Openness is a vital aspect of scientific advice, say NGOs

Following a second letter from NGOs to the incoming EU president, Jean-Claude Juncker, asking him to scrap the position of chief scientific advisor, we're publishing articles on the controversy from two of the signatory organisations (items 1 and 2 below). Both organisations base their work on science.

The NGOs' call has been attacked by the UK-based lobbying organisation Sense About Science. Subsequent research by the NGOs has revealed that out of all the EU member states, only one maintains the position of chief scientific adviser: the UK.

Just how useful the UK's chief scientific advisor has become to politicians who want to dress up their policies in the garb of science is made clear by George Monbiot in a hard-hitting article, "Beware the rise of the government scientists turned lobbyists" (item 3 below).

In a recent example, the UK's current chief scientific advisor-cum-lobbyist Sir Mark Walport lent his enthusiastic support to a joint effort by the UK government and the GM industry to promote GM crops. In statements that left science behind and entered the realm of political lobbying, Walport parroted industry lines about GM crops being needed to feed the world and said that Europe's GMO regulations should be weakened because they are slowing the introduction of GMOs.

1. Science policy is about debate and discussion – not one person working in secret
2. Evidence-based policymaking in the EU requires more than just another expert voice
3. Beware the rise of the government scientists turned lobbyists
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1. Science policy is about debate and discussion – not one person working in secret

by Dr Michael Warhurst
ChemTrust, August 19, 2014
http://www.chemtrust.org.uk/science-policy-is-about-debate-and-discussion-not-one-person-in-secret/

CHEM Trust, with over 20 other European civil society organisations, have today sent a letter to the President-Elect of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker. In the letter we propose that the next Commission adopts a revised model of scientific advice, rather than the current single ‘Chief Scientific Officer’ approach.

The link between science and policy – and how uncertainty is understood and acted on – are key issues for any government or similar organisation. Many aspects of science are well understood, but in many areas of great controversy the science is subject to great uncertainty and dispute.

Science moves forward through such debate, with ideas that are now well established – like plate tectonics or the idea that most stomach ulcers are caused by bacteria – widely dismissed when they were first proposed. The debate continues in many other areas, such as on the risk of hormone disrupting chemicals, nanotechnology or the role of statins in preventative medicine.

One of the best examples of government failure when dealing with scientific uncertainty was in the UK, after a new disease had appeared in cattle – Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). One major question was whether this disease could spread to humans. For some years it was claimed that this was impossible, until the government in 1996 had to admit that in fact a new human disease, vCJD, was caused by exposure to BSE. They also had to admit that the public had not been properly protected from exposure to BSE; this disease has killed more than 100 people.

BSE and vCJD were a major failure of government, and led to a very extensive public enquiry, published in 2000, reviewing the failings that lead to the spread of CJD. Many recommendations where made on how to prevent this sort of case happening again.

The inquiry’s conclusions on scientific committees & on uncertainty are particularly relevant to the Commission Scientific Advisor discussions, notably:

* The composition of the committee should include experts in the areas of the advice that is likely to be required.
* Trust can only be generated by openness.
* Openness requires recognition of uncertainty, where it exists.
* The importance of precautionary measures should not be played down on the grounds that the risk is unproven.
* Scientific investigation of risk should be open and transparent.
* The advice and the reasoning of advisory committees should be made public.

Contrast this with the role of the Commission Scientific Advisor, who is one individual – not a committee with varying expertise and experience – but seems to have the power to over-rule other scientific advisory bodies. In addition, the current holder of the position – Anne Glover – believes that this post should operate in secret, with no disclosure of what the advisor is being asked to consider, nor of the advice they have given:

“Anne Glover, the EU’s Chief Scientific Advisor, has said that her opinions to the European Commission should remain independent from politics and therefore “not transparent” and immune from public scrutiny.”

As the letter points out, we – and many others – believe that any advice should be published, and that the Commission’s scientific advice shouldn’t be concentrated in one person, however good a scientist they are.
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2. Evidence-based policymaking in the EU requires more than just another expert voice

Paul Whaley
Cancer Prevention Society, 19 Aug 2014
http://www.cancerpreventionsociety.org/2014/08/evidence-based-policymaking-in-the-eu-requires-more-than-just-another-expert-voice/

CPES is signatory to a second open letter, published today by 28 NGOs, criticising the value of the position of Chief Scientific Advisor (CSA) to the EU and saying it should be scrapped (here). It has been pointed out that, as a science-focused charity, CPES ought surely to be advocating for more scientists rather than less; so why is CPES against the appointment of a CSA to the EU?

In a nutshell, it is this: Adding one more opinion leader to a complex advisory system with systemic problems, such as we have in the EU, does nothing to resolve those problems. It simply replicates them in another role.

The EU commissions and receives vast quantities of scientific advice, having in place a complex structure of scientific advisory committees and experts responsible for distilling complex bodies of evidence into what is and is not known in relation to a particular matter of policy, identifying and filling in knowledge gaps, advising on risks in the context of both comprehensive and incomplete bodies of evidence, and so on.

The problem is therefore not in the quantity of advice. The problem is that policy does not consistently reflect the significance of the body of evidence upon which it is supposed to be based, that interpretations of the evidence are often seen as partial and cherry-picked, that complex issues may be made to appear certain while many believe them controversial, and so on.

It is this problem, of better integrating scientific evidence into policy-making, which needs to be solved.

