Safe Food_ Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism - Marion Nestle [17]
The application of the two-culture problem to safety issues also has a long history. In 1979, Philip Handler, then president of the National Academy of Sciences, said, “The estimation of risk is a scientific question—and, therefore, a legitimate activity of scientists in federal agencies, in universities and in the National Research Council. The acceptability of a given level of risk, however, is a political question to be determined in the political arena.”21 In 1991, Edward Groth, a scientist at Consumers Union, explained that public policy choices lie at the heart of safety debates about food. “Each dispute has two main components, factual issues and value issues. . . . Factual questions include: What risks are involved? How big are they? Who is at risk? These are scientific questions. The central value question is: Given those facts, what should society do?”22 A more detailed examination of the two approaches to evaluating risks—called, for lack of better terms, science-based and value-based—helps to explain why food safety issues are so political.
Science-Based Approaches: Counting Cases and Costs
Much of what we know about the ways in which people assess safety risks comes from studies by experts in risk communication, a field that deals with questions about how the public is—and should be—informed about matters of potential harm. To explain science-based approaches, risk communication researchers begin by examining how scientists think. Ideally, science begins with an observation. Rather than accepting an observation as a universal truth, scientists question its accuracy, interpretation, and relevance; develop theories to explain its significance; and design and conduct experiments to test those theories. The quality of scientific research depends not only on the question under investigation (some research questions are more interesting and important than others) and the care (“rigor”) with which studies are conducted, but also on the ability of the studies to eliminate (“control for”) all possible causes of the observation other than the one being tested. Scientific methods also extend beyond observations to suggest probable causes, to exclude irrelevant causes (“confounding variables”), and to estimate the probability that a particular cause is the true reason for the observation of interest.
The point here is that probability is not the same as proof. Biological experiments in humans are complicated by genetic variation and behavioral differences, and study results nearly always depend on probabilities and statistics. This means that they are subject to interpretation and, therefore, to perception, opinion, and judgment. Scientists tend to minimize the subjective nature of interpretation and to view knowledge gained through the testing of theories as objective, accurate, evidence-based, hypothesis-driven, and rigorous. As one scientist who consults for the biotechnology industry explains, “The advantage of being a biologist comes not from what I know but from how I think. To me, the greatest value of scientific training is a proclivity for asking questions without being emotionally attached to a specific answer—a willingness to look objectively at data even if the facts contradict our preconceived notions.”23 Scientists who believe that such opinions are objective—and remain unaware of how self-interest might influence them—may well have trouble understanding why the “other culture” questions their impartiality.
In practice, a science-based approach to food safety is one that appears to focus exclusively on the characteristics of the risk itself: annual cases of illness, doctor’s visits, hospitalizations, deaths, costs to individuals and to society, the benefits of doing nothing about the risk, and the benefits and costs of risk reduction. From this perspective, risks are measurable and, therefore, “scientific” and “objective.” Researchers and federal officials evaluate potential hazards through a formal process of risk assessment that involves identifying the hazard, characterizing