A Discussion of Politicizing Science: The Alchemy of Policymaking

by Dr. Michael Gough, Roger Bate and Dr. Henry I. Miller
July 24, 2003

Three authors of Politicizing Science discussed how politicians ? both elected and appointed ? favor science and scientists that advance their agendas and discourage scientific experimentation and results that do not.  Agenda-driven health and environmental regulations divert research funds from areas of science that could provide wide public benefit. Sometimes the results are disastrous.

Michael Gough, editor, is an adjunct scholar at the CATO Institute and former official with the Office of Technology Assessment. He has chaired government committees on possible health effects of herbicides, Agent Orange and dioxin. He is the author of more than forty papers on environmental and occupational health and is a fellow of the Society for Risk Analysis and was president of the International Society for Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology. His Ph.D. is from Brown University.

Roger Bate is the director of the International Policy Network in Washington, D.C. and an adjunct Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, also in Washington. He was the founder of the Environment Unit at the Institute of Economic Affairs in 1993, and he co-founded the European Science and Environment Forum in 1994. He is a board member of the South African non-governmental organization Africa fighting Malaria. Bate?s Ph.D. is from Cambridge University.

Henry Miller, M.D. is a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was the founding director of the Food and Drug Adminstration?s Office of Biotechnology and represented the U. S. government on various expert and policy panels. He was the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at the Hoover Institution and has published numerous monographs on risk assessment and management and regulatory policy and reform. His research articles have appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Nature Biotechnology, the Journal of the American Medical Association and Science.

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