It's no surprise when an activist group trots out a lone, non-peer-reviewed study in an effort to bolster its case, but you would think that government regulations rest on a stronger scientific foundation. Guess again.
Submissions to serious science journals are routinely peer-reviewed checked for basic coherence, factual errors, and adherence to standard scientific procedure by scientists other than the authors of the paper themselves. We expect scientists to submit to peer review for the simple reason that they may be wrong, and peer review, while fallible, is one way to doublecheck (the best way, over the long haul, is replication repeated experiments by diverse scientists yielding the same or compatible results).
Last year, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) specifically its Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, led by administrator John D. Graham, formerly of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis and an ACSH Advisor suggested that before issuing regulations on science-related matters (such as most of the topics addressed by EPA and FDA), the government, too, should at least adhere to the bare-minimum standard of normal scientific procedure and have its studies peer-reviewed, preferably by scientists who haven't already staked out a position on the issue and who aren't funded by the regulatory agency itself.
You wouldn't expect an uproar at this suggestion, but Dr. Robert Steinbrook reports in the January 8 New England Journal of Medicine that regulators and their allies are objecting already. If they have to show that the science behind their proposed regulations is sound, after all, it might be much harder to enact the regulations. This concern should evoke no more sympathy from an intelligent citizen than the argument that if we have to show people are guilty, there will be far fewer successful prosecutions. We shouldn't want to act in error, no matter how ostensibly noble the cause.
Nonetheless, the Washington Post reports today that Joan Claybrook of Public Citizen has denounced the plan as "paralysis by analysis" and that numerous former regulators from past presidential administrations from Nixon's to Clinton's have issued statements against the change in policy. An earlier Post report quotes Lisa Heinzerling, a Georgetown law professor, calling the new rules "another weapon for the administration and its corporate allies to use against protective regulation."
Any review process can be corrupted, of course, but surely even an imperfect peer review process is better than no peer review at all unless, of course, you believe regulators and agency scientists to be infallible (I often have to make a similar point in debates with supporters of "alternative medicine" they are sometimes quite versed in the things that can go wrong with mainstream clinical drug trials, but it's not clear how that justifies trusting gurus and medicine men instead when the gurus and medicine men have done no thorough studies at all).
Pro-regulation forces expressed similar concerns back in the late 80s and early 90s over the concept of "cost-benefit analysis," an idea seemingly even more basic and common-sensical than peer review: regulations should have benefits that outweigh their costs. That's another idea you'd think the government took for granted but doesn't. So we stumble along under a thick blanket of regulations that may not be based on good science and may not (even by government standards) do more good than harm.
As a general rule, whether the debate is routine government regulation or something more extraordinary such as ghosts, psychics, or faith-healing, beware the people who don't want anyone to doublecheck their work and won't let you look too closely at what their hands are doing. Unproven claims are bad enough in the marketplace, where we at least have the option of trying to avoid quackery, but government regulation is backed by fines and jail time there's no getting away. The least the regulators could do is let us get a second opinion.
Tonight (January 15, 2003 at 8pm) Todd Seavey's peers will review a videotape downstairs at Lolita Bar (the northeast corner of Broome St. and Allen St. in Manhattan) of his appearance on the TV show Style Court, and all are welcome to brave the near-zero temperatures and watch unless you're planning to be uptown watching Al Gore's speech about the need for more anti-global warming regulations.
