Chemical Education Today
Commentary
Good Chemical Measurements, Good Public Policies by Larry R. Faulkner
Analytical Science and Public Policy I would like to talk about how analytical science serves in the formulation of public policy. At every turn now, one encounters sharply debated issues and important public policies that rest on chemical information. This is true in practically any arena where public interest intersects with the material world: health care practice and public health; energy; quality of air, water, and food; manufacturing standards and product liability; criminal justice; national and international security, including the defense against terrorism. The scale can be truly global, as in the case of the current debate over climate change, which extends into international efforts to regulate gaseous emissions. Sometimes the relevant chemical measurements and applicable theory are sound and their scope is appropriate to the policy; often they are inadequate, and a policy or debate overreaches the analytical capability needed to support it. In the decades ahead, the issues with us today will become even more pressing and will drive a still greater reliance on analytical chemistry. Just before the turn of the 20th century, Lord Kelvin focused on the importance to science of measurement and numbers (1). Lord Kelvin’s focus applies in our world to the formulation of practically any public policy that rests on technical facts about the material world. To paraphrase Kelvin for my purpose, we might say this: When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind: it may be the beginning of a basis of policy, but you have scarcely in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of soundness in policy.
These days policy-makers of all kinds are adopting or carrying out policies every day that rest, or ought to rest, on a technical basis. The question is: How sound is the basis? The answer depends on how well the relevant information has been measured and how well it has been brought into the formulation of the policy. Yes, in many spheres, good public policy does need to rest on good chemical measurements: accurate measurements of the important things. Has it ever been so? Yes, in some degree, at least since valuable analytical measurements were first possible. But the picture has gradually changed during my lifetime to the point that the availability of chemical measurements has actually given rise to new public issues and created a need for new public policies. Some of these issues are shaking the foundations of the global economic and political systems. Why has all this happened? The basis is surely in the breathtaking development of analytical capabilities from the 1960s through the present day, which has established sheer power. Before the 1960s, most ana190
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lytical chemistry was done with genuinely chemical methods of the type that we used to cover in classical quantitative analysis. Most samples were of what we would now regard as humongous size, and a single determination took minutes to days, depending on sample preparation. Instrumentation was in its infancy, largely because the electronics required were not reliable enough or quiet enough to make instrumental methods really attractive. All of that changed with the solid-state revolution, and especially with the advent of the integrated circuit, the microprocessor, and the laser. Perhaps the most intense period was the decade of the 1970s, when new electronic, optical, and separations capabilities opened a period of astounding analytical development. The new methods brought at least three things that had been missing in the world of classical analytical chemistry: dynamic range, sensitivity, and simple, fast sample handling. • Dynamic range in the old days was often no more than an order of magnitude, sometimes two. Rarely more. The new methods frequently provided five orders or so, sometimes considerably more. This improvement gave freedom to address samples with widely varying characteristics or constituents within a sample varying by orders of magnitude in presence. • Sensitivity brought the capability to deal with very small samples or to detect and quantify trace constituents. • Sample handling was dramatically improved, and often automated, to save time in huge quantities. These advances made it possible to address many, many similar samples in a reasonable period. They also made it possible to address a measurement to a particular location on a larger sample.
The methods now available to us have brought far more than these three benefits. They rest on such a range of properties that it is now possible to obtain an enormous selection of information. Remarkable analytical power now rests easily in our hands, and it is changing the way that we as a society are thinking about our world, our competitive opportunities, our legal constructs—and our politics. Let me set out just five arenas in which issues of public policy have arisen from chemical measurements: • The ready adoption of DNA screening, which can succeed with the tiniest of samples, even very old samples, is fantastically definitive for relating circumstances to individual people and for defining the genetic makeup of individuals. It has already changed much about criminal law and forensic practice. • The ability to resolve atomic composition in two and three dimensions on the micrometer scale has altered means for defining intellectual property.
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• Global competitiveness has become determined not just by cost-effectiveness, but also by quality-effectiveness. Customers can measure quality using chemical measurements, and they can also measure the dollar and convenience value of shortcomings in quality. • Medical diagnostics built on analytical measurements have repeatedly raised international alarm over epidemics and have guided strategies for combating them. • Far bigger than any other area relevant to this address is the debate about global climate change, which has come to the fore in serious politics only in the last decade because accurate measurements of the important things could not be made until the last two decades.
