Emergency Powers: [1] Science & Democracy

A healthy democracy must serve the common good, and decision-making must be accountable and transparent in order for it to be trustworthy. Science in the service of the public good must also conform to democratic norms of accountability and transparency. Yet data production and scientific knowledge are all too often, the product of political decision-making because science is expensive to produce. The decisions of our institutions shape the scope of data and information that is produced. For this is an expensive process, and not open to all.

Since time immemorial, the ancient Greeks, the time of Sun Tzu, (and before) political and economic cultures have directed resources to what Latour has described as ‘centers of calculation’. Science is a resource, and the production of particular forms of science has long been recognised as tactically and politically useful in times of controversy. Also important, is science (or data) that is not produced. This is called undone science. Because of the cost of data and science production, the dynamics of science and power are extraordinarily difficult to tease apart, and ‘science and technology operate, in short, as political agents.’

Objectivity, reliability and expertise in science, are directly related to who funds the science; how the scope of the research, science or innovation is crafted; and how expertise is recognised. Research and science are expensive to resource, and funding must be secured, for research and science to be undertaken. Proposals must therefore fit what is recognised as both legitimate and worthy, and policy and funding cultures inform how we approach technical and scientific problems, and deal with them. So while the production of data and scientific knowledge, is championed as ‘apolitical’, our overarching political, economic and social cultures shape the scope of what forms of research and science will be funded. Inevitably, it is not only policy makers that drive this process, but the historic legacy of the research and scientific communities. Thomas Kuhn’s discussion on the innate conservativism of science, and the hesitancy of scientific communities to embrace new ways of thinking, or new paradigms, revealed how established interests often worked to repress new findings.

What results after these decisions are made, priorities are identified, and scopes established and funding granted - is data and science. As Sir Peter Gluckman has explained ‘Science is not a collection of facts; science is a collection of processes which are defined to eliminate bias to the extent they can.’

This is the trick. For thirty years Aotearoa New Zealand’s science culture has been decoupled from critical, research and science that can draw attention to harm from social, political and economic activities. Our funding policies have not provided a safe space for research and science which by definition is controversial, because it challenges the activities of powerful institutions. The work required to draw attention to these harms is long term and interdisciplinary, requiring long-term funding. Our hyper-competitive funding environments have not provided a safe space for knowledge that might challenge economic priorities.

Bias towards business as usual, has been built into the system.

The research and science environment framing COVID-19 provides a case study of the absence of a safe space for research and science that can counter the claims of public and private institutional interests. The two years to 2022 have resulted in an unprecedented stifling of data and scientific knowledge relating to both the risk of Covid-19; the risk of the novel mRNA vaccines and the presence of medications that could be deployed as an alternative to the novel mRNA vaccines.

Neither the public interest, nor democracy can be protected when power only permits knowledge and research to move in one direction. When the U.S. Centre for Disease Control sought to prevent release of data relating to the Pfizer vaccine, an appeal to a U.S. district court resulted in the judge ordering the release of those documents. The judge emphasised the intimate relationship between access to information and effective democratic stewardship. The judges’ comment is worth repeating:

“Open government is fundamentally an American issue”—it is neither a Republican nor a Democrat issue. As James Madison wrote, “[a] popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps, both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” John F. Kennedy likewise recognized that “a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.” And, particularly appropriate in this case, John McCain (correctly) noted that “[e]xcessive administrative secrecy . . . feeds conspiracy theories and reduces the public’s confidence in the government.”

The release and production of controversial information can be stymied by powerful institutions. Bringing up such questions raises a lot of uncomfortable knowledge. This knowledge is uncomfortable because firstly, it may undermine the principles of powerful institutions and secondly, once brought to the surface it can reflect badly on the values, assumptions and priorities of these same powerful institutions.

NOVEL ENTITIES & RISK

Aotearoa New Zealand is spectacularly bad at researching risk arising from man-made technologies, or novel entities. Novel entities, defined as ‘new substances, new forms of existing substances and modified life forms, including ‘chemicals and other new types of engineered materials or organisms not previously known to the Earth system as well as naturally occurring elements (for example, heavy metals) mobilized by anthropogenic activities.’

Novel entities can be persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT), harming at the level of a single human, or at the level of an ecosystem. PBT qualities, which are often not recognised or declared when the product is released, not only impair our capacity to protect and steward human and environmental health in the short term, but also to uphold or commitments to intergenerational justice.

Novel entities are embedded in economic life, and governments must balance the conflict of promoting business while regulating the adverse and off-target effects resulting from business activities. This has not been done very well, and the escalating risk from release of novel entities currently vastly exceeds (feeble) institutional efforts to regulate them.

By not ensuring a safe space for uncomfortable science that can question the potential for novel entities to harm health, governments fail to uphold basic tenets of administrative and constitutional law. Research and science to regulate should have kept pace with the research and science to produce, but it never has done so. In such a world, it has been impossible to prioritise the public interest. Such work has an important place, as it provides information to both the public and policy-makers, so that they may deliberate from such a place that represents the public interest, and is not weighted to the interests of powerful institutions that may profit politically or financially. Yet this work has been defunded and undervalued, and the research and science dedicated to exploring risk is decades behind the development laboratories in commercial-in-focus institutions.

Yet, as Sir Peter has recognised,

‘where science is of most use is actually where the science is most contested. Governments are usually making decisions in situations where the science is not complete; it can never be complete and it’s often most contested. And we now face this challenge that the science of the most interest to governments is actually in areas which are most contested in terms of public values.’

