DNA database: Acid test
According to the Guardian’s editoral:
Evidence-based policy is proving elusive at the Home Office. Alan Johnson’s sacking of Dr David Nutt, followed by multiple resignations from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs that he chaired, is still reverberating around Whitehall. Yesterday a new front opened when the home secretary announced his latest proposals on the DNA database. They would allow DNA from those arrested but against whom no further action was taken to be retained for up to six years. Critics suggest that the key piece of research supporting this period relates to opinion among the government’s persistent critics in the House of Lords. It is likely to be just one more in a long series of small retreats from an indefensible policy based more on populism than science – one that has allowed the security state to tower over the right to privacy.
November 13th, 2009 at 10:57
Ministers are in an illogical and untenable position when they decide they need expert advice on science, choose expert advisers from among the “best” scientists they can find – and then insist that those advisers, chosen specifically for their independent expertise, toe the political party line.
If they were trying to demonstrate their own incompetence and intellectual bankruptcy, they could hardly do a more thorough job.
November 13th, 2009 at 11:00
As the late Richard Feynman remarked, “Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves”.
Since politics is the art of successfully fooling ourselves and others, it is difficult to reconcile its demands with those of (honest) science.