Ronald Bailey
Fear Sells: The Media and the Precautionary Principle
 
The media regularly fan the flames of fear of new technologies. Urgent headlines have warned us against the dangers of cell phones, electric transmission lines, synthetic chemicals, falling sperm counts, Internet social misfits, in-vitro fertilization, population growth, resource depletion, genetically enhanced crops, and nanotechnology. Why? Because Chicken Littles and boys-who-cry-wolf allege that new technologies and economic progress pose vast unknown dangers to get front-page stories and advance their careers. Thus, advocates of the precautionary principle are well treated in the press, while defenders of scientific and technological progress are dismissed as naïve or, worse, as corporate stooges. The result is an iron triangle of fear composed of the media, activists, and politicians that has been slowing progress and demoralizing technologically advanced societies for the past half century.

Lester Crawford
The Precautionary Principle and the International Conflict over Agricultural Biotechnology

The international conflict over biotechnology continues, but there is reason for optimism. The European Union recently ordered the Greek government to rescind a ban on a bioengineered form of corn called MON 810. Of note, both Greece and the EU used risk assessment terminology to justify their conclusions. The EU “didn’t think that the dossier submitted by Greece gave any new evidence of health or environmental risks from these seeds,” while Greece concluded that “scientific evidence confirms that the cultivation of maize bearing the MON 810 genetic modification poses an immediate environmental risk.” Since Commissioner Byrne’s famous statement to the effect that genetically modified crops have not been shown to pose more risks than non-genetically modified crops, a modicum of reason has returned to the debate. To wit: eighteen bioengineered plant varieties have been approved since the statement in 2004. Nonetheless, the rhetoric spawned by the confusion associated with the linkage of the precautionary principle to bioengineered crops still wafts over much of the rest of the world. But now is the time to package information and education campaigns that make it easy for the general public to understand risk-based decision making. And it is time to put together a convincing argument that allows the inculcation of risk assessment into the political and trade atmospheres.

Jon Entine
Business and Risk: How the “Corporate Social Responsibility Movement” Endangers Corporate Innovation and Reform

Consumers--who, after all, are why corporations exist--are relentlessly demanding. To survive in today’s hypercompetitive international marketplace, companies need to think globally and be nimble, creating new opportunities by taking risks. Yet, the very qualities necessary for success are under attack by some advocacy groups professing to act in the name of “corporate social responsibility” and “business ethics.” These critics often invoke fungible concepts such as “stakeholder dialogue,” “brand reputation,” and “sustainability,” not reforming or humanizing corporations, but pushing narrow ideological agendas based on the reflexive mantra of “better safe than sorry.” As one Greenpeace member has remarked, “For environmentalists, targeting brands is like discovering gunpowder.” High-profile companies are in effect paying a brand tax that holds them accountable for links their value chain cannot control. With public concern about corporate misconduct heightened in the wake of various business scandals in the United States and trust of multinational corporations near an all-time low, business leaders are increasingly paralyzed by caution, reacting rather than leading. Corporations, government policymakers, and, most critically, the public, are all net losers in the process.

Claire Fox

The culture of panic and caution is now so pervasive that it is distorting the way society organizes the education and care of children. The language we usually associate with the world of science and technology, such as “better safe than sorry” and “risk management,” are now applied to protect children from every possible harm. This is illustrated by the way that the UK school system is reorganizing itself around child protection and child safety (through the implementation of the Every Child Matters policy). Child protection is now defined very broadly and covers everything from physical and sexual abuse to emotional well-being.

The consequences of this concern with protecting children are problematic in a variety of ways. It is distorting the content of the curriculum, as the themes of distrust and caution are being taught as fact in relation to everything from food safety to interpersonal relations. This preoccupation with protection is also paralyzing relationships between teachers and pupils and having a detrimental impact on teachers’ capacity to act as authority figures in the classroom. Teachers now face formal and informal regulations vis-à-vis how they relate to those they teach; for example, sports coaches and music teachers have to avoid any physical contact with pupils, and teachers in general avoid disciplining pupils for fear of accusations of bullying or abuse. Additionally, there is growing mistrust between teachers and parents, as both parties view the other as potential threats to children. Even the relationships between pupils and their peers are being mired in this climate of fear, as illustrated through the growth of the anti-bullying industry and the regulation of informal friendships through initiatives such as peer intervention squads and conflict resolution training. Schools are becoming the official breeding grounds for the culture of fear and are the means through which risk aversion is being internalized by new generations.

Frank Furedi
Politics of Fear in a Precautionary Culture

“Politics of fear” has become a term of everyday use. Yet it is by no means the most significant or distinct feature of our times. The politics of fear could not flourish if it did not have such a powerful cultural resonance. Politicians cannot simply create fear from thin air; they require resources provided by culture that they can deploy and manipulate. Nor can politicians monopolize the deployment of fear. Panics about health or security scares can just as easily begin on the Internet or through the efforts of an advocacy organization as they can from the efforts of government spin doctors. Paradoxically, governments spend as much time trying to contain the effects of spontaneously generated scare stories as they do pursuing their own fear campaigns. Possibly one of the distinct features of our time is not the cultivation of fear, but the cultivation of our sense of vulnerability. In an era in which children, women, the elderly, the infirm, and the poor--around 80 to 90 percent of the population of the Western world--are routinely represented as members of a “vulnerable group,” there is little need for an omnipotent state to remind us of our powerlessness. Today, most human experiences come with a health warning, continually reminding us that we cannot be expected to manage the risks we face. A powerful culture of precaution works to estrange the public from the ideals of risk taking, innovation, and experimentation.