Sir Peter has noted that science should not be a proxy for values debates. He recognises that complex and controversial decisions intersect with what he considers to be ‘community values’ but which might also be recognised as democratic norms. These values are, according to Sir Peter, are ‘disputed’.

Disputes tend to concern the intersect of novel entities and biological risk, whether to humans or the environment (flora, fauna or ecosystems). Harm might arise from new commercial activities, claimed safety of a new technology, recognised pollutant emissions, or establishing risk over aggregating harm that might be arising from previously considered exposures to claimed benign technologies or polluting activities.

Of course, the point where a biological system starts to be harmed from a technology or polluting activity differs by maturity of that system, and historic and current stressors on that system. The potential for cascading, or ripple effects that create irreversible harm can shape how seriously we are likely to regulate a harm. However, if the science remains undone around the extent of harm, and harm is unknown or under-appreciated it can be difficult to bring the issue into the public sphere. This is often the case for neurodevelopmental or endocrinological harm in early infancy and childhood. This makes it difficult to stop the harm in a timely manner.

Because of this complexity, there is no one form of science that is appropriate to demonstrate risk between a technology and a biological system. Risk is rarely linear, and harm often has a cascading and irreversible effect on biological systems. Risk is will therefore always be a judgement call, depending upon a broad range of expertises to make that judgement, in the public interest.

Data and science therefore have an important role in legitimating political controversies. Harms commonly concern commercial activities and the release of PBT novel entities (as pollution, as ultraprocessed food, as pharmaceuticals, as pesticides) which aggregate inside biological systems. In this context science is powerful, with power: ‘the ability to influence others directly or indirectly, subtly or overtly, legitimately or illegitimately’.

Today, no publicly paid researcher would want to be seen persistently criticising commercial activities, it would be tantamount to career suicide and would impair the chance for future research funding.

INFANTS, CHILDREN & YOUNG PEOPLE

The disputed values concern what and how we value an entity. The protection of the health of children and young people is a ‘value’ that officials and risk analysts find very hard to prioritise. Therefore authoritative, scientific knowledge considering risk from manmade technologies to pregnant women, children and young people, in New Zealand is precarious and often non-existent. It’s well established that environmental factors predominantly shape our risk for disease in adulthood, and that these are frequently set in place in the early years.

It’s clear that novel entities contribute to our human ‘exposome’ - the range of exposures to synthetic chemicals, pharmaceuticals, dietary constituents, psychosocial stressors, and physical factors, as well as their corresponding biological responses.

Yet in Aotearoa New Zealand, there is no place for the research risk in this arena. The state does not direct funding to understand risk to the developing infant and child from novel entities. The Crown Research Institute that was likely to do this work, Gravida, faded away. Our brain institutes don’t seem to explore environmental chemicals and neurodevelopmental toxicity. Pregnant women, babies, children and young people require particularly precautionary and values-based policy development, because vulnerability to an exposure is almost impossible to estimate. If harm occurs, it can produce much greater lifetime costs, than if similar harm were to occur in a mature adult.

How we value is a function of what we know. If the data and science is not produced to understand harm, there results in a knowledge chasm around how that risk might manifest. In times of contestation, the evidence that is produced and seen as legitimate, is just as important. Our society can claim we value pregnant women, infants and children. However, if our research and science is resourced to prioritise economic activity, rather than stewardship (and the uncomfortable knowledge that surfaces with evidence), our society can never claim that pregnant women, infants and children are valued.

Interaction of technology and human biology will never produce a consistent result. It will be forever uncertain. The recommendation that not at-risk children are vaccinated, in order to protect families demonstrates just how far medicalisation pervades contemporary New Zealand culture. Traditionally the protection of pregnant women, infants and children – as well as the elderly and disabled - has been the raison d'être of community life. Harm in infancy and childhood produces profound economic costs across the life course. However, healthy children and pregnant women were asked to accept a novel genetic vaccine that has a paucity of supporting data, so that they might protect much older people towards the end of their life. There are other ways policy measures can increase safety for everyone (see here and here).

As every toxicologist and doctor recognises, there is always a risk from medication, and vaccines are particularly precarious, which is why vaccine producers secure indemnity from risk. The government did not make a safe place to establish appropriately informed policy, and instead produced campaign messaging and social and economic pressure that undoubtedly placed the majority of pregnant women, children and young people at risk.

INFORMED POLICY & INTERDISCIPLINARY COLLABORATION

The case focus which has driven the regulations and the traffic light system and the case-focussed modelling, is an example of New Zealand’s historically blinkered and narrow approach to public interest risk governance and human and environmental health. Risk governance concerns how societies navigate complexity, scientific uncertainty, socio-political ambiguity and prevent the potential for unanticipated, off target, or cascading effects that are irreversible.

It’s often political. In New Zealand, very little funding has been directed to the production of scientific knowledge which might clarify contested technologies that have potential to risk or set in place human and environmental health harms. This includes medical technologies. Yet when decision-makers focus on a specific metric and clarify a boundary, they set a value judgement.

Deliberation means that we consider the broadest possible group of alternatives, in order to produce a judgement that is most reflective across society. The only way to move forward to ensure accountability and transparency at arm’s length of the institutions with the vested (political and financial) interest. To remove conflicts of interest and draw attention to bias. This should ensure a safe space for contestation and deliberation and to make sure the fora is interdisciplinary so that judgements reflect complex scientific, ethical, legal and social issues around risk. This will never be apolitical – it will always be messy and political. Such work requires long term block funding.

Continue reading: Chapter [2] Uncomfortable Knowledge, Essential for Robust Democracy here.

From my April 2022 paper COVID-19 Emergency Powers: The New Zealand State, Medical Capture & the Role of Strategic Ignorance.