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« "Public comprehension of science--believe it or not!": the public and decision-relevant science, part 1 | Main | The impact of "science consensus" surveys -- a graphic presentation »
Thursday
May302013

Polarization on policy-relevant science is not the norm (the "silent denominator" problem)

Ever hear of the Formaldehyde Emissions from Composite Wood Products Act of 2010?

Didn't think so. 

As the Environmental Proection Agency explains, the Act (signed into law by President Obama on July 7, 2010, after being passed, obviously, by both Houses of Congress)

establishes limits for formaldehyde emissions from composite wood products: hardwood plywood, medium-density fiberboard, and particleboard. The national emission standards in the Act mirror standards previously established by the California Air Resources Board for products sold, offered for sale, supplied, used or manufactured for sale in California.

The legislation directs the EPA to promulgate implementing regulations relating to "labeling," "chain of custody requirements," "ultra low-emitting formaldehyde resins," "exceptions ... for products ... containing de minimis amounts of composite wood," etc.  The agency just issued proposed rules for notice & comment yesterday!

Why am I telling you about this?  Well, first of all, because I know you've never heard of this regulatory scheme (if you have, you are a freak and are proud of it, so the point I'm going to make still applies).

Because you haven't, the issue of formaldehyde regulation is absent from your mental inventory of risks managed through the application of scientific knowledge.

Because this law -- along with billions and billions (or at least 10^3's) of others informed by science -- is missing from your risk regulation inventory, there's a serious risk that you are overestimating the frequency with which risk issues provoke cultural polarization.

I'm sure some segment of the population somewhere is really freaked out by formaldehyde and another drinks a glass of it for breakfast everyday just to prove a point. But these citizens are really outliers; whatever group-based conflict there might be about formaldehyde is nothing like the ones over climate change, nuclear power, HPV, guns, etc.

Very very very few risk and other policy issues that turn on science provoke meaningful cultural conflict. The ratio of polarizing to nonpolarizing issues of that sort is miniscule.

That doesn't mean that those issues get regulated in an optimal manner.  But it means that one of the largest obstacles to rational engagement with science in policymaking is absent -- and that's an undeniably good thing for enlightened self-government.

The science-informed policy issues that don't provoke controversy are, of course, boring.  That's why most people don't know about them.

But if you do notice and give some thought to them, a couple of interesting and important things will occur to you.

First, insofar as the number of science-informed policy issues that could provoke cultural polarization is very small relative to the number that actually do, there must be something, and something strange, going on with the ones that actually do end up generating that sort of division.

It's critical to figure out how to fix a broken debate like the one over climate change.

But we should also be figuring out why this sort of weird pathology happens and how we can avoid it.

That's one of the objectives of the science of science communication. Indeed, it's probably the most important contribution this science can make to the welfare of democratic societies.

Second, if you notice all these boring, nonpolarized forms of science-informed risk regulation, you'll realize that the thing that makes some issues become polarized can't be lack of public knowledge about the science surrounding them.

It's true that members of the public don't know sicence much about climate change, nuclear power, the HPV vaccine, etc. But the public doesn't know anything more about the science relating to the vast range of issues that fail to generate polarization.  

Members of the public wouldn't score higher on a "formaldehyde science literacy" test than a climate science literacy test.

Formaldehyde scientists aren't better "science communicators" than climate scientists. 

That doesn't mean, either, that members of the public are necessarily uniformed.  

Obviously, members of the public couldn't possibly be expected to know and understand all the science that is relevant to protecting their health and wellbeing--whether that science informs regulations that protect them from exposure to toxic substances or medical procedures that protect them from diseases. 

But just as a reflective individual doesn't have to have an MD to participate in an informed and meaningful way in his or her receipt of high-quality medical care, so a  reflective citizen doesn't have to have a degree in toxicology or biology to know whether his or her government is making sensible decisions about how to protect the public generally from exposure to environmental toxins.  

