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Science, foreign policy, and the news media
Olw-79lxm $5.00 + .oo Copyright 0 1992 Pesgamon Press plc
!&?chMlqgy in so&y. Vol. 14, pp. 66-61.1992 Printed in the USA. AU tight6 remrved.
Science, Foreign Policy, and the News Media Peter Grose
ABSl’RACl! In pursuit of their own responsibilities to interest and inform their publics, the news media play a critical role - for good or ill - in drawing unfamiliar considemtions of science and technology into the realm of public policy mahing. Journalists have primary responsibility for clarity and accuracy in their presentations, but scientific and technical specialists have a prior responsibility to make themselves understood - to each other and to those who describe their work. Statements of ostensible fact have to be considered tentative and subject to correction; standards of “proof’ have to be relaxed to accommodate the moving targets of ongoing research; and responsible journalism must continually assess the downside as well as the upside of any research program, lest governments and public opinion eventually find themselves deceived.
Two decades ago an American secretary of state could say, without apology, that he “really knew nothing” about economics - but not to worry, he “had people” who could tell him whatever he needed to know. Within a few short years, the OPEC oil-pricing crisis confronted the industrial nations of the world with a policy challenge as fundamental as any of the political threats of the Cold War. Never again could responsible diplomats disclaim personal interest in the economic components of foreign policy. I raise this anecdote to suggest a possible parallel, that considerations of science and technology are also coming to be introduced, eventually taken for granted, in routine deliberations by policy makers who “really Peter Gmse is Executive Editor of Foreign A&ire, and an Honoumty Fe&w of Pembroke College, Oxford University. Author of Israel in the Mind of America, he was a correspondent and editor of The New York Times and served as Deputy Director of the State Department Policy Planning Staff during the Carter Administmtion. This article was ortgtnatly a Discussion Paper for Zsmel’s Wetsmann Institute of Science Forum on Science and Government, December 1989. 55
56
RGroSe
know nothing” about science. How this process can be promoted is the reason for this conference. As in the reahn of economics in the 197Os, the news media in all their variety are coming to understand their central responsibilities for educating their publics - including, often, the policy make= themselves - about arcane information that has not traditionally been considered “news.” Scientists - and economists - have frequently been part of the policymaking process, of course. Our mentor at this conference, Chaim Weizmann, stands as a true prototype of the innovative scientist who worked his way into deliberations of foreign policy, with results in that realm at least as signXcant as his distinguished contributions to 2Othcentury science and technology. A budding policy-minded scientist or engineer eager to make an impact over a broad range of ostensibly nonscientific issues would do well to pay serious attention to We’unnann’s biography Weizmann was hardly alone. Edwin H. Land played a far more important role in the highest political councils of the US government of the 1950s than the everyday photographers using his inventions ever realize. In our times, Bobby Inman combines a distinguished engineering expertise with a shrewd policy sense. We could cite many others. Similarly, in the media, there have long been highly competent writers who have managed to make the technical into popular fare. The issue is not individual talents, but institutional, structural means for ensuring that policy decisions, great and small, are not made in ignorance of factors that can determine the success or failure of the enterprise. This conference is exploring a variety of such institutional structures; my assignment is the news media itself. 2. lbsk of the Media The chronicler of complex realities has a fundamental task: that of establishing and maintaining communication with the reader (or viewer - throughout this discussion I will refer to writers and readers just to avoid cumbersome phraseology). This is not the place for me to tell you my problems as an editor, in trying to make my journal interesting and attractive to our self-selected readers. The only relevant point now is that news articles must be made meaningful to their intended audiences if they are to have any impact. If the point seems trite, I insist that it nevertheless be kept in mind, for it is central to the journalist’s daily task. A brilliant and insightful discussion of emerging problems in biotechnology will sink unnoticed in a general news publication, if it is written in a way that only other biotechnologists can understand. Conversely, a catchy and clever discussion of the same issues - you would say, a popularization - would be most out of place, offensively so, in an academic
Science,Fbre&n Policy,and the News Medid
57
