J R Bruning
Brownstone Institute
For many, the nagging inkling that the state of policy-relevant and regulatory science was less robust and trustworthy than official sources claimed came roaring into focus with COVID-19. For those that had a nose for contradictions and inconsistency, the perpetual urgencies to believe the scientific claims of a handful of special scientists on the telly fell rather flat.
The global population was required to acquiesce to a brand-new technology, a gene therapy unaccompanied by genotoxicity or carcinogenicity studies, nor completed trials for pregnant mothers. A technology where heart risk was known from the get-go. Unbelievably, the endpoint in the clinical trials was never prevention of transmission, nor prevention of hospitalisation and death.
In a pattern akin to the respect demanded of high priests, the only purveyors of God’s message; special scientists were the Final Word when it came to The Science and health-based risk throughout COVID-19. Like high priests, their scientific claims could not be questioned. If we didn’t acquiesce to the technology, we were not only anti-science and anti-vax. We would be anti-health.
How has The Science come to be the Final Word in modern societies? At its core, powerful institutions have exploited public confidence and trust that science is produced in a neutral and impartial manner. Governments and powerful institutions have taken this trust that science is objective, and capitalized. Because of the opportunity this presents, ‘objectivity is a priceless adjunct to governmental power.’
Sociologist and lawyer Sheila Jasanoff has theorised that objectivity has the tool-like qualities of a talisman – one that would ward off the appearance of political bias. For Jasanoff, impartiality through the use of science and evidence acts to ‘erase the stamps of agency and subjectivity.’
Yet policy-relevant science is a different beast from basic or research science. It does double duty. It must be acceptable scientifically and politically. The effect is that any claimed objectivity is subjective. It depends on what science is used, who the experts are, and how this science is valued, and this depends on political cultures and priorities. Such science is therefore ‘contingent, vulnerable to criticism and tends to unravel under adversarial challenge.’
But there’s more. Powerful shifts in the past 50 years have weakened the threads between the public and regulators, while more closely binding regulators to the industries that they are charged with regulating. Like sliding dials on an amplifier, the power of corporations has increased as they have consolidated and became more powerful. The capacity for public sector and regulatory scientists to broadly research risk has declined.
Globally basic science and interdisciplinary funding has shrunk dramatically, while the problems that these types of research could shine a light on have asymmetrically expanded.
Public-sector funding scopes direct science and research funding away from research that might untangle the relationships between biology, social life, and environmental emissions and exposures. Lawyers who seek to undertake interdisciplinary research also find themselves stymied. The consequence is that autonomous interdisciplinary experts that can inform government officials and challenge their decisions are scarce.
This long-read is drawn from a recent paper by New Zealand charity PSGR.
Regulation of technologies favour the interests of the regulated industries at every turn
Knowledge is the currency of private industry, and regulators come to depend on industry expertise. Regulatory capture can happen from the get-go. If regulators are neither required nor funded to pursue inquiry outside regulator-industry relations, they are unlikely to.
Government agencies can engage in practices of public engagement that resemble consultation. In practice, the substituted activities fail to address the core issues that the public wants discussed. The substituted activities in effect perform transparency, accountability, and debate. Seasoned public interest advocates will back up this claim.
[…]
In modern academic and public research environments controversial information that contradicts government policy or industry partners (or potential partners) is politically and professionally unwelcome. Funding for expensive research is extraordinarily difficult to secure, and most institutions have private industry partners to help drive research income.
If scientists aren’t funded to consider difficult issues, that work won’t happen. They won’t review relevant science findings, provide context for issues that are ambiguous and complex, and help society navigate them. The work certainly won’t happen if it contradicts the interests of big business.
As with captured regulators, these research environments then pivot to reflect the aims and priorities of industry partners, and the funding scopes set by central government agencies.
The effect is that policy-makers accept and defend the private industry claims, instead of challenging them.
There’s no feedback loop where basic science and interdisciplinary teams are encouraged to critically review and triangulate the claims of corporations. Institutional knowledge and peer networks with expertise to pick apart complex issues have been eroded. Without the feedback into official and regulatory environments, raw data is not scrutinised, models reign supreme, and real-world data is neglected.
