WaterWonk extraordinaire John Fleck brought this 2004 paper by Daniel Sarewitz to my attention. I had not seen it before, much less read it. Provocative, to say the least. Read for yourself.
'How Science Makes Environmental Controversies Worse', Environmental Science and Policy, Volume 7, Issue 5, Pages 355-434 (October 2004)
Sarewitz's paper was part of a special issue dealing with Bjorn Lomborg's book, The Skeptical Environmentalist.
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Abstract
I use the example of the 2000 US Presidential election to show that political controversies with technical underpinnings are not resolved by technical means. Then, drawing from examples such as climate change, genetically modified foods, and nuclear waste disposal, I explore the idea that scientific inquiry is inherently and unavoidably subject to becoming politicized in environmental controversies. I discuss three reasons for this. First, science supplies contesting parties with their own bodies of relevant, legitimated facts about nature, chosen in part because they help make sense of, and are made sensible by, particular interests and normative frameworks. Second, competing disciplinary approaches to understanding the scientific bases of an environmental controversy may be causally tied to competing value-based political or ethical positions. The necessity of looking at nature through a variety of disciplinary lenses brings with it a variety of normative lenses, as well. Third, it follows from the foregoing that scientific uncertainty, which so often occupies a central place in environmental controversies, can be understood not as a lack of scientific understanding but as the lack of coherence among competing scientific understandings, amplified by the various political, cultural, and institutional contexts within which science is carried out.
In light of these observations, I briefly explore the problem of why some types of political controversies become “scientized” and others do not, and conclude that the value bases of disputes underlying environmental controversies must be fully articulated and adjudicated through political means before science can play an effective role in resolving environmental problems.
The more I learn about groundwater hydrology, the more I realize it is an epistemological task steeped in genuine uncertainties. You can’t really look underground directly, data’s sparse, resulting answers you get are based really importantly on the modeling assumptions you make. And so it is not surprising under any circumstances to have different scientists come up with different answers. You sorta expect it.
“Truth is the cry of all, but the game of the few. ” – George Berkeley
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