BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

Politics, Environmentalism Beating Out Science In Regulating Risk Say Experts.

Following
This article is more than 10 years old.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A survey of three professional societies, each focused on risk assessment, reveals that science is being pushed aside by politics and environmental advocacy when it comes to protecting the public from the risks of chemicals.

When asked to weigh the most important factor that should go into managing risk, the scientists overwhelmingly said science (98 percent). But when asked to weigh the factors that do influence risk management, science trailed legal concerns (72 percent), politics (66 percent), the precautionary principle (52 percent), and environmentalists (49 percent); at 47 percent, science barely exceeded the weight of influence of the media (43 percent).

Indeed one of the most surprising findings in the survey is that, contrary to the repeated assertion that government regulation of risk has been captured by the chemical industry—a regular theme of New York Times columnist Nick Kristof—the survey respondents judged industry concerns to be the least influential factor in current risk management, with a weight of influence at 28 percent.

Even more surprising, when the survey responses were broken down by the respondents’ politics, only one in five self-described liberal scientists thought that environmental groups’ concerns should be given “great weight” (19 percent), followed by conservatives (13 percent), and moderates (9 percent). The precautionary principle—i.e., suspected harms should be regulated without scientific consensus that they are harmful—was equally unpopular, with only one in four liberal scientists (26 percent) saying that it should be given great weight in risk assessment and only one in ten conservatives and moderates (9 and 11 percent respectively).

In fact, the overall message of the survey is that neither liberals nor conservatives want to give great weight to any concerns outside of the scientific evidence – whether they come from industry, environmentalists, politicians or the media. Instead, 99 percent of liberals and 100 percent of conservatives say scientific factors should have great weight. Again, emphasis on should.  Overall, 57 percent described themselves as liberal or leaning liberal; 19 percent described themselves as moderate; and 24 percent described themselves as conservative or conservative leaning.

But even when it came to science, many of the survey respondents were concerned that science was not being done in the right way: 69 percent said it was “very important” to have access to the underlying raw data for the most critical studies in order to do their own independent analysis of the results, but only 36 percent said that having this access was often or always the case. Just 24 percent said that consistent and transparent criteria were often or always used to evaluate the quality of the studies used in risk assessment, while 82 percent said that such criteria should be applied to all studies, no matter whether they originated with academia, industry, or government.

During a webinar in which the results were released, Dr. George Gray, President of the Society of Risk Analysis, said that the risk assessment community is already working on solutions to many of the problems identified in the survey.

While the survey was small—there were just 186 respondents—the focus on a particular set of expert skills and experience gives these findings force that they otherwise would not have had if this was simply a general survey of scientists.  Seventy-seven percent of respondents, for example, had worked on or contributed to government risk assessment, and 68 percent had worked in the field of risk assessment for 20 or more years. This was a good slice of a small pie.

As to the respondents' backgrounds, 31 percent worked in industry, 30 percent in consulting, 25 percent in government agencies, and 13 percent in academia or non-profits. All were members of either the Risk Assessment Specialty Section of the Society of Toxicology (SOT), the Dose Response Section of the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA), and the International Society for Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology (ISRTP).

Harris Interactive administered the study in co-operation with George Mason University’s Center for Media and Public Affairs and Center for Health and Risk Communication. The American Chemistry Council, Crop Life America, and the International Platinum Group Metals Association provided funding for the survey but did not have any role in formulating the survey questionnaire or analyzing its results.

You can read the study release here.