Science, Society, and So-Called Socialist Plants

Lawmakers who see science as a challenge to their authority seek to cripple it. The consequences could be devastating.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler. Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Some societal changes are sudden, while others creep up more slowly. On the surface, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) recent decision to allow the agricultural industry to keep using chlorpyrifos — a controversial pesticide linked to neurological problems in children — doesn’t seem shocking. After all, the story of big chemical companies locked in battle with environmental scientists is one as old as modern America. But if you look closer, you might see the signs of a much larger shift.

The battle over chlorpyrifos was won with a new tactic. Instead of attacking individual studies, like tobacco companies battling cancer research in the 1970s, the supporters of chlorpyrifos were helped by politicians who quietly reset the rules of science.

The seeds of this change were planted more than a year ago when Trump’s EPA proposed a far-reaching transparency policy. Under the agency’s new guidelines, scientists must publish the raw, non-anonymized data used in their research. The catch is that in long-term human studies, this raw data includes the medical history of hundreds of people — details that scientists have previously promised to keep private. If you’re a medical researcher, you face a grim choice: Violate your privacy promises, and you’ll run into strict federal privacy laws. But keep these details anonymous, and the EPA will ignore your research completely.

In the case of chlorpyrifos, the new transparency guidelines eliminated large, peer-reviewed studies by Columbia University and Berkeley from consideration. Smaller experiments on animals in controlled laboratory environments, like the ones chemical companies use to show the safety of their products, were unaffected. And just like that, the EPA’s consensus reversed, shifting from an inability to conclude that the risk from the use of chlorpyrifos meets the safety standard in 2015 to “the objections [to its use] are not supported by valid, complete, and reliable evidence” this year.

The word “complete” betrays the game — it’s not the science that changed. The shift was in the rules we use to allow science into the political conversation.

The goal is to dilute science until it becomes another voice shouting in the crowd — a voice you can choose to disregard even in the face of environmental calamity.

The chlorpyrifos decision isn’t an isolated case. In fact, political policy is full of places where science collides with our culture and our comfort. But increasingly, the argument isn’t being fought on scientific grounds (with competing studies) or on policy grounds (with cost-benefit assessments). Instead, politicians choose to avoid the argument entirely and instead attack the opponent. The goal is not to pick scientific winners and losers in every fight, but to dilute science until it becomes another voice shouting in the crowd — a voice you can choose to disregard even in the face of environmental calamity.

The decision to allow chlorpyrifos has the potential to affect thousands of children and dozens of species, but it’s a relatively small detail in the big picture of political science interference. The EPA transparency rule threatens to overturn almost all settled science on air and water pollution, clearing the way to introduce more banned pesticides and reduce restrictions on pollution ranging from car tailpipes to power plant smokestacks. And the transparency rule is itself just one part of the science-obscuring initiatives transforming public policy. Other rules restrict what sort of scientists can serve on advisory panels, limit the scope of their conclusions, or hide difficult realities by banning problem words.

Consider another example. The EPA recently expanded the use of sulfoxaflor, a formerly banned pesticide that is highly toxic to threatened bee colonies. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Agriculture suspended data collection for its annual Honey Bee Colonies report. The department claimed the decision was due to budget cuts, but it had the side effect of ensuring that there would be no future numbers to challenge the change. Once again, it wasn’t an argument against science, but a strategy to marginalize science — a way to contain its ability to influence policy.