Argumentation (2005) 19:123–143
DOI 10.1007/s10503-004-2070-2
Springer 2005
Giving Science a Bad Name: Politically and
Commercially Motivated Fallacies
in BSE Inquiry
LOUISE CUMMINGS
School of Arts, Communication and Culture
Nottingham Trent University
Clifton Campus, Clifton Lane
Nottingham, NG11 8NS
United Kingdom
E-mail: [email protected]
ABSTRACT: It is a feature of scientific inquiry that it proceeds alongside a multitude of nonscientific interests. This statement is as true of the scientific inquiries of previous centuries, many
of which brought scientists into conflict with institutionalised religious thinking, as it is true of
the scientific inquiries of today, which are conducted increasingly within commercial and
political contexts. However, while the fact of the coexistence of scientific and non-scientific
interests has changed little over time, what has changed with time is the effect of this coexistence
on scientific inquiry itself. While scientists may no longer construct their theories with various
religious dictates in mind, growing commercial and political interests in science have served to
distort the interpretation of science. Using the U.K.’s recent crisis with bovine spongiform
encephalopathy (BSE) as my context, I examine two ways in which this distortion has occurred
– the interpretation of the science of BSE by politicians and by commercial parties for the
purposes of justifying policy decisions and informing the public of risk, respectively. Fallacious
reasoning, I contend, is the manifestation of this distortion in these contexts. In demonstration
of this claim, I examine how politicians and commercial parties alike have employed two
fallacies in their assessments of the science of BSE. These fallacies extend in novel ways the set
of so-called traditional informal fallacies. The interpretation of science, I conclude, is a rich
context in which to conduct a study of fallacious reasoning; moreover, such a study can contribute in significant ways, I argue, to the public understanding of science.
KEY WORDS: authority, BSE, commercial and political interests, fallacy, interpretation, part/
whole, reasoning, scientific inquiry
THE RELATIONSHIP OF SCIENCE TO OTHER ASPECTS OF LIFE
Science has always had a complex and often difficult relationship to the
other areas of life with which it has coexisted. Nowhere has this been more
evident than in the relationship of science to religion. Galileo experienced
religion’s more malevolent intentions towards science when, a year after the
publication in 1632 of his Copernican views in the Dialogue on the Two Chief
World Systems,1 he was committed to trial and condemned for heresy by the
Roman inquisition, an episode which came to be described as ‘the greatest
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scandal in Christendom’. For centuries2 the work of anatomists such as
Vesalius3 provoked strong and often violent theological reactions. In a more
recent century, Darwin’s views on evolution, expounded in On the Origin of
Species (1859), have elicited vitriolic criticism from a range of religious
figures.4
While science has succeeded in shedding its more oppressive religious
shackles, many of these have been replaced by increasingly powerful political and commercial interests in the activities of scientists. These interests
range from direct commercial funding of scientific research – with commercial control of the questions addressed by that research – to commercial
and political interpretations of the results of scientific research for a public
that is becoming more informed about science. When these interpretations
take the form of government pronouncements about the safety of foods and
medicinal products, public trust in these pronouncements has implications
for public health.5 If the public is to succeed in rationally evaluating the
findings of scientific inquiries, then an analysis of the underlying logic of
these interpretations, I contend, is an essential first step in this process. Such
an analysis will also serve to reveal how efforts that are aimed at improving
the public understanding of science can best be directed – to the critical
evaluation of scientific claims or to the critical evaluation of interpretations
of those claims.
In Section ‘‘Two ‘New’ Fallacies’’, I identify two fallacies that have figured prominently in political and commercial interpretations of the science
of BSE. These fallacies represent a significant development of the class of
traditional informal fallacies. I examine what constitutes their fallaciousness. I contend that these fallacies were instrumental in convincing the
public that BSE could not be transmitted to humans and that beef was safe
to eat, both of which have subsequently been shown to be incorrect. In
Section ‘‘Public Understanding of Science’’, I argue that the fact of their
incorrectness is something that a public that was better equipped in skills of
rational criticism could have appreciated at the time.
TWO ‘NEW’ FALLACIES
Failure to use authority
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) is a progressive, degenerative disease of the brain in cattle. Its widespread emergence in British cattle in the
1980s threatened unknown and potentially catastrophic consequences for
both animal and human health.6 The public anxiety that came about as a result
of this uncertainty promised to destroy a multi-million beef and dairy industry
in the U.K.7 and to lose U.K. producers lucrative markets in Europe and
beyond. Against this background politicians and commercial parties came
under increasing pressure to address the human health implications of BSE
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and to advise the public on the safety of beef and other cattle-derived products.
The Meat and Livestock Commission (MLC) – a commercial organisation
that represents the beef industry – responded to this pressure in 1990 by
distributing a video entitled ‘Beef – The Facts’ to local authorities. In it, Mr
Colin Maclean, Technical Director of the MLC, claimed:
In 1988 the Government commissioned a report from a group of eminent scientists led by
Professor Richard Southwood of Oxford University. They reported eighteen months ago that
if the current meat industry practices continued, the chance of transmission of BSE from
cattle to man by any method was remote – if they do nothing.
…
Finally, to quote the Government’s Chief Medical Officer, Sir Donald Acheson ‘Beef can be eaten
safely by everyone, both adults and children, including patients in the National Health Service.’
…
One person has suggested that in order to infect cattle the agent may have changed, mutated,
and so it can change again to infect humans. There is now sound scientific evidence that this
is simply not the case (BSE Inquiry Report, Volume 6, p. 378; emphases added).
On 17 May 1990, the MLC issued a press release entitled ‘British Beef is
Safe’. This claimed that ‘the most eminent and distinguished scientists in
Britain and in the rest of Europe have concluded there is no evidence of any
threat to human health as a result of this animal health problem’ (BSE
Inquiry Report, Volume 6, p. 377; emphasis added). On the same day, Mr
Gummer8 made a statement to the House of Commons that was issued as
part of a press release from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
(MAFF). Mr Gummer was quoted as saying:
I am naturally concerned to ensure that the public knows that the clear and consistent
advice of the best scientific opinion is that British Beef is safe. I refer the House to the
statement which the Chief Medical Officer made yesterday. He said that he had taken advice
from the leading scientific and medical experts in this field (BSE Inquiry Report, Volume 6,
p. 375; emphasis added).
A further MAFF press release, detailing the contents of a letter that Mr
Gummer had written to Lady Wilcox (Chairperson of the National Consumer Council), described how ‘independent experts have concluded that
BSE is most unlikely to have any implications for human health’ (BSE
Inquiry Report, Volume 6, p. 368; emphasis added). Examples of commercial and political assurances concerning the safety of beef and the failure
of transmissibility of BSE to humans can be multiplied.9 My purpose in
presenting these examples is that each of them is revealing of the use of or
abuse of authority or expertise in inquiry into BSE. In the analysis to follow,
I examine how the fallaciousness of certain of these examples resides in the
manipulation of authority by the commercial and political proponents of
these examples. The result of this manipulation, I contend, was the generation on the part of the public of the beliefs that beef was safe to eat and that
BSE could not be transmitted to humans. I argue that neither of these beliefs
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were justified by the scientific evidence that was available at the time and,
moreover, that both of them have been shown subsequently to be erroneous.