In both cases, such a person only has to be able to make an informed judgment that the professionals he or she is relying on to use scientific knowledge know what they are doing and are using what they know to benefit him or her and others whose interests those agents are supposed to be promoting.

Reflective citizens do that all the time.  And one of the aims of science communication is to create and protect the conditions in which democratic citizens can reliably exercise this rational recognition capacity.

Those conditions are missing for climate change and other issues that culturally polarize the public.  In connection with those issues, citizens' rational recognition faculty is being impaired by toxins -- not ones emitted from "composite wood products" but ones being transmitted, either deliberately or by misadventure, by partisan discourse.

One goal of the science of science communication, then, is to protect the quality of the science communication environment from contamination by antagonistic cultural meanings that convert boring, mundane issues of fact that admit of scientific inquiry into divisive symbols of tribal loyalty.

To acquire and use the knowledge necessary to do that, researchers must avoid fixating only on pathological cases like climate change and ignoring the "silent denominator" (or silent members of the denominator) comprising all the science-informed policy issues that don't generate cultural polarization.

We can't expect to be able to accurately prevent and, failing that, diagnose and treat science-communication pathologies unless we start with an informed and psychologically realistic of what citizens know and how in a healthy body politic.

Hey--did you hear about the Chemical Safety Improvement Act that is garnering bipartisan support in the Senate?!  

I didn't think so.

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Reader Comments (71)

@NiV:

I think the game likely only is interesting to people who agree Marxism is wrong. But there is something about the experience of figuring that out that has an intersting impact on some people

It's true that many of the "answers" will reflect intellectuals repelled by the rude shock of Stalinism. But not all. My last move -- Elster -- wasn't in thta category. I doubt Popper migrated out of Marxism b/c of anything having to do w/ Stalin or the Soviet UInion -- more likely he just concluded it didn't make sense; but I'm not sure.

But it's not as interesting a game if we include "socialists" who weren't Marxists since they are unlikely to have had the experience ofbeing enveloped in a system of thought like that.

I don't think any pseudocience will do, either. the game wouldn't go even 1 move, as far as I can tell, if we said "recovered Freudians."

June 2, 2013 | Registered CommenterDan Kahan

@Dan:

Sorry, been occupied elsewhere.

My general point is that polarization results when an issue that appears purely technical also happens to "impinge upon" -- i.e., affect -- cultural values. As you note in your post, most technical issue don't polarize, and my explanation is that that's because most don't have much relevance to cultural values. You want to say, as I understand it, that no technical issue has such relevance, or at least that none has any more relevance than any other, and you bring up examples of technical issues that are polarizing in one culture but not in another as evidence of this. I think that's comparing apples to oranges, since cultural values themselves vary from one culture to another (e.g., an association of nuclear power with defensive nationalism, guns with historical origins, etc.). You can also find some examples that are only weakly polarizing anywhere, and thereby find some anomalies -- so I should and will admit that I overgeneralized: most, but not all, of your mysteries could be cleared up, at least to the extent you expressed, by simply acknowledging the variable potential of some technical issues to become polarizing because of either or both of their symbolic cultural content (e.g., guns) or their policy implications (e.g., climate change). But this shouldn't be taken as implying some mechanistic historical determinism -- obviously there are a large number of factors in play in the process of polarization, and the inherent cultural significance of any particular issue is only one of those, even if a major one.

But all this is just to rehearse what I've already said, and I too realize that I haven't found a way to "entice" you away from what appears to me to be an artificial problem, or at least as you've expressed it. I agree that the polarization itself is a problem, and like you would like to find ways to reduce it.

