Opinion The scientization of public policy and politics: A new approach to conceptualizing and identifying the phenomenon, 2023, Roberts

This sounds like it's annoying but I suppose it's possible there are other interpretations?

Source: Politics & Policy Preprint Date: August 19, 2023
URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/polp.12548

The scientization of public policy and politics: A new approach to conceptualizing and identifying the phenomenon
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Alex N. Roberts

Abstract

We know that deep scientization (DS)—the misrepresentation of political issues as technical/scientific ones best handled by experts — can unduly limit public deliberation and lead to policy misdesign.

Yet, tools for investigating DS remain lacking.

This article develops a new approach to diagnosing DS that works by identifying where experts have used their discretion to construct policy claims that contravene existing, shared epistemic standards.

This approach's value is demonstrated through a case study of U.S. chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) policy.

The study shows that, whereas government experts originally developed CFS as a research construct, they have since used their discretionary power to recast CFS as a serious disease requiring new policy interventions.

This epistemically unjustified transformation of CFS has limited public discussion of important value-laden policy questions and arguably yielded poor policy outcomes.

The approach developed here can also be used to uncover DS in other policy areas.

 

I’d like to read the whole paper. But failing that who is this person what’s their background do you know?
I think I remember some of the other papers listed underneath by title but not more.

 

I wonder how the author determined that scientization, and not research, is the reason CFS is now seen as serious disease.

To be honest the abstract makes him look like one of those people who read something about CFS decades ago, decided it was nonsense, and have not mande any effort to read more about it since then

 

Yeah

 

Is part two going to be "scientization of public policy and politics: How people that practised research wanted to make us believe that the earth is round and how this technical/scientific misrepresentation of a political topic wanted to create incentives for us to sail around it"?

 

By the same author, The biopsychosocial model: Its use and abuse 2023 Roberts

 

Is this a historical paper?

 

Unsurprisingly, I can't find any biological papers in the references list from the last 10 years.

 

You see, he's only trying to discredit the illness to help patients and is really concerned about their mental health.

(sarcasm)

 

This guy is a visiting Professor at a nondescript school. I wouldn’t put too much stock into his recycling of CFS = depression ramblings

 

Why does he complain about reification of CFS and diversity of criteria, then proceed to reify CFS himself and then attribute it to psychiatric condition based on symptoms?

That seems hypocritical and lacks intellectual consistency. The author seems unaware of the history of harms which have been done to ME CFS patients by treating them as if they had a psychiatric condition.

Which psychological treatments is he talking about?

Is this the Klineberg ref?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24944088/
"Adolescent chronic fatigue syndrome and somatoform disorders: a prospective clinical study."

If so it is thoroughly biased by BPS assumption.

I feel what I have read of this "analysis" does not make a useful point and is just more typical handwavey BPS "beelzebub's tales to his grandson", chasing its tail in ever decreasing circles and trying to sell the reader on believing in psychiatric explanations for CFS. I wonder who is paying for it?

 

Did I understand this correctly?

According to his line of thought a disease starts to become a disease once a clear biological biomarker exists. This of course means that the early victims that died of HIV/AIDS didn’t die of a disease, because the objective biomarker was only found later, the same of course applies to decades of people dying of MS. Furthermore this can be expanded throughout the whole human history, since biological biomarkers are a new phenomenon we can thus say diseases didn’t exist throughout humanity and roughly only started occurring after the industrial revolution. In fact just dispose or stop the use of MRI machines for certain patients, and we don't have to deal with MS anymore, as markers become absent. Was it even possible to break ones bones before advanced imaging techniques existed?


"Schrödingers disease hypothesis: Diseases stop existing if we stop looking, all we have to do is close our eyes."


This means diseases are not biomedical conditions and problems, but instead financial investment topics.

 

To think in terms of "real diseases with biomarkers" and "not real diseases without biomarkers" is flawed thinking. Reality is more nuanced than that. In his world view, psychiatric disorders also seem to be a third category which are real but not a disease (due to lack of biomarkers).

There are also other medical conditions that don't have a biomarker but are still accepted as real diseases.

How insightful and deep of an analysis . If he had spent more time reading the IOM report he might have learned that "CFS" patients have symptoms that don't fit psychiatric disorders.