Tony Gilland

Environmentalists today stress the importance of science and argue that contemporary scientific understanding confirms that the relationship between modern society and the planet is unsustainable. This view is echoed by many scientists and policymakers who wholeheartedly endorse the precautionary principle. Sir Robert May--former chief scientific advisor to the British government and former president of the UK’s preeminent scientific academy, the Royal Society, until the end of 2005--recently argued that while science and innovation have led to unparalleled human well-being, the threats posed by global warming, biodiversity loss, and infectious diseases mean that we now live on the brink of “the worst of times.”

Despite the growing consensus that places our appreciation of what science has to offer within a pessimistic framework of averting manmade and natural catastrophes, we need to focus on experimentation in its broadest and most ambitious sense rather than constantly worry about unforeseen consequences and assigning science the mundane task of human survival.

James K. Glassman
Obesity and Public Policy

Excessive caution--a serious threat to innovation and economic growth--has its roots in deep misunderstandings, many of which begin with the media’s ignorance of science and a tendency toward group-think and hysteria.

The issue of obesity in America provides a good case study. The issue surfaced after the success of trial lawyers, politicians, the media, and health professionals in the tobacco wars. After all, obesity--like smoking--makes people sick, and obesity can be caused by the ingestion of products made by large companies with deep pockets.

Over a remarkably short period of time--about four years--the obese and the overweight have surfaced as major public policy concerns, to the extent that the surgeon general said in 2004: “As we look to the future and where childhood obesity will be in 20 years . . . it is every bit as threatening to us as is the terrorist threat we face today. It is the threat from within.” Obesity equals terrorism.

Unfortunately, good data on the effects of being overweight and obese are hard to find. The U.S. Center for Disease Control originally attributed 300,000 to 400,000 deaths per year to obesity--on a par with estimates for tobacco. Last year, however, that estimate was scaled back to 25,814--still a questionable figure.

This is not to deny that poor diet and lack of exercise contribute to disease--they do. But the media’s focus on obesity is widespread and extreme, and the cost of being obese today, relative to being underweight, is at a historic low. Indeed, research shows that being slightly overweight is better than being underweight.

While the vast majority of Americans believes that weight is a matter of personal responsibility, lawsuits have been filed that put the blame on restaurants and beverage companies. Sales of snacks and soft drinks at schools are being curtailed by state law, and attempts are being made to limit advertising of cereals and candy to children.

I will examine media coverage of obesity--including the film Super Size Me--and the distortions and consequences of that coverage.

Philip Howard
Legal Structures and the Culture of Fear

America has perhaps the most risk-conscious culture in the history of civilization. Common ailments like headaches are often treated by doctors with batteries of tests. Simple classroom choices--maintaining discipline, grading papers--are layered with rules and procedures designed to guarantee that no one is unfairly treated. Ordinary banter in the workplace is discouraged in mandatory, mind-numbing “diversity workshops.” Supervision of children is fraught with peril. Warning labels are plastered all over the landscape: “Caution: contents are hot.”

A wealthy society, like a wealthy person, is apt to err on the side of caution, an instinct akin to trying to protect a lead in games. But what is going on here is not the age-old tension between caution and risk. There is a third dimension of risk that never existed--at least not in ordinary daily choices--until recent decades: legal risk. In any social dealing, whether selling products, managing employees, running a classroom or building a playground, there is a chance that someone might be hurt or offended. And in modern America that carries with it the risk of being sued.

Dealing with legal risk is different from dealing with other risks because instead of weighing the benefits and costs of a choice, it requires focusing on the lowest common denominator. The choice might be beneficial or productive, but might nonetheless carry huge legal risks. After several decades of escalating legal risks, there has been a major shift in our cultural perception of risk. Risk has become a suspect concept. “You took a risk” is an accusation--reason enough to get sued.

Legal structures affect daily choices. The only solution to the epidemic of legal fear is to restore reliability to our legal system. What is reasonable and what is not must be decided as a matter of law, not on an ad hoc basis by juries. In order to feel free to act reasonably, people must have a sense of where the legal boundaries are.

Christina Hoff Sommers
The Overprotected Child

With few exceptions, American children are mentally and emotionally sound. Yet many adults regard them as fragile, distressed, and unable to cope with life’s challenges. Today, most middle-class kids are surrounded by an array of self-esteem educators, anti-bullying facilitators, and emotional intelligence coaches. What are the consequences of this obsession with protection?

Alan Wolfe

One reason why Americans seem less averse to taking big risks is that both conservatives and liberals alike have retreated from ideas of national purpose. In contrast to earlier conservatives such as John Marshall and Alexander Hamilton, today’s variety speaks for federalism (antifederalism, historically) and aligns with antiscientific movements such as the Christian Right. Meanwhile, those on the Left, unlike liberals under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, fear concentrations of power in the executive branch and adopt a small-is-beautiful attitude toward the environment. The United States needs a political realignment before it can once again become a great power with forward-looking vision.

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