I mentioned a couple of months ago that I think David Goldston is very smart and very perceptive. He's provided more evidence supporting that assessment in his latest column in Nature.
Here are the two key observations:
- [The] conceit that science alone should and can dictate clean-air standards is propagated by political figures of all stripes and often by scientists themselves.
- [R]egulatory decisions involve policy judgements as well as scientific determinations, and the science is often uncertain.
The observations are prompted by President Bush's decision to weaken smog control regulations. Goldston argues that got the science wrong in deciding to use an 8-hour period for determining maximum ozone exposure, rather than the plant growing season standard unanimously recommended by the EPA's advisory panel. “For that piece of the rule, he should be considered guilty as charged”, the “as charged” referring to the charges leveled by environmentalists who accuse him of gutting the rules on ozone pollution.
“But,” Goldston continues
the other piece is deciding what level of ozone should be permitted, and that cannot be determined solely by science for two reasons. First, deciding what level of damage constitutes a threat to “public welfare” inherently is not a scientific question. Scientists may be able to describe the damage that could result from a given level of ozone, but the decision that such damage is so great that it must be prevented is a policy matter.Second, the EPA's science panel found that “quantitative evidence linking specific ozone concentrations to specific vegetation/ecological effects must ... be characterized as having high uncertainties.” What to do in the face of uncertainty is a policy question, not a scientific question. So although the advisory panel unanimously recommended a specific range of ozone standards, a number within that range can hardly be seen as the only justifiable standard under the law.
Goldston has it right on both counts. He distinguishes the first from the second reason, but they can be regarded as deriving from the same fundamental principle. Science alone cannot determine questions of value, questions of what's right and wrong or of which of several competing goods is the most important.
As a scientist I can describe the consequences of different policy choices, at least for a limited number of situations in which I have a reasonable degree of expertise. I can help to determine which choices are the most likely to achieve a desired end (or the least costly or the least disruptive or whatever). I may even help to discover new ways of achieving a desired end.
But there isn't a scientific theory that can tell me what ends ought to be pursued or what ends are desirable. The question of what I ought to do is a question of ethics or aesthetics< not science>
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