The perversion of scientific evidence for policy advocacy: A perspective on Avery 2010

Abstract

The claims of scientific misconduct surrounding the pandemic influenza event in 2009 and the furor surrounding purported scientific manipulation at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit were used as grounds in Avery's 2010 paper to ostensibly criticize how science is corrupted by the need to support particular political or ethical perspectives and, implicitly, that such perspectives are either lacking in evidence, or that such evidence is distorted or suppressed to maintain the politically correct interpretation. However, this rejoinder to Avery's paper demonstrates unambiguously that both unbalanced interpretation and one-sided presentation of opinion as evidence in support of these claims is in fact a thinly disguised attack on two issues that are contentious to certain vested interests. Having written the original paper on which Avery 2010 is based for a think tank well known for its opposition on ideological grounds to both environmental legislation and anthropogenic global warming, and for which some funding was received, Avery undermines his own arguments by appearing to embody the very problem he seeks to reveal. This rejoinder details why that seems to be the case. © 2011 Policy Studies Organization.