Retorts

Integrity in Science -- a Vanishing Quality?

The March issue with Tim Frederikson's article and "Anatomy of Deception", on dubious or over-massaged test results used in pesticide registration, reminds us of the increasing conflict between the need for honest reporting in science (if it is to remain science) and the pressing need to retain jobs. As scientists are no longer valued by the Government, and the hard realities of the "profits before people" policies of recent administrations become more pressing, many scientists and other professionals are asking repeatedly "Is integrity an unaffordable luxury?"

When I was a young civil servant scientist we retained self respect by reporting honestly. It was left to Ministers and their lackeys to insert or delete, according to taste, the unimportant little words like "not". Our masters relied on the threat of the Official Secrets Act to dragoon us into near silence when our reports were monkeyed with. We, the scientists, did not lie.

Where does John Citizen now look for reliable data? With Freedom of Information Acts, as long as the reports are of little significance, access is sometimes freer than in the past. If they are important, "commercial sensitivity" can usually be alleged, and silence maintained. How much, or how little of the science, or near science that now appears in the public arena can be trusted?

Since retiring I have become especially interested in the environmental aspects of many planning matters. Environmental impact reporting and assessing clearly rivals weather forecasting as the most voluminous kind of science fiction produced in New Zealand. Meteorologists can claim "insufficient data," but the reports provided by "consultants" on planning or development projects have no such let out. These are often wonderful examples of selective reporting. Some wax eloquent on the trivial, the marginal, and the irrelevant. The majority carefully eschew any discussion of the critical, central matters in assessing their client's projects. Evasion and circumlocution have been raised to lofty art forms. "Effects" are what the Resource Management Act 1991 is interested in, but our "scientific harlots" have lost their critical faculties. Perhaps they never had any.

Large fees, the universal measure of success, no doubt accompany the over-long report that achieves planning consent by a combination of exhaustion and boredom. It seems there are few champions of thorough, realistic reporting. Those hiring consultants mostly want a "snow job", and the local consent authority is all too eager to approve anything that promises a few jobs in the district, regardless of down-stream costs to ratepayers. In any case, it is rare for councils to have the expertise to evaluate the report that is submitted.

The problem is as old as the oldest professions: prostitution and the law. Of both, it is said that any service will be provided, and any posture adopted if the fee is right. To do otherwise is to risk the loss of both client and fee. We have become accustomed to these realities in some places, but some still expect something better of real science, where honest reporting is still a sine qua non.

Now that Crown Research Institutes are charged more with profit than with truth, where shall we look for reliable, honest reportage? Public health, safety and almost all other values may be at risk, but having killed off the scientists who could once afford integrity and honesty, where do we now look for an honest broker?

Very few of them in environmental and planning reporting and assessing come to my notice. A tedious, but useful appraisal is possible by checking all the references cited and challenging the unattributed assertions. Incomplete, wrong or untraceable references are common, but important demerits. Then check further. How many references really say that which is attributed to them? Note the frequency of errors favouring the client, and those that disadvantage the client. So far, I have never found a "disadvantageous" misquotation or error, but misquotes and mis-attributions abound. Odd, don't you think?

I fear that the above whinges from an old sorehead are not just the tips of ice-cubes, but serious symptoms of grave diseases that have arrived as parasitic companions of economic "realities" -- deceit and lies are invading the camps of the users of science. With the imperative of survival as an excuse for dishonesty, some set out to do a $1000 job for a $100 fee, and thus have neither time nor capacity for a respectable or reliable job any more. If science loses its integrity, can it be regained? Or is it like virginity -- once lost, it's gone forever?

W.C. Clark, Emeritus Professor of Zoology, University of Canterbury