journal. The diversity of possible audiences is why we have different sorta of publications, and so it should be. Here comes an interesting question, both pertinent and, I at first believed, impertinent. Journalists have long defended their need to simplify (I do not say over-simplify) complex matters, just to make them understood in the “quick read” that is all most publications can expect from their readers. Experts briefing policy makers face the same problem, given the well-known short attention span of the typical elected official. This is particularly true in matters of science and technology (as, indeed, of economics). As I was making this familiar point the other day to a wise friend of mine, a scientist, he raised a gentle but most awkward challenge. ‘Why do journalists writing about scientific matters always rationalize a need to keep it simple for the great mass of the populace?” he asked. ‘This is not true for a column of music criticism in the very same publication. Why can discussions of art assume great sophistication and erudition among their readers, but not scientific commentary?” It took me a while to come up with the answer, but I think I have it, and it lies in the very theme of this conference. So-called cultural commentary is not generally relevant to questions of public policy - there are well known exceptions to this point - whereas explanation and discussion of scientific and technological topics most definitely are. That is why we are here. Thus, it does not really matter in the broad scale of things if only a small number of readers understand the fine points of modern dance technique, but it matters a great deal if emerging techniques of science and technology are grasped only by a professional priesthood. I suppose some of you could fashion an intellectual refutation of this point; but you came to this meeting, so you must accept the argument at some level. Does keeping it simple mean that complex reality has to be distorted? In the matters we are considering, is any simplication over-simpliiication? I want to say no, and can show evidence in the form of good science writers who simplify and bad science writers who over-simplify. But I am growing less confident in that element of faith in my trade. The realities we discover and hypothesize are becoming so complex that I am tempted to translate the Heisenberg Principle into the realm of journalism: l’b the degree that I can explain it, then to that degree I do not understand it. I am increasingly worried that clarity and accuracy may no longer be compatible. If this fear is justified, what can we do about it? I say “we,” for it is not just my problem as a journalist; it is your problem as scientists as well. You as innovators have the same difficulty understandingand conveying the full meaning and consequences of your research that we as reporters have in describing it. We can beat our breasts about this, and trade our complaints, but this will get us nowhere. The problem is an emerging
68
?? Grose
fact of life, and it leads to another fact even more disturbing: Decisions affecting our lives and our existence will necessarily be made by people -allofus - who simply lack the capacity to understand what they weare confronting. These are facts that we have to live and die with, and we are all in it together. 3. What Is to be Done? Still we must do the best we can. The fact that clarity and accuracy may not be fully compatible does not mean that we have to abandon the attempt to achieve as much clarity and as much accuracy, at the same time, as is humanly possible. This brings me to some recommendations, modest admittedly, but I hope steps in the right directions. First concerns our standards for “proof,” or at least “knowledge.” Following on my anecdote about the economically illiterate secretary of state, I recall a staff meeting with a later incumbent in high diplomatic office. In the midst of a tedious discussion about some technical financial issue, he turned in desperation to the economist present and said, “What are the important indicators here? What do the figures show?” The intrepid economist smiled shyly and replied, “what, sir, do you want the figures to show?” Scientific and technological research is by its nature a self-correcting process. Ideas are floated, developed, and even have to be acted upon even though we all know they are tentative (that is the nice word for it) or half-baked (less nice). Neither the scientific community nor the news media need to be embarrassed or distressed when previous information on which policy makers were banking turns out to be incomplete - that is inevitable - or even wrong. All modern science was made possible by the intellectual revolution four centuries ago that authorized relaxation of rigid demands for deductive certainty and substituted the inductive process of likelihood. Let me cite another parallel, from a different realm. Allen Dulles, the great founder of the American intelligence establishment, used to mock the process that passed for military intelligence during the American Civil War. “Their method,” he said, “was to count the noses of the soldiers on the other side of the line, and then count again from the other direction just to be sure the figure was right.” Today, many scientists argue, factually, that the evidence is simply insufficient to confirm the hypothesis of global warming, or the greenhouse effect. We do not yet have enough data to be sure; that is true. But what is also true is that when we do have enough evidence, it will be too late to do anything about it. My first recommendation is that everyone concerned - the scientific and technological community, the policy makers who expect the advice,
Science,Foreign Policy, and the New8 hfedia
59
and the news media who are so quick to criticixe errors of judgment relax their expectations of reliability, accept degrees of probability in making commitmentswithout demandingAristoteliaucertainty,and then feel no need for apology or shame if and when they are proved wrong. The second recommendation follows: In this self-correcting process, ambiguity will be inevitable along the way. Partisan politicians - and some scientists are partisan, too - may be quick to seize upon the side of the ambiguity that best promotes their own interests, and then claim “scientific” backing for what they wanted to do anyway Given human nature and politics, this is not going to change. But the scientific community can at least declare its awareness of the partisan interpretationswhen they are trumpeted and, above all, the news media can spell out, each time it happens, how partisanshipis coming into play in ostensibly objective research programs. A related point is the problem