June 3, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterLarry

@larry
1 and same issue impinges sometime & someplace but not another. You aggressively resist trying to figure out why. Why?
The statement "some issues provoke cultural polarization b/c they impinge on values" is not an explanation; it is a re-statement of the phenomenon to be explained: why do some impinge? What causes -- & can't be "intrinsic" or "economic" etc or else variance across time/place would be unexplained.
Or else you think "there's no explaining culture"--it's unanalyzable, the position you said you don't espouse at the outset.
Would you have same reaction to the Ferrari book -- "artificial problem ... all your mysteries would be obviously, easily solved if only you'd just see that ..." -- which tries to figure out why madcow disease generated cultural polarization in some places & not others? I doubt it.
And you know my motivation: if we can figure out answers to these sorts of questions, then maybe we can use our knowledge to reduce the incidence of cultural polarization w/i any particular democratic society -- since no issue that polarizes is "inherently" destined to do so.
I think formaldehyde just poisoned the atmosphere for you on this one.... Did you say you had a bad experience w/ it at some point? At about the same time you renounced Marxism? ... Actually, it's interesting to consider intersting thinkers who had formaldehyde poisoning experiences at one point!
Maybe the issue will re-emerge (it isn't going away...).

June 3, 2013 | Unregistered Commenterdmk3!

@Dan:

Doesn't this start to seem a little silly to you? "You aggressively resist trying to figure out why." Really? I said, for example, that cultural values vary from one culture to another, and gave a couple of brief examples of how that explains cultural differences in polarization -- which you then simply ignored and repeated "variance across time/place would be unexplained" if the cultural effect of an issue were intrinsic to it. Someone's aggressively resisting here, but it doesn't look like me.

Let me say, before you repeat it again, that I understand your point -- you want to say that "polarization" just means having an effect on the surrounding culture. I think there's a difference in meaning between the two, and I think the latter expansion helps to explain an otherwise quite mysterious phenomenon. It helps you to find, for example, the right next question: what explains the cultural effect of some (a few) but not other (the great majority) issues? Unfortunately, it looks like you've become so attached to the idea that nothing explains this (other than accident -- which can explain anything and therefore nothing -- or the old left standby of greed, which also is a handy way of avoiding explanation, since it isn't able to distinguish one issue from another) that you will "aggressively" resist the idea that even a part of the answer is inherent in the issue itself. Why you've become so attached is another matter, and I'll resist speculations regarding your own efforts at poison recovery.

June 3, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterLarry

@Larry:

I would like not to have this strike you as silly. Let me try again.

Imagine I have a $1 billion. Is there anything I can do w/ it to make (or at least increase the likelihood of) synthetic biology becoming culturally polarized in US? If so, what?

Now imagine I have a $1 billion & want to prevent it from becoming polarized. Anything?

Do you agree that processes that determine whether "risk impinges on cultural values" are not immutable? Agree that they might in fact be amenable to conscious regulation?

June 3, 2013 | Unregistered Commenterdmk38

"Imagine I have a $1 billion. Is there anything I can do w/ it to make (or at least increase the likelihood of) synthetic biology becoming culturally polarized in US? If so, what?"

Interesting question. OK, let's take an existing cultural value, like the war on drugs. We use synthetic biology to engineer human cells able to synthesise heroin - a drug gland. (Those who like their Culture references may be amused.) You can get the cells implanted, and then you can get high whenever you want, for free. You use your billion to develop it, and then start selling to anyone over 18.

I think Larry's point is that an existing cultural group has a pre-existing constellation of values - for example, tolerance or opposition to the use of recreational drugs. If you create a technology that impinges directly on such a value, groups that are for or against will polarise for or against the new technology.

If you used it instead to create anti-drug glands that stopped excessive opiates working, and gave it to kids like a vaccination, you would get a different group mad at you.

I think what Larry was saying is that activities can only polarise where they conflict with pre-existing values. What I thought you were trying to say is that sometimes they don't. That there are issues that would appear at first glance to conflict with some value in the same way as a controversial issue, but which for some reason arouse no controversy. I'm not sure if you were also saying the converse too, that there might be issues that at first glance don't conflict with people's values, but which become controversial nevertheless.

