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When the ‘green’ argument was still struggling for respectability,
established scientists used to assert confidently that practices such as
dumping waste in the sea or allowing radioactive emissions were ‘safe’. What
they didn’t say was that science and the data on which it was built
contained inherent uncertainties which had been ignored or understated.

A successful strategy for environmentalists was simply to highlight these
concealed uncertainties. Exposing them inevitably undermined the case for
the practices, and often the wider credibility of the scientific
institutions supporting the exaggerated claims of safety. This was
important, for example, in Greenpeace’s successful campaign against the
dumping of radioactive waste at sea in the early 1980s.

Despite the jibe that green activists were ‘anti-science’, these campaigns
would be better described as ‘pro-science’ because they demanded a more
rigorous treatment of those inherent uncertainties. This was in marked
contrast to the pro-dumping lobby, which for political reasons subordinated
essential aspects of good science – such as acknowledgement of uncertainty
and openness to criticism.

However, uncertainty in the data exposing a lack of scientific ‘proof’ of
safety can equally well be used as a lack of ‘proof’ of harm. So in the
1980s the British government and scientists from the Central Electricity
Generating Board demanded more research on acid rain, arguing that existing
scientific data, which was good enough for most other countries, was too
uncertain.

Although the green view is now more generally accepted, the onus is still on
environmentalists to prove that a threat exists. The possibility or even
likelihood that present practice may pose a threat is not considered enough
to shift ‘business as usual’ attitudes. For example, the conflict between
environmentalists, scientists and those controlling the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change is not over the basic credibility of models of
global warming in which greenhouse gases are the culprits. It is over the
extent of the threat and the urgency of serious policy responses. The
opinions of mainstream scientists lie somewhere between those of Jeremy
Leggett, the Greenpeace scientist who asserts that the uncertainties in the
model leave open the possibility of irreversible climatic disaster and a
larger possible global error cost if the world ignores the signals, and of
scientists representing industrial interests who say the uncertainties are
such that climate change could be significantly less serious, giving no
case for costly major changes of policy.

The bone of contention, then, seems to be scientific uncertainty, and how it
should be recognised and interpreted in government policy making. The most
important point to emerge may be that the interpretation of uncertainties in
and around such scientific models has been seen as a scientific matter, for
scientists alone to resolve, when actually it is a process riddled with
social and political implications, and requires wider debate. This should
be as well informed as possible about the technical details and limitations
of the models, but not falsely determined by them. Where the environment is
at risk, there is no clear-cut boundary between science and policy.

Scientific uncertainty is not the only factor contributing to differing
interpretations. Ignorance also plays a part, but Britain has evolved a
culture of ‘good science’ which is so narrowly constructed that it cannot
accommodate ignorance and the complex interactions in the environment. This
has led policy makers to an inbuilt bias against environmental protection.

Take, for example, the case of industrial discharges, which illustrates a
crucial confusion in existing thinking that does not distinguish between
scientific uncertainty and ignorance. British policy on this issue has been
dominated by the ‘assimilative approach’ – defining scientifically the
capacity of an ecosystem to assimilate pollutants and then licensing
discharges within these ‘safe’ margins. Environmentalists have criticised
this approach because it reduces the recognised possible environmental
effects to a few observable end results such as lethal dose, or induction of
disease in fish, and then asks whether cause-and-effect chains can be
observed between these selected effects and the discharge of given
chemicals.

This model makes policy look scientifically precise, but only by excluding
the possibility of other end effects, indirect effects or interactions
between chemicals – or indeed, between chemicals and other factors. It may
be able to specify the uncertainties within this reduced scientific
framework, but the larger uncertainties – even about whether the right terms
and parameters have been identified – are buried. Such wider uncertainties
are better termed ignorance. They encircle the science rather than being
encircled by it.

Science aspires to operate the principles originally described by the
American sociologist Robert Merton in the 1950s – openness, impartiality and
self-criticism. In principle, one might expect these qualities to have
inspired a widespread recognition and treatment of uncertainties. However,
they represent an ideal that is not reflected in reality and not well
recognised even by the scientists themselves.