Like other informal fallacies, the traditional fallacy of argumentum ad
verecundiam (literally, argument to reverence or respect) has been the
subject of attempts to describe both its fallacious and non-fallacious
nature. Aristotle in his Rhetoric (1398b, 18) recognised that sometimes an
appeal to authority is perfectly sound. This argument’s soundness,
Walton (1989) contends, inheres in its capacity to advance our deliberations on an ‘issue or problem’ when ‘objective knowledge’ (knowledge
that is based on independent experimental investigation) is lacking or
otherwise problematic:
Appeal to expert opinion can be a legitimate form of obtaining advice or guidance for
drawing presumptive conclusions about an issue or problem when objective knowledge is
unavailable or inconclusive (p. 172).
A pressing context in which objective knowledge is frequently ‘unavailable
or inconclusive’ is that of scientific inquiry:
Good scientific method is based on the idea of reproducible evidence. In other words, it is
better to do an experiment yourself rather than rely on the say-so of someone else who has
done it and claimed certain results. But does that mean we should always mistrust and reject
the word of an authority as fallacious? It need not, if our reliance on cognitive authority is
regarded only as a means of supplementing experimental investigation in those cases when
an immediate decision is required and independent experimental investigation is not possible
or practical (Walton, 1989, pp. 174–175).
Inquiry into BSE is one such case. Immediate decisions were required to
bring under control a rapidly escalating animal health problem and to
prevent the emergence of a human health problem. However, given the
lengthy incubation period of spongiform encephalopathies10 – and, of
course, ethical prohibitions on experimentation in humans – it was never
going to be either practically possible or morally acceptable to engage in
direct experimental investigation of questions about the transmissibility of
BSE to humans. Under such circumstances, and according to Walton’s
comments above, ad verecundiam could be expected to function as a
non-fallacious strategy of reasoning. We will see subsequently that this
expectation is borne out in part by the reasoning employed by a key
commercial representative in the BSE crisis. However, we will also find
evidence of the use by this representative of a novel fallacy involving
authority. It is to an analysis of these different authority arguments that
we now turn.
Until the publication of Charles Hamblin’s (1970) text Fallacies, the
dominant approach in fallacy analysis had been one of emphasis on the
fallaciousness of the so-called informal fallacies. The argumentum ad
verecundiam was deemed to be little different from other informal fallacies
in respect of its being fallacious. The basis of this argument’s fallaciousness,
it was argued, is its essential dependence on the opinions and judgements of
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individuals, both ‘subjective elements’ that offend against the objectivity
that is aspired to in a scientific context. While not subscribing to this view of
ad verecundiam, Woods and Walton capture the considerations that motivate it as follows:
…to allow an appeal to authority as a genuine form of acceptable argument is to throw
scientific objectivity to the winds…an appeal to authority, having intrinsically inexact and
subjective elements about it, must be ruled out of the domain of science entirely (Woods and
Walton, 1974a, p. 136).
Underlying this rejection of argumentum ad verecundiam was a hyperbolic
epistemology in which epistemic states other than objective knowledge were
essentially unrecognised. Yet such an exaggerated epistemology is not
reflective of actual scientific inquiry – much of scientific inquiry proceeds
necessarily in the absence of objective knowledge11 (the pursuit of BSE
inquiry in a context of lack of knowledge is a case in point). So some other,
more realistic criterion, upon which the fallaciousness of ad verecundiam
could be based, needed to be found. With the development of mundane
epistemologies12 – in which the central emphasis is on a range of epistemic
states (presumption, for example) that are not recognised within more traditional epistemologies – has come the development of evaluative criteria for
ad verecundiam, in which the focus of evaluation is the quality of expert
testimony, not the mere fact that expert testimony is being used.13 In this
way, we are cautioned by fallacy theorists in our evaluation of ad verecundiam to ensure that the expert to whom appeal is made has real, as
opposed to apparent, expertise in the subject area in question.14 In the case
where real expertise can be demonstrated, a presumption of truth attaches to
the conclusion of the ad verecundiam argument. However, such is the tentative nature of presumptionl5 that any counterindication – for example, it is
discovered that the expert has a financial interest in producing the opinion
that he does – will immediately remove the conclusion’s tentative claim to
truth. So the movement from a hyperbolic to a mundane epistemology
enables us to view an appeal to authority as more or less warranted and the
conclusion of any argument that is based on such an appeal as presumptively true16 depending on features of the expert to whom that appeal is
made – is the expert unbiased, sufficiently qualified in the area upon which
he is pronouncing, etc.?17 However, this characterisation of fallacious and
non-fallacious forms of ad verecundiam overlooks a number of other
‘authority’ arguments that are also fallacious, but for which the flaw cannot
be described as an unwarranted appeal to authority. In these arguments, the
fallacy arises not from the unwarranted use of authority, but from a failure
to use authority when the situation in effect demands its use. On this novel
conception of authority arguments, an arguer who does not appeal to
authority when such an appeal is required is as guilty of committing an
argumentative flaw as the arguer who makes an unwarranted appeal to
authority. I contend subsequently that this novel type of authority argument
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is employed by Mr Maclean of the Meat and Livestock Commission. To
understand how an arguer can fail to use authority, we must first examine
the features of a rationally acceptable appeal to authority.
I want to return to the above examples of authority appeals in BSE
inquiry. The expertise of the different authorities that are appealed to in
these extracts is represented in various ways. The professional standing of
scientists and experts is indicated through the use of adjectives like ‘eminent’, ‘distinguished’ and ‘leading’. To reflect the impartiality of experts,
they are described as being ‘independent’. Finally, in an attempt to establish
the extent of their expertise, scientists are represented as having eminence in
‘Britain and in the rest of Europe’, all countries that are deemed to have
advanced scientific communities. It was certainly the case that much truly
expert scientific opinion came to inform the policy decisions and pronouncements on risk produced by politicians and others during the BSE
crisis.18 To this extent, appeals to authority were often valid within the
context of this inquiry.
Consider in this regard how Mr Maclean of the Meat and Livestock
Commission makes use of appeals to authority in the extract presented
above. Two authority appeals advanced by Mr Maclean in this extract
address the question of BSE transmission from cattle to man and the
question of the safety of beef for human consumption. The expert sources
that are cited in relation to each of these questions are respectively:
• Eminent scientists led by Professor Richard Southwood of Oxford University
• Government’s Chief Medical Officer, Sir Donald Acheson.
