The Fallibility of Scientific Authorities

Jaan Suurküla MD

Published at the PSRAST website in May 1997

The support from scientific authorities to the exploitation of Genetically Engineering of Foods on one hand and the strong criticism of opposing scientists has confused laymen as well as decision-makers. Can the majority of experts really be wrong? May leading authorities, who have a decisive influence on safety assessment, really have made erroneous judgments ? The history of the Nuclear Energy (NE) issue may provide some illuminating lessons to learn. ( The text below has been checked for correctness by a nuclear physicist who was involved in the opposition to NE-exploitation).

The history of GE is conspicuously similar to the history of NE in important respects. For many years, a vast majority of international experts were in favour of nuclear energy and critical opponents were not taken seriously. Scientifically well-founded counter-arguments from qualified scientists were neglected, if not publicly ridiculed, by leading authorities. The opinion of the majority of the leading authorities was uncritically taken as the Truth irrespective of the factual content of the criticism.

The general opinion of the scientific authorities was that Nuclear Energy is very safe and that accidents are extremely improbable - yes, virtually impossible, considering the "advanced" and "almost ridiculously" rigorous safety measures. The opinion was backed by powerful multinational companies co-operating with governmental organizations. As in the GE case, NE development was made an important national issue in some countries. It was considered vital to promote the technology so that the nation will remain in the forefront of its development and the industry will have a competitive advantage from its leading position.

As in the case of GE, the NE technology was launched in spite of considerable deficiencies in the research about potential complications. The reason was the same - multinationals expecting huge gains, pressing governments to satisfy their desire for rapid exploitation.

The opponents were, as in the GE case, various Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO:s) and a small number of courageous scientists who dared to oppose the massive opinion of their colleagues. They revealed serious defects in the safety assessments and expressed concern about unconsidered potential complications.

The Three Mile Island nuclear power station incident in Harrisburg supported some of their criticism (its obvious counterpart in the GE case is the Showa Denko Tryptophan EMS disaster). But as in the case of the Showa Denko disaster, the governmental experts did their best to explain away the Harrisburg case.

With the growing public awareness, and an increasing number of more or less serious incidents, it became increasingly impossible politically to ignore the critical evidence and arguments presented by opponents to Nuclear Energy. So with time, it became more and more obvious that the scientific authorities and the majority of scientists had been seriously wrong in their safety assessment of Nuclear Energy based power generation systems. Governmental officials and politicians began to realize that they had been fooled by the rosy and distorted propaganda skillfully displayed by the proponents of NE and supported by leading scientists, several of whom earned considerable incomes as advisors of the industry. So the tide began slowly to turn.

With the Chernobyl Catastrophe, continued NE exploitation became seriously questioned by most governments.

In the case of GE, we are in the early phase of a turning tide. Governmental organs and politicians, who so far have been misinformed and manipulated by the GE proponents, are beginning to wake up to reality due to the information from NGO:s. Therefore, it is most important to make every possible effort to awaken the public opinion so as to create a strong public demand for reality-based assessment of the hazards of GE foods. The possibilities of success should be considerably better than in the case of NE. This is because NE satisfied a great demand for energy, while the presently developed GE foods are of very limited if any value to mankind, mainly satisfying the profit demand of the Genetic Manipulation industry.

We can only hope that the tide will turn fast enough so that we can avoid a GE counterpart to the Chernobyl Catastrophe. It is time for governments to consider the whole spectrum of facts and potential dangers in stead of using the opinions of selected, biased scientific authorities as an alibi for their position.

The situation is potentially more serious than for NE as the pollution of GE genes will, contrary to radioactivity, not decay and remain localized. It may in stead increase with time and spread globally. And while radioactivity can easily be detected, harmful genes released into nature are difficult or impossible to detect. And harmful effects like unexpected food toxins likewise. The toxin hazard is unnecessarily accentuated because no rigorous testing is required in the case of substantial equivalence. Because of the rubbery nature of this principle, recommended by international scientific authorities , virtually anything will pass as "substantially equivalent" (se e.g. Inadequate safety assessment of GE foods [EL] and Fagan [ML]). Therefore, in the worst case, millions may suffer before the cause is detected. And because of absence of labeling or highly deficient labeling rules (as is the case in EU), the discovery of the real cause of such a catastrophe would be greatly delayed.

The NE history thus shows that the majority of scientists and leading authorities may be wrong in their judgement about safety assessment of a new technologies. The striking parallels with the situation of GE gives reasons to suspect that the same may be true in this case. This leads is to the question - are there common mechanisms in these two cases that may contribute to the serious judgement errors by leading scientists?

Why were the leading nuclear energy experts mistaken ?
- Can we learn from history?

May international authorities, consulted for the assessment of safety issues be more likely than others to be biased in favour of exploitation of the technology they are experts on?

There are psychological reasons to expect this.

• The scientific authorities have built their career and the basis of their prestigious position on the technology. They may often have become members of prestigious governmental and international expert commissions because of their knowledge of the technology.
• An important common factor in the NE as well as the GE case is that a very large part of the applied research has been financed by the industry. In addition to making many important scientists more or less dependent on the industry for their work, the industry was able to pay them considerably better than the universities. And also those still working at the universities had opportunities of getting generous consultancy fees from the industry.
• The combination of heavy involvement of powerful financial organizations and considerable governmental involvement is a factor common to NE and GE in the countries leading the technology development. The consent of scientific authorities is vital for governmental approval of the technology. Therefore, it is inevitable that scientists are exposed to great efforts to make them approve it.

It seems obvious that that such conditions may contribute to a risk for a biased position among key scientists. It is but human, under such premises, to succumb to reality-distorting subconscious defense mechanisms that makes a person neglect or seriously underestimate crucial critical factors that should justify a critical or at least most cautious stance. I think such psychological mechanisms explain the obviously unrealistic safety assessments of leading nuclear energy experts. And similar subconscious mechanisms may make leading scientific experts of FAO and other regulatory bodies neglect or seriously underestimate various hazards with Genetic Engineering (see "Alarming deficiencies in international and national regulations" (6Kb) and "Fatal Flaws in Food Safety Assessment" (100 Kb))

Another problem is that, both in questions of GE safety and in the NE case, higly specialized experts with a narrow laboratory background have had a considerable influence in safety assessment issues. This is unfortunate as they are mostly incompetent to assess the consequences of the technology outside the laboratory walls. Or even to foresee complications outside their speciality even under laboratory conditions. If the complications of the technology may cover wide and disparate fields as is the case both in NE and GE , an undue influence of narrow specialists may have serious consequences.

So there are a number of similar factors in the case of NE and GE that makes it justified to expect that the GE authorities may run the risk of making serious errors in the safety assessment questions similarly as was the case in the NE issue.

A lesson that can be learnt from this is that facts and not the scientific status of a scientist should be considered by the decision-makers in important safety issues. To that end it is necessary that vital decisions concerning new technologies should not be allowed, as presently, to be made on the basis of scientific analyses that are impossible for the layman to fully understand. A procedure should be established that enables the non-specialist and even the well-educated layman to make a qualified judgement of relevant scientific facts without the interference of the opinions of scientific authorities involved in the technology under assessment. Such a procedure is suggested by us in:"A suggested procedure for ensuring impartial and reliable safety assessment of commercial applications of science" .