Mixing Science and Politics: Graham Faces Opposition

When Washington Post reporter David Brown called the Harvard School of Public Health's Center for Risk Analysis (HCRA) a few weeks ago, he was looking for an impartial opinion of a recently released government report on human exposure to certain toxins. His story quoted the HCRA's spokesperson, David Ropeik, who said the study showed only the presence of toxins but not an actual hazard.

The quote caught the eye of Ron Collins at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a Washington interest group and a watchdog for the "corporatization of science."

According to Collins, the HCRA is on the CSPI's list of "sinners," organizations that his group tracks that take large sums of money from industry sources. These groups, he says, more often than not put out studies that are favorable to those corporations.

Collins fired off a letter to the Post the next day. In that March 23 letter, Collins wrote "The public is entitled to know about such conflicts in order to make more informed decisions about the reliability of the experts quoted."

This incident is just another episode in the controversy surrounding the HCRA and its founder and director, Professor of Policy and Decision Sciences John D. Graham, who was tapped by President George Bush to head the powerful Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

The nomination has galvanized Graham's opponents who claim that he uses the Harvard name to push a pro-business point of view. His supporters counter that the opposition, including Ralph Nader's group "Public Citizen," which released a highly critical 130-page report on Graham's work last month, are waging a political battle by attacking his scientific credentials.

"This is definitely a political issue," said Graham-supporter and Yale Law School Professor E. Donald Elliott. "The Democrats are trying to portray the current administration as being anti-environment."

But Graham's critics say the real issue is the integrity of science-and Harvard's good name-and say their disagreements with Graham are more than purely political.

BF: Following The Money

After learning that the HCRA receives considerable funds from industry, Brown promptly wrote a letter to Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) Barry R. Bloom.

The letter acknowledged the necessity of many universities to take money from corporations and bemoaned the propensity of the media to assume conflicts of interest even when none were apparent.

Brown wrote "I naively assumed the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, part of the hallowed Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard University, to be such a disinterested voice."

In the stinging conclusion, he wrote "I am told your school needs money. Nevertheless, Harvard University has a budget larger than that of some countries. I am surprised it is willing to trade its most valuable thing, its reputation, for a handful of silver."

In an interview last week, Bloom agreed that the perception of a conflict of interest is a problem but stressed that the HSPH has a strict conflict of interest policy and is dedicated to full disclosure of funding sources.

"On the issue of disclosure, the only hedge or protection one has is to disclose and then let people decide for themselves," Bloom said.

According to Bloom, much of the work done at places like the HCRA or at the HSPH would not be done if not for support from industry.

He stressed, however, that the industry groups are never allowed to influence the design of a study or decide whether or not the results will be released.

"We should all worry about protecting the independence of universities," Bloom says. "In order to get the work done, we have to work both with the federal government and corporations."

"It is a classical stereotype and simplification to say that all corporate money corrupts," Ropeik says. "We recognize that perception is a problem and are therefore very careful about how we do our work."

The HCRA's website lists over 100 corporations and government agencies as funding sources, including AT&T Wireless, U.S. Centers for Disease Control, and Dow Chemical Company.

According to Ropeik, the HCRA has a total budget of about $3 million. Forty percent comes from unrestricted grants given by corporations and foundations. Thirty percent comes from the government and is earmarked for specific projects. Another 20 percent is given by corporations for specific studies. The remainder comes from the HSPH.

Although the HCRA is rare in the sense that there are very few similar centers, academics who do work in risk analysis routinely take money from industry.

According to M. Granger Morgan '63, chair of the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, the HCRA is not alone in accepting industry money. Morgan advised Graham on his doctoral dissertation at Carnegie Mellon.

"This is not a particularly unique position," he says. "The trick becomes balancing multiple sources of money to ensure objectivity in the work.

The Washington Post, at least, seems to think the HCRA has had trouble striking that balance.

In an April 12 story on a government study on the chemical dioxin that is potentially damaging to chemical and agricultural interests, the Post referred to the HCRA as "industry-backed."

Graham sits on a government advisory panel that reviewed the study. The panel issued a statement that called into doubt some of the most explosive findings, including the possible link between exposure to dioxin and cancer.

"The Post's characterization of the center is imprecise," Ropeik says.

The HCRA's funding and Graham's work has also been called into question by a report published by Public Citizen.

Although the incident with the Post occurred after the report's release-and involved parties say the two incidents are unrelated-both are revealing of the fundamental disagreements between Graham and his critics.

BF: Public Citizen's Quarrel

The consumer advocates at Public Citizen say they are worried about Graham's corporate ties.

