Powerless Science? Science & Politics in a Toxic World by Soraya Boudia & Nathalie Jas (2015)

Boudia, Soraya, and Nathalie Jas, eds. Powerless Science?: and Politics in a Toxic World. New York: Berghahn, 2014. ix + 280 pages. Hardcover, $95.00. Powerless Science? is the second and most recent title in the series, Environment in History: International Perspectives, sponsored by the European Society for Environmental History and the Rachel Carson Center. editors did a heroic job of assembling and connecting a group of articles from contributors active in interdisciplinary and studies. They span multiple disciplines (sociology, history, philosophy, economics, and political science), assorted methodologies, different time frames, venues, and geographies, as in cases from the United States, Italy, and Taiwan. substantive proposition is that technological-scientific risks and hazards--particularly environmental contamination--are ongoing scientific, technological, social, and political problems. title question--Powerless Science?--recurs throughout the book. It refers to asymmetries of capability and situations. This involves disparities such as ones between knowledge and sufficient motivation to take a stand, unequal stakes between those affected and those benefiting. introduction helpfully addresses The Greatness and Misery of Science (pp. 1-14). It stresses the correlation of wealth and well being as attributes of modernity with the act of putting substances into air, soil, water, and markets. Medicine, pesticides, food additives, petrochemistry, synthetic chemistry, and nuclear industries are toxicants that might (or not) have pathogenic effects--mutagenicity, carcinogenicity, and reproductive outcomes. editors are emphatic that doing science requires questioning everything and treating any conclusion as tentative and partial. Uncertainty always remains. Curiosity and suspense build from chapter to chapter, so skipping back and forth enhances rather than spoils the effect. In reading, keep watch for asymmetries and also for analogies. We who are social scientists might be as culpable as the chemists and biochemists who participate in hard science. Powerless Science? characterizes the choices for scientists as very dire: defining dangers and making them visible versus obscuring them, providing resources for advocacy movements and regulatory systems, guaranteeing systems of regulation for prevention and management, claiming objectivity while putting forward some results and not others, doing science versus diversionary activities such as academic publishing, educating the lay public, keeping grants coming, and other parts of the misery. recognizing the difficulties ... does not mean refraining from criticizing the choices made, and certainly not giving up on the long-term transformation of a society slowly poisoning itself. (p. 24) Asymmetry is illustrated in the nineteenth-century case of John Snow, a British physician who accumulated five years of observations that indicated cholera was spread by contact. In London's 1854 cholera epidemic, he famously identified the Broad Street pump handle as the vector. He said that inaction would cost than action. However, Snow's explanation went against received opinion of contemporary academic scientists, who held that cholera was airborne. Scientists trumped practitioners, and Snow was ignored. For this reason, precautionary measures were not taken. Characteristically, calling for more research delays action (p. 42). editors' articles agree delay is a profitable strategy for industries. Delay puts off precautionary measures. Delay postpones protection of public and environmental health. Calls for further scientific experimentation buy time for vested interests. …