The Lobbyists: the emics and etics of our culture

Much of what human culture is all about has to do with the distribution of resources--material resources such as wealth or property, and psychological resources such as power and prestige. Anthropologists studying the world's populations routinely observe what people actually do, and ask people what they believe that they do. The first, what a culture looks like to an external observer, referred to as 'etics' in anthropology-speak, is usually not the same as the latter, the insider's view, the 'emics'. People may routinely act in ways that deviate from the accepted tenets of their culture, for various reasons including self-interest, and this is often rationalized by the 'deviant'.

Anthropology has a long tradition of labeling cultures by some major feature--'The Basketmakers', 'The Fierce People', and so on. While anthropology is popularly seen as the study of the exotic 'other', the same principles of analysis also apply to our own culture. These days, one might refer to the US and other industrialized cultures as "The Lobbyists". What we do is organize, posture, dissemble, advocate, pressure, and persuade to gain preferential access to resources. Scientists may be among the most educated people in our society (according to some definitions of 'educated', at least), but we are not exempt from emic-etic differences.

Lobbying for research funds is part of our system. Lobbying includes providing, stressing, repeating and so on, our reasons why this or that particular project that we want to do should be funded. There is always an emic element--some justification of the argument in terms of our beliefs (e.g., that this will lead to major health advances). But the facts are routinely stretched, dissembled, and strategized in order that we, rather than somebody else, will corner the resources. We even give our graduate students courses in 'grantsmanship' which often if not typically amounts to teaching how to manipulate the funding system--it's certainly not about how to share funding resources!

We, your bloggers, often complain about the kind of science that is being funded. Among the reasons are not the sour grapes of being deprived of resources, because we have done well for decades in that regard, but that we are unhappy with the hypocrisy and self-interest intrinsic to the system. We think that is not good for society, and not good for science.

From an emic point of view, our complaining may be OK--what science is doesn't match what it is supposed to be! But our complaints probably reflect a poor acceptance of the etics of the situation on our part--science works like all other systems for sequestering resources, and we should not expect it to be perfect or in perfect synch with its emics.

Anthropologists are trained to try to be detached when evaluating a culture, even their own. From a detached, anthropological point of view, our system (our mix of emics and etics) is what it is. As anthropologists, perhaps we should learn to accept these realities, rather than complain about them as if emics could ever be identical to etics, which they never are. Whether the discrepancy in relation to science and its lobbying is serious, damaging to society--or, despite its lack of complete honesty actually good for society--are interesting and important questions, that themselves require one to specify what is good, and for whom.

In understanding our culture as The Lobbyists, we should not be surprised at its nature: we understand how it is, and the game is open to all to play. We are as free to dissemble as anyone, and we can dive after funding resources as greedily as anyone. In fact, the players generally (if privately) recognize the nature of the game. In that sense the rules are known so the game is fair, as games go.

Still, we have not been able to accommodate our views on science to the etics. We try to cling to our emics, thinking that science should be more honest and free of vested self-interest or greed. It doesn't take away from our, or anyone's skepticism about what is being said or done in science these days. And if the science is distorted because of its material or psychological venality, it is fair game for criticism--it may that only if at least a few point out the emic-etic disparities that things are adjusted to stay within societally accepted limits. Still, we should probably just learn to accept that we, too, are part of the The Lobbyist society!

Since the deadline is nearing, we have to end this blog, so we can get back to work on our stimulus-package grant application.

Credible research

Marion Nestle, Professor of Nutrition and Food Studies at NYU, was on campus last week to speak, sponsored by the Penn State Rock Ethics Institute. Nestle is the author of a number of popular books about the politics of food, and an outspoken critic of the influence of the food industry on how and what we eat, and thus, on the health of the American population. She's particularly concerned with obesity in children and the role of advertizing in promoting the consumption of excess calories even in children as young as two. She believes that any money researchers take from the food industry is tainted money. Her point is that it's impossible for a scientist to do unbiased research, however well-intentioned, if the money comes from a funder that stands to gain from the findings. Indeed, it has been found that results are significantly more likely to favor the funder when research is paid for by industry.

The same can and has been said about the pharmaceutical industry and drug research, of course, and, though we don't know the particulars, it has to be equally true of chemistry or rehab or finance or fashion design. But, as we hope our posts about lobbying last week make clear, the problem of potentially tainted research doesn't start and stop with the involvement of money from industry. Research done with public money can be just as indebted to vested interests, its credibility equally as questionable. It can be somewhat different because researchers tend not to feel indebted to the actual source of the money -- the taxpayer -- but research done on the public dollar can be just as likely to confirm the idea or approach the funding agency supports.

Even when money isn't the motivation, there are many reasons that research might not be free from bias -- the rush to publish, the desire to be promoted or get a pay raise, commitment to given results, prior assumptions, unwillingness to be shown wrong. Many prominent journals won't publish negative results and of course journals and the media like to tout if not exaggerate positive findings. There is pressure to make positive findings -- and quickly -- to use to get one's next grant (and salary). This is one reason it is commonly said that one applies for funds to do what's already been done. This makes science very conservative and incremental when careers literally depend on the march of funding, no matter what their source.