It is doubtless the case that the first of these expert sources – the four
members of the Southwood Working Party – was well placed to advise on
the likelihood of BSE transmission from cattle to man. Each member of this
working party was a respected authority in his specialist field and the scope
of their combined specialisms – zoology, virology, clinical neurology and
veterinary science – qualified them to advise on the human health implications of BSE.19 Accordingly, Mr Maclean’s use of authority markers – that
is, his use of ‘eminent’, academic title (Professor) and institutional affiliation
(Oxford University) – were rationally justified in this case. Sir Donald
Acheson, the expert source appealed to in the second extract cited above,
was not personally qualified to make pronouncements on the safety of beef
for human consumption – the question of the safety of any animal product
for human consumption depends as much on veterinary expertise as on
medical expertise in order to be answered and, as such, lies outside of the
exclusively medical competence of the Chief Medical Officer. However,
through consultations with veterinary and medical experts, Sir Donald acquired a form of indirect expertise on the question of the safety of beef and
an appeal to his authority in argument was an appeal to this indirect
expertise. As with the first appeal to expertise a rational basis can also
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be found for this second appeal to authority. The fallaciousness of
Mr Maclean’s reasoning only truly emerges when these two non-fallacious
appeals to authority are examined in the context of the following extract:
One person has suggested that in order to infect cattle the agent may have changed, mutated,
and so it can change again to infect humans. There is now sound scientific evidence that this
is simply not the case.
I want to contend that an appeal to expertise is necessary in this extract and
that Mr Maclean quite deliberately avoids using such an appeal. To
appreciate the necessity of such an appeal, we need only consider the wider
argumentative context in which this extract occurs. Mr Maclean produces
two rationally justified appeals to expertise in an attempt to support his own
claims that beef is safe to eat and that BSE cannot transmit from cattle to
humans. On the question of transmission, he then goes on to address a
viewpoint that he opposes. What is clear is that when opposing viewpoints
on an issue are being presented and when each of those viewpoints is supported by different experts, it is necessary, in the interests of achieving
balance in argument, to accord the same rights of cognitive authority to
each of these experts. At a minimum, this requires that the arguer state the
name, professional title and affiliation of the expert in question. It is evident
from the above extract that Mr Maclean neglects to execute even this
minimum requirement in relation to the source of an opposing viewpoint.
What motivates this neglect, I contend, is Mr Maclean’s desire to remove
authority from his opponent and, through doing so, to invalidate this
opponent’s claim – the source of this claim, he is implying, lacks cognitive
authority with the result that the claim itself has no rational standing.
Moreover, this claim is further weakened on account of its juxtaposition
with two rationally justified authority arguments, both of which support Mr
Maclean’s views. In this case, therefore, the fallaciousness of Mr Maclean’s
reasoning lies not in its unwarranted appeal to expertise – such as occurs, for
example, where it emerges that the cited authority lacks expertise in the area
of the question-at-issue. Rather, the fallaciousness of his reasoning consists
in its failure to use an authority appeal when the context effectively demands
such an appeal. This last claim warrants further examination.
It is commonplace in fallacy inquiry for theorists to use the term
‘fallacy’ only when certain argumentative errors have been committed. On
some occasions, these errors take the form of a violation of a rule of
dialogue or of inference. On other occasions, arguers use premises that do
not support the conclusion of an argument or that support a different
conclusion. Typically, these errors are antithetical to the fulfilment of one
or more of the purposes for which we engage in argument, whether this is
the resolution of a dispute or the determination of the guilt of a defendant.
However, it is clear that an arguer can also act in ways that are antithetical to the fulfilment of these purposes by failing to do certain things.
For example, an arguer may fail to use available evidence to support a
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claim. In this way, the arguer who uses an unwarranted appeal to
authority and the arguer who fails to appeal to authority when such an
appeal could quite legitimately be used to support a claim are both acting
in ways that preclude the fulfilment of one or more of the purposes of
argument. We can now apply this extended conception of fallacy to an
analysis of the reasoning employed by Mr Maclean. It is clear that the
Meat and Livestock Commission was under considerable pressure to
address growing public concerns about the safety of beef. Media speculation about the potential risks posed by BSE to human health threatened
to destabilise the U.K.’s beef industry. In a letter to Mr John MacGregor,
the then Secretary of State in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and
Food, Mr Geoffrey John (Chairman of the MLC) remarked:
At its meeting today [25 May 1989], the Commission expressed very considerable and urgent
concern about the effect of the current BSE issue on the public perception of the meat
industry, and potentially on beef sales. You, of course, will be fully aware of recent media
interest in the subject (BSE Inquiry Report, Volume 6, p. 134).
It was against this increasingly difficult background that Mr Maclean of the
MLC set about attempting to alleviate the public’s fears about BSE. To this
end, he embarks upon an argumentative monologue, in which he is seen
both to advance claims and to respond to counter-claims. However, given
the wider context at this time, it is clear that Mr Maclean’s overwhelming
concern was not simply to provide the public with facts upon which it could
base its own assessment of risk. Rather, his primary concern was to defend
the British meat industry and, particularly, to argue forcefully in support of
the claim that beef was safe to eat. He promotes this interest in two ways.
First, he advances two rationally warranted appeals to expertise in support
of claims that it is within his organisation’s interest to defend. Second, he
fails to accord proper rights of cognitive authority to the source of an
opposing claim (although we cannot say with certainty who this source was,
as Mr Maclean expresses this claim it is consistent with views advanced by
Dr Richard Kimberlin, an independent consultant in transmissible spongiform encephalopathies20). Mr Maclean’s dual strategy serves to erode the
authority of the source that produces this opposing claim which in turn
enables him to imply that there is no rational basis to this claim. In this
case, Mr Maclean is not making an unwarranted appeal to authority – he
has not made claims of expertise that we have been able to validate. To this
extent, his error is quite unlike the flaws that are typically associated with
fallacious appeals to authority. Notwithstanding this fact, Mr Maclean is
still reasoning fallaciously when he fails to use authority in a context that
demands its use. To describe the flaw in this reasoning, we extended the use
of the term ‘fallacy’. As well as applying to the various things that people do
incorrectly in argument, we used the term to describe the many things that
arguers fail to do in argument. To understand the second ‘new’ fallacy of the
BSE crisis, we must extend our conception of fallacy still further.
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False attribution of a part to a whole
It was demonstrated above how Mr Maclean of the Meat and Livestock
Commission manipulated authority in an attempt to promote certain of this
organisation’s commercial interests. Mr Maclean failed to appeal to
authority when the wider context of his argument effectively demanded such
an appeal. However, a failure to use authority was not the only ‘new’ fallacy
to characterise commercial and political interpretations of the science of
BSE. A second such fallacy is exemplified by the following conclusion of the
BSE Inquiry Team, which is also a summary of the reasoning of Section 4
committees21 on the question of the safety of bovine-derived oral medicines:
We felt that it was not unreasonable for the Section 4 committees to assume that if it was safe to
eat meat, it must be safe for humans to eat the minimal amount of bovine material contained in
oral medicines such as gelatine in capsules (BSE Inquiry Report, Volume 1, p. 178).
