I just finished reading a wonderful, thought-provoking book last night. The author, Roger A. Pielke, Jr., is Professor in the Environmental Studies Program and Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Univ. Colorado at Boulder. The book, The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics examines the interaction between science, policy, and politics; how and why the traditional ivory tower cannot suffice in the modern juncture of the three; and how and why scientists should adopt a more general, modern world view for the benefit of society.

The author posits that there are four positions a scientist can take to contribute to decision making in a (assumed) democratic society. The roles are that of the Pure Scientist: one who remains aloof of the political discourse and deposits knowledge into the public domain, hoping for some "trickle down" effect that those discoveries will help decision-makers in prescribing a policy; the Science Arbiter: one who directly interacts with the decision-makers, but whose interaction is solely passive, who provides answers to positive questions (questions about "what is"; as opposed to normative questions, those about "what ought to be") and explains the consequences of those answers; the Issue Advocate: one who joins the political discussion pushing for a desired course of action; and the Honest Broker of Policy Alternatives (we'll just call this the Honest Broker in seq.): one who interprets the science and actively provides the decision-makers all possible courses of actions and their related consequences.

Pielke makes the point in his book that, while the roles of pure scientist and science arbiter have their place in society, those roles are only appropriate in limited circumstances where a course of action is uniquely decided by facts, where the questions of ethics, moral imperative, or otherwise human values either do not come up or comes up in such a way that the parties engaged in the discussion are predisposed to agree. He calls those circumstances Tornado Politics, i.e. if a rational group of people is confronted with information that a tornado may or may not be heading their way, the decision on whether to seek shelter (a policy) can be uniquely forced by finding out the verity of the weather phenomenon (a fact), because the predominant expectation is that human beings look to preserve their lives (the non-conflicting human value).

But most situations in politics, the author contends, finds more similarity with Abortion Politics, where when a group of rational people in a democracy is confronted with the choice about whether to allow abortion in their community, the most reasonable course of action is to first propose several alternatives, possibly seek a compromise, and then take a vote. The question of abortion is inherently one tied to conflicting moral and ethical values (pro-life vs. pro-choice) [of course, we are conveniently disregarding cases of medical emergency etc.] and the political debate is not one where presentation of facts can solve. It is important to note that the process of reaching a concensus in the two circumstances are rather disjoint: it would be just as absurd to take a vote on whether to seek shelter for fear of an incoming tornado without discovering more facts about the tornado, as to summon a scientific panel about medical technology in abortion clinics to decide whether abortions should be allowed.

The prime difference between tornado politics and abortion politics is that in the former, opinions can be swayed given sufficient evidence (I can see the tornado coming in from the south and it is approaching fast!), whereas in the latter, the opinions are so deeply rooted as a fundamental belief that no amount of scientific facts can change them.

From this observation (that politically sensitive issues are more often abortion politics rather than tornado politics), Pielke asserts that the way mainstream scientists often maintain our position "above the fray" is counterproductive to the public good. He argues that in the case of abortion politics, it makes more sense for scientists to take on the role of an honest broker, and present all scientificly sound courses of action, and let the politicians fight it out by making a compromise between their values. The point being that often our myoptic human kind cannot see past the immediate black-and-white valuation and sometime a more objective approach can present an alternative policy on which a compromise can be reached.

In discussion of how scientists adopted the ostensible attitude of separation of politics with sciense, Pielke goes back to the original proposition of Vannevar Bush which, in a post WWII America, urges the government to provide funds for "basic research" (a.k.a. pure science) under the assumption that there is a linear pipeline in how science affects society, that basic research leads to applied research, which leads to development of products, which leads to public benefit. Pielke argues that this world view is too simplistic, and it only worked for the latter half of the twentieth century because of the Cold War and of WWII. During the Cold War, the United States' political stance of containment forces us into an arms race against the Soviet Union. In that context, technological advances are sought as a precursor to military prowness and thus, as justification for American foreign policy. With "basic research" already contributed to the making of the atomic bomb, the military feels confident that more of the same cannot go wrong. Furthermore, after the end of WWII, the only major Western power to retain most of its economic infrastructure is the United States. Having decades of "headstart" in a sense made the United States the de facto economic leader of the world, and this economic prosperity allowed the American people to adopt a more laissez-faire attitude toward government spending on science. But at present, neither of those reasons are true: the Cold War has ended and the American economy is in a slump. It is no wonder that the policy for the funding of science is undergoing a change--the original premise was wrong anyway, and now there is not reason to overlook that error.

In light of this, Pielke advocates that scientists should engage themselves in policy decision, either as an issue advocate or as an honest broker. He argues that fostering the relation between politics and science is what will do the most good for both arenas.

Along the lines of his argument, he also touched on issues such as stealth issue advocacy, an issue advocate who disguises his opinion in the skin of pure scientist and/or science arbiter; the confounding of tornado and abortion politics, sometimes deliberately for political gain; and more. He also illustrated these discussion with real world examples such as the decision to go to war in Iraq and the can of worms opened by the book The Skeptical Environmentalist.

The presentation of the material is pedagogical, and the argument clear. Exposition is supplemented by examples. The case studies presented are exceptional for giving insight into the argument. For the "basic researchers", the writing might be a bit repetitive, I feel that sometimes paragraphs are devoted to concepts that can be easily explained in one or two sentences; of course, it is better to err on clarity then on conciseness. Sometimes I cannot help but wonder whether the models he presented is too simplistic and limited in scope, but I suppose such meta-discussions should be relegated to another tome or to the large body of literature in that particular field of study. In mathematical language, Pielke convincingly reduced the physical problem to his model, and his thorough analysis of the model problem provides valuable intuition for dealing with the actual physical problem. One pet peeve that I have throughout reading the book is his ineffectual use of diagrams. On most occasions I found his fancy flow-charts and tables added, rather than subtracted, to the confusion: the diagrams often introduced terminologies which obscures their intended purpose, and for the small number of concepts dealt with, a graphical presentation does not offer much more benefits than just a verbal description. Overall, for readers like I, who are completely unaware of the literature in the study of Science, Technology, and Society, and who are interested in making sense of this political mess we are in right now, this book offers a beacon of guidance.