genius in the specific field of sonoluminesence. I was not trying to say that corporate scientists are not smart. The trouble is that today, science is amazingly specialized. I right now know a tenured professor, with a PhD in Phyciscs, whose specialty is acoustical phenomenon. Yet even this guy is not particularly qualified to review a paper on sonoluminescence. That is the trouble I see with the 'indpendent' nonsense. It narrows a field that may already have been very narrow. With this law we thus end up with some corporate scientist that may have to be reviewing works that are not in their field. There are many, many things researched under government grants that probably have no one working on them in the private sector. The private sector has to make money, at least at some point. The really speculative or purely theoretical stuff is probably rarely if ever pursued in corporate science. Thus I doubt there are no corporate scientists in many fields, and thus to rely on them for indpenedent reiview would require employing people out of their field. Maybe I am not looking enough, but the great majority of physicists I run across in print, doing research, etc, seem to be attached to universities. It seems almost certain that these guys have all had government grants at some point. We thus seem to be eliminating the most natural and desirable pool of people to do review in physics with this law. Posted by: Timothy Klein at December 8, 2003 10:28 PM | PERMALINKI've long been bothered this trend (I'm in science myself). I see it as part and parcel of a larger problem, myself; contempt for "useless" non-industry science, and protection of industries from scientific scrutiny, are only half the picture. When the whole "stem cell" debate came up, here's my suspicious little mind thinking: Ah. So we're establishing prohibitive regulation on government-funded research, while leaving privately-funded research alone. So those who want to develop stem-cell based cures and then charge huge amounts of money for them have an advantage... This regulation could quite easily be used for similar purposes - it's not even all that difficult. All it requires is the money to press for endless delays by challenging trivial points or making unreasonable reviewing demands. Anything that delays publication of the research for sufficient time allows a company to push through its own programs in the interim. They already have a slew of tools, mostly through the Patent Office, to keep anything they themselves develop from entering the public sector thereafter; all they need is a claim to have "discovered" it first, and it goes under Trade Secrets and such. Perhaps that wasn't, strictly speaking, the intent of Bush or his advisors. But you can sure wager that some of the industry lobbyists were thinking of it, and campaigning with that thought in mind. Bottom line, I think, is that not only don't industries want scientific scrutiny of their practices; they don't want openly-available research threatening their profits. Posted by: April Follies at December 8, 2003 11:03 PM | PERMALINKOkay, I'm confused. From my understanding, before this bill, anybody could peer-review, be they funded by the government or funded by industry. Now, only the ones funded by industry can peer-review. Maybe my mind has been warped by too much caffeine, this being finals week and all, but how does cutting out half of the scientific field widen it? This sounds suspiciously like Cheney strengthening Medicare by taking out a trillion dollars, or Republicans screaming that we're weakening marriage by letting more people marry. I think I'm on to something... Posted by: scarshapedstar at December 8, 2003 11:03 PM | PERMALINKI'm not going to trust the left on scientific objectivity until they start supporting nuclear power. We have a real case in which scientific advice was ignored and it wasn't the right that did it. Posted by: Joseph Hertzlinger at December 9, 2003 12:13 AM | PERMALINKJoseph, the case has been made largely against nuclear power. If you think on a very short term basis in terms of investment and profits, and also involving the overall financial and social costs of managing and securing the energy produced for, oh, say about 100,000 years, then great. Otherwise, you have to acknowledge the many, many risks of this technology, the overconfidence in the stability of civilization and management capability (see human history), and the 100,000 year investment in technology that will surely be outdated in 50 to 100 years, if not earlier. Meanwhile, we have to in the face of this absurdity to proclaim absolute faith in our ability to secure these facilities with our force and strength, forever, while also giving absolute faith to our ability to someday figure out how to make toxic radiation less unhealthy or find a way to dispose of it in a trash bin somewhere in the cosmos. Of course, with a longer term and wiser vision, and taking in all the available information and risks, the investment in smaller-scale and more sustainable sources of energy would turn out to be the boon it really is, and not also commit ourselves to more dangerous and power concentrated forms of energy that will put endless generations to task for our decisions made today. Posted by: freelixir at December 9, 2003 01:09 AM | PERMALINKNewton was massively involved in the British scientific establishment. He was the British scientific establishment. I'm not sure what he's doing in Mark S's list. Why would we have to secure radioactive waste for 100,000 years? Is radioactivity that dangerous? We don't see three-eyed mutants in Hiroshima. People in the Rocky Mountains ("where the scenery's attractive and the air is radioactive" --- Tom Lehrer) have low cancer mortality rates. The odds are that even dangerous nuclear waste won't go anywhere. There was a natural nuclear fission reactor on Earth two billion years ago. The resulting waste stayed put with respect to the surrounding rock. Even if radioactivity is dangerous, in the long run, nuclear power uses up radioactivity. If we don't use nukes, we'll be putting "endless generations" at risk of natural radioactivity or of some nutcase digging it up for bombs. Why would we have more absolute faith in the ability of scientists to determine global warming policy than nuclear policy? The only good reason not to use nukes is that something else is better and that something else can reduce global warming to a triviality. To Mark Safranski Timothy Klein is right on top of it. Read the original link - a lot of non-industry scientists will be