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January 6, 2006
Starting from Zeta
by Sylvia S Tognetti
The end of 2005 didn't end the hurricane season of 2005, which finally ended today as Zeta disintegrated. For more, see Jeff Masters blog at Wunderground, for which I am adding a special link to the blogroll because he doesn't just report the weather - he also reports on departures from normal - and not just about hurricanes. Check out his explanation of what this cloud is, and why we will probably be seeing it more often.
Before moving on, a comment about 2005: After Katrina, can anybody still believe that more and better scientific information will necessarily lead to better policy decisions?
2005 was the year that some proclaimed the science wars to be over (see also this post by PZ Myers] - largely because of a war on science itself that made differences between the two cultures pale in comparison. It's about time. I have gotten into a few arguments with scientists myself, but it is only because I value science that I even bother. I have often heard statements to the effect that it is necessary to "get the science right" before dealing with the mushy stuff, like policies and institutions. The catch is, that getting good scientific information that is relevant to social concerns, and to particular places, is itself an institutional challenge. Not to mention getting it to actually be used in decision-making, or getting a decision to actually be made....
Although this is beginning to be recognized, and great efforts have been made to collaborate across these disciplinary divides, there is a pitfall in this too, in that everything seems to get reduced to the conceptual framework of the discipline of the person who designs and initiates the study. This is an issue I became very conscious of over 15 years ago when I worked at the National Academy of Sciences, where I helped to organize and staff what may have been the first committee composed of an almost even split between natural and social scientists. Subsequently I went to graduate school but never quite managed to get a dissertation off of the ground - probably because I developed a background in both the natural and social sciences and could never reduce an argument to either one without feeling like I was making a caricature out of reality (ok, so there were other reasons, like major differences with my first graduate adviser and a program switch that was all for the best). More recently, as part of a working group for the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, I felt like I had entered into a world created by a couple of ecological modelers, or some sort of soft bureaucracy structured to correspond with the compartments of their model (still, in spite of the unwieldy process, there is a lot of good material in the soon to be released technical volumes - more on that later).
2005 also catapulted Chris Mooney's book, The Republican War on Science
What is more interesting to me is where some of the negative public reactions towards science, or experts in general, comes from. In science for policy, there is a tendency that parallels that found in interdisciplinary efforts, which is that of reducing complex problems to a scientific framework that leaves out much of what people care about. This frame is itself a hidden value judgment, which, for example, is ultimately what is behind the opposition to GMOs in Europe. A few months ago, Mario Giampietro passed through town and gave me an earful of scientific explanations for his objections to GMOs and why functional equivalence is a myth. He has even published articles about this. But over dinner, he gave me the real reason, in his own language. You can't make gnocchi without the yellow sticky potatoes that come only from Avezzano in the Abruzzo. If you try to make gnocchi with Idaho potatoes it will be a disaster! If you want to find out what kind of peaches are best for soaking in wine you will have to learn Italian and go ask a Roman - some things are better left not only in their own language but also in their cultural context. But these peaches only grow at Castel Gandolfo, the summer residence of the pope. There is no functional equivalent.
As I half grew up in Italy, I understand this only too well. One of my favorite things to do when I visit family in Pisa is to go on a bike ride to the market with my aunt. The last time I did this, one of the vendors held up a head of lettuce and said it came from Torre del Lago. He went on to insist that, if you eat this lettuce you will hear Puccini. Hearing Puccini might have only been my imagination, but the association of the image with the taste seared the taste in my memory. I'm sure there is nothing else like it anywhere. The controversy isn't about GMOs, but about a way of life and the value of places. Where food comes from is no less important than where people come from. But policy decisions are not based on such things. As for functional equivalence, it depends on the functions you are looking at. If looking only at nutritional characteristics of food, it is possible that soylent green could be engineered to be functionally equivalent to potatoes from Avezzano or lettuce from Torre del Lago - but what I will call the Puccini factor would be lost forever. And the world itself would become a less interesting place to live.
As for that book... maybe if I put "Tuscany" in the title, people would even read it. As a half Pisan, DOC, I know I can tell a more interesting story than Under the Tuscan Sun, and, as a geographer, it would also give me a chance to rant about what makes places unique and special.... (Interested publishers can write to me at sst at postnormaltimes dot net).
May we all find at least some moments of normalcy in the coming year.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at January 6, 2006 10:53 PM
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