In practice, any field of scientific research is characterised by particular
basic methods, models and their related assumptions. These become part of
the identity of that field, and instead of being subject to critical
scrutiny, act as the criteria by which new approaches or claims are
critically assessed. Thus compromises are struck between critical openness
and dogmatic closedness. What becomes institutionalised as ‘good science’ is
therefore a product of culture as well as intellectual principles. In
Britain the culture which has predominated, inevitably influencing
environmental policies, has been largely reductionist – that is, breaking
down an area into its smallest components in the belief that only these
directly observable and measurable parts matter. It often takes the view
that factors have no significance unless they can be tied directly into a
cause-and-effect relationship. The consequence is that research with a high
degree of control over the system being studied – enabling precise
observation of the behavioural correlations between a small number of
variables – becomes equated with ‘good science’.

As we will see, a different approach to environmental policy prevails in
Germany or Scandinavia. Yet British policy makers, aided and abetted by a
particular science policy culture, have browbeaten environmentalists and
their own counterparts in Europe with the condescending attitude that only
the British approaches were based on ‘good’ (meaning reductionist) science,
as if this were the only possible path. These attitudes have not only left
Britain with a damaged international reputation as an environmental laggard,
they have also left the country way behind in the development of many types
of clean technology that could be valuable export earners.

An example from marine pollution illustrates just how limiting reductionism
can be. Volkert Dethlevsen, a German marine scientist studying eels in the
North Sea, revealed that 80 per cent of blood samples from specimens caught
in a contaminated area contained bacteria, compared with 4 per cent in an
equivalent sample from an uncontaminated area. At the time there were no
observable disorders, such as tumours, that corresponded with the levels of
bacteria, so no cause-and-effect relationship between the contamination and
the eels’ health was considered to have been established. However, from a
different point of view, high bacterial counts could be considered
indicative of an impaired immune system. In the longer term such an
impairment can be a precursor to the development of tumours or other damage,
even if the final step is triggered by another, perhaps natural factor.

Such indirect or multiple causation is invisible from the reductionist
perspective of ‘good science’. While it attempts to give precise answers
which can be used to support the idea of an ecosystem’s assimilative
capacity, it also precludes richer forms of reasoning that may be just as
well founded in the available evidence.

However, the culture of science is not fixed, and differences between
certain countries in how they construe and use science show that a different
‘good science’ is possible which lives up to Merton’s principles of science.
German scientists, for instance, are much more likely than their British
counterparts to accept multiple interactions and composite variables such as
the health of an organism’s immune system, stress and disease, which are
intrinsically less precise and reductionist. A German ecologist called
Sinderman identified 18 different factors, both natural and caused by
humans, which could singly or in combination result in stress on marine
species. He noted that ‘disease therefore has to be understood as an
unspecified response towards all (these) kinds of stress’. This principle
is well recognised in human medicine and informs environmental science
policy in Germany and elsewhere. In these countries the scientific culture
still attempts, as in Britain, to differentiate and quantify the effect of
the constituent variables as far as possible, but it does not discount the
larger picture of possible interactions simply because it may not be
possible to specify the complexities of a composite variable like stress or
immunocompetence completely.

Reductionism also pervades wider areas of British science. A year ago a
working group of the Advisory Committee on Science and Technology, which
advises the Prime Minister, published a report on environmental research and
development (excluding clean production) in Britain which showed that it
was dominated by physics-based disciplines, which alone account for 46 per
cent of it. Perhaps even more telling was the finding that of the 34 per
cent spent on biological sciences, more than two-thirds was laboratory-based
molecular biology.

Molecular biology is a fast-growing area with more and more industrial
applications. While the effects of those products on the environment are
not properly understood, they are sanctioned by the culture of ‘good
science’. But no matter how good the molecular biology is in its own terms,
its very control and precision is its downfall when it comes to
environmental policy. For example, no basis has been developed for
understanding what might happen to genetically manipulated organisms (GMOs)
when released into the environment. From the reductionist basis of genetics
even the properties of whole organisms are a black hole of ignorance.

PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLES

What is needed is a different, ‘greener’ culture of good science. As well as
giving a greater value to areas of science such as ecology which consider
the environment in its broader context, it would value the usefulness of
observation and, crucially, embody a wider responsibility which
incorporated the recognition of ignorance. This culture would expose the
false presumptions about the safety of intervening in natural processes that
result from an implicit neglect of ignorance. It would lead to environmental
protection through the wise use and negotiation of a precautionary
principle.

The precautionary principle demands that the environment must not be left to
show harm before action is taken. The burden of proof is shifted from those
seeking to protect the environment to the polluter. Although the
precautionary approach has been labelled ‘unscientific’ and unworkable, the
same criticism can be levelled with equal validity at the assimilative
approach: there is often no reason why particular measurable properties are
chosen; indirect causation is easily overlooked, and interactions between
elements are excluded, even though they have been accepted in principle as
important.

