IF YOU have a tricky bit of policy you need to sell, try reaching for some scientific words 鈥� whether or not research actually backs up your claims.
This tactic has been a favourite of the UK government in recent years. At the start of the covid-19 pandemic, it resisted calls for social distancing measures, as had already been implemented in some other countries. The reason given was that policies such as lockdowns would be unworkable because people would experience 鈥渂ehavioural fatigue鈥�, a sciencey-sounding concept supposedly based on research in psychology, but which scientists advising the government later disowned. 鈥淚f you look in the literature, you won鈥檛 find it because it doesn鈥檛 exist,鈥� one told the BBC in July 2020.
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Now, the UK government is using the same playbook for its new policy towards asylum seekers, which calls for 鈥渟cientific methods鈥� to assess whether those who are unaccompanied and say they are children are under 18. These are age-assessment methods with a veneer of science, involving X-rays or DNA methylation, that probably sounded fantastically scientific in the corridors of power, but when it comes to proving they work 鈥� what some might call 鈥渢he science bit鈥� 鈥� they are sorely lacking.
It鈥檚 not just politicians in the UK who wield the stamp of pseudoscience. The European Union鈥檚 peculiar carbon accounting allows it to claim that biomass is a renewable energy source, when in plain language it generally means burning trees, a practice that actually fuels climate change. And last year, law-makers in Texas banned abortion beyond six weeks of pregnancy if a doctor could detect a 鈥渇etal heartbeat鈥�, a medical-sounding term that .
It is right that democratically elected politicians should make decisions by weighing scientific evidence as a factor, rather than simply 鈥渇ollowing the science鈥�. But as Fiona Fox, head of the UK鈥檚 Science Media Centre, says on page 27, government science must truly be science, not just political spin. Throwing in a few choice phrases to 鈥渟cience things up鈥� isn鈥檛 good enough.