A reconstruction of the reasoning of this extract finds the central assumption of the Section 4 committees acting as a major premise in the following
conditional argument:
If it is safe to eat meat, then it is safe to consume bovine-derived oral medicines.
It is safe to eat meat.
[ It is safe to consume bovine-derived oral medicines.
Throughout the BSE crisis, a form of analogical reasoning that was based
on scrapie in sheep22 was routinely used to validate claims about the safety
of meat for human consumption. This same analogy was called upon by the
Section 4 committees to validate the minor premise of the above argument.23
However, in the present context the focus of analysis lies not so much with
the rational warrant of the minor premise of this argument as with the
grounds that are advanced in support of this argument’s major premise.
These grounds can be formulated as follows:
IF MEAT IS SAFE TO EAT, THEN ANY PART OF MEAT IS SAFE TO EAT
As stated here, these grounds are entirely reasonable – the property ‘is safe’
is divisible between the whole (meat) and its parts (parts of meat). Notwithstanding their reasonableness, these grounds support the major premise
of the above argument in appearance only. The oral medicines that are
mentioned in that premise contain the bovine bone product gelatine,24 a
product that is not properly a ‘part of meat’ (‘meat’ was taken to mean
‘skeletal muscle’ by the Section 4 committees). So, even if it is known25 that
meat is safe to eat, nothing about the safety of consuming gelatine can be
inferred from this fact. In treating gelatine as a part of meat, the Section 4
committees were falsely attributing a part (gelatine) to a whole (meat). Such
an argument is not included within the group of traditional informal
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fallacies. And it may still be denied inclusion in this group if we can find an
alternative and, importantly, non-fallacious rendering of the reasoning of
the Section 4 committees. It may be argued, for example, that these committees were advancing a quite different type of argument from the one that
has just been outlined. They may have been using, for example, the then
dominant analogy between BSE and scrapie to argue as follows:
BSE and scrapie are similar in essential respects.
Scrapie-contaminated meat and bones have equal levels of infectivity.
[ BSE-contaminated meat and bones have equal levels of infectivity.
The conclusion of this analogical argument could then have been used by
the Section 4 committees to justify the safety of bovine-derived oral medicines on the basis of the supposed safety of meat – as a bone product, the
gelatine in oral medicines could be expected to be as safe (or as dangerous,
as it turned out) for human consumption as meat itself. However, even if
ovine meat and bone were known to contain similar levels of scrapie
infectivity – as indeed they were26 – no conclusions about BSE infectivity in
bovine meat and bones could be drawn from this fact. For at the same time
as the Section 4 committees were engaged in their deliberations about the
safety of oral medicines, there was growing evidence that the dominant
analogy between BSE and scrapie was beginning to unravel. For example,
Professor John Collinge27 told the BSE Inquiry Team:
Certainly the appearance in domestic and captive wild cats was a very important
development. It demonstrated that you could no longer really plausibly argue that BSE
was just scrapie in cows with all the same properties. This agent, wherever it had
originated from, had quite different biological properties to scrapie as manifested by the
extended host range of affected species, including things like nyala and kudu as well as
the cats that had not been affected by scrapie before, so far as we were aware (BSE
Inquiry Report, Volume 1, p. 140).
To the extent that this analogy was no longer secure, any conclusion about
the safety of bovine-derived medicines that was based upon it could not be
rationally warranted. Notwithstanding our best efforts to find a rational
basis for the reasoning of the Section 4 committees, this reasoning emerges
as inherently problematic and fallacious. I contend that the neglect of histological differences between meat and bone – such as occurs in the false
attribution of gelatine to meat – and the over-reliance on an analogy between BSE and scrapie reveal the pursuit of a commercial interest over a
public health interest by these committees. Of course, the official role of
these committees was to provide impartial scientific advice on BSE to the
Medicines Division of the Department of Health, the authority responsible
for the licensing of human medicines within the U.K.:
Decision-making28… had to be based on proper evidence and be demonstrably untainted by
departmental and political interests. Officials and Ministers relied heavily on advice from
several committees of outside experts set up under Section 4 of the Medicines Act and
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known as ‘Section 4 committees’. Many of the members were of great eminence in their field
and their advice was almost invariably followed. This was certainly the case in dealing with
BSE (BSE Inquiry Report, Volume 1, p. 167; emphasis added).
Yet, an examination of the actual practice of these committees reveals a
complex process of deliberation in which scientific assessments of risk were
often subordinated to a range of other concerns. Some of these concerns
were legitimate in nature. For example, the decision to exclude bovine
products from human medicines had to be measured against other pressing
concerns, such as the potential for disruption to necessary vaccination
programmes.29 However, other concerns embodied economic, political and
commercial interests that unjustifiably assumed priority over scientific
interests and that motivated, I argue, fallacious reasoning of the type
examined above. Consider in this regard an issue that came to be addressed by many pharmaceutical companies, that of establishing new, nonbovine sources for many of their products. A number of these companies
were represented in person at meetings that were called in order to discuss
the safety of bovine products in human medicines.30 The proposals for
action that resulted from these meetings – most of which required changes
in the sourcing of medicines – entailed a major commitment of expenditure
on the part of pharmaceutical companies. I contend that a reluctance to
undertake this expenditure accounts for some of the more problematic
claims that were made about the safety of bovine products in human
medicines. To see this, we need only examine some of the conclusions of
the Southwood Working Party. The risks posed by bovine material in
vaccines was one of the most vexing issues to be considered by the
Working Party.31 The final draft of the Southwood Report directly addressed those risks – there was a ‘theoretical risk’ of BSE transmission via
medicines. However, the consternation caused by this assessment of risk32
prompted a revision of the section of the report that dealt with the safety
of human medicines. The response in official animal and human health
circles to the pre-publication draft of the Southwood Report and the report’s subsequent rewording were both motivated by a desire to avoid a
vaccine scare amongst the public.33 Such a scare was to be avoided at all
costs, as previous scares had resulted in a number of deaths. Sir Donald
Acheson (Chief Medical Officer, 1983–1991) told the Inquiry Team:
I had in mind a marked and extended previous reduction in the acceptance of whooping
cough vaccine which had followed incorrect public allegations by a scientist that the
administration of the vaccine carried a significant risk of encephalitis. On the one hand I was
aware that during the period 1980–1988, due to incomplete vaccination of our population of
children, there had been 123 deaths from measles and 50 from whooping cough in England,
together with a many times larger burden of illness and some long-term complications (BSE
Inquiry Report, Volume 1, p. 179).
Although it was critically important to avoid a public vaccine scare, the
ultimate motivation for the decision to reword the Southwood Working
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Party’s conclusions on medicinal products, I contend, was the threat of legal
action by the pharmaceutical industry. Licensing officials, whose job it was
to devise guidance for the pharmaceutical industry on the basis of the
Working Party’s report, could either institute non-binding guidelines for
medicines manufacturers (a form of self-regulation) or introduce formal
regulation of the industry. Of these two courses of action, formal regulation
would almost certainly have achieved greater levels of industry compliance.
