Environmental Decisionmaking

Problem Set #8:

1) (5 pts) Jasanoff describes five case histories which she calls "flawed decisions". In your opinion, what went wrong in these cases? Why were scientists not able to come to the "right" conclusion the first time?

A few things went wrong in these cases, including scientists misinterpreting results (often as a result of "seeing what they want to see"), and a rush to judgement due to agency or public pressure. I want you to discuss what kept people from coming to the "right" conclusion, but also keep in mind that Jasanoff is not entirely convinced that the peer-review was always correct either. The larger point has to do with objectivity that gets discussed in the next question as well.

2) (5 pts) Explain why a modern critique of science generally calls into question its "objectivity" in the traditional sense. How does this affect the prospect of expert decision making?

Scientists, like everyone, make decisions and do research within a social context. This means that some results are analyzed very skeptically, while others may be given the benefit of the doubt just because they correspond to previously-held beliefs. This also means that some questions simply don't get asked, because nobody thinks about them. Moreover, scientific "feuds" are common, where adherence to a point of view has more to do with lab loyalty than with objective results. These lead to questions about what scientific "objectivity" means. They do not mean that science is no different from other forms of knowledge, but that it is not absolutely different as was believed a century ago and is still believed by many. This affects the prospect of expert decision making because it means that we cannot simply assume that experts will come to a unique "correct" decision. Personalities, ideologies, and idiosyncrasies matter in science as they do elsewhere.

3) (5 pts) What is "agency capture"? Why is this important for decision making? Jasanoff refers to this only obliquely in the reading, so you may want to rely on the lecture or some web surfing to answer this question. If you do that, notice how the conservative discussion of "agency capture" focuses capture by the expert bureaucrats of an agency (over political appointments), while the liberal concern is capture by regulated industry.

"Agency capture" is when agencies end up doing the bidding of one or another group, rather than the bidding of their political leaders or some unbiased "public interest." This capture is usually the result of an imbalance of knowledge. For example, liberals worry about agency capture by the regulated industries. In this scenario, the real experts in any field are generally going to be those hired by industry in order to study particular issues. These experts then serve on expert committees and provide expert opinion to the agencies. Agency officials end up relying upon this expertise, both because it makes their jobs easier and because it allows them to avoid lawsuits (in a court battle, you want to be on the side of the most qualified experts), and so in the end the agency finds itself doing the bidding of the regulated industry, rather than serving as a watchdog.

This is not the only type of capture possible, however. Conservatives tend to worry about capture by the bureaucrats within the agency. Career bureaucrats have technical knowledge of the issues and institutional knowledge (they know how things get done), and so agency heads rely upon them for information. This leads to "capture" of the agency by bureaucrats, or, put another way, to agency autonomy that is not really accountable to political appointees. This can be problematic if agency bureaucrats have an agenda or if you are trying to institute changes.

4) (5 pts) How does the prospect of uncertainty affect the interplay between expert decision making and the political process. What are some arguments for why courts should either carefully oversee agency decisions, or why they should grant significant leeway to these agencies? Where do you fall on this question?

Agencies must make decisions under uncertainty, and they may not be able to wait until there is 95% certainty before they act. However, this question of when to act leaves decisions open to scientific dispute (not everyone will agree). It is possible that agencies will act too quickly, or that they will refuse to act quickly enough, perhaps because of agency capture discussed above.

Particularly because of the possibility of capture, there needs to be some oversight to make sure that agencies are acting in the public interest, and so courts need to be able to step in when agencies are out of control. However, judges don't have the same expertise that agency officials have, so court rulings may have more to do with whether a particular judge is sympathetic to the political aims of claimant than with the scientific "facts" in the case. Hence, it is difficult to ensure that a court decision will be based upon "objective" information, and if agencies always have to worry about having their decisions overturned by courts, then they may become unwilling to act under uncertainty, thus creating a situation where the public interest is not served. For this reason, judges often give "deference" to agencies, but this deference can, of course, be exploited. And so it goes.