[…]
When citizens protest, and provide scientific studies they’re dismissed, because, well, they’re not scientists.
The effect is a fundamental democratic rift. It is the decoupling of nation states from independent information streams and meaningful critical enquiry.
What is the term for information that is strategically managed and selectively presented to encourage a particular synthesis or perception? Propaganda.
This is a massive issue, because in the 21st century scientific and technical information is fundamental to policy. As a political priority, the rails for science that tracks to safety claims are greased – in policy and in law. Feedback loops into legacy media then reflect these political positions.
[…]
Pick your technology, your medical solution, your emission, your digital solution
Most are aware that chemical regulation is subpar, with chemicals used in the industrial, agrichemical, pharmaceutical, household, and personal care sectors underregulated. However, the democratic deficits, the captured regulatory processes, occur across a wide range of technologies including nanotechnology, biotechnology, geoengineering, and radiofrequency radiation.
[…]
Regulators often rely on very old science and unpublished studies to claim a particular level of exposure is safe. For example, the World Health Organization (WHO) safe drinking levels for pesticides often rely on levels that are derived from unpublished industry studies which are several decades old. It’s uncomfortable to think that the WHO’s safe level for glyphosate in drinking water is derived from an unpublished 1981 Monsanto study. Somewhat contradictorily, old authoritative data isn’t subject to the same high standards that regulators apply when they turn to decide which studies fit their guidelines for risk assessment.
No matter the burgeoning literature, nor court cases which uncover boatloads of studies which suggest risk at much lower levels than a 1981 Monsanto study. That old study remains in place, ruling the roost.
Hormone level risks are only vaguely considered by regulators. One or two studies might be provided by industry, but the broader scientific literature is largely ignored. Toxicologists might be employed by regulatory authorities, but not endocrinologists. Conventional toxicology dose-response rules don’t apply when it comes to hormone level risk. Hormone-level effects and epidemiological studies can signal harm long before it is seen in toxicological studies.
Narrow regulatory reasoning doesn’t just apply to chemicals and biotechnologies. New Zealand’s standards for radiofrequency fields are over two decades old. No reviews have been undertaken to identify new pathways of risk, such as what the pulsing effect of radiofrequencies may do at the cellular level.
[…]
When private industry information is not subject to robust debate and challenge, it’s propaganda
The information is produced for the purpose of permitting an activity to occur. The information has a tangible effect; it is to assure society that the activity is perfectly acceptable, and that society will not be adversely harmed. However, that information cannot be contested, and is asymmetrically weighted to favour powerful institutions. Corporations and government work closely to ensure that the information is acceptable, and the rules and guidelines are often light years behind the scientific literature. Conversely, the technologies used by the industry scientists are leading edge. Over and over again, it can be demonstrated that the rules and guidelines are so inadequate and archaic that it is likely that society might be misled and deceived by the assurances of safety.
[…]
Via https://brownstone.org/articles/regulatory-science-as-propaganda/
One of my favorite books of all time, Mike is John Strachan's 1933 The Coming Struggle for Power. Based on a main thesis that the capitalist oligarchy eventually corrupts all intellectual life (science, arts, literature, etc), he essentially predicts our current predicament.
While the conclusions of this article are well supported, they in and of themselves cannot address the fundamental warping of the ground upon which current decisions are made.
Certainly a great deal of modern research is utterly useless as anything other than items of warfare, and considering that the focus of warfare today is the disempowerment of the person, and destruction of choice, the advancement in the cognitive sciences, in nanotechnology, and waves/frequencies hardly represent a gift to mankind.
Medicine has moved into an instrument of tyranny with such speed that few have even noticed. Those slow on the uptake still attempt to defend covid as a virus, fully ignoring the entire breadth of the operation that has utterly ruined the basis of Western Civilization.
It's not accurate to point an accusing finger solely at science for this paradigm ending offensive, but it is remiss to exonerate it for its obvious contribution to our deteriorating reality.