I’m all for evidence-based everything, which is no surprise I’m sure.

I was interested to read about the chief drugs advisor to the UK government being sacked for speaking out against the government’s drug policy. Professor David Nutt argued that cannabis had been reclassified as a higher risk drug against scientific evidence and was promptly sacked for commenting on policy. 

He is quoted as saying: “So this government has made the law and then it has gone back to the advisory council and said ‘could you find some evidence to support our decision?’  Now we’ve said ‘no, we will stick to science, our scientific guns, we will produce the evidence and if you go and legislate inappropriately, we will continue to point out the evidence does not support you’.” (http://bit.ly/VUJpW)

This quote echoed a number of conversations that took place at the Enivironment Institute of Australia and New Zealand Conference last week.  In particular, there was a lot of frustration at groups and individuals that don’t want a development in their locality (for whatever cultural, social or personal reason) and who build (often spurious) scientific arguments to validate their opinion. 

Considerable time and effort is often spent in putting together good, unbiased scientific evidence to address the “scientific” concerns, only to be ignored, deflected and demeaned, because it does not support the community sentiment.

Too often this situation decends into a “my expert is better than your expert” skirmish, and noone wins.  And you may be surprised, but as a scientific consultant, my livelihood is dependant on me giving my clients the best evidence-based answer, not the one they want.  And it’s a kick in the guts to go into those situations in good faith and wanting a good scientific debate, only to have my scientific integrity brought into question. 

And you know what I reckon?

I think that it is actually valid for a community to stand up and say, “we have heard the evidence, we accept the value of the proposal but we don’t want it because it will make my backyard ugly/change the nature of our community/change the road I take to work”.  Politicians should stand up and say “that is a fair and reasonable scientific argument, but parents in my constituency just don’t want another thing to worry about, no matter the risk, so we will go against the scientific advice for now.”

It’s ok to have social, political, religious or emotional responses, and for these to be taken into account.  But they cannot be taken into account, if they are not out on the table.

Just don’t use science as a cover up.  Thanks.