Friday, October 30, 2009
Nutt sacked
Professor David Nutt has been sacked as the government's top drugs adviser after a rollercoaster of a relationship with two home secretaries over the last 12 months. It was his job to provide hard scientific facts to the government on the harm of drugs.
He seems to have argued the harm from illegal drugs could be equal to harm in other parts of life, such as horse-riding. He did not seem to have accurate statistics to this effect.
He reproduced a chart of drugs and other substances, based on their risk to health. The chart stated that alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than many illegal drugs, including LSD, ecstasy and cannabis. Again, adequate statistics, directly relevant to the existing social context, do not seem to be there.
But he then went beyond that and criticised the moral tone of policy decisions.
IMO: The Government were right to sack Nutt. Firstly, he publically cricitised their moral view which was well outside his remit. Secondly, alternative statistics and anecdotal observation suggest his views are in considerable variance with fact. It is clear that the Government may well be ruing some actions (e.g. on removing marriage tax reliefs) it has taken, allegedly in the interests of Socialism, but in fact far from both that and far from the public good, and they may well be trying rather clumsily to correct some earlier errors. So Nutt can't stand the heat and has had to be taken out of the kitchen. Clumsy well-wishing scientists are only likely to anger the public and defeat their own profession if their arguments in Nutt's favour do not actually prove him right, which is most unlikely - there are many literature references and much anecdotal evidence which can be quoted to this end, and in any case the onus is on him to prove his controversial points. We cannot accept scientific advice ex cathedra, science is no religion.
He seems to have argued the harm from illegal drugs could be equal to harm in other parts of life, such as horse-riding. He did not seem to have accurate statistics to this effect.
He reproduced a chart of drugs and other substances, based on their risk to health. The chart stated that alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than many illegal drugs, including LSD, ecstasy and cannabis. Again, adequate statistics, directly relevant to the existing social context, do not seem to be there.
But he then went beyond that and criticised the moral tone of policy decisions.
IMO: The Government were right to sack Nutt. Firstly, he publically cricitised their moral view which was well outside his remit. Secondly, alternative statistics and anecdotal observation suggest his views are in considerable variance with fact. It is clear that the Government may well be ruing some actions (e.g. on removing marriage tax reliefs) it has taken, allegedly in the interests of Socialism, but in fact far from both that and far from the public good, and they may well be trying rather clumsily to correct some earlier errors. So Nutt can't stand the heat and has had to be taken out of the kitchen. Clumsy well-wishing scientists are only likely to anger the public and defeat their own profession if their arguments in Nutt's favour do not actually prove him right, which is most unlikely - there are many literature references and much anecdotal evidence which can be quoted to this end, and in any case the onus is on him to prove his controversial points. We cannot accept scientific advice ex cathedra, science is no religion.
# posted by uv : 5:09 PM
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