Their report, titled "Safeguards at Risk: John Graham and Corporate America's Back Door to the While House," claims that if the Senate approves Graham's nomination, "he will be in a position to wield enormous power, and to undercut public health, safety, and environmental protections for years to come."

The report's author, Laura MacCleery, characterizes Graham as a consultant and lobbyist for the industry, not an academic interested doing good science.

"There are several levels of our complaint," MacCleery says. "[Graham] does not hold degrees in any hard sciences yet he refers to himself repeatedly in stories as a scientist. It's fair to say that if you're evaluating the health effects of dioxin, you should know something about biology."

The report criticizes both Graham himself and the work that he oversees at the HCRA. It characterizes the center as corrupted by the corporate money that finances it.

Graham's supporters counter by saying the report is highly selective in what it chooses to present, ignoring cases when research done under Graham's oversight gave results that were not favorable to companies that sponsored the studies.

Graham is not allowed to comment to the press under the terms of his nomination process, but according to spokesperson for the OMB Chris Ullman, Graham intents to combat the conclusions of the report when he is again able to speak publicly.

"Professor Graham is certainly aware of what the Public Citizen report contained and he is very much looking forward to presenting a balanced picture of his beliefs and his credentials to the Senate and the public," Ullman says. "The report is inaccurate in a variety of places and is very selective in the information it presents."

According to Ullman, Graham is meeting with senators and preparing extensive materials for his impending confirmation hearings.

If confirmed, Graham would have review powers over regulations proposed by federal agencies as the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

BF: The Risk of Politics

Many of Graham's supporters say the controversy surrounding his record and the HCRA's funding sources is just a way that his critics are trying to hold up his nomination.

They say the critics are more interested in portraying the Bush administration as anti-environment than in ensuring good science.

"Some of John's findings have been challenging to people in the environmental community," says Ropeik. "They are using the money issue to speak to the larger disagreement they really have."

According to Elliott, who co-signed a pro-Graham letter to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee with nearly 100 other academics, the critics are primarily opposed to Graham's reportedly conservative politics and his insistence on quantifying the costs and benefits of proposed regulations.

Elliott served under the General Counsel to the Environmental Protection Agency during the administration of President George H. W. Bush.

He says Democrats on the Governmental Affairs Committee have told him privately that they plan on giving Graham a difficult time but may ultimately vote to confirm him.

According to Ropeik, the CSPI's questioning of the HCRA's funding and the furor over Graham's nomination relate back to the politics of a new administration getting acquainted in Washington.

"When David Brown quoted the HCRA, he got a letter from the CSPI, which is a great organization but is an avowedly liberal organization," Ropeik says.

According to Senior Lecturer on Environmental Science John Evans, who is on the faculty of the HCRA, Graham's political views might lean toward conservativism-but he disputes that he has accommodated his politics or his scientific study to the interests of the corporations who fund his work.

"I've known John since before the HCRA existed," says Evans. "Before he had a penny of anybody's money, he believed the same things he believes now."

BF: The Science of Risk

The opposition to Graham's nomination may come in part from his critics' fears that his research uses scientific methods that are hard to combat but may be influenced by subtle value judgments that are not easily shown as being biased.

In a sense, this is an argument about where science stops and political value judgments begin. Both sides think they are right because they draw the line in different places-and do not acknowledge the validity of the others' position.

"John and I can argue endlessly on a problem-basically about where that line is," Evans says.

Risk analysis is a relatively new field of study which uses quantitative methods to make decisions about what rules and regulations would be the most effective for the least cost.

In some cases, it requires that researchers make some basic value judgments about what risks, to which people, are less serious than other risks. Such judgments, say critics of Graham and his center, are where the bias toward corporations arises and why they cast doubt on the scientific validity of his work.

"I think in a way, one of the major reasons [for the opposition] is that all of us connected with the Center favor formal, quantitative analysis," says Evans. "This analysis is not attractive to environmental groups because certain regulations are not cost effective."

Morgan, a registered Democrat, says he supports the integrity of Graham's work even while acknowledging that there are certain parts of risk analysis that cannot be done with purely scientific tools.

"Even if you know all the science, you still have to make value judgments," Morgan says. "One of the areas where there's room for legitimate disagreements is the relative importance that should be given to certain risks."

But these value judgments bring back the question of the role of the scientist in public policy.

"When you have this unbelievable infusion of financing, it is hard to do it without ethical problems," says the CSPI's Collins. "It raises questions about the whole purpose of the educational mission."

--Staff writer Catherine E. Shoichet contributed to the reporting of this story.

--Staff writer Jonathan H. Esensten can be reached at esensten@fas.harvard.edu.