However, formal regulation would also entail the pharmaceutical industry
incurring huge costs to make the necessary adjustments in their manufacturing procedures. If Southwood and his team were to conclude that there
was a risk – even a theoretical risk – of BSE transmission through medicines,
it is difficult to see how on human health grounds formal regulation could be
avoided. However, formal regulation would almost certainly have been
opposed by the pharmaceutical industry, which would use the absence of an
actual or real risk, as opposed to a theoretical risk, as grounds upon which
to mount a legal challenge. Professor Asscher (Chairman, Committee on
Safety of Medicines) described such a challenge in his statement to the BSE
Inquiry Team:
Licences cannot generally be revoked merely on the basis of a remote and theoretical risk.
Such a revocation would very probably be overturned if legally challenged and we would
never advise Ministers to take formal regulatory action in such circumstances (BSE Inquiry
Report, Volume 7, p. 120).
The avoidance of a public scare about the safety of vaccines, while not
grounds in itself to justify the rewording of the conclusions of the Southwood Working Party, provided a convincing pretext under which licensing
officials could pursue this rewording. In reality, however, their decision to
pursue this rewording was motivated by considerations that were economic
and commercial in nature. Licensing officials reasonably predicted that if
Southwood concluded that there was a risk of BSE transmission through
medicines, pharmaceutical companies would have to substantially revise the
procedures that they used to manufacture these medicines. At a minimum,
this would involve finding alternative sources for the ingredients in a
number of their products.34 Moreover, existing stocks of vaccines, some of
which could last for years,35 would have to be destroyed. The combined cost
of these measures would have been enormous and would have fallen largely
on the companies whose products were affected by them. It could be expected that the pharmaceutical industry would oppose such measures by
legal means, particularly if they were introduced through formal regulation.
The only way to avoid this sequence of events was for licensing officials to
ensure that Southwood and his team avoided making any major pronouncement in which medicines could be seen as a significant vector of the
BSE agent. A rewording of Southwood’s conclusions was sought and
achieved. But while this rewording enabled the government and the pharmaceutical industry to avoid incurring short-term costs,36 an altogether
GIVING SCIENCE A BAD NAME
135
greater cost resulted from their combined actions: an enduring and pervasive distrust of scientific pronouncements, particularly when those pronouncements are made by government ministers and officials.37
PUBLIC UNDERSTANDING OF SCIENCE
I argued above that two ‘new’ fallacies – one involving the failure to use
authority and the other involving the false attribution of a part to a
whole – characterised how certain scientific assessments of risk came to
be interpreted during the BSE crisis. A central claim within my argument
was that commercial and political interests were the cause of this fallacious reasoning – these interests, I contended, came to distort, if not the
actual process of scientific inquiry into BSE, then how the results of that
inquiry came to be interpreted for the wider general public. Specifically, I
argued that a senior representative of the Meat and Livestock Commission had manipulated authority within a campaign of public reassurance
about the safety of beef for human consumption. Also, I claimed that
Section 4 committees were falsely identifying gelatine as a part of meat in
an attempt to avert public anxiety about the BSE risks that were posed
by bovine products in human medicines. In one respect, the public has
almost come to expect the intrusion of commercial and political interests
into issues of a scientific nature.38 This expectation, however, stems more
from an overwhelming cynicism about politics and a pervasive distrust of
the motivations of large corporations than it does from any reasoned
judgement that is based on an examination of scientific inquiry. If this
cynicism and distrust is not to be allowed to erode science’s authority to
pronounce on certain issues, then there must be a concerted effort to
establish a programme of public education that involves the cultivation of
reasoned judgement in relation to scientific issues. An essential component of this judgement, I contend, will be skills of rational criticism, in
particular, skills of fallacy identification and evaluation.
Of course, calls to reasoned judgement are not new. Their most common
manifestation – as the central aim of critical thinking39 – has long been
recognised as a significant educational objective (Krasnican, 1952). Yet,
critical thinking has been largely neglectful of the study of scientific reasoning – ‘scientific reasoning represents an important, neglected area within
critical thinking’ (Boone, 1992, p. 74).40
Moreover, the formal educational orientation of much work in critical
thinking41 limits its usefulness to the much wider educational task of
improving the public’s skills of rational criticism in matters scientific. The
recent emergence of a new field of inquiry, the public understanding of science,
promised to remedy the deficiencies of the critical thinking approach. For now
science was the central focus of examination and the general public the target
of educational efforts. These emphases are reflected in the following mission
136
LOUISE CUMMINGS
statement of the Office on Public Understanding of Science, part of the U.S.
National Academy of Sciences:
The mission of the Office on Public Understanding of Science is to foster the mutual
responsibility of scientists and the media to communicate to the public, with accuracy and
balance, the nature of science and its processes as well as its results.
While it is undoubtedly the case that the public understanding of science
(PUS) has achieved certain gains over the approach of critical thinking,42
the central, rational, critical component of this approach has been largely
neglected by workers in the PUS field. In demonstration of this claim, we
need only consider the following PUS sources. An electronic journal that
has been publishing articles in the public understanding of science since 1992
lacks all mention of the rational criticism and procedures of science in its
scope statement:
Public Understanding of Science43 covers all aspects of the inter-relationships between science (including technology and medicine) and the public. Topics include: surveys of public
understanding of and attitudes towards science and technology; perceptions of science;
popular representations of science; scientific and para-scientific belief systems; science in
schools; history of science education and of popular science; science and the media; science
fiction; scientific lobbying; evaluative studies of science exhibitions and interactive science
centres; scientific information services for the public; popular protest against science (‘antiscience’); science in developing countries and appropriate technology.
Within its ‘vision for the future’, the PUS Office of the U.S. National
Academy of Sciences advances an understanding of the rational character of
science as one of its long-term public education aspirations:
They [Americans] will understand that at its frontiers, science must proceed by trial and
error, contending with ignorance and uncertainty, but ultimately by rational processes can
create new resources and capabilities.
Yet the goals that the National Academy directs to scientists, to the media
and to the general public fail to address issues such as the rational criticism of
science or to examine the rational processes by means of which scientific
inquiry proceeds.44 In the same way in the U.K., an objective of the Public
Understanding of Science, Engineering and Technology team in the Office of
Science and Technology45 is to impart to the public scientific knowledge, in
the absence of which ‘the public will be unable to rationally influence decisions affecting their lives’. However, no strategy or procedure is advanced for
the achievement of this particular rationality objective. Once again, the
picture to emerge is one in which certain critical thinking goals and objectives
are proposed in the absence of even the remotest idea of how to foster the
skills of rational criticism that are essential to the achievement of these goals
and objectives. I described above how the approach of critical thinking could
benefit from the expertise and insights of workers in the public understanding
of science. It can now be seen that these same workers could benefit from
certain skills and insights within a critical thinking approach.
