Politicians have learnt to lie in the language of scientists

The crusade against the unlovely language of government has had triumphs. Today, it would be a brave minister who implored stakeholders to mainstream a paradigm shift. “Going forward” has been rolled back and “fit for purpose” is anything but.
But there is a new linguistic menace. In this era of evidence-based policy, ministers have swapped the jargon of management for the argot of science. Owen Paterson, Britain’s environment secretary, rejected an attack on the government’s green credentials by 41 conservation groups as “unscientific”, “subjective” and put together by “active campaigning groups”. Here’s a thought: are political parties not the final word in active campaigning groups?
We had Esther McVey, a minister of state for employment, rubbishing a York university report suggesting a change to housing policy would save less money than the work and pensions department had predicted. The study, she insisted last month, was “flawed” because of the involvement of housing associations, which had an “agenda” in opposing the new diktat. How academics could possibly design a real-world study of tenant behaviour without the complicity of housing providers remained mysteriously unexplored.
Wherever science promises to elucidate, politicians are choosing to cower behind its terminology to obfuscate and retaliate. It is as if Malcolm Tucker, the foul-mouthed spin-doctor from BBC television series The Thick of It, is stalking the corridors of Whitehall hurling scientific journals at minions with barked orders to spew key phrases randomly at sticky moments. Don’t like the people having a go at you? Accuse them of being special interest groups harbouring an agenda. Rather not enact a public health policy? Exaggerate the uncertainty and call solemnly for more evidence.
That last tactic would surely be a Tucker favourite: sowing doubt gives ideological positions a veneer of scientific respectability. It is an effective way to shut down discussion, because the language of scientific evidence – error bars, confidence intervals, meta-analyses, methodologies – is outside the vernacular of most interviewers. When Britain’s government decided recently not to mandate plain packaging for cigarette packets, former health minister Anna Soubry said more evidence was needed to show it cut smoking. Scientists saw no such ambiguity in the 49 studies carried out so far, which point to plain packets having less consumer appeal. As Stirling university academics asked pointedly in the British Medical Journal: “How much evidence is enough?”
There is no such thing as a perfect body of evidence; it is the best available data that matter. Academics know precisely what it means for a study to be “flawed” – and it does not mean an analysis that you simply disagree with. They can handle “agendas” or conflicts of interest. If the government really believes that housing associations should not assist research into housing policy, then it should, for the sake of consistency, oppose National Health Service involvement in assessing the effects of health policy. We would then be in the peculiar position of having housing policy formulated without reference to tenants and healthcare policy without the input of patients.
Taken to extremes, pharmaceutical companies would never again be able to conduct a drug trial. While it is no hard task to discredit the drug companies – seek out Ben Goldacre’s Bad Pharma for a joyously rude precis – they do good science, too. Conflicts of interest do not automatically negate results: if a study is well designed, carefully described (so it can be replicated) and all conflicts of interest declared, the results can still stand.
Politicians who misappropriate the language of science to serve their own ends are bound to regret it. Without a true understanding of what evidence means and how it should be applied, the skies can quickly fill with the flapping sound of chickens coming home to roost. Or, in Mr Paterson’s case, badgers.
In the teeth of overwhelming opposition from scientists, the environment secretary ordered a badger cull to stop the spread of bovine tuberculosis. Shooting has not cut their numbers as hoped. Mr Paterson has since said the badgers “moved the goalposts” – a highly technical term for an own goal.

Anjana Ahuja was named best science commentator at the 2013 Comment Awards this weeks

Fonte: FT