by Judith Curry

[T]the systems built to support scientists do not reward moral courage and the university pipeline contains toxins of its own — which, if ignored, will corrode public faith in science. – Marc Edwards

In case you haven’t been following this story, here is a quick recap from triplepundit:

The city of Flint, Michigan, switched drinking water sources from Lake Huron to the Flint River to save money while a new pipeline was being constructed. The river water is 19 times more corrosive than the lake water and was not treated with an anti-corrosive agent. Over time, the water damaged the pipes, sending enough lead to qualify as toxic waste into the city’s drinking water and causing hundreds of people (including children) to get lead poisoning.

Before getting to the profiles in courage part, lets first take a quick look at profiles in corruption and arrogance. Some background is provided in this summary of a Congressional Hearing on the water crisis. Michael Moore has a hard hitting article, excerpts:

The basics are now known: the Republican governor, Rick Snyder, nullified the free elections in Flint, deposed the mayor and city council, then appointed his own man to run the city. To save money, they decided to unhook the people of Flint from their fresh water drinking source, Lake Huron, and instead, make the public drink from the toxic Flint River.

When the governor’s office discovered just how toxic the water was, they decided to keep quiet about it and covered up the extent of the damage being done to Flint’s residents, most notably the lead affecting the children, causing irreversible and permanent brain damage. Citizen activists uncovered these actions, and the governor now faces growing cries to resign or be arrested.

More information on the bizarre and toxic political situation in Michigan is revealed in this vox article.

Fortunately, there are some heroes in this story.

Mona Hanna-Attish

The first hero in this story is Flint pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attish. CNN has a profile ‘Our mouths were ajar’: Doctor’s fight to expose Flint’s water crisis. Excerpts:

When she told Hanna-Attisha that she had heard the city of Flint wasn’t doing “corrosion control” to prevent lead in aging pipes from leaching into the water supply, the doctor didn’t need to be told twice about the gravity of the potential consequences.

“When pediatricians hear anything about lead, we absolutely freak out,” says Hanna-Attisha, director of the pediatric residency program at Hurley Medical Center, a public hospital in Flint.

The prospect of lead in the water made her realize urgent action was needed. Her response, she says, was to undertake “the easiest research project I’ve ever done.”

The percentage of children in Flint with lead poisoning had doubled, she says. “In some neighborhoods, it actually tripled. (In) one specific neighborhood, the percentage of kids with lead poisoning went from about 5%, to almost 16% of the kids that were tested,” she says. “It directly correlated with where the water lead levels were the highest.”

Having uncovered the shocking data, Hanna- Attisha took the unconventional step of sharing the findings at a September press conference, flanked by medical colleagues. “We had an ethical, professional, moral responsibility to alert our community (to) what was going on.”

The news understandably created a big splash — but an equally large backlash. “We were attacked,” Hanna-Attisha recalls. She was labeled an “unfortunate researcher” and accused of causing hysteria. Critics said her figures did not line up with the state’s findings. Even though General Motors stopped using the city’s water supply because it was corroding engine parts, the official reaction, Hanna-Attisha says, was one of “denial, denial, denial.”

The criticism, she says, took its toll. “I was physically ill. I think my heart rate went up to 200. You know, you check and you double-check, and you know your research is right. The numbers didn’t lie, but when the state is telling you you’re wrong, it’s hard not to second-guess yourself.”

A turning point came, however, through a conversation with a state health official who reached out, asking how she had come to her findings. “They re-looked at their data and found, ‘You know what? Our findings are consistent with your findings,’ ” she says.

“My job, as a pediatrician, is to take care of that kid in front of me, but to make sure that they have the brightest future ahead of them,” she says. “We owe it to these kids to make this better. I may be an optimist, too much of an optimist, but we have to try hard to mitigate this exposure.”

Marc Edwards

The other hero is Virginia Tech Professor Marc Edwards. The Chronicle has an article entitled The Water Next Time: Professor Who Helped Expose Crisis in Flint Says Public Science is Broken. Excerpts:

Working with residents of Flint, Mr. Edwards led a study that revealed that the elevated lead levels in people’s homes were not isolated incidents but a result of a systemic problem that had been ignored by state scientists.

But being right in these cases has not made Mr. Edwards happy. Vindicated or not, the professor says his trials over the last decade and a half have cost him friends, professional networks, and thousands of dollars of his own money.

Q. Do you see this as an academic success story or a cautionary tale?

A. I am very concerned about the culture of academia in this country and the perverse incentives that are given to young faculty. The pressures to get funding are just extraordinary. We’re all on this hedonistic treadmill — pursuing funding, pursuing fame, pursuing h-index — and the idea of science as a public good is being lost.

This is something that I’m upset about deeply. I’ve kind of dedicated my career to try to raise awareness about this. I’m losing a lot of friends. People don’t want to hear this. But we have to get this fixed, and fixed fast, or else we are going to lose this symbiotic relationship with the public. They will stop supporting us.

Q. Do you have any sense that perverse incentive structures prevented scientists from exposing the problem in Flint sooner?

A. Yes, I do. In Flint the agencies paid to protect these people weren’t solving the problem. They were the problem. What faculty person out there is going to take on their state, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency?

I don’t blame anyone, because I know the culture of academia. You are your funding network as a professor. You can destroy that network that took you 25 years to build with one word. I’ve done it. When was the last time you heard anyone in academia publicly criticize a funding agency, no matter how outrageous their behavior? We just don’t do these things.

