Last week I was an ad hoc member of a Scientific Advisory
Panel at EPA for a chemical that has been reported to alter reproductive
endpoints in amphibians. It was an
interesting experience, and I’ll have more to share in the coming weeks, but
one unexpected outcome was that it made me very, very, very grateful that I
work at a university…oh, Camelot of employers.
More than one day of the meeting involved listening to
public comments, and the company that makes the herbicide had the majority of
that time. We listened to the company and
its scientists (or the university scientists it funded) provide arguments for
their evaluation of the situation—often times reexamining the models developed
by EPA scientists and interpreting the data available literature in, well,
their own way. We also listened to EPA
scientists clarify their approach for arriving at safe environmental levels, as
well as why we should or should not be concerned about effects on aquatic
vertebrates. The company had some points
that were valid. EPA had valid
points. And then they had to listen to
the scientific advisory panel, which was probably less interesting to them than
the comments they made were to me. But
the panelists had their own valid points.
Lots of talking and lots of listening.
Very exhausting. Very interesting.
But the bottom line is that there are lots of great things
about academics, which benefits scientists personally and the public at
large. (On the downside, many university
scientists are not rich…but my father would argue that such things build character.) First, academics can (and often do) say
anything. Academics have the freedom to
be honest (and verbose) and really lay it on the line. Do you think someone’s scientific approach is
questionable or flawed? Alas, then you
can just say so and there’s really no one to answer to. Your dean, departmental chairperson, and
colleagues don’t really care if you express your scientific opinion—in fact,
they may want to chat more about it and evaluate it themselves and come up with
a cool experiment as a follow-up. If you
work in industry or are funded by industry, then whoever provides your bread
may have some (or a lot) of sway over what you say publicly; and, even if the
industry does not influence what its scientists say, there will always be the
perception that they could. Someone
working for or being funded by a company loses the appearance of being objective
and unbiased. EPA scientists could be
limited by their employer as well (or direct supervisor); and with changes in
administration, the extent to which the scientists can express themselves can
also change. EPA may even suffer from a
similar (but opposite) problem of public perception that industry is plagued with—the
perception of bias: EPA employees as
tree huggers likely to make something appear worse than it is. (Although, I must say that there was very
little tree-hugging, or frog-hugging, on the issue I was involved with.)
Second, as an academic on the panel evaluating the
literature and the white paper put together for the panel, I had no vested
interest in the outcome, which aids objectivity. EPA has spent months (maybe years) putting
together models to evaluate safe environmental levels and writing up the paper
and appendices to clarify how they arrived at their conclusions. If I was involved into anything that had
appendices up to “Appendix N” I would definitely want things to go my way and
wouldn’t want to have to be involved with any more appendices related to the topic
ever again. Industry is profiting from
the market of their pesticide, so they have a vested interest in keeping it on
the market at maximal rates. Industry
can cherry pick the data and develop models that suit their interests, and even
believe they have been more objective than Spock himself. As a scientist who never had an appendix past
C, I could honestly care less if the chemical involved has an effect or not—the
only thing I honestly care about is arriving at a scientific valid conclusion that
nears the truth. Because there is a
truth—the chemical does or does not have effects that are biologically relevant
at given concentrations—my only goal is that we arrive as close as possible to
that destination. Then it’s EPA’s job to
decide how concerned they are about the potential effects and what they are
going to do about them.
A third reason to love academic life is that university
scientists can do the research they want to do!
My lab is currently severely lacking in funds, but we can do a lot of
things on a shoestring and are doing so.
No one tells us what we should be interested in or what we should
examine, and there is great thrill in that which may not always be enjoyed by
government or industry-funded scientists.
Fourth, the situation of regulation is complicated, and as a
scientist from a university, I can evaluate the data and express my opinion on
what the right step is, but it cannot be easy to have to implement the change
(EPA) or to have change implemented on one’s own livelihood (Industry). The academics may be the marriage counselors
in the whole process…at the end of the day, we walk away, but a lot of the hard
decisions and work have to be done by others, and you just hope they have the
courage and strength to take any good advice that was offered.
So, in the end, I am so happy to be home and I feel so
enlightened and exhausted by the experience of seeing a small slice of the way the
regulatory process works. And, even
better, I left with quite a few new ideas for experiments.
