"Energy and Ethics", 1986 Spring
(Response to "Objectivity as a Problem for Moral Philosophy by David Holdsworth)
Over the past decade Bernard Cohen (an author and professor of physics at the University of Pittsburgh) has been pre-eminent in clarifying and quantifying many nuclear issues that have been consistently obfuscated by fuzzy thinking. Much of his work has been published in refereed journals and has been subject to peer review and public debate.
In a brief article in Ethics and Energy, David Holdsworth undermines Cohen's approach by suggesting that it is falsely based. Cohen is quoted as saying in an informal interview that his conclusions, being mathematical, are objective. From this symptom Dr. Holdsworth diagnoses that Cohen belongs to the "positivist school of thought" which is apparently contrary to an "emerging view of science" seen by the Edinburgh School of Sociologists, and perhaps others. Holdsworth does not identify a single error made by Cohen as a result of his unfashionable positivism.
I reject most emphatically the second of Holdsworth's four key points, viz., "objectivity can be irrelevant to decision-making and social choice". To me, this attitude is usually phrased much more clearly as "Don't confuse me with facts, my mind is made up". His article does nothing to advance an understanding of nuclear issues, from either a scientific or an ethical standpoint. Instead, by again confusing the issue with philosophical arguments that have been debated by academics for ages and that never will be resolved, it helps to deflect the appeal by Cohen and others, including myself, for due consideration of relevant facts.
I opened my presentations to the Interfaith Program for Public Awareness of Nuclear Issues (IPPANI) in Toronto in 1984 by saying:
Any determination of the ethics of technological applications must involve value judgements. ... I believe that value judgements should be made by the community as a whole, but my concern is that these judgements are being made in the absence of available facts, or even based on "facts" that my colleagues and I believe to be false or misleading.
I illustrated the distinction between facts, interpretation and judgement by examining the risk to the public from ionizing radiation resulting from the operation of nuclear reactors. The average Canadian has received much less than one per cent of his or her total radiation from activities of the nuclear industry; and even some hypothetical individual spending full-time at the boundary of a nuclear-electric generating station would have received only a few per cent of his or her total radiation from that station. By moving away from the station the individual could very well have been exposed to higher levels of radiation, since contributions from living indoors, from living at higher altitudes, and from taking airline flights can easily exceed that from the nuclear station. These are facts, not in dispute, that can help members of the public assess the magnitude of the risk. It is my contention that these very simple and basic facts are not widely known; and that, if they were, public perceptions of the risks of nuclear energy would be markedly affected.
What is not a fact, but a question of interpretation, is the numerical magnitude of the risk associated with the relatively small amount of radiation attributed to nuclear energy. The majority view in the international community of health-care professionals is that the risk is very small and almost certainly less than the risk associated with an equivalent coal-fired plant. To provide an easily understood yardstick for comparison, Cohen equated the nuclear risk to that of smoking less than one cigarette per year. A minority view holds that the nuclear risk is much higher, so that it could be equated to smoking a few tens of cigarettes each year. That is the measure of the much publicized controversy.
I maintain that the popular public perception is that the nuclear risk could be very large since "the experts are divided on this question".
Knowledge of the fact that the dispute is between a low risk and a very low risk would relieve a lot of unnecessary anxiety. If this is "positivism", I am proud to be positive, and not as negative as so many of those in our media.
My illustration has considered only the risk associated with normal operations. The possibility of a major accident at a nuclear generating station requires similar treatment, but with different numerical estimates, which are again subject to interpretation. However, for the worst North American accident to date, at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979, the resulting public exposures are reasonably well established, within a range of uncertainty. The most exposed member of the public received additional radiation equivalent to smoking about ten cigarettes acording to the majority view (and correspondingly more by the minority view). The only health effects detected in local inhabitants have been due to psychological stress that could have been mitigated by a proper understanding of the facts. Suppression of the facts, whether deliberately or by misguided good intentions, is surely a matter of ethics.
The decision whether the interpreted risk is acceptable, in the light of the expected benefits, is a value judgement which should be distinct from, but made in knowledge of, the facts and the interpretation. Non-technical factors should also be considered and the technical community should be neither specially privileged in, nor excluded from, the decision making.
Sometimes the problem is, according to Mark Twain: 'It's not that people know too little . . . It's that they know too many things that just ain't so."
Since publication, I have been informed that the correct quotation is "It is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so", from a work called "Proverb" (1874) by "Josh Billings" (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Widely published results by Paul Slovic and his colleagues show that the public overestimates, often grossly, the risk of certain activities with low risk. For instance, while botulism actually causes two fatalities per year in the U.S., public estimates ranged from 100 to 3000. If society, knowing that botulism causes only two deaths per year in the U.S., still wants to commit a large amount of its limited resources to combatting that risk, I can accept the democratic decision. However, I would appeal the same decision if it were made on the false belief that botulism causes 400 deaths year. Facts do matter.
Those of us who are technically qualified have an obligation to make available to the public facts relevant to value judgements, and to explain interpretations to the best of our ability. Similarly, those promoting policies have an obligation to seek out the relevant facts first: To do otherwise is unethical.
Through your newsletter I appeal to those interested in the ethics of nuclear issues to give due recognition to the available facts, and even to reexamine their assumptions as to what are facts.
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