If an environmental injustice is occurring, someone in a government agency is not doing their job. Everyone we wanted to partner said, Well, this sounds really cool, but we want to work with the government. We want to work with the city. And I’m like, You’re living in a fantasy land, because these people are the problem.

Q. When is it appropriate for academics to be skeptical of an official narrative when that narrative is coming from scientific authorities? Surely the answer can’t be “all of the time.”

A. What these agencies did in [the Washington, D.C., case] was the most fundamental betrayal of public trust that I’ve ever seen. When I realized what they had done, as a scientist, I was just outraged and appalled.

I grew up worshiping at the altar of science, and in my wildest dreams I never thought scientists would behave this way. The only way I can construct a worldview that accommodates this is to say, These people are unscientific. Science should be about pursuing the truth and helping people. If you’re doing it for any other reason, you really ought to question your motives.

Unfortunately, in general, academic research and scientists in this country are no longer deserving of the public trust. We’re not.

Q. I keep coming back to these university researchers in Flint who said: “The state has 50 epidemiologists. They say that the water’s safe. So I’m going to focus my energy on something that’s less settled.” How do you decide when the state should be challenged?

A. That’s a great question. We are not skeptical enough about each other’s results. What’s the upside in that? You’re going to make enemies. People might start questioning your results. And that’s going to start slowing down our publication assembly line. Everyone’s invested in just cranking out more crap papers.

So when you start asking questions about people, and you approach them as a scientist, if you feel like you’re talking to an adult and they give you a rational response and are willing to share data and discuss an issue rationally, I’m out of there. I go home.

But when you reach out to them, as I did with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and they do not return your phone calls, they do not share data, they do not respond to FOIA [open-records requests], y’know. … In each case I just started asking questions and turning over rocks, and I resolved to myself, The second something slimy doesn’t come out, I’m gonna go home. But every single rock you turn over, something slimy comes out.

Q. You teach a course on ethics and heroism at Virginia Tech. How exactly does one teach heroism to college students?

A. We teach aspirational ethics. What I teach my students is, You’re born heroic. I go into these animal studies, and heroism is actually in our nature. What you have to do is make sure that the system doesn’t change you, that our educational system doesn’t teach you to be willfully blind and to forget your aspirations, because that’s the default position.

We talk about the realities of heroism too. It’s not fun. These are gut-wrenching things. But the main thing is, Do not let our educational institutions make you into something that you will be ashamed of.

I tried to find out more about Marc Edwards, he doesn’t have much of an online profile (I am particularly interested to see what he is doing re teaching ethics). I did spot this TEDxVT talk: Heroic by nature, cowardly by convenience, which focuses on a previous similar situation in Washington, DC. This is well worth watching.

I was also very pleased to see that Marc Edwards is a MacArthur Fellow.

JC reflections

This whole situation is frightening and appalling on a number of fronts.

The toxicity of Flint water reminds us that real environmental contamination of the air, water and soil has direct, adverse impacts on human health, with the adverse impacts commonly borne disproportionately by the most disadvantaged people. Such horrible contamination can be present even in developed countries, with stringent environmental protection guidelines. Sort of makes hypothesized warming at the end of the 21st century not seem all that ‘dangerous’ by comparison.

The treatment of whistleblowers related to environmental contaminants seems much worse than that dished out to climate change skeptics. Climate change is global problem with a global network of skeptics and whistleblowers – there is some sort of strength in numbers (even if the numbers are only 3%). However, environmental contamination is a local problem, and a whistleblower may be very isolated and facing a broader array sanctions from their university or employer, state and local governments, as well as federal agencies.

Every few years, some sort of event happens that triggers a massive loss of public trust in scientists and/or the regulatory agencies. The event in 2009 was Climategate. The Flint water crisis is the most serious one in recent memory. Apart from the obvious public safety issue, what the heck are our tax dollars being spent on?

In the midst of this appalling and disturbing situation, it is exhilarating to see the heroism and courage of Hanna-Attish and Edwards. I was particularly struck by Edwards’ comments regarding toxins in the university pipeline. His comments are absolutely spot-on — the importance of skepticism, standing up for what you know is right, and teaching ethics as it relates to public service, even in the face of opposition from colleagues and government agencies.

I was also very much struck by this statement, which makes a mockery of Lewandowsky and Bishop’s concerns over transparency:

So when you start asking questions about people, and you approach them as a scientist, if you feel like you’re talking to an adult and they give you a rational response and are willing to share data and discuss an issue rationally, I’m out of there. I go home.

But when you reach out to them, as I did with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and they do not return your phone calls, they do not share data, they do not respond to FOIA [open-records requests], y’know. … In each case I just started asking questions and turning over rocks, and I resolved to myself, The second something slimy doesn’t come out, I’m gonna go home. But every single rock you turn over, something slimy comes out.

Well Steve McIntyre and a number of others could have written that particular book for climate science. It would be a very interesting sociological study to interview scientists and others that have requested data and other materials from climate scientists to see if this ‘slime’ correlation holds up.

In the context of the climate debate, I hope that Edwards’ example and words will encourage climate scientists to stand up for what they think is right and not be driven by what their peers might think or say (which unfortunately seems to be the norm, as per the German climate scientists).

The toxins in the university pipeline start with federal research funding and ending with university priorities for hiring, promoting and rewarding faculty members that focus on glitzy metrics that end up conflicting with ethics and public service. The net result is wasted resources (money and time) and a loss of public trust in scientists, which will act to erode away the human and financial resource base for science.