GIVING SCIENCE A BAD NAME
137
The relevance of the above discussion to the specific case of scientific
inquiry into BSE can be stated simply as follows: instruction of the
public on how to rationally evaluate the reasoning of this inquiry can
only properly proceed when the logical, critical techniques of the critical
thinking approach are combined with the scientific, educational aims of
the public understanding of science. In the absence of a sustained effort
to combine the techniques and aims of these disciplines, rational evaluation of the kind of reasoning that was examined previously will remain
outside the critical capacity of the public. Moreover, without such rational evaluation the political and commercial interests that motivated
this reasoning will damage the credibility of science in the long term. It is
not unreasonable to suppose, for example, that today’s distrust of
political and commercial interpretations of science could become tomorrow’s rejection of science itself. Although the present paper is not a
suitable context in which to develop a model of how public rational
criticism of science should proceed, the above discussion has certainly
established the need for a model of this kind and has broadly demonstrated the aims and techniques that such a model should embody.
NOTES
1
Maurice Finocchiaro has performed an extensive analysis of the argumentative structure of
this text. See Finocchiaro (1980).
2
As late as 1689 in France the idea that there existed a bone in man which was the necessary
nucleus of the resurrection body continued to stimulate opposition in the Church to dissection.
3
Vesalius (1514–64) is generally credited with being the founder of the modern science of
anatomy. He died as a result of being shipwrecked whilst undertaking a pilgrimage to the Holy
Land, which was apparently embarked upon to atone for his sin.
4
Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford between 1845–69, criticised Darwin in the Quarterly
Review, declaring that he was guilty of ‘a tendency to limit God’s glory in creation’, that ‘the
principle of natural selection is absolutely incompatible with the word of God’, that it
‘contradicts the revealed relations of creation to its Creator’, that it is ‘inconsistent with the
fullness of his glory’ and that it is ‘a dishonouring view of Nature’ (I.92–95).
5
In the U.K. a recent example of how a lack of trust in government pronouncements can have
implications for public health concerns the question of the safety of the MMR (measles,
mumps, rubella) vaccination. Despite repeated government assurances that this vaccination
isn’t linked to autism in children, parents have opted in large numbers either not to vaccinate
their children at all or to pay for their children to receive individual vaccinations against each of
these childhood diseases. In keeping with what I will argue in the main text, the public’s refusal
to accept these assurances is related, I contend, more to a reluctance to believe any political
interpretation of the science in this area than it is to a reluctance to believe science per se.
6
As an indication of the size of the BSE epidemic, in early 1993, cases were being reported at a
rate of around 1,000 a week. The source of this figure is the report of the BSE Inquiry, headed
by Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers. For nearly three years Lord Phillips and his team
examined all that was known about the history of BSE and new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob
disease, nvCJD, and looked at how these diseases were handled by the British Government and
by others in the period between December 1986 and 20 March 1996. This report provides much
of the factual background of this paper.
138
LOUISE CUMMINGS
7
‘At the time BSE emerged, beef and dairy farming was the largest sector of U.K. agriculture.
The output from milk, fattened cattle and calves totalled some £5 billion, nearly 38 per cent of
the entire U.K. agricultural output. With a cattle population of some 12.7 million, the U.K.
produced 97 per cent of the beef and veal required to supply the needs of the domestic market,
and sufficient liquid milk to supply 100 per cent of domestic demand for milk and almost 70 per
cent of domestic demand for butter and cheese’ (BSE Inquiry Report, Volume 1, p. 23).
8
Mr Gummer was the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food between 1989 and 1993.
9
Mr Colin Maclean, in an MLC press release on 14 May 1990, remarked: ‘All the scientific
evidence–as opposed to rumour, conjecture and guess – provided by leading veterinary surgeons
and scientists in the U.K. and the rest of the EEC has indicated that U.K. beef is perfectly safe to
eat’ (BSE Inquiry Report, Volume 6, p. 363; emphasis added). Dr Pickles, principal medical
officer in the Department of Health, issued in May 1990 a minute to health and local
authorities. It read: ‘The Government have taken advice from the leading scientific experts in
this field. They have consistently advised us that there is no scientific justification to avoid eating
British beef. Beef can be eaten safely by everyone both adults and children including patients
within the NHS’ (BSE Inquiry Report, Volume 6, p. 365; emphasis added). A draft of this
statement, agreed by the Chief Medical Officer, Department of Health Press Office and MAFF,
read: ‘According to the advice of outside experts to the Government there is no scientific
justification to avoid eating British beef. Beef can be eaten safely by everyone both adults and
children [including patients within the NHS]’ (p. 365; emphasis added). In the letter to Lady
Wilcox, mentioned in the main text, Mr Gummer states: ‘British beef is therefore not a public
health risk and can be eaten with complete confidence – a view endorsed by the European
Community’s top scientists’ (Volume 6, p. 368; emphasis added). Finally, in a press release in
May 1990 by the MAFF Food Safety Directorate, the question ‘Isn’t it true that not enough is
known about BSE to ensure the public is protected?’ was addressed as follows: ‘Although BSE
is a recent development, a similar disease in sheep, scrapie, has been studied extensively. That
research provides a solid foundation for dealing with BSE. Our policy has been endorsed by the
EC’s independent scientific advisors’ (Volume 6, p. 370; emphasis added).
10
The closest we can come to calculating the incubation period of spongiform encephalopathies in man is through the study of the iatrogenic transmission of CJD (transmission through
some form of medical treatment or surgery). Such studies have revealed long incubation
periods: ‘Central inoculation through neurosurgery, depth electrodes, corneal graft or dura
mater graft results in disease after a mean incubation period of about 2 years…Peripheral
inoculation through human pituitary derived growth hormone (hGH) or pituitary derived
gonadotrophin (hGnH) results in disease after an incubation period range from a minimum of
4 years to a maximum of at least 30 years with a mean of around 12 years’ (Will, 1993, p. 963).
Given these long incubation periods, even if BSE was transmissible to humans, it would be
many years before science would be in a position to confirm this fact.
11
Woods and Walton (1974a) remark of such epistemologies: ‘A common tendency is to lump
everything not dignified by the title ‘‘objective knowledge’’ into the category of speculation,
something devoutly to be avoided when engaged in scientific pursuits. It is this sort of
dichotomy that we urge resistance against. Whilst there may be an important sense in which
opinion-based conclusions are ‘‘subjective’’, we would point out that such conclusions are very
much a part of ongoing scientific practice, that they admit of scientific treatment and
characterization, and that in no event are they simply to be equated with raw speculation or
random guesswork. In fact, we see no compelling reason for supposing that a judgement from
expertise can never be knowledge. Is all knowledge objective knowledge?’ (p. 145).
