Yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle carried a brilliant essay by John Carroll, one of the newspaper’s daily columnists. His topic was Angel Raich, the woman recently denied access to medical marijuana. His column is about the stupidity of marijuana laws, the politicians who create them, the prosecutors who enforce them, and the judges who uphold them. It’s also about arrogance: when legal expertise for its own sake prevails over science and compassion.
Wouldn’t it be good if there was an objective, scientific method to decide these issues? A system that isn’t corrupted by arrogance?
For more than a century, a culture of scientific expertise has been promoted in the US and other industrialized countries with just this objective in mind. Yet two kinds of science are practiced.
On the one hand, working science consists of men and women motivated by curiosity and love of discovery who bravely go where those two things take them. They churn out reports and explanations of what they find. On the other hand, ecclesiastical science consists of men and women who pronounce the scientific truth for the benefit of non-scientists. Working science tends to upset the established order. Ecclesiastical science is the established order.
This is the old story of stability and change—always turbulent and rife with power struggles. Sometimes the politics is internal to the scientific community—for example, the discovery a decade ago of regulatory T cells is gradually turning immunology on its head. And sometimes the politics is very much in the public domain—for example, the alleged risks of dietary fats.
Unless you’re perverse, you probably don’t want controversy. You want to know what to do. And, because of the culture of expertise, you expect the experts to tell you what to do. But if scientists can’t agree, where does that leave you and me?
Researchers in the sociology department at the University of Cardiff in Wales have a solution. In the context of a phenomenon they call “technological populism,” these researchers developed a method for identifying the real experts. Basically, experts hang out with other experts—swimming in the same waters, so to speak.
The technological populism that concerns these researchers arises from activism by non-scientists and is often lead or taken advantage of by professional politicians or power brokers for their own nefarious purposes. The problem is that these controversies too often lack scientific merit, the researcher claim. One that caught my eye was the concern by parents that the MMR vaccine causes autism. No scientific merit, the researchers have decided, because the advocates don’t pass the expert test.
That’s arrogance. It’s the arrogance of ecclesiastical science. “We do these procedures all the time.” “This drug is perfectly safe.” “This vaccine will save thousands of live.”
We’re suckers for this because we’ve become acculturated to this culture of expertise. Here lies ignorance and danger because it excludes an entire body of learning that one researcher has called “local knowledge.” I’ll give you an example.
Beginning in the mid-1960s, Polly Murray, Judith Mensch, their families, and their neighbors suffered from rashes, swollen and stiff joints, and sore throats. They knew something was wrong. The many doctors they consulted provided neither explanation nor relief. They contacted public health agencies, including the CDC and were dismissed. But they persisted over many years. Finally, they found working scientists at Yale who took them seriously. These women were from Lyme, Connecticut and were instrumental in the identification of Lyme disease.
I’d advise you to pay attention to the experts with an open mind—those with local knowledge as well as working scientists. And as Mr. Rogers advised us after 9/11, pay attention to the helpers. I’d also watch out for the self-proclaimed deciders—they’ve decided what’s best for you. You can let, them, of course, so that you’re told what to do. We do these procedures all the time.
