POLITICS VERSUS SCIENCE: APPORTIONING ... - Buffalo State

But the precautionary principle, as all risk averse interpretations of innovation,
brings a different set of costs. Wildavsky (2000, 40) 5 , for example, argues that innovators
do not have political champions: “To wipe out tangible benefits people already enjoy—
familiar products, traditional jobs, with their identifiable and self-aware constituencies—
is politically more difficult to do then to stop something new that is not yet surrounded
with a self-productive belt of interest.” Because statutes “almost never explicitly address
the lost opportunity costs of screening out of a product,” the consumer shoulders the
costs. Politicians, however, pander to a “clamoring constituency” demanding that
government ensure its safety and, as a result, advocate “specific measures on behalf of
tangible people.” Conversely, scientists offer generalized societal benefits and future
improvements based on scientific discoveries. “You’ll be better off in the ‘by-and-by’,”
Wildavsky observes, “has never been noted as a politically potent appeal.”
Durodié (2000, 163) in his review of European risk regulation writes “implicit
with the Commission’s approach has been the assumption that the precautionary principle
is a zero-cost, or something for nothing option” and “pointing to the fact that science can
never provide definitive answers is hardly a major new discovery, let alone one that
desires to be dressed up with the title of the precautionary principle.” He speculates that
the European public’s embrace of zero-risk may reflect their lack of confidence in
decision-makers rather than science! He argues that the EU’s application of the
precautionary principle has unanticipated consequences for European society (164):
The panic and hysteria created around these issues reflects a far wider loss of
nerve within society rather than any inherent problem with the products
themselves. The real cost will be that of a generation of young people brought up
5 This is a reprint of Wildavsky’s classic article. Morris (2000) includes it as his lead chapter. It serves as
the theoretical ballast in the text’s energetic attack of the precautionary principle.
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