12
An example of a mundane epistemology is Nicholas Rescher’s dialectics, a controversyoriented approach to the theory of knowledge. For Rescher, the concept of presumption
assumes epistemological significance on account of its association with rational controversy,
which is the basis of Rescher’s epistemology: ‘In rational controversy, there must always be
some impartially fixed common ground determining what is to count as evidence. This leads
straightaway into the topic of presumption’ (1977, p. 30; emphasis in original).
GIVING SCIENCE A BAD NAME
13
139
Given that in any ad verecundiam argument, appeal is made to an expert individual or to a
group of expert individuals, and given that traditional epistemologies eschew the subjectivity of
such an appeal, ad verecundiam is invariably fallacious for fallacy theorists of a traditional
epistemological bent.
14
‘The most blatant of the fallacious appeals to authority occur where a legitimate expert in a
given area makes a judgement that does not fall within it, but where added credibility is given to
his judgment simply by virtue of his being an expert in some area’ (Woods and Walton, 1974a,
p. 143; emphasis in original).
15
‘…presumptions, though possessed of significant probative weight, will in general be
defeasible – i.e., subject to defeat in being overthrown by sufficiently weighty countervailing
considerations’ (Rescher, 1977, p. 31).
16
Rescher characterises presumptive truth as follows: ‘…to assert P as a presumption is to say
no more than that P is potentially or presumptively true – that it is a truth-candidate – but does
not say that P is actually true, that it is a truth’ (1977, p. 42; emphases in original).
17
The shift from a hyperbolic epistemology, with its emphasis on objective, certain knowledge,
to a presumption-based mundane epistemology has effected a shift in standards of argument
evaluation. Arguments that were previously judged to be unacceptable in accordance with
deductive standards of inference are now deemed to be acceptable within a presumptive
framework. Indeed, this very shift has come to characterise much recent fallacy evaluation. Also
within recent fallacy evaluation, it is argued that fallacious variants of many of the informal
fallacies come about when an argument, which is presumptive in nature, is presented as being
deductive. Walton (1995) comments on this in the case of ad verecundiam argument as follows:
‘What is wrong is that instead of being presented (appropriately) as a defeasible, presumptive
inference – which is open to critical questioning by its nature – the argument from expert
opinion is presented as if it were a tight deductive inference that the respondent cannot
question’ (p. 282).
18
Various expert committees and working parties were established in order to advise successive
British governments on the animal and human health implications of BSE. For example, the
Southwood Working Party, whose terms of reference were ‘to advise on the implications of
Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and matters relating thereto’, consisted of a professor of
zoology (Sir Richard Southwood, Chairman of the Working Party), a professor of virology
(Anthony Epstein), a clinical neurologist (Sir John Walton) and a veterinarian (Dr William B
Martin). The Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC), whose terms of
reference were ‘to advise the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Department
of Health on matters relating to spongiform encephalopathies’, had the following members: Dr
Tyrrell (Director of the Medical Research Council Common Cold Unit, Chairman of SEAC),
Dr Will (Director of the CJD Surveillance Unit), Dr Watson (Director of the Central Veterinary
Laboratory, 1986–90), Dr Kimberlin (independent consultant in transmissible spongiform
encephalopathies since 1988), Professor Fred Brown (a virologist), Professor Ingrid Allen (a
neuropathologist), Professor Richard Barlow (pathologist and veterinarian), Mr David Pepper
(veterinary surgeon), Dr William Hueston (epidemiologist, joined SEAC upon Professor
Barlow’s resignation), Professor John Pattison (a medical microbiologist), Professor John
Collinge (Head of the Neurogenetics Unit at St Mary’s Imperial College School of Medicine),
Dr Michael Painter (a consultant in communicable disease control), Professor Peter Smith
(human epidemiologist and statistician), Professor Jeff Almond (virologist and immunologist)
and Mr Ray Bradley (Head of Pathology Department at CVL between 1983 and 1995 and
coordinator of BSE Research at CVL between 1987 and 1995).
19
This has been disputed, however. For example, in an article entitled ‘A Culture of Secrecy
that Risked Our Lives’ in the Sunday Times on 29 October 2000, Jonathan Carr Brown argues
that ‘The Southwood working party did not contain a single expert in prions. Phillips [chairman
of the BSE Inquiry] declines to comment on this glaring omission’ (p. 12). Within the context of
the current discussion I will not examine the charge that the Southwood working party lacked
necessary expertise in prions, the abnormal protein posited to be the disease entity in all
140
LOUISE CUMMINGS
spongiform encephalopathies. This charge was not supported by the independent BSE inquiry
that was conducted by Lord Phillips and his team (the quotation makes this clear). As such, it is
an unsubstantiated charge by a single journalist that does not pose a serious threat to the
tenability of the claim that this working party embodied adequate expertise.
20
In an article entitled ‘Transmissible Encephalopathies in Animals’, submitted for publication
in the Canadian Journal of Veterinary Research in June 1989, Dr Kimberlin refers to the
possibility of a change in the agent on crossing the species barrier, a change which could put
humans at risk of transmission from cattle.
21
Section 4 committees were so named on account of their establishment under Section 4 of the
Medicines Act 1968. These committees consisted of eminent outside experts who provided
advice to the Medicines Division – the body that was responsible for the licensing of medicines
in the U.K. – within the Department of Health. The main section 4 committees that advised on
human medicinal products at risk from BSE were the Committee on Safety of Medicines
(CSM), the Committee on Dental and Surgical Materials (CDSM), and the Committee on
Review of Medicines (CRM). Two subcommittees of the CSM played a key role: the Biologicals
Sub-Committee (BSC) and the specially constituted BSE Working Group (BSEWG).
22
This analogy with scrapie can be stated briefly as follows: BSE and scrapie disease in
sheep are similar in essential respects; scrapie hasn’t transmitted to man; therefore, BSE
won’t transmit to man. See Cummings (2002) for discussion of the role of this scrapie
analogy in BSE inquiry.
23
The minor premise of this argument is supported through a chain of premises that terminates
in an analogy with scrapie – it is safe to eat meat because BSE doesn’t transmit to humans and
BSE doesn’t transmit to humans because it is similar to scrapie that hasn’t transmitted to
humans. Professor Sir William Asscher, chairman of the Committee on Safety of Medicines
(one of the Section 4 committees), told the BSE Inquiry Team that, while the Committee was
concerned about the use of parenteral products (human growth hormone, dura mater implants,
etc.), the very fact that scrapie had not transmitted to man gave reassurances that BSE was
unlikely to be acquired orally.
24
Gelatine is a colourless, transparent, jelly-like material that is derived from collagen and that
is obtained by boiling animal bones.
25
The proposition ‘meat is safe to eat’ was not known to be true during the BSE crisis. That
fact is indicated by the BSE Inquiry Team through their use of the hypothetical conditional
construction ‘if it was safe to eat meat, it must be safe for humans to eat the minimal amount of
bovine material contained in oral medicines’.
26
In the decades preceding the emergence of BSE in cattle, Dr William Hadlow – a veterinary
neuropathologist – had demonstrated that ovine meat (skeletal muscle) and ovine bone marrow
had similar levels of scrapie infectivity, along with tissues such as heart, lung and kidney.