out of the loop, and a lot of less knowledgeable scientists will be calling the shots. How can that be good? Posted by: J Edgar at December 9, 2003 09:12 AM | PERMALINKKevin, Just curious. Posted by: Jim at December 9, 2003 11:35 AM | PERMALINKJoseph, you are very misinformed. Your rebuttals unsupported by any information that I've ever heard before. I challenge you to support it. The amount of radioactive waste we're talking makes Hiroshima pale in comparison. See the LA Times today on how Nevada is fighting the nuclear waste being put in their state, and their reasons why. Safety, security costs, etc., etc., etc. The scientific consensus is that radioactive waste is ENORMOUSLY dangerous to life. The reason we are so determined to stop a radioactive "dirty bomb" is because committed properly and with the right magnitude it would effectively make wherever it was set off a ghost town for hundreds of years. And that's just a small amount of radioactivity compared to the mass amounts of waste being generated. Posted by: freelixir at December 9, 2003 12:57 PM | PERMALINKThe Data Quality Act as a piece of legislation is no longer than a few lines. It was snuck onto a massive appropriations bill that had to be passed in order to keep the government running. This is just another example of the imperfect system of appropriations. Though industry sponsored the proposal (Jim Tozzi, the director of the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness, an industry front group, was one of the primary authors of the legislation) it slipped though Congress with no debates, no hearings, and no analysis. Those that did notice it probably thought, “What could be bad about data quality?” Unfortunately they found out when OMB wrote very extensive and overreaching set of guidelines meant to interpret the Act. Agencies were then required to adapt their own guidelines, many of which mimicked the OMB guidelines. The guidelines do little to increase data quality and are more functional as a mechanism for industry to delay and dilute the regulatory process. Already, hundreds of challenges have been filed under the DQA mostly from industry. The requests look to highjack the regulatory process in favor of industry. The OMB Peer Review Bulletin follows up on the DQA, establishing specific peer review standards for agencies. Though no one would argue against the practice of peer review, this policy is not about peer review. Federal agencies already conduct extensive peer review with no significant problems identified in the current system. The bulletin is about creating a burdensome system that would delay an already slow process of developing regulations and safeguards. The bulletin increases the influence that industry has over the regulatory process. For those in the discussion that believe this proposal would bolster science, note that many notable academics have come out strongly against this proposal, as well as a number of public interest and scientific organizations. For more information, see http://www.ombwatch.org/article/archive/171/. Okay, it's always good to fess up when wrong. Strike down my 100,000 years (more nuclear holocaust style number) and peg it at 1,000 years. In my opinion, still very costly and presumptuous for current energy needs. It's impossible to do justice to Perrow's complex, tightly argued thesis in just a few sentences, but in essence he argues that the requirements for successful control of certain technologies contain inherent contradictions. Because what happens in one section of a nuclear plant can dramatically affect events in others, some central control is needed to make sure that actions in one place don't cause unanticipated consequences in another. This control can might be in the form of a central management that approves all actions or in the form of a rigid set of rules governing actions throughout the plant. On the other hand, because the technology is so complex and unpredictable, operators need the freedom to respond quickly and imaginatively to special circumstances as they arise. Both rigid central authority and local discretion are needed, and, Perrow says, it is impossible to have both. Thus a nuclear plant will always be vulnerable to one type of accident or another-either one caused by a failure to adapt quickly to an unanticipated problem, or else one created by not coordinating actions throughout the plant. Perrow argues that a number of technologies besides nuclear power face the same inherently contradictory demands: chemical plants, space missions, genetic engineering, aircraft, nuclear weapons, and the military early warning system. For each, he says, accidents should be considered not as anomalies but a normal part of the process. Their frequency can be reduced by improved design, better training of personnel, and more efficient maintenance, but they will be with us always. Perrow goes on to suggest that society should weigh the costs of these normal accidents against the benefits of the technology. For chemical plants, the costs of accidents are relatively low and are usually bome by the chemical companies and its workers, while the cost of shutting down chemical plants would be rather high. There is nothing to replace them. But nuclear power is different, Perrow says. The costs of a major accident would be catastrophically high, while the cost of giving up nuclear power would be bearable. Other ways of generating electricity could take its place. People have also come to appreciate how complexity changes the risk equation. It makes risk harder to calculate by making it difficult to understand all the ways that things can go awry. But equally important, complexity can amplify risk. The more complex a technology, the more ways something can go wrong, and, in a tightly coupled system, the numbers of ways that something can go wrong increases exponentially with the number of components in the system. The complexity also makes a system more vulnerable to error. Even a tiny mistake may push the system to behave in strange ways, making it difficult for the operators to understand what is happening and making it likely they'll make further mistakes. Posted by: freelixir at December 9, 2003 03:36 PM | PERMALINKLooking back from the vantage point of a post-Three Mile Island, post-Chemobyl world, people sometimes wonder why we ever went ahead with nuclear power. Didn't anyone realize how dangerous it was? Didn't anybody think about the risks to people living close to nuclear plants? Didn't anyone consider the implications of generating so much nuclear waste? These