The question with respect to climate change is the possibility of early detection, above the natural environmental “noise level,” of a trend that may only be emerging above that level. Large numbers of measurements of different variables are required. Many are of physical quantities, such as temperature, but chemical measurements are critical to the overall assessment, because they relate to the great accounting problem of what happens to carbon after combustion. Moreover, chemical measurements are essential to support proposed international actions, such as limiting emissions by law or developing systems of trading emissions. The stridency of the debate comes both from the stakes and from the decades-long time constant for the effect to manifest itself. The stakes are as high as they could possibly be: jobs for millions of people, perhaps even billions; living standards worldwide; viable answers to worldwide energy needs; the extinction of species; the flooding of populated coastal areas; the sustainability of human civilization; the sovereignty of nations. Breathtaking. And all resting on an issue of chemistry, where analytical measurements are absolutely central to wise public policy. The price for the wrong policy is devastation in some form. The price for even the wisest policy will probably be very high. The best possible wisdom must be sought. It will take some time, and better data than we have. I cannot think of a single public issue predating the 1960s that arose from analytical information or for which analytical information was critical to emerging policy. Our field was industrially and medically important then, but far back on the sidelines politically. Well, times have changed. We analytical chemists are now squarely in the middle of one of the biggest political issues of our time. It will not be a comfortable situation, but it is one of high responsibility. We must execute with skill and integrity. That brings us to the manner in which chemical information is handled and understood in public debates. To say something useful, I first need to draw some contrasts between the ways political folks, such as legislators, members of an executive branch, or active members of political parties, do their business vs. the habits to which we in science are accustomed. The contrasts are sharp between the two cultures, and it is important to face up to them as we consider the most effective ways for science to link with the policy arena. Let us remember that elected and appointed officials, in the end, have the www.JCE.DivCHED.org
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authority to make public policy. We rarely hold memberships among them. If we in the scientific community are to contribute constructively, it must be through our interface with such people, or alternatively through the press and its influence on them. It will not help to complain that they look at the world differently from us. They do, indeed. And that’s because their methods are suited to their world, much as ours are suited to ours. Here are a few observations concerning things that the two communities do not really understand about each other: • We in science can afford to wait for a complete picture, or at least a decisive picture; they, in the political sector usually cannot. Political leaders do not have that luxury. They are almost always under pressure to act, to choose a course, and to present it confidently to the public. They have to take their best shot when the time comes. • We can afford to concentrate on our subject, so that we come to understand its nuances and implications fairly fully. They do not have that luxury either. • We may debate vigorously, but we gradually converge on a picture for a given phenomenon that satisfies nearly all members of the interested technical community. Governmental officials can hardly ever hope to achieve a consensus but strive for whatever within reason can gain majority support. • Scientists believe that all of the good data bearing on an issue are to be rationalized in an explanation. There is much greater tendency among political officers to pick whatever data fit their policy inclination and just to neglect the rest without reason. A scientist views this behavior as undisciplined. • There is a related point. Scientists know that there is hardly ever a situation when a single definitive measurement can decide a very substantive issue. The answer has to come from an examination of the problem from different angles, from measurements made by different techniques. Confidence that the truth has been found comes when the same picture holds up to these different queries. Political leaders are much more prone to accept a single technical result as definitive, especially if it agrees with what they really want to do for political reasons. • In science, we are used to being able to think about a problem in isolation. In politics, everything remains connected to everything else. • Finally, the two communities have completely different concepts of what they both call the “real world.” For science, it is physical, objective, and invariant. For political leaders, the “real world” is one of human opinion. It is subjective and variable. Scientists are repelled by that notion. At least, I am. For us, only reality is reality.
Now let us turn more directly to the question: How can we best present chemical information and promote understanding in the public arena?
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Commentary Begin by recognizing that the burden is on us, the scientific community. While it is undeniable that science is critically important to wise and effective public policies, it does not follow that it is the public’s problem, or the political leader’s problem, to figure out how to bring the information into the debate. We have the information, so we have to do that. In that effort, we need to become more effective in presenting our information. Here are six recommendations: Above all, we must consistently protect, and even enhance, public respect for the integrity of science and the scientific community by insisting on the proven value of the scientific method and the need to bring all available valid results into an interpretation. We must actively resist the selective interpretation of selected results. Second, we should be proactive with the timely development of policy-oriented summaries of technical results. Third, we must learn how to improve our ability to write and communicate policy-related science. Fourth, we need to become more effective at helping policy-makers through their moments of decision. Fifth, our community should more consciously develop channels of communication with officers in agencies of the executive branch and with the staff leadership of legislative committees. Our community should work to become a regular resource for them. Last, and very important, we must guard to our utmost against transforming our leading professional organizations into partisans or political agents with respect to a given issue. Public credibility in the integrity of science is at stake, and preserving that is, in the long run, the greatest contribution we can make to the health of the larger world.
What, then, are the big policy questions to which scientific results are critical? Here is my incomplete roster: • How will we meet the energy needs of a developing world? • How will we continue to evaluate and to address the impact of climate change? • How will we support health care that is affordable in the context of the developed world? Or in the context of the underdeveloped world?
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• How will we detect and defeat new threats to health, including plagues and scourges that arise from evolutionary change? • How will we assure safety of the food and water supplies? • How will we defend our society in the face of large, continuous threats from individuals and non-governmental organizations? • How will we support a pace of commercial innovation that can preserve living standards in advanced economies, as members of the developing world strive to join them? • How will we preserve personal liberty while we address all of these other things?
There is an important place for analytical results and new analytical approaches in every one of these spheres. Of course they are very big questions indeed. As you go about your work, choosing problems and solving them, you inevitably have to be much more specific. But there can be motivation and pride in thinking about your choices and your successes in the context of one or more of these questions. In the end, the answers will issue from the knowledge and methods developed in many places by many people, just as science always progresses. The answers are profoundly important, and they will determine the world that our children and grandchildren will inhabit, so it is a privilege for any one of us to be a part of the hunt. Literature Cited 1. Lord Kelvin, Popular Lectures and Addresses, 1891–1894.
Larry R. Faulkner, an analytical chemist, is president, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78713-8920;
[email protected].
Editor’s Note: “Good Chemical Measurements, Good Public Policies” was presented as the plenary lecture at the 2004 Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy, March 7, 2004, in Chicago, IL. The full text is available at http://www.utexas.edu/president/speeches/ chemistry_030704.html (accessed Nov 2004).
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