of “selling” a costly research program to a government or the public. We can all think of examples, from putting men into space to erecting missile defenses, in which serious research had to be cast in popular and perhaps irrelevant terms to gain attention and support. There is nothing inherently wrong in this, as long as we are clear in our own minds, and make it clear to our readers, that this is what is happening. But the danger is obvious that the manner in which a research program is portrayed - “marketed” - risks distorting its efficacy, its purposes and, most ominously,its consequences. I am intrigued with one possible example of such distortion, not on the side of oversell, but the opposite: a serious, arguably humane research program defeated by negative publicity.The American news media share a major part of the’blame, along with the government officials who failed to make a. better counter-argument once the negative first impressions took hold. I refer to the “neutron bomb” controversy of the late 1970s. The Enhanced Radiation Weapon, as I understand it, was a tactical artillery shell that could be effective in defeating, and certainly deterring, attacks by individuals and armed units without destroying the physical setting, the buildings, neighborhoods, and natural habitat in which the attackers were operating. Once word of this new device became public, it was immediately portrayed as a weapon that would “harm people but not buildings” - a grotesque example of military technology gone berserk, reversing civilized priorities, deeply offensive to humane values. But surely a counter case could have bean made. In guerrilla wars, terrorist attacks, even against an infantry advance through populated territory, a serious inhibition on the defense is ‘concernover spreading devastation that makes the battlefield of today uninhabitable tomorrow. Indeed, as we all have seen to our sorrow, the tactics of guerriUas and terrorists involve using the ordinary civilian setting as cover for their
60
RGroSe
assaults. Could it not be fairly argued that a weapon that would threaten the attacker without necessarily destroying the innocent cover would be a more humane way of meeting this kind of aggression than turning entire civilian neighborhoods into rubble? I have no wish to revive the old neutron bomb controversy, but I offer this example simply to show how fragile is the portrayal of scientific and technological research, how incomplete or distorted depictions of purpose and consequence can cast the whole program in a destructive light. ‘lb sum up my first two recommendations, reports and analysis of the scientific process come with the illusion of objectivity, of factual statement. This is only an illusion. No more than in economics or, for that matter, music criticism is the description of scientific progress value-free and objective. Every assertion is subject to revision and review, on new information or new experience. The news media - and the scientific community itself - would fail in their responsibilities if they neglected to acknowledge this throughout. Third, no explanation of scientific and technological development can be responsible if it fails to indicate the downside as well as the upside of any proposal, program, or innovation. The design of a policy for science, as well as for the input of science into foreign policy, are matters of assigning priorities. The trade-offs must be made clear to all, at every step along the way, lest governments and public opinion eventually fmd themselves deceived. Beware of zealotry. Two quick examples: High-definition television may be an exciting prospect for people who enjoy watching the world on that little rectangle. But at what cost? Not so much the cost of the technology itself - that could be accommodated in the supply and demand cycle - but in what economists call the opportunity cost. If priority is assigned to this pleasant and undoubtedly important technology, what about other technologies that will suffer from the diversion of talents and productive capacities? Would other emerging technologies actually bring about human betterment in a more direct and meaningful way? Deciding priorities is particularly painful in medical research programs. The state of Oregon recently confronted the undeniable evidence that state funding for prenatal care would affect more people, would bring about greater good for greater numbers, than expensive facilities in readiness for organ transplants. The state legislature acted on this evidence and gave priority to programs for prenatal care. Inevitably, and within a short time, a cute little Oregon boy suddenly needed a transplant - and no state facilities were available to save his life. The media had a human-interest bonanza; the hapless legislators were pilloried for their heartless decision, even though cooler heads in calmer days would confirm, reluctantly, that they had probably made the right decision.
Science, Foreign Policy, and the News iUediu
61
4. Comprehending the Complex No one is going to make the modern world simple, and scientists are justified in their frustration with journalists who try to do so. Yet there are trade-offs here, too. Accurate comprehension is a Holy Grail; the quest is beguiling and satisfying. But we will never get to it. Meanwhile, decisions have to be made, and they will be reached on imprecise and inadequate information. The sophisticated discipline of economics penetrated the policy process when the practitioners rose above their principles and started talking to noneconomists in ways that these rank amateurs could understand. I think it fair to say that, by and large, professionals of the news media showed themselves ready to meet the economists half way, but no more than half way It is at conferences like this that we can see the analogous process under way in the interaction of policy making and scientific and technological innovation.