No scientific method will ever be able to ask all the right questions about
what we do to the environment, let alone find the answers. Science does not
give absolute proof; it is intrinsically ‘soft’ and its results are always
open to interpretation. This will be true even for a greener science which
struggles against reductionism. Rather than commit society to the blind
faith that scientific knowledge can and does address all uncertainties,
mature and rational policy should recognise the inherent limitations of
scientific knowledge. A greener science would make these limitations
explicit, and so promote more critical public debate about the interventions
in nature that are made in the name of economic necessity.

IGNORANCE ISN’T BLISS

The implications of ignorance in any particular field of science are even
more rarely debated. Thus when field trials are set up to investigate the
releases of GMOs, the assumption is that the parameters and effects being
observed are the important ones. Such scientific ignorance is particularly
insidious when research leads to policy. In the case of GMOs, for example,
it will allow experimentation in the wider environment to be pronounced
fully scientifically evaluated and safe, when by definition it can only be
safe according to the body of existing knowledge available to the scientists
on the licensing committee.

Existing science and policy institutions appear blind to these inevitable
limitations. The economic interests which benefit from this cultural myopia
– such as the chemicals industry which has viewed dumping in the seas and
rivers as a cheap method of waste disposal, and the new biotechnology
industries seeking to release GMOs – wish to maintain it as the only
conceivable rationale. The deeply dogmatic nature of these commitments sits
uneasily with the notion of science as open and self-critical: science knows
it cannot provide unequivocal evidence of safety.

A greener science would not demand certainty before intervening in the
environment. On the contrary, it would make the uncertainties of scientific
knowledge explicit and encourage rather than obstruct a wider public debate
about the dangers and benefits of pursuing a certain path. Science would
help to inform a debate involving an open consideration of social, economic
and political factors, and give those who stood to lose from a certain
course of action as much chance to participate as those who stood to gain.
So advisory committees on pesticides or the release of GMOs into the
environment would not be dominated by scientists – as they are at present,
giving a false impression of scientifically evaluated safety – but include
much wider representation from society.

The currently dominant forms of science in Britain also conceal substantial
political influence, often to the ultimate detriment of the environment. If
those controlling the budgets have vested interests, the balance of evidence
may be heavily biased against environmental protection. For example, in
Britain today it is difficult to obtain independent scientific opinion on
nuclear issues. Many nominally independent scientists and institutions
perform research funded by the nuclear industry, and this tends to narrow
their view of uncertainty and ignorance.

We are not suggesting that scientists are deliberately manipulating their
presentation of scientific understanding in ways which are environmentally
harmful. What we do say is that there should be recognition that there is
room for legitimate negotiation in scientific principles – such as the
burden of proof, measurement and classification – and that limitations such
as uncertainty and ignorance are embedded in any culture of good science.
The agenda of science should also be decided by a larger, more questioning
forum which keeps environmental protection firmly in mind. Thus research
priorities might change from waste disposal techniques to waste reduction,
or from nuclear power to renewable energy and energy conservation. For
Britain this would have the added advantage of stimulating innovation and
thereby reaping economic benefits which have too often been left to
countries that are more forward-looking in their attitude to environmental
protection. However, merely giving greater influence to apparently less
reductionist science would not be sufficient to address the fundamental
issue. A greener science would be meaningless without a greener
institutional context in which the science was defined and operated.

The growth of environmental commitment has been inspired by more than the
belief that the physical environment is threatened. Policy culture has
become scientistic: it gives credibility to opinion only when it is defined
in scientific language, which may not be adequate to describe human and
social experiences, and this has alienated many people. This is not usually
the fault of scientists themselves; it is a function of the form of
science, including social science, that has been allowed to dominate. In
this sense even scientists innocent of the development of scientism become
implicated by their lack of critical reflection and open debate of these
issues.

A key dimension of ‘greener’ science would therefore be new institutional
and intellectual forms of science which can interact positively with new,
more sustainable economic, cultural and technological dimensions of society,
rather than inadvertently working against them. It is irresponsible to
dismiss this attempt to recognise science in its wider context as
unscientific, as it accords science a necessary, responsible but redefined
role in a wider challenge it has yet to fully recognise.

Brian Wynne is research director of the Centre for the Study of
Environmental Change, University of Lancaster. Sue Mayer is director of
science at Greenpeace UK. Next week New ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ will carry an opposing
view from an industrial scientist.