The Precautionary Principle - Bad Science and Bad Governance

It is a noisy essay, trying to weave together too many strands of evidence, but the underlying message is correct. From The Poison of Precaution: The Anti-Science Mindset by David Zaruk.

I would go somewhat further than Zaruk's assessment that the Precautionary Principle betrays an anti-science mindset. I argue that it is a marker of an additional attribute. Someone who believes in the Precautionary Principle is almost always a technocratic Mandarin Class totalitarian. Just as "micro-aggression", "racist", and "harassment" are claims intended to restrict free speech, so to is the invocation of the precautionary principle. It is an effort to exercise control of an argument without having to make an evidence-based coherent, logical argument oneself.

From Wikipedia.

The principle is used by policy makers to justify discretionary decisions in situations where there is the possibility of harm from making a certain decision (e.g. taking a particular course of action) when extensive scientific knowledge on the matter is lacking. The principle implies that there is a social responsibility to protect the public from exposure to harm, when scientific investigation has found a plausible risk. These protections can be relaxed only if further scientific findings emerge that provide sound evidence that no harm will result.

The argument usually goes something like this:

Free citizen X: I want to try this policy which has not been done before in order to improve these conditions.

Totalitarian: It could conceivably cause harm under some not particularly clear circumstances. So, No!

It is brute State force replacing free debate.

All new actions entail unforeseeable risk. No matter how confident we are in fundamental knowledge and assumptions, almost everything functions as part of a complex, chaotic, dynamic system subject to tipping points, power-laws, unintended incentive structures, etc.

It is rare in the extreme for any new idea, policy, new product, innovation, etc. to play out exactly as planned.

Invoking the precautionary principle forestalls all progress.

More critically, it forces the reversion of progress back to those in control of the technocratic process of approval. I.e. the regulators. And regulators always end up protecting their institution, enriching themselves and their friends. They do not regulate on behalf of free citizens.

The precautionary principle is of course, almost tautologically, anti-science. Despite the stories we tell ourselves of progress through thinking, life isn't actually like that. Sure, we think and envision new scenarios, and imagine alternatives. But almost all progress arises from happy accidents and monomaniacal focus on improbable perspectives, and sheer hard-headed conviction about things which cannot yet be proven. Without the courage and daring and rewards to take those risks, there is no new knowledge.

Those who invoke the precautionary principle are rarely actual scientists or innovators or creators or discoverers. They are anti-science totalitarians.

Invocation of the precautionary principle in a debate is always the sign that there is no good-faith discussion. Anti-science totalitarians are not interested in good faith debate or freedom or discovery. They are only interested in power and the precautionary principle is one of their weapons. It sounds sciencey but it is brute force.

I don't see it specifically invoked as often as I used to. I think it no longer quite has the rhetorical power that it used to do. I suspect people now see it for what it is. Though it isn't referenced very often, you actually see it embedded in processes and behaviors everywhere in government and academia. It is perniciously prevalent.

Is it true that it is less referenced than a decade ago? Google Trends suggests so.


Click to enlarge.

As does NGram Viewer.


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From Zaruk's article.

As I have written elsewhere, there are many definitions of the precautionary principle, but the one the European Commission presently favours is what I call the David Gee version: the reversal of the burden of proof. Rather than proving that a technology is a threat, before a product, process or substance is allowed on the market, innovators will have to prove with certainty that it is safe. Safety and certainty are, of course, subjective, emotional concepts and activists have been busy over two decades setting all sorts of uncertainty traps to take technologies off of the market (from low-dose exposure to cocktail effects to potential endocrine disrupting properties all assessed from a hazard-based approach).

This version of precaution is now approaching its 20th anniversary. David Gee, a former director at Friends of the Earth UK, wrote Late Lessons from Early Warnings when he was serving as the head of science at the European Environment Agency (I wish I were making this up). His approach was to put science on trial for past missteps. The reversal of the burden of proof essentially said that science was guilty until proven innocent (and there was no hope of a fair trial with the emotional demands for certainty and safety).

The goal is quite simple: set the safety bar so high and create enough uncertainty traps that all technologies will fail the precaution test.

[snip]

This precautionary approach has not only denied benefits to European citizens (and worse to more vulnerable populations abroad), it has also fostered a narrative that pulling back is a more responsible approach than innovating and solving problems with research and technology. This has created a dangerous mindset among European leaders and influencers.

[snip]

After two decades of David Gee’s perverted precautionary approach, a frightfully large number of European leaders and influencers have adopted an anti-science approach. If something is suspect then the immediate impulse is that science and technology (imposed via their corporate demons) are to blame and, in true Vogtian fashion, the only solution is to pull back, impose precaution and hope Mother Nature can heal itself. We are no longer looking for new scientific solutions for our problems but rather relying on our regulators to ban technologies and get humans out of the way.

Four hundred years after Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum, and the need for a scientific approach to protect humanity from the harsh forces of nature (a life his contemporary, Thomas Hobbes described as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”) we seem to have forgotten the benefits science has brought us. Two decades of David Geeism and Europeans seem to be demanding a return to those heady Malthusian days. This is absurd beyond belief and it shows how dangerously complacent our narcissistic, virtue-signalling leaders and influencers have become.

Anti-science groups like Corporate Europe Observatory or Testbiotech are demanding that scientists be removed from the risk assessment process (they started a rumour that a mid-sized ag-tech company paid off all of the regulators and scientists … Yes … all of them). These ethically-challenged opportunists propose that the experts be replaced with citizen science panels. This supports their strategy that technologies simply need to be removed from use and who better than a panel of petrified peers to implement this precautionary paradise?

Precaution has created this anti-science mindset – that the only solution to save the planet is less science and technology. This narrow-minded tribe of activists feel entitled to impose their ideology on the policy process, block technologies that farmers, doctors and consumers need and push humanity backward (particularly those most vulnerable).