!&?chMlqgy in so&y. Vol. 14, pp. 66-61.1992 Printed in the USA. AU tight6 remrved.
Science, Foreign Policy, and the News Media Peter Grose
ABSl’RACl! In pursuit of their own responsibilities to interest and inform their publics, the news media play a critical role - for good or ill - in drawing unfamiliar considemtions of science and technology into the realm of public policy mahing. Journalists have primary responsibility for clarity and accuracy in their presentations, but scientific and technical specialists have a prior responsibility to make themselves understood - to each other and to those who describe their work. Statements of ostensible fact have to be considered tentative and subject to correction; standards of “proof’ have to be relaxed to accommodate the moving targets of ongoing research; and responsible journalism must continually assess the downside as well as the upside of any research program, lest governments and public opinion eventually find themselves deceived.
Two decades ago an American secretary of state could say, without apology, that he “really knew nothing” about economics - but not to worry, he “had people” who could tell him whatever he needed to know. Within a few short years, the OPEC oil-pricing crisis confronted the industrial nations of the world with a policy challenge as fundamental as any of the political threats of the Cold War. Never again could responsible diplomats disclaim personal interest in the economic components of foreign policy. I raise this anecdote to suggest a possible parallel, that considerations of science and technology are also coming to be introduced, eventually taken for granted, in routine deliberations by policy makers who “really Peter Gmse is Executive Editor of Foreign A&ire, and an Honoumty Fe&w of Pembroke College, Oxford University. Author of Israel in the Mind of America, he was a correspondent and editor of The New York Times and served as Deputy Director of the State Department Policy Planning Staff during the Carter Administmtion. This article was ortgtnatly a Discussion Paper for Zsmel’s Wetsmann Institute of Science Forum on Science and Government, December 1989. 55
56
RGroSe
know nothing” about science. How this process can be promoted is the reason for this conference. As in the reahn of economics in the 197Os, the news media in all their variety are coming to understand their central responsibilities for educating their publics - including, often, the policy make= themselves - about arcane information that has not traditionally been considered “news.” Scientists - and economists - have frequently been part of the policymaking process, of course. Our mentor at this conference, Chaim Weizmann, stands as a true prototype of the innovative scientist who worked his way into deliberations of foreign policy, with results in that realm at least as signXcant as his distinguished contributions to 2Othcentury science and technology. A budding policy-minded scientist or engineer eager to make an impact over a broad range of ostensibly nonscientific issues would do well to pay serious attention to We’unnann’s biography Weizmann was hardly alone. Edwin H. Land played a far more important role in the highest political councils of the US government of the 1950s than the everyday photographers using his inventions ever realize. In our times, Bobby Inman combines a distinguished engineering expertise with a shrewd policy sense. We could cite many others. Similarly, in the media, there have long been highly competent writers who have managed to make the technical into popular fare. The issue is not individual talents, but institutional, structural means for ensuring that policy decisions, great and small, are not made in ignorance of factors that can determine the success or failure of the enterprise. This conference is exploring a variety of such institutional structures; my assignment is the news media itself. 2. lbsk of the Media The chronicler of complex realities has a fundamental task: that of establishing and maintaining communication with the reader (or viewer - throughout this discussion I will refer to writers and readers just to avoid cumbersome phraseology). This is not the place for me to tell you my problems as an editor, in trying to make my journal interesting and attractive to our self-selected readers. The only relevant point now is that news articles must be made meaningful to their intended audiences if they are to have any impact. If the point seems trite, I insist that it nevertheless be kept in mind, for it is central to the journalist’s daily task. A brilliant and insightful discussion of emerging problems in biotechnology will sink unnoticed in a general news publication, if it is written in a way that only other biotechnologists can understand. Conversely, a catchy and clever discussion of the same issues - you would say, a popularization - would be most out of place, offensively so, in an academic
Science,Fbre&n Policy,and the News Medid
57
journal. The diversity of possible audiences is why we have different sorta of publications, and so it should be. Here comes an interesting question, both pertinent and, I at first believed, impertinent. Journalists have long defended their need to simplify (I do not say over-simplify) complex matters, just to make them understood in the “quick read” that is all most publications can expect from their readers. Experts briefing policy makers face the same problem, given the well-known short attention span of the typical elected official. This is particularly true in matters of science and technology (as, indeed, of economics). As I was making this familiar point the other day to a wise friend of mine, a scientist, he raised a gentle but most awkward challenge. ‘Why do journalists writing about scientific matters always rationalize a need to keep it simple for the great mass of the populace?” he