In
Nature’s article, Over the Limit, an anonymous author tells the story
of a European policy that turned its back on scientific evidence and the
repercussions thereof. As he proceeds to support the policy and the
reasons they made it, he extrapolates the idea that evidence is not the
only basis a policy should be made on and comes up with the claim that
“when setting policies, there are limits to the role that evidence can
have.” I, respectfully, disagree with his claim and his reasons and will
explain why.
The law in question was put into place in Europe in 2011 when the Court
of Justice of the European Communities decided that men could not be
charged more than women for auto insurance. This goes against mounds of
scientific evidence that explicitly states that men are more likely to
wreck their cars then women, and is aimed at reducing sexual
discrimination. While the intention of the law is good, admirable in
fact, the fact that they ignored such conclusive scientific evidence is
causing much controversy. The author stands up for this law and attempts
to explain his reasoning behind it, and behind his support of it.
In
the article, he says that although evidence is a strong factor in
policy-making, it should not be the only one, and that it “is important
to distinguish between policies that ignore the evidence and those that
consider it but do not give it the deciding vote.” He later says it is
up to the scientists to present the evidence and its up to the
politicians to decide when to ignore it, and while that is true, he also
seems to be supporting the fact that sometimes it is not only
acceptable to ignore scientific evidence, but it is also the ‘right’
thing to do, as evidenced by his comment about the “drive in Europe to
reverse practices that survive as a legacy of centuries of inequality
and discrimination against women is right to trump the cold logic of the
statistics.” He says that there are other relevant factors that
politicians must consider and that evidence shouldn’t always get the
deciding factor, but all of these appeals have very specific flaws that I
will point out.
When
he says that it is ‘right’ for politicians to ignore scientific
evidence I am trying hard to find where exactly he got his definition of
right, because if by right, he means foolish, selfish, and
short-sighted, then maybe my entire argument is nothing but semantics.
In his own article he specifically says that “It is legitimate, if
short-sighted, to acknowledge that man-made global warming is real but
argue that policies to cut emissions are too expensive to pursue.” So it
is legitimate (and ‘right’ if you transfer over the property he so
graciously extended to the law in Europe) for a policy that is so
short-sighted that it is all but ignoring an international disaster just
waiting for us around the door. I don’t think so. Even in some of his
lesser claims, he has nothing to back them up. He says that it is
important to distinguish between policies that ignore scientific
evidence and those that consider it, but don’t give it the deciding
vote. I answer that claim with a question. Why? The outcome is the same,
so why is there a difference? An ignorant policy still gets put in
place. The outcome is the same, so what is the difference? I argue none
(now I know that it makes a difference when you are trying to decide who
to vote for, but we are only focusing on the validity of the policies
put in place, and not the politicians behind them).
Another
thing that the author fails to see is that the term ‘scientific
evidence’ is a lot more encompassing then he seems to believe. He seems
to want to limit it to only empirical evidence on limited subjects. What
he doesn’t seem to get is that evidence can be present in all of the
other ‘factors’ he claims that should supersede evidence such as
“social, economic and political factors.” Evidence is not limited solely
to the natural sciences, but can be present in all of the above, so
turning your back on ‘evidence’ means turning your back on all things
logical. This is not ‘right’ for any reason.
So
if evidence is as encompassing as I believe it to be, then it only
leads to one logical conclusion. Evidence is the only thing to
rightfully base policy upon, and this is why I disagree with the article
on hand, allow me to explain. Assuming it is wrong to ignore evidence
in policy making would seem like that would be all you would need to
make the claim I just made there, but the author has rightly pointed out
several other factors that may influence policy making. If evidence
were so limited, then it would be impossible to run a country only
making policies on such a limited scale, but add in my other premise and
you will see how it opens up the possibilities to a great extent. You
can now make policies based on economic evidence, which was once
considered an ‘other’ factor, allowing evidence to be the basis for ALL
policies.
While
the logic leading up to my claim is unbreakable (I hope) the premises
are the ones you could argue against. This means any opposition to my
claim would either argue that ignoring evidence in policy making is not
wrong, or that evidence is not as encompassing as I had once thought.
One may say, you don’t decide whats right or wrong, how can you claim
that one policy is better than another? My answer to that would be that
for length’s sake I am assuming that selfish, short-sighted policies are
wrong, and to try to argue that would involve an ethics essay and
entrance into an age old debate that would not simply go well in a blog
such as this.
To
attack the other premise, one would simply have to find a ‘relevant’
factor in policy making and show that there is no scientific evidence in
that area whatsoever. Do that, and my entire post will be shut down and
be irrelevant trash, but I doubt you will be able to do such a thing.
The gathering of scientific evidence is done mainly for one reason only.
to find out information, so you can do something better in the future.
This, or to make better choices in the future. And what ‘choices’ are
more in the open and have the most interest other than policies?
Scientists gather information all the time to help future policy makers
and I highly doubt that you can find a relevant area where there has
been no research in.
All
of this leads me to confidently say that evidence is the only relevant
basis for policy making and that the author of “Over the Limit” was
wrong in his article.
Works Cited:
"Over the Limit." Nature. 9 Mar. 2011. Web. <http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v471/n7337/full/471136a.html>.
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