Science and policy – truth and perceptions

By Phil Thomas, Chairman of the Scottish Salmon Producers’ Organisation (SSPO)

The thing about science is that the truth will always eventually emerge. It may take a long time and the process may be piecemeal, stuttering and marked by steps of controversy but eventually scientific ‘right’ will always prevail. For centuries it has been that way. The basis of Man’s progress has been characterised by fierce, sometimes arcane arguments between scientists with different points of view or with different interpretations of the same observations and data. But there has been a disciplined and accepted methodology about the approach and it has systematically presented arguments, ultimately resulting in a better understanding. However, starting in the 1940s and coming into full effect by the 1990s there has been a significant change in the way that science is used in society. Winston Churchill famously said “Scientists should be on tap not on top”. However, by the 1990s politicians and civil servants throughout the developed world had embraced the concept of ‘evidence-based policies’. As a consequence, science moved from its academic homeland into a highly political world where the practitioners are influenced by the pressures of the media and perception rather than truth. This has brought with it a new type of scientific practice, which rather than challenging a prevailing hypothesis seeks simply to acquire data to support the policy conclusion that has already been reached. Needless to say, this is generally in line with the prevailing political policy or in-vogue political perception. The risks in this approach are self-evident and the consequences to society can be severe and costly. Amongst nutritionists and food policy specialists there is now a fundamental rethink about diet and health. This has built slowly and with a growing pressure from generalists rather than specialists in the field. Increasingly their analysis of the evidence has pointed to demonstrable failings in food and health policies and the evidence on which they are based. The latter includes the highly influential 1950s studies of Ancel Keys, which first ‘discovered’ the relationship between coronary heart disease and the consumption of saturated fat in a study of national statistics across seven countries. However, it is now known that Keys had selected the data from a much larger dataset of 23 countries and that the selection had been to support his conclusion rather than to test the hypothesis. Now you might say: “Well that could never happen these days because of the scrutiny used in modern research evaluation”. However, in a recent successful spoof Dr John Bohannon, a science journalist at Harvard University, published a rigged research study in the International Archives of Medicine showing that eating a bar of chocolate each day would help you lose weight. He had anticipated that the flawed scientific work would be quickly seen through but, in reality, the findings were taken up by large swathes of the international press and widely reported as fact. So, how does all this relate to fish farming? Well, I am continually struck by the fact that every few months a resurrected version of the narrative that salmon farms are certain death to wild salmon populations gets trotted out, despite the fact that the evidence from a range of studies and analyses fails completely to support that hypothesis and many studies quoted in support are of the designed-to-support-hypothesis type. The constant repetition of the narrative – often by those who do not subscribe to the concepts of aquaculture – appears to be designed to create a perception that fish farming is incompatible with the maintenance of biodiversity. Examined in reality that proposition also doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. But, in a situation where perceptions are the currency, fish farmers need to be prepared to stand up for scientific truth and make sure that misleading narratives do not get incorporated into public policy. In the end scientific ‘right’ will always prevail. However, to quote Max Planck: "A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see light but rather its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it”. So the fish farming industry should be resolute in making its case and be prepared for the long haul.