asked. ‘This is not true for a column of music criticism in the very same publication. Why can discussions of art assume great sophistication and erudition among their readers, but not scientific commentary?” It took me a while to come up with the answer, but I think I have it, and it lies in the very theme of this conference. So-called cultural commentary is not generally relevant to questions of public policy - there are well known exceptions to this point - whereas explanation and discussion of scientific and technological topics most definitely are. That is why we are here. Thus, it does not really matter in the broad scale of things if only a small number of readers understand the fine points of modern dance technique, but it matters a great deal if emerging techniques of science and technology are grasped only by a professional priesthood. I suppose some of you could fashion an intellectual refutation of this point; but you came to this meeting, so you must accept the argument at some level. Does keeping it simple mean that complex reality has to be distorted? In the matters we are considering, is any simplication over-simpliiication? I want to say no, and can show evidence in the form of good science writers who simplify and bad science writers who over-simplify. But I am growing less confident in that element of faith in my trade. The realities we discover and hypothesize are becoming so complex that I am tempted to translate the Heisenberg Principle into the realm of journalism: l’b the degree that I can explain it, then to that degree I do not understand it. I am increasingly worried that clarity and accuracy may no longer be compatible. If this fear is justified, what can we do about it? I say “we,” for it is not just my problem as a journalist; it is your problem as scientists as well. You as innovators have the same difficulty understandingand conveying the full meaning and consequences of your research that we as reporters have in describing it. We can beat our breasts about this, and trade our complaints, but this will get us nowhere. The problem is an emerging
68
?? Grose
fact of life, and it leads to another fact even more disturbing: Decisions affecting our lives and our existence will necessarily be made by people -allofus - who simply lack the capacity to understand what they weare confronting. These are facts that we have to live and die with, and we are all in it together. 3. What Is to be Done? Still we must do the best we can. The fact that clarity and accuracy may not be fully compatible does not mean that we have to abandon the attempt to achieve as much clarity and as much accuracy, at the same time, as is humanly possible. This brings me to some recommendations, modest admittedly, but I hope steps in the right directions. First concerns our standards for “proof,” or at least “knowledge.” Following on my anecdote about the economically illiterate secretary of state, I recall a staff meeting with a later incumbent in high diplomatic office. In the midst of a tedious discussion about some technical financial issue, he turned in desperation to the economist present and said, “What are the important indicators here? What do the figures show?” The intrepid economist smiled shyly and replied, “what, sir, do you want the figures to show?” Scientific and technological research is by its nature a self-correcting process. Ideas are floated, developed, and even have to be acted upon even though we all know they are tentative (that is the nice word for it) or half-baked (less nice). Neither the scientific community nor the news media need to be embarrassed or distressed when previous information on which policy makers were banking turns out to be incomplete - that is inevitable - or even wrong. All modern science was made possible by the intellectual revolution four centuries ago that authorized relaxation of rigid demands for deductive certainty and substituted the inductive process of likelihood. Let me cite another parallel, from a different realm. Allen Dulles, the great founder of the American intelligence establishment, used to mock the process that passed for military intelligence during the American Civil War. “Their method,” he said, “was to count the noses of the soldiers on the other side of the line, and then count again from the other direction just to be sure the figure was right.” Today, many scientists argue, factually, that the evidence is simply insufficient to confirm the hypothesis of global warming, or the greenhouse effect. We do not yet have enough data to be sure; that is true. But what is also true is that when we do have enough evidence, it will be too late to do anything about it. My first recommendation is that everyone concerned - the scientific and technological community, the policy makers who expect the advice,
Science,Foreign Policy, and the New8 hfedia
59
and the news media who are so quick to criticixe errors of judgment relax their expectations of reliability, accept degrees of probability in making commitmentswithout demandingAristoteliaucertainty,and then feel no need for apology or shame if and when they are proved wrong. The second recommendation follows: In this self-correcting process, ambiguity will be inevitable along the way. Partisan politicians - and some scientists are partisan, too - may be quick to seize upon the side of the ambiguity that best promotes their own interests, and then claim “scientific” backing for what they wanted to do anyway Given human nature and politics, this is not going to change. But the scientific community can at least declare its awareness of the partisan interpretationswhen they are trumpeted and, above all, the news media can spell out, each time it happens, how partisanshipis coming into play in ostensibly objective research programs. A related point is the problem of “selling” a costly research program to a government