Besides the pressure to conform and play it safe, a serious problem is that such bias doesn't necessarily make the science wrong, but it does make it more difficult to know how or where it's most accurate and worthy. And it can stifle innovative, truly creative thinking. Some of the most important results are likely to be negative results, because they can tell us what isn't true or important, and guide us to what is. But that isn't necessarily what sponsors, especially corporate sponsors, want, and it isn't what journals are likely to publish.

So, while it's essential, as Marion Nestle and others consistently point out, to eliminate the taint of vested interest from research, it's impossible to rid research of all possible sources of bias. And the reality is, at least for our current time, that it's only the fringe of those most secure in their jobs etc., who can speak out about the issues (as Nestle said, she has tenure and doesn't need money to do her work, so she can say anything she wants to) -- and they do not have the leverage to change the biases built into our bottom-line, market- and career-driven system.

Big Lobbying Week

This past week saw pushes on both sides of the Atlantic for funding for new mega-genomic projects. On the European side, this lobbying is for EU-wide national biobanks, of millions of peoples' records including personal health information and (of course) DNA samples. On the American side, it's to get federal funding for more large-scale genetics. Mass emailings are going out to anyone on potentially relevant science list-serves, asking them to get in touch with the incoming secretary of Health and Human Services. In both cases, the advertized benefit of these huge and expensive genomics projects is a revolutionary 'personalized medicine,' a cause that seems somewhat unsavory given that it will mainly be for wealthy patients, in an era when many millions are without basic living resources including health care.

Personalized medicine is code for a high-technology approach to genetics, to tailor treatment to each individual by predicting their susceptibilities (and potentials?) to suggest molecular interventions. Lifestyle advice is also mentioned, but the real push is genetic, and it's based on a faith in strong genetic determinism, because if individual genotypes don't have high predictive power, the dream of revolutionized medicine won't become a reality. And so this past week was a big one for lobbyists for the belief system that holds (sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly) that genes determine everything in life, which often goes hand-in-hand with the belief that anything organized about life has to be due to natural selection (for brevity, we are exaggerating--but not all that much). Inherent in both of these related beliefs is an assumed fundamental inherency about organisms and their traits. Such views have a history of being rationales for various sorts of inequality, but also discrimination, sometimes of the worst kinds. So this isn't just societally neutral science, and it would be naive to believe that such misuses of science are just historical relics.

Commercial interests as well as the self-interests of academics and the bureaucratic portfolios of science funding agencies are transparent in these efforts. An objective never stated publicly as such is to lock up huge amounts of funds, for open-ended time periods. That will certainly keep the vested interests in the pink of professional health for decades.....but will it keep the public that pays for it in the pink of health?

We think the evidence is clearly that it won't, and for several reasons. First, hundreds of diseases really are genetic. Cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy are well-known examples. They are actually quite complicated, but at least the genes are known, good targets for research, and tests for at least their major genetic variants with high predictive power are already available: they do not require targeted, sequestered funds nor nationwide biobanks. Secondly, even for complex traits, like cancer or diabetes, the majority of cases are manifestly not genetic in the usual sense. Thirdly, sequestered, targeted research pots are not needed to stimulate research into these common and important diseases: investigators will initiate research proposals to work on those problems that will compete just fine in the peer-reviewed system.

Actually, the scientists organizing and proposing these efforts know very well that they are unlikely to deliver their proposed benefits. They know, too, that when one mega-project ends, self-interest drives the need for a successor. That's the nature of the game these days--and not only in genetics by any means--it is largely what vested interests are all about, and naturally those who will gain are not going to speak against locking up hundreds of millions of funds for countless years to come to fund their playground. And we've not mentioned the many issues of confidentiality and other kinds of abuse of private information.

Of course genes are important. The overall genetic contribution to most biological traits in any species is substantial. That's why embryos can start as single cells and turn into predictable adults, resembling their parents, and so on. Clearly genomes play a major, if not the only, role in this. This is 'molecular' and materialistic causation. There is nothing mystical about it.

But prediction and understanding in science are more than making such statements about a genomic role in biological traits. Living organisms--even individual cells--are highly complex, with countless interacting factors, each variable in the population, and affected by contingency and chance. And there is the 'environment', which from any gene's point of view includes everything else, including the rest of the individual cell's genome. That means that we may not be able to have usefully high individual (personalized) prediction based on any one gene or its variants, or even on any reasonably enumerable set of them. And that is what the evidence, of which there is a huge amount, has clearly shown.

We'll comment at a later date on this lack of individually predictive determinism, and why looking from the 'gene' (itself an increasingly elusive notion these days) on up to the organism and its diseases, is not a cost-effective way to invest health resources. Science is a good thing to invest in, and large health data bases can be, too. But investment should be in proportion to the problems that need solving, not the research curiosities (or interests) of a small group of privileged people called 'scientists'. The history of such glowing promises by geneticists is older than many who will chance across this posting, and while there is a clear and important role for some large-scale genomic resources, biobanks and dreamy promises for gene-based 'personalized medicine' are highly exaggerated, self-interested lobbying tools that need to be recognized as such. When you see ads like the one linked to above, you should ask why would anyone need to pay for such ads? Who has what to gain? If as scientists we just want to keep the large-scale genomic industry in business, at least let's say so honestly and be done with it.

Societally responsible science requires that people speak up about the facts as they are known. The integrity of science depends on truthfulness, and there should be resistance when facts are distorted or dissembled, or exaggerated promises made, out of this kind of self-interest, especially when the target is public funds. At least, that is how we see what is going on in this regard today.