June 3, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterNiV

@NiV:

So no serious suggestions about what to do w/ my $1 billion on synthetic biology? In particular none if I want to avoid cultural polarization? Out of anyone's control b/c of the "pre-existing constellation of values" people have? I had been understanding @Larry to be saying that too but I think he believed I was misreading or even deliberately mischaracterizing him.

My position:

1. Cultural groups have visions of the best life and best society.

2. Forms of behavior -- indivudual or collective -- that convey cultural meanings antagonistic to those understandings of the best life and best society will provoke moral indignation and resentment on the part of the group members whose values are deinigrated in that way.

3. People will tend to impute *harmful consequences* unrelated to denigration of their values to such conduct (diseases, envioronmental catastrophes, etc.) & be disposed to credit and discredit empirical evidence in ways that fit that disposition.

4. But behaviors have no "inherent" or "necessary" meanings; they acquire them through all manner of contingency.

But all of these things are very general. In particular, I believe it is possible to acquire knowledge about (4) in a manner that makes it possible to explain, predict, & form prescriptions about how to influence what comes to mean what -- & in particular whether any particular form of behavior has to be understood as denigrating or threatening a group's values.

It would be foolish to say that complete control can be exercised over such things. Historical inertial might create burdens to heavy to be lifted. Moreover, whatever technology one uses to implement the understandings a "science of cultural meaning" imparts will necessarily be imperfect.

But it seems realistic to me to think that a science of meaning can be devised and used to improve human life in the same way that either forms of science do. No doubt to worsen human life too -- just as other forms of science have been used in that unfortunate way.

The *good* I'd like to see done w/ a technology of meaning involves using it to insulate the development of scientific technologies -- of all kinds -- form antagonisitic cultural meanings. The less that happens, the less likely we are to be deprived of the benefits that technologies generate. Obviously, technologies don't necessarily generate benefits; but if the assessment of evidence is not distorted by cultural cognitoin (the process I described), then we will make generally intelligent judgments about what the risks and benefits of particular technologies happen to be.

The point of this post is a general one: that one won't learn reliable lessons about the dynamics of meanings that generate cultural conflict over policy-relevant science if one makes the mistake of studying only the forms of policy-relevant science that have acquired antagonistic meanings. One can't learn anything that way b/c that mode of inquiry involves an invalid sample, one "selected on the dependent variable." To test hypotheses about why policy-relevant science acquires antagonostic meanings, one needs a sample w/o antagonistic meanings; then one can see whether a hyothesized cause of such meanings varies w/r/t the forms of science that have come to bear such meanings & those that have not.

Put formaldehyde -- & a million other "boring" things --into the sample & look how many specious explanations for climate change we can eliminate, including lack of public comprehension of the releavant science -- the usual bogus culprit!

I'm asking for more conjectures about (4), things that can be tested if we give ourselves a sample that isn't truncated by excluding from it things that in fact it strikes people as absurd -- & very appropriately; that's the point -- to see as grounding cultural conflict

June 3, 2013 | Unregistered Commenterdmk38

1 and 2 were what Larry was saying. 3 is probably reasonable. 4 I think was what was being questioned.

You say "But behaviors have no "inherent" or "necessary" meanings", but some obviously do. If a cultural group are a priori strongly opposed to a particular behaviour - like government regulation, the ability to defy government power, modern industrial technology, artificiality, wealth, redistribution, privacy, drug-taking, drunkenness, non-reproductive sex outside marriage, etc. - then behaviours that impinge on that pre-existing set naturally have cultural meaning.

Larry said that different regions had different cultural splits, which explained much of the variation, and that weakly polarising issues that might or might not trigger a split explained the anomalies. There is also the fact that cultural values do change over time.

I don't know if it's true, but it's a well-formed hypothesis. The question is can you exhibit enough examples of issues with no inherent cultural meaning that nevertheless triggered polarising splits (contradicting 2?) or examples of issues that do impinge strongly on cultural values but nevertheless cause no split.