Moreover, all these tissues were considerably less infective for scrapie than ovine brain and
spinal cord.
27
John Collinge is Professor of Molecular Neurogenetics at St. Mary’s Hospital, London. He
has been a member of the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee since December
1995.
28
The decision-making referred to here is that undertaken by ‘officials and ministers’. To the
extent, however, that Section 4 committees provided these officials and ministers with the
evidence upon which decisions were taken, this evidence also needed to be ‘demonstrably
untainted by departmental and political interests’.
29
‘There were two principal arguments against immediate withdrawal of stocks. The first was
the difficulty of procuring sufficient guaranteed ‘clean’ stocks to maintain the vaccination
programme or provide life-preserving medication. Many of the contemporary documents and
the statements we [the Inquiry Team] saw emphasised the difficulty of replacing stocks
overnight. In particular, ‘growing’ batches of vaccines was a lengthy process. For this reason,
stocks tended to be built up and kept for a number of years ahead’ (BSE Inquiry Report,
Volume 1, p. 179).
GIVING SCIENCE A BAD NAME
30
141
‘On 16 May 1988 the NIBSC [National Institute for Biological Standards and Control]
organised a discussion about BSE to consider what the disease might mean for medicines
using biological material. The meeting was attended by Mr Wilesmith, the CVL [Central
Veterinary Laboratory] epidemiologist, Dr Kimberlin from the NPU [Neuropathogenesis
Unit], Dr Rosalind Ridley and Dr Harry Baker from the MRC’s [Medical Research
Council] Clinical Research Centre, and Dr A J Beale and Dr A J M Garland from Wellcome’
(BSE Inquiry Report, Volume 1, p. 171; emphasis added).
31
‘The potential risks from parenteral injection had been one of the Working Party’s most
serious worries’ (BSE Inquiry Report, Volume 1, p. l78).
32
Mr Scollen (MAFF Animal Health Division) gave a graphic account in a minute to Mr
Cruickshank (responsible for MAFF’s Animal Health Group) of reaction to the final draft of
the section of the Southwood Report dealing with medicines: ‘There was general dismay at the
drafting, which tends to highlight the (theoretical) risk via medicines and to relegate the
qualification that the risk is remote’ (BSE Inquiry Report, Volume 1, p. l74).
33
Mr Scollen believed that even a revised version of the Southwood Report would trigger a
negative public reaction. In the same minute to Mr Cruickshank that was mentioned in endnote
32, Mr Scollen remarked: ‘Even if the report is modified in the light of these reactions, its
appearance seems likely to trigger a need for a major public relations job which takes full
account of the medicines angle’ (BSE Inquiry Report, Volume 1, p. 174).
34
The minutes of a meeting of the BSE Working Group, held on 10 January 1990, read: ‘It was
considered after some discussion that negotiations should take place to ensure that sources are
changed as soon as possible and to replace existing stocks with new material whenever feasible.
Replacement of Wellcome unadsorbed DTP vaccine, by Wellcome adsorbed vaccine should
ensure that the former, which is not much used, is replaced earlier than 1991. In the case of the
Tuberculin PPD, no other source is available at present, but the company (Evans) should be
asked to move over to the new product and replace stocks as soon as this is feasible’ (BSE
Inquiry Report, Volume 1, p. 185).
35
Professor Asscher explained to the BSE Inquiry that ‘manufacturers tended to keep large
stocks of existing vaccines which, in some cases, were likely not to be exhausted for as much as
5 years’ (BSE Inquiry Report, Volume 7, p. 128).
36
These short-term economic gains overlook completely the long-term costs to the state of
caring for someone with new variant CJD. On the basis of witness statements given to the BSE
Inquiry, the Economics and Operational Research Division of the Department of Health has
estimated that the average cost of care per patient in 2000 was £20,288. Additional expenditure
includes a compensation package worth many millions of pounds that was pledged by the
government in 2000 to support the families of nvCJD victims.
37
In addition to the human casualties (victims of new variant CJD) of the BSE story, Lord
Phillips remarks that ‘the other casualty of the BSE story has been the destruction of the
credibility of government pronouncements’ (BSE Inquiry Report, Volume 1, p. 22).
38
This expectation is referred to in a minute from Mr Scollen to Mr Cruickshank: ‘While I
have no doubts about the Working Group’s staged approach and the balance to be struck
between risks and benefits to human health, this will not be the easiest position to present to a
potentially critical public prone to seeing the influence of commercial interests’ (BSE Inquiry
Report, Volume 1, p. 175; emphasis added).
39
Woods and Walton (1974b) characterise the basic goal of critical thinking as the ‘creation of
an underlying competence favourable to the critical, reasoned, logical evaluation of beliefs and
values’ (p. 84; emphasis added).
40
Boone is reviewing a book which is exceptional in respect of its recognition of the
contribution that the study of scientific reasoning can make to improving critical thinking skills:
‘It [Understanding Scientific Reasoning] now also serves the widely recognized goals of improving
critical thinking skills and contributing to general scientific literacy’ (Giere, 1991, p. iii).
41
Formal education has been the emphasis of both early and late work in the field of critical
thinking: ‘We recommend the systematic incorporation of the teaching of critical thinking...in
142
LOUISE CUMMINGS
educational curricula and especially in teacher training…’ (Woods and Walton, 1974b, p. 84);
‘The Critical Thinking movement aims at cultivating thinking abilities in students at all
educational levels’ (Govier, 1989, p. 1l6); a broad liberal education is central to John Mc Peck’s
conception of critical thinking: ‘In our society, at least since the time of Thomas Jefferson, the
chief purpose of schools has been to produce an informed citizenry, capable of making
intelligent decisions about the problems which might face it’ (1990, p. 29).
42
Not, of course, that such gains were ever an avowed aim of workers in the public
understanding of science.
43
Public Understanding of Science is published by the Institute of Physics, a member of the
Science Council and a nominated body of the Engineering Council which is being replaced by
the Engineering and Technology Board and Engineering Council (U.K.).
44
The goals that the National Academy directs to scientists are (1) to inform scientists about
research in public understanding of science, (2) to enlist more scientists in efforts to
communicate to a broad public and (3) to identify and disseminate effective strategies for
presenting results, uncertainties and challenges. The goals directed to both scientists and media
are (1) to establish links between scientists and professional communicators (print and
electronic media), (2) to assess current portrayals of scientific work, both its content and
characterization, in the media and (3) to develop tools and resources to facilitate communication, in particular via electronic means. Finally, the goals that the Academy directs to the
general public are (1) to increase their appreciation of science through innovative communication strategies, (2) to provide opportunities for discussions with scientists about scientific
issues relating to their daily lives and (3) to seek their feedback about the effectiveness of various
communication mechanisms.
45
An office within the U.K.’s Department of Trade and Industry.
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GIVING SCIENCE A BAD NAME
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