things seem so obvious today. Posted by: freelixir at December 9, 2003 03:39 PM | PERMALINKWhile I generally agree with the article, freelixir, For chemical plants, the costs of accidents are relatively low and are usually bome by the chemical companies and its workers, while the cost of shutting down chemical plants would be rather high. ...Bhopal argues against this. Posted by: Anarch at December 9, 2003 06:12 PM | PERMALINKAiiieeee - too....many...people to respond to...need more...internet time. (sigh) My apologies. In no particular order John Isbell: Sir Isaac Newton was the British scientific establishment as an *old man* but not when he published his first papers. Just starting out as a young prof Newton was actually ridiculed by his peers and was so traumatized he almost never published again. Bobbyp wrote Uh, who exactly is prevaricating and dissembling, bub ? Secondly, before I answer your question - under the original premise - it's up to those critical of the rule to meet the burden of proof, not me. Third, to answer your question the current interpretation of the rule at least ensures that the voices of those who might be regulated based upon a non-scientist bureaucrat's extrapolated interpretation of scientific evidence at least gets heard ( after which we can decide the validity of their methodology - politicized crap posing as peer review will still look exactly like...politicized crap) Keith wrote: "It's because you also think they know more about the field, are more likely to understand the points you are trying to make, and are more likely to provide useful feedback." Ah, a valid point. Even a good general assumption. However, the door should be left ajar for the exceptions for the following reason. In highly specialized fields you have peer review falling under the law of diminishing returns because you have an smaller number of competent researchers qualified to do peer review as the field becomes more esoteric. When you have relatively few such reviewers the tendency of these folks who " know more about the field, are more likely to understand the points you are trying to make, and are more likely to provide useful feedback " are also more likely to share the exact same paradigmatic bias that you yourself have operated under. This is why, after a major breakthrough in a field it seems in retrospect that people have been missing the forest for the trees. Wouldn't it be useful, in cases of rareified areas of research, to at least *consider* the perspective of really sharp people from cognate fields ? The issue of the political uses of scientific research are separate from the issue of the vested interests within peer review itself and existed before and after the rule was changed. Timothy Klein wrote: "With this law we thus end up with some corporate scientist that may have to be reviewing works that are not in their field. There are many, many things researched under government grants that probably have no one working on them in the private sector. " I agree with you here - there has to be modifications or flexibility in the interest of maintaining the integrity of the peer review process. Anarch wrote: True, which is why I did not posit that. Nor are privately employed scientists - or at least most of them- to be equated with 12 year olds. I need to reiterate that many academic scientists sometimes accept stints in private industry or act as consultants to the same for interesting projects. The government also has, since dawn of the Cold War, subsidized a vast amount of " private " R & D or partnered universities with corporations. The CIA invests in Silicon Valley companies, the DoD is pouring money into nanotechnology - where would you draw a line between researchers in those cases and on what principle ? Again, sorry for the delay in my abusively longwinded response. Posted by: mark safranski at December 9, 2003 07:01 PM | PERMALINKTrue, which is why I did not posit that. Nor are privately employed scientists - or at least most of them- to be equated with 12 year olds. Drat! You've found the flaw in my cunning metaphor! I need to reiterate that many academic scientists sometimes accept stints in private industry or act as consultants to the same for interesting projects. True, which is why I was careful to assert that "tainting" in the manner of which I spoke is not equivalent to having corporate sponsorship. I've known a number of electrical engineers, for instance, whose work I'd consider top-notch -- and whose opinions I would completely trust for peer-reviewing, if I actually knew a damn thing about electronics -- despite their having been employed by private ventures. My position is that a scientist's opinion should be considered suspect not for merely having a corporate sponsor, but specifically one whose profitability (or, more generally, the profitability of the industry of their sponsor) would be jeopardized by certain results. where would you draw a line between researchers in those cases and on what principle ? When the primary employer (or, to a lesser extent, a major funder) of the researcher is an organization whose profitability, or the profitability of its industry, would be jeopardized by the results being reviewed. Looked at the other way round, if it's in the material interests of the employer/funder for the corpus of research to be manipulated in a particular direction. [The primary thrust here of "material" is "economic", but I do intend overtones of "political" as well. Trouble is, gauging accuracy of research versus political interest is a much trickier question than my sleepless-befuddled brain can tackle at 5am.] This holds double, btw, for scientists who have been employed in industries that have a history of compromised research like the tobacco industry. I'm aware that in considering them tainted I could be overlooking legitimate results -- I'm not claiming this a strict causal link or anything -- but for the taint-by-association of those who've done such work exceeds the threshhold I have for confidence in their opinion. Again, sorry for the delay in my abusively longwinded response. Hmmmm... I recognize most of those words but I've never seen "abusively" and "long-winded" together. Could you maybe draft a 24 page research paper on exactly what this juxtaposition entails? ;) Posted by: Anarch at December 10, 2003 03:33 AM | PERMALINK"Again, sorry for the delay in my abusively longwinded response. Hmmmm... I recognize most of those words but I've never seen "abusively" and "long-winded" together. 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