or the public. We can all think of examples, from putting men into space to erecting missile defenses, in which serious research had to be cast in popular and perhaps irrelevant terms to gain attention and support. There is nothing inherently wrong in this, as long as we are clear in our own minds, and make it clear to our readers, that this is what is happening. But the danger is obvious that the manner in which a research program is portrayed - “marketed” - risks distorting its efficacy, its purposes and, most ominously,its consequences. I am intrigued with one possible example of such distortion, not on the side of oversell, but the opposite: a serious, arguably humane research program defeated by negative publicity.The American news media share a major part of the’blame, along with the government officials who failed to make a. better counter-argument once the negative first impressions took hold. I refer to the “neutron bomb” controversy of the late 1970s. The Enhanced Radiation Weapon, as I understand it, was a tactical artillery shell that could be effective in defeating, and certainly deterring, attacks by individuals and armed units without destroying the physical setting, the buildings, neighborhoods, and natural habitat in which the attackers were operating. Once word of this new device became public, it was immediately portrayed as a weapon that would “harm people but not buildings” - a grotesque example of military technology gone berserk, reversing civilized priorities, deeply offensive to humane values. But surely a counter case could have bean made. In guerrilla wars, terrorist attacks, even against an infantry advance through populated territory, a serious inhibition on the defense is ‘concernover spreading devastation that makes the battlefield of today uninhabitable tomorrow. Indeed, as we all have seen to our sorrow, the tactics of guerriUas and terrorists involve using the ordinary civilian setting as cover for their
60
RGroSe
assaults. Could it not be fairly argued that a weapon that would threaten the attacker without necessarily destroying the innocent cover would be a more humane way of meeting this kind of aggression than turning entire civilian neighborhoods into rubble? I have no wish to revive the old neutron bomb controversy, but I offer this example simply to show how fragile is the portrayal of scientific and technological research, how incomplete or distorted depictions of purpose and consequence can cast the whole program in a destructive light. ‘lb sum up my first two recommendations, reports and analysis of the scientific process come with the illusion of objectivity, of factual statement. This is only an illusion. No more than in economics or, for that matter, music criticism is the description of scientific progress value-free and objective. Every assertion is subject to revision and review, on new information or new experience. The news media - and the scientific community itself - would fail in their responsibilities if they neglected to acknowledge this throughout. Third, no explanation of scientific and technological development can be responsible if it fails to indicate the downside as well as the upside of any proposal, program, or innovation. The design of a policy for science, as well as for the input of science into foreign policy, are matters of assigning priorities. The trade-offs must be made clear to all, at every step along the way, lest governments and public opinion eventually fmd themselves deceived. Beware of zealotry. Two quick examples: High-definition television may be an exciting prospect for people who enjoy watching the world on that little rectangle. But at what cost? Not so much the cost of the technology itself - that could be accommodated in the supply and demand cycle - but in what economists call the opportunity cost. If priority is assigned to this pleasant and undoubtedly important technology, what about other technologies that will suffer from the diversion of talents and productive capacities? Would other emerging technologies actually bring about human betterment in a more direct and meaningful way? Deciding priorities is particularly painful in medical research programs. The state of Oregon recently confronted the undeniable evidence that state funding for prenatal care would affect more people, would bring about greater good for greater numbers, than expensive facilities in readiness for organ transplants. The state legislature acted on this evidence and gave priority to programs for prenatal care. Inevitably, and within a short time, a cute little Oregon boy suddenly needed a transplant - and no state facilities were available to save his life. The media had a human-interest bonanza; the hapless legislators were pilloried for their heartless decision, even though cooler heads in calmer days would confirm, reluctantly, that they had probably made the right decision.
Science, Foreign Policy, and the News iUediu
61
4. Comprehending the Complex No one is going to make the modern world simple, and scientists are justified in their frustration with journalists who try to do so. Yet there are trade-offs here, too. Accurate comprehension is a Holy Grail; the quest is beguiling and satisfying. But we will never get to it. Meanwhile, decisions have to be made, and they will be reached on imprecise and inadequate information. The sophisticated discipline of economics penetrated the policy process when the practitioners rose above their principles and started talking to noneconomists in ways that these rank amateurs could understand. I think it fair to say that, by and large, professionals of the news media showed themselves ready to meet the economists half way, but no more than half way It is at conferences like this that we can see the analogous process under way in the interaction of policy making and scientific and technological innovation.