What Can Really be Done about the Perversion of Science by Politics
One can quickly become depressed by the problems afflicting the science used for regulation of public health and the environment, and CPR bears a substantial share of responsibility for painting a grim picture of a world where politics prevails over science. In a Cambridge-published book, Rescuing Science from Politics, and an accompanying white paper that summarizes the book, along with a second white paper on the problems of scientific secrecy, CPR offers a wide-ranging diagnosis of what ails the science used for regulation. It ultimately concludes that there is far too much manipulation of scientific research by industry; that there are far too few incentives for agencies and even interest groups who are honest about the limits of science and remaining scientific uncertainties; and that many of the processes that purport to support and nourish regulatory science (like peer review; data access; and scientific freedom) are filled with gaps and holes that ultimately make the resulting science and scientists worse, rather than better off.
