Mirror of Justice

Jon Adler has an interesting post about "the intersection of science and public policy" and the "danger of politicizing science."  In the public square these days, the charge is common that the Bush Administration (by opposing embryo-destroying medical research, etc.) is particularly guilty of "politicizing science."  Among other things, Adler quotes this, from a USA Today article on the subject:

Science policy professor Daniel Sarewitz of Arizona State University in Tempe says: "I think the opportunity to use science as a political tool against Bush has been irresistible — but it is very dangerous for science, and for politics. You can expect to see similar accusations of the political use of science in the next regime." . . .

It is easy to acknowledge (it's impossible not to) that people (left and right) often maintain "policy"-related and other views in the face of "science"-based objections that the factual predicates for these views do not obtain.  I gather the worry about "politicizing" science is not merely about this kind of reaction, but about a more unsettling strategy:  Identifying first, using non-"scientific"-means, one's policy preferences, and then construct defenses of those preferences using apparently (but not really) "scientific" methods and conclusions (and discarding "scientific" methods and conclusions that are in tension with one's policy preferences).  This seems, well, "bad", but it's not at all obvious to me that contemporary "conservatives" (if the Bush Administration is "conservative") are any more guilty of this kind of thing than anyone else.

An even deeper worry, though, might be about those who insist -- and it seems like lots of people do insist -- that all important questions *are* scientific questions, and *can* be answered through scientific methods.  But, of course, even at its best, science can only supply the material to which we apply moral principles and prudential reasoning.  So, when people say -- and many do -- that the "scientific" answer to the stem-cell debate (as opposed to the "sectarian") answer is the permissive one, it seems that they are missing this point.

UPDATE:  Prof. Ellen Wertheimer, of the Villanova University School of Law, kindly passed on this link to the USA Today piece from which Prof. Adler quoted.

UPDATE:  My colleague, Carter Snead -- a law-and-science scholar -- writes in with this:

. . . Virtually none of the hot-button issues at the intersection of science and public policy/law are "scientific questions."  They are, at bottom, normative disagreements about which science (by design) has nothing to say, other than to provide clarity regarding the factual predicates of such disputes.  For example, human embryology can shed light on when and how a new member of the species comes into being, but it is utterly silent on the question of what is owed to the human embryo, or how this obligation might stand in relation to other goods such as the freedom to conduct basic scientific research aimed ultimately at the relief of dread diseases or debilitating injuries.  These are moral questions.  And in democratic republic such as ours, they are properly understood as "political" (and perhaps, by extension, legal) questions.