Once we've established that something else besides point 2 is required to explain polarisation, we can enquire what. The examples you find to illustrate the point may help in the search.

"The *good* I'd like to see done w/ a technology of meaning involves using it to insulate the development of scientific technologies -- of all kinds -- form antagonisitic cultural meanings."

Even if they conflict with people's values? Are there no immoral uses of technology - things we shouldn't do?

June 4, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterNiV

Dan -

But all of these things are very general. In particular, I believe it is possible to acquire knowledge about (4) in a manner that makes it possible to explain, predict, & form prescriptions about how to influence what comes to mean what -- & in particular whether any particular form of behavior has to be understood as denigrating or threatening a group's values.

What, outside of support from a Democratic president, would have predicted that the ACA mandate would have transformed from = personal responsibility to = tyranny?

Is that policy an outlier in some fashion? If so, what causes it to be so? Why couldn't any particular policy transform from "boring" to "polarizing" merely by being associated with the opposing tribe? Why do you think that the causal mechanism lies in the attributes of the question being debated rather than in the tribal nature of the debaters?

June 4, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterJoshua

The point of this post is a general one: that one won't learn reliable lessons about the dynamics of meanings that generate cultural conflict over policy-relevant science if one makes the mistake of studying only the forms of policy-relevant science that have acquired antagonistic meanings. ... To test hypotheses about why policy-relevant science acquires antagonostic meanings, one needs a sample w/o antagonistic meanings; then one can see whether a hyothesized cause of such meanings varies w/r/t the forms of science that have come to bear such meanings & those that have not.

Okay. So far so agreed. But one also will not be able to learn anything about "the dynamics of meanings that generate cultural conflict over policy-relevant science" if one makes the mistake of assuming from the start that such policy relevant science is free of inherent cultural meaning (though often meaning specific to a particular culture). This isn't to say that there are no "specious explanations" for conflict, by the way -- there are, and I'm happy to see Dan trying to clear them away. But that's different from asserting that policy relevant science cannot have any intrinsic bearing on culture.

To understand why Dan insists so strongly on this, I think it's worth restating a point I alluded to earlier -- a key aspect of the implicit model he's working with appears to be a notion that science and culture are separated by an absolute gulf: science deals with facts and objective reality, or as close to it as we can get, whereas culture deals with big, nebulous, messy abstractions like "individualism", "equality", etc. If we allow that science in itself could ever impinge upon such abstractions, then it seems like the gulf is bridged and we open the door to those sorts of culturally-based values, ideals, and hopes infecting science, and its surrounding institutions. And then the idea of having a source of knowledge unaffected by cultural divisions seems lost.

Sad though that may be, I think this model is nonetheless wrong -- which is why I argue that, instead of looking for ways to purge policy-relevant science of cultural overlays and thus re-establish its authority, we should look for ways to spread science-like habits and techniques of critical reasoning as far as possible through a culture.

June 4, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterLarry

@ Larry:


I argue that, instead of looking for ways to purge policy-relevant science of cultural overlays and thus re-establish its authority, we should look for ways to spread science-like habits and techniques of critical reasoning as far as possible through a culture.

I believe in the propogation of such habits too -- b/c they help people in all kinds of ways (indiviudally & collectively) & are intrinscially valuable. And for sure they are part of the cuture -- the nullius in verba culture -- that belongs to all members of the Liberal REpublic of Science, regardless of their cultural worldviews

But the insufficient propogation of these critical habits of mind is not what causes cultural polarization over science; and enlarging their propogation won't solve the problem either. Indeed, the sad thing is that in a polluted science communication environment, those who have these critical habits of mind are the most polarized of all...

Or such is the conclusion that I think the best evidence provisionally (as always in science) supports.

Strange but true.

June 4, 2013 | Registered CommenterDan Kahan

... the sad thing is that in a polluted science communication environment, those who have these critical habits of mind are the most polarized of all...