Currently, all the controversies stem from a system in which processes are not fully transparent, do not reflect best practice in aggregating and appraising evidence and are often politically-led; simply adding one more scientific advisory body which functions in the same way as the system currently does, cannot solve the problems inherent in that system. (At least, not without imbuing that body with a magic power of scientific interpretation which is not available to anyone else in the system.)

We therefore need a different approach to tackling this problem. What that approach should be needs debating and should be introduced on the basis of evidence that it will actually improve the system rather than replicate the problems already inherent within it.

We have already seen it in medicine, in the move away from relying on opinion-leaders for advice and moving towards formalising evidence-gathering and appraisal in systematic review methods; we should be thinking along these lines in all areas of policy.
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3. Beware the rise of the government scientists turned lobbyists

George Monbiot
The Guardian, 29 April 2013
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/29/beware-rise-government-scientists-lobbyists

What happens to people when they become government science advisers? Are their children taken hostage? Is a dossier of compromising photographs kept, ready to send to the Sun if they step out of line?

I ask because, in too many cases, they soon begin to sound less like scientists than industrial lobbyists. The mad cow crisis 20 years ago was exacerbated by the failure of government scientists to present the evidence accurately. The chief medical officer wrongly claimed that there was "no risk associated with eating British beef". The chief veterinary officer wrongly dismissed the research suggesting that BSE could jump from one species to another.

The current chief scientist at the UK's environment department, Ian Boyd, is so desperate to justify the impending badger cull – which defies the recommendations of the £49m study the department funded – that he now claims that eliminating badgers "may actually be positive to biodiversity", on the grounds that badgers sometimes eat baby birds. That badgers are a component of our biodiversity, and play an important role in regulating the populations of other species, appears to have eluded him.

But the worst example in the past 10 years was the concatenation of gibberish published by the British government's new chief scientist on Friday. In the Financial Times, Sir Mark Walport denounced the proposal for a temporary European ban on the pesticides blamed for killing bees and other pollinators. He claimed that "the consequences of such a moratorium could be harmful to the continent's crop production, farming communities and consumers". This also happens to be the position of the UK government, to which he is supposed to provide disinterested advice.

Walport's article was timed to influence Monday's vote by European member states, to suspend the use of three neonicotinoid pesticides. The UK, fighting valiantly on behalf of the manufacturers Syngenta and Bayer, did all it could to thwart the nations supporting this partial ban, but failed.

Here's how he justified his position. First he maintained that "there is no measurable harm to bee colonies … when these pesticides have been applied on farms following official guidelines". This statement is misleading and unscientific. The research required to support it does not exist.

The government carried out field trials which, it claimed, showed that "effects on bees do not occur under normal circumstances". They showed nothing of the kind. As Professor Dave Goulson, one of the UK's leading experts, explained to me, the experiment was hopelessly contaminated. The nests of bumblebees which were meant to function as a pesticide-free control group were exposed to similar levels of neonicotinoids as those in the experimental group. The government "might have been wise to abandon the trial. However, instead they chose to 'publish' it by putting it on the internet – not by sending it to a peer-reviewed journal. This is not how science proceeds."

What this illustrates is that these trials have taken place far too late: after the toxins have already been widely deployed. The use of neonicotinoids across Europe was approved before we knew what their impacts might be.

Experiments in laboratory or "semi-field" conditions, free from contamination, suggest that these toxins could be a reason for the rapid reduction in bee populations. We still know almost nothing about their impacts on other insect pollinators, such as hoverflies, butterflies, moths, beetles and midges, many of which are also declining swiftly.

Walport went on to suggest that the proposed ban would cause "severe reductions in yields to struggling European farmers and economies". Again, this is simply incorrect: in its exhaustive investigation, published last month, the House of Commons environmental audit committee concluded that "neonicotinoid pesticides are not fundamental to the general economic or agricultural viability of UK farming". In fact they can prevent a more precise and rational use of pesticides, known as integrated pest management. The committee reports that all the rape seed on sale in this country, for example, is pre-treated with neonicotinoids, so farmers have no choice but to use them, whether or not they are required.

He then deployed the kind of groundless moral blackmail frequently used by industry-funded astroturf campaigns. "The control of malaria, dengue and other important diseases also depends on the control of insect vectors." Yes, it does in many cases, but this has nothing to do with the issue he was discussing: a partial ban on neonicotinoids in European crops. This old canard (if you don't approve this pesticide for growing oilseed rape in Europe, children in Mozambique will die of malaria) reminds us that those opposed to measures which protect the natural world are often far worse scaremongers than environmentalists can be. How often have you heard people claim that "if the greens get their way, we'll go back to living in caves" or "if carbon taxes are approved, the economy will collapse"?

But perhaps most revealing is Walport's misunderstanding of the precautionary principle. This, he says, "just means working out and balancing in advance all the risks and benefits of action or inaction, and to make a proportionate response". No it doesn't. The Rio declaration, signed by the UK and 171 other states, defines it as follows: "Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation." This, as it happens, is the opposite of what his article sought to do. Yet an understanding of the precautionary principle is fundamental to Walport's role.

Among the official duties of the chief scientist is "to ensure that the scientific method, risk and uncertainty are understood by the public". Less than a month into the job, Sir Mark Walport has misinformed the public about the scientific method, risk and uncertainty. He has made groundless, unscientific and emotionally manipulative claims. He has indulged in scaremongering and wild exaggeration in support of the government's position.

In defending science against political pressure, he is, in other words, as much use as a suit of paper armour. For this reason, he'll doubtless remain in post, and end his career with a peerage. The rest of us will carry the cost of his preferment.