Unsound Science

A friend sent a mind-altering article my way this afternoon. The L.A. Times reports that Jim Tozzi, a renowned Beltway lobbyist whose clients over the years have ranged from Big Tobacco to almost every major chemical company seeking to void EPA, OSHA and other health and safety regulations, has joined up with medical marijuana activists to reverse federal prosecutions against people who use the banned substance, prosecutions that were recently upheld by the Supreme Court.

Steph Sherer of Oakland-based Americans for Safe Access wants to use Tozzi’s “Data Quality Act” to claim the government ban ignores reams of medical evidence that smoking dope can ease pain, ameliorate migraines and mitigate the symptoms of chemotherapy. The Data Quality Act, a single paragraph that Tozzi slipped into a 2000 appropriations bill on behalf of his clients, allows anyone to challenge scientific findings that lead to government regulations. It's primarily a tool for big business.

I was enjoying thinking about Tozzi's involvement in this creative use of his pernicious law (Tozzi, now 67, was a budding jazz musician in his formative years; is he trying to recapture some of the joys of his youth?). But then the latest issue of the American Journal of Public Health crossed my desk. An article by Lisa Bero and her colleagues at the University of California at San Francisco entitled “Legislating ‘Sound Science’: The Role of the Tobacco Industry” documents how Philip Morris in the 1990s initiated a campaign to discredit the researcher who documented the connection between second-hand smoke and lung cancer. The capstone of that campaign was Tozzi’s Data Quality Act.

In the past several weeks, the Republican/big business sound science campaign hit a new low. Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, launched an investigation of three scientists who have been on the forefront of documenting the rapid rise in temperatures across the globe. Barton's merely “seeking data,” according to the committee spokesman.

In other words, rather than letting the normal processes of peer-reviewed science and exchange of data between scientists drive the scientific process, the pro-oil industry lobby has borrowed a page from Big Tobacco. First get your hands on the data, and then turn it over to friendly scientists to recast it as either wrong or indeterminate while you publicly castigate the researchers as propagating “unsound science.” When you release your "findings," do it preferably via press release from a friendly Congressional committee, rather than trying to get it published in a refereed scientific journal.

Earlier this week, fellow Republican Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), chairman of the House Science Committee, demanded Barton call off the dogs in his “misguided and illegitimate investigation.” Apparently, even some Republicans are getting tired of right-wing attacks on the Enlightenment.