Yes, I don't doubt that, odd though it may seem at first sight. Our difference lies in the fact that I regard this -- on second, or post-first sight -- as normal and to be expected, rather than as toxic or pathological. That is, I regard what you call a "polluted science communication environment" as simply the normal science communication environment when and where cultural values are involved.

Another difference has to do with how such environments change over time -- despite this polarization, I think the conversation amongst those with genuinely critical habits of mind does evolve under the pressure of real-world findings, making the extreme on one side or another less and less tenable. And I think we see an example of that in the climate change debate with the spreading communication of reduced CO2 sensitivity.

I would say that communication that attempts, for one reason or another (e.g., keeping an issue alive as a kind of "wedge" political tactic), to focus on the less tenable extremes really is toxic, however common. In the climate debate, for example, such extremes would be the "end is nigh" alarmists on one side, and the outright denialists on the other -- making those the primary focus of communication only impedes (but doesn't stop) the process of slow but sure evolution.

June 4, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterLarry

@Larry:

I should keep my mouth shut probably -- since I think we might be heading back toward each other.

I won't be greedy. I think the last paragraph has in it all we really need for us to be in enough agreement.

It must be the case, given your last paragraph, that you agree both that what people do -- and can avoid doing or be opposed by others when they do it -- can affect the extent to which facts that admit of scientific investigation become infused with polarizing meaings; and that it is at least sometimes morally undesirable for issues to become infused (or so deeply infused) with such meanings.

Surely it is then an open question, to be resolved by the methods of observation and inference that are the signature of science, whether we can learn enough about those sorts of dynamics and how to control them to improve the prospects that people of diverse cultural outlooks will succeed in living lives that have value by their own lights.

June 4, 2013 | Registered CommenterDan Kahan

@Dan:

I don't think your second to last paragraph quite follows from my last, but I don't want to be greedy either, or merely repetitive, so I'll leave it at that. And while I'm a bit concerned about the implications of "control" wrt "these sorts of dynamics" in the last paragraph, I like its concluding sentiments.

June 4, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterLarry

@Larry:

It is a beautiful sentiment isn't it? One that a Popperite, recovered Marxist high on formaldehyde fumes might express?

I am reckless, and so will try to forge and even deeper alliance, w/ still more such sentiment.

I envision a world that is safe for beautiful creations (dare I say 'creatures'?) like 'Nippy' & 'Hummy' -- one rich enough in cultural meanings for all cultural groups to be able to see a vindication of their own partial ("partisan" only when they seek to impose them on others) understandings of virtue in the awe-inspiring ('achtung') display of human rationality that their (intelligent) design reflects...

June 5, 2013 | Registered CommenterDan Kahan

BTW - Dan,

Still hoping for an answer:

Why couldn't any particular policy [or issue] transform from "boring" to "polarizing" merely by being associated with the opposing tribe? Why do you think that the causal mechanism lies in the attributes of the question being debated rather than in the tribal nature of the debaters?

June 5, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterJoshua

... the awe-inspiring ('achtung') display of human rationality that their (intelligent) design reflects...

Okay! I got a little lost in the syntax of that sentence (those formaldehyde fumes? but whose high?), but I like awe-inspiring displays and human rationality too (not to mention intelligent designs), and am always happy to forge alliances. My guess is you wouldn't be as happy with a beautiful creation like a pink rifle, but then that's the kind of thing that makes all our views "partial", no? Anyway, as long as "control" is viewed as self-control, and the understandings of virtue of even social scientists is seen as being as partial as anyone else's, then we may have at least a partial alliance. E.g., I also liked your recent post, and look forward to the follow-up.

June 5, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterLarry

@Joshua:

No, I'm waiting for an answer. From you. I don't have one; or actually, I have about four -- and they are not consistent w/ one another. I want other toughtful people to share their conjectures w/ me. and also help me formulate designs for studies that pit them against each other in ways calculated to generate evidence that give us more reason than we had before to see one or another of them as more likely to be true

June 6, 2013 | Unregistered Commenterdmk38

@Larry:

Yes, pink children's rifles sicken me.

