Smoke, mirrors and the death of objectivity
As Henry Porter said in his Observer column on Sunday 19th November, 'the more facts we have, the further away we are from genuine insight'. And no more true than in the world of drug information. Back in 1968, the Institute for the Study of Drug Dependence (now DrugScope) was set up in the UK to try and gather what little information was 'out there' about illegal drugs. Now enter 'illegal drugs ' into Google and you'll net nearly seven million hits in half a second. So is that job done - is drug information now 'sorted?' Absolutely not. We have simply moved into a post-modern world where there are no longer any wrong answers, simply 'alternate truths'. That's rubbish - and where drug information is concerned, it is insidious rubbish because the ways of arriving at the alternate truths about drugs (whatever your starting point) are subtle and often mired in scientific and statistical obfuscation:
- Studies are cherry-picked to suit an argument
- Over-reliance is placed on studies where samples are small or unrepresentative, or fail to take into account other factors which might account for the result
- There are researchers who have the veneer of objective scientific respectability, but come to the work with their own moral agenda with the inevitable outcome for the results
- Findings are refracted through the prism of spin. Medical journals announce new 'shock' research about drugs and by the time they hit the tabloids, what might have started out as considered work has been reduced to scary headlines
- And of course, there are straightforward lies, exaggeration. the promotion of potential risk to a small group of users as the actual risk to most users and so on
So what? Isn't it better to exaggerate the dangers of drugs, skew research and do everything you can to put people off? Isn't it sending the 'wrong message' if you do anything other than tell the bad news, even if you sex it up a bit? Ponder a moment on the police claim last week that cocaine users face 'a very high risk of cancer' (Metro 24th November) from snorting cocaine cut with phenacetin.
At a crude level this kind of tactic doesn't work; over the past 25 years, Class A drug use has skyrocketed in the UK despite all the warnings of experts and campaigners. But beyond that, there is an objective truth about drugs and people are entitled to have full and unfettered access to it. Trouble is that this isn't a simple truth, it doesn't lend it self to easy soundbites because it is often hedged in with qualification and caveat and this can sound cautious and unexciting. As an organisation DrugScope will not sit on the fence in highlighting the dangers of drugs, but neither will we condone or support drug information which lacks credibility and is detached from evidence.
8 comments:
Prohibition has created what Donald Rumsfeld (the ex USA defense secretary) defined as "known unknowns" - that is to say "things we know that we don't know". This means very basic information such as how strong or how pure a drug is.
Because of prohibition, illegal drugs are not really "controlled substances", in truth there is no effective control over any aspect of the trade.
If we want facts about drugs and drug use, we first have to quantify the market, which means being able to study it and measure it. This simply isn't possible whilst we suffer the policy of prohibition.
very true, having done drug education in schools and with the police, i am not suprised that young people stick their fingers up and do not believe what they are told, so much lies...2 e pills will kill you, one try of crack and you are a hopeless addict etc
the home office and others have promoted this kind of crap and are now reaping the rewards,
excellent post. I'd also add that the cloud of misinformation about drugs is matched by that swirling around the effectiveness of drug policy more generally.
25 years since I was a teenager and I personally have listened to enough rubbish from politicians and their agencies.
from the 'just say no' and 'heroin screws you up' ads of the 80's to the 'brain warehouse' today.
how many more years of this nonsense must we put up with befor someone has the strength to deal with the issues properly.
Not only is there over-reliance on studies where samples are small but there is a growing trend for everything to be evidence-based. And if it is not then itis deemed scientifically imperfect,this may work within the clinical medical sector but is it transferable to drug information and research?
As you would expect from a drugs information provider that has the cheek to claim to 'Tell the truth about drugs' I totally agree with the sentiments of the blog. I'm sure we can all think of recent examples of the truth being distorted by academics and medics to further their careers or pass off their own moral values as 'research'.
Cannabis and mental illness is classic example where an 'academic' passes off their own views as if it were conclusive evidence, which the media lap up and before you know it you end up with FRANK (who started out with the intention of providing accurate information) producing a propaganda campaign telling us that cannabis 'does your head in'. The words cry, boy and wolf come to mind.
Even The Independent, a paper that is usually fairly accurate on drugs had an article last week jumping on the current bandwagon with an article entitled ''Crystal meth: Britain's deadliest drug problem' (they didn't even use a question mark). The fact that there is no evidence that methamphetamine has killed anyone in Britain and even if we did get a rise in use, it is far less likely to kill you than heroin, let alone get into the telephone number figures of tobacco and alcohol, just didn't fit with their story. The article also contained the following quote,
"Police are also concerned that the manufacture of the drug - the chemicals and instructions on how to use them are readily available on the Internet".
Quite so, just go the Home Office web site and download Appendix One of the methamphetamine report and you can find all the recipes a drug manufacturer could ever want. If we don't get a methamphetamine problem in this country it won't be for lack of trying.
This article by Tim J. Gluckman and Peter Webster is worth reading. An excerpt:
«Science pretends to be value-free, but a close scrutiny of scientific studies concerning many of today's controversial topics reveals that "scientific results" are often bought and sold like any other commodity in today's runaway free-market system. And when scandals inevitably appear, the lawyers are called in and rarely does anyone suffer any significant consequence, or even a stain on his or her scientific reputation.
Concerning the efforts to bring meaningful drug policy reform to a world suffering from prohibition's long and dismal failure, science has been at best a fickle friend, at worst an outright collaborator with injustice and mendacity. Scientists themselves sometimes produce the prohibitionists' sought-after results on demand, or at other times raise no protest when the media cherry-picks the bits that suit the dominant discourse: i.e., drugs are dangerous/ drugs have no beneficial use/ drugs are better illegal/ society needs to spend huge amounts of money to prevent the sky from falling.(...)
It often seems that science is a willing handmaiden of the politicians who are trying to maintain their lifetime lie. Scientific results that do not fit with the predominant paradigm are usually ignored, or the scientists who carried out that research may not get contracts in the future. The British magazine *New Scientist* referred to just such a syndrome, and one should not be surprised if researchers fish out of the mass of findings the values they think their financers would like to see, or construct their tests so that the desired outcome is achieved.»
You mean alternative (truths), not alternate.
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