But I believe those who see them as beautiful deserve to pursue the vision of the good that invests those "children's toys" with the meanings they value. Also that I'm obliged as a citizen both not to treat my disgust as sufficient grounds for preventing them from participating in practices (including the creation of a pink children's gun) that embody what they value and to be vigilant that my disgust does not make me impute legally cognizable (secular) forms of harm to those activities when the evidence is lacking.

I know many of them feel the same way --not about what disgusts them but about what the appropriate domain is for the sort of moral perception disgust embodies.

I think many of them would agree w/ me too that it woudl be better to create conditions -- practices, norms, even some legal procedures (ones akin to the methods of constitutional law that police the boundaries of partisan disgust) that help to minimize the number of insights from science that become the occasion for one or the other of us to be disgusted, since we recognize that such conditions increase the probability that we will misjudge matters of risk and benefit that bear on our common welfare.

They & I disagree on a tremendous amount about matters of the highest significance about how to live.

But we agree on enough to get the benefits -- all of them: from protection from the risk of mindless genocide to historical levels of health and prosperity to the attainment of habits of mind that perfect our natural endowments of rationality -- that come from living together in a liberal democracy society.

mmmmm... love the smell of formaldehyde in the morning.

June 6, 2013 | Unregistered Commenterdmk38

Unfortunately I now realize that a couple of comments of mine from a day or two ago didn't get posted, probably because I rushed off without completing the capcha phase.

I think that we can't discuss cultural cognition without also studying political, economic, religious and other forces that conspire to plug into the public's tribal tendencies and exploit them for their own purposes. People have been engaged in this process long before Dan Kahan arrived on the scene.

Does formaldehyde polarize? I think I will define "polarization" for the purposes of the discussion here as using cultural divides to poison a conversation on a science related policy issue such that real science can't be fully discussed and actions based on the actual science facts are not taken. Obviously then most things aren't completely polarizing. Some discussions happen, some partial steps towards action may happen.

As others above have noted, there has been some explicit campaigns to regulate formaldehyde and efforts against that. But much of the efforts are not head on, along the lines of: Red blooded working Americans love formaldehyde. They are couched behind code words and lumped with other issues into a movement more based on: Get the EPA out of the way, they are blocking jobs for red blooded American workers. The net result is that the EPA had great difficulties in doing studies and formulating regulations. The clustering of the FEMA formaldehyde contaminated trailers did inadvertently provide a well constrained group for studies. But these formaldehyde related health problems would not have happened had formaldehyde been better studied and then regulated, as soon as red flags arose. So as I tried to explain above, the "bipartisan support" for formaldehyde legislation is, IMHO more of a political tactic to attempt to avoid arousing the tribal instincts of one's opponents while the building trades continue to procrastinate than anything to do with actual support of regulation. Because there are market forces specifying formaldehyde free products eventually such products will be replaced. With the passage of time, worker mobility, confounding variables in product exposure and other issues will reduce the opportunities for future industry liabilities along the lines of the FEMA trailer settlement. So, since the ability for lawsuits does hinge on scientific observations, science is playing a small role in the eventual elimination of formaldehyde from products. But this is not the same as saying that we have had real, public science based discussions of needed policy changes at the time science was able to demonstrate the need for such policy changes. And the reasons for that lack of discussion have to do with tribal based appeals to a base constituency that could be enlisted as an anti government regulation, specifically anti EPA voting block. In this case, keeping this couched in forms that obscure the target and made it difficult for opponents to rally their own base has been a clever move, in my opinion.

June 6, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterGaythia Weis

@Gaythia-- what is the story behind the Chemcal Safety Improvement Act?

June 7, 2013 | Registered CommenterDan Kahan
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