A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association that found that fetuses don’t feel pain until somewhere between the 23rd and 30th week of preganacy is all over the news; the Chicago Tribune has a front page story on it today with the title “When Science, Politics collide”.
No way this paper wouldn’t have been hotly criticized in the current climate, but it’s especially relevant because it addresses a bill proposed by Senator Sam Brownback (KS-R), called the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act, which would requires that abortion practitioners must tell women considering an abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy that the abortion procedure will cause significant pain for the unborn child. The hook that people who don’t like the results of the study are using is that the study must be flawed because one of the five authors runs an abortion clinic and another worked several years ago for an abortion-rights group. The tribune article addressing this is actually pretty good:
Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, the journal’s editor-in-chief, said she wasn’t concerned by Drey’s failure to indicate she performed abortions. “That’s part of [an obstetrician's] scope of practice. They don’t have to reveal that.”
A Roman Catholic who opposes abortion, DeAngelis said she has been swamped this week with critical e-mails about the fetal-pain study from “people with no medical background, no science background, religious fanatics, people who are mean-spirited.” She stressed that the report was reviewed by several outside experts and thoroughly examined by her own staff.
“It is a peer-reviewed article,” DeAngelis said. “They are not reporting their own findings. It’s a review article based on what’s in the literature. … The references are there. Anybody who doubts the veracity can go to the original article and say they misinterpreted it.”
That is the way science is supposed to work, said Arthur Caplan, chair of the department of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania. “As a scientist, if you think I’m wrong, you probe my data, question my findings and do a critical study–not point your finger and talk about my politics,” Caplan said.
But Senator Brownback, for one, has another idea about how to evaluate the study: he claims it’s inaccurate because it “flies against practical sense”
Well, isn’t that lovely. So does quantum mechanics. So does Dark Energy. So does the expanding Universe. That’s a great way to do science.
From the Tribune article:
Still, the distrust of science now seen in our culture is distressing, several experts said.
When you begin to second-guess scientists’ methods and routinely call their objectivity into question, “then we’ve come to a time in which, tragically, science becomes driven by politics,” said Laurie Zoloth, director of bioethics for Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
Quite.
August 26th, 2005 at 6:59 pm
I tend to agree a lot of science goes against common sense, but I think the charge of bias is more important. A lot of scientists don’t flinch when charges of bias due to corporate funding is mentioned. Indeed there is a lot of evidence for it in the pharmacological industry and even some other related industries. Why then should one be surprised if people wonder whether someone who makes their living from abortions might be biased in this matter?
This isn’t an issue of whether the people in question did good science. That’ll be something that is discovered in both peer review and more importantly replication of results. Just that why is one charge of bias allowable while the other seems open to ridicule?
August 26th, 2005 at 11:37 pm
Clark,
You stole my thunder!
Any research must be able to show that its results are not biased in any way.
In this case it is hard to defend the review against the charge of bias unless the sample of articles involved were either randomly selected or involve an exhaustive survey of all studies on fetal pain.
Were is this discussed?
August 27th, 2005 at 5:02 am
Hi
I’m not saying I agree with Sen. Brownback’s agenda, but I think you might have “edited” his comments on the study ever so slightly. I quote the article:
…Brownback says that’s inaccurate and that it “flies against practical sense.” [Your quote ended here] “They’re saying 28 weeks. But you have premature babies delivered at 23 and 24 weeks and you wouldn’t dream of doing surgery on them without anesthesia,”
You made him out to be an ignorant fool, whereas his “practical sense” argument is based on evidence (or at least common practice), not predjudice. I assume you wouldn’t quote so selectively in your science, too…
August 27th, 2005 at 8:59 am
Clark said:
A lot of scientists don’t flinch when charges of bias due to corporate funding is mentioned. Indeed there is a lot of evidence for it….
We need to distinguish between biased researchers and biased research. Good science is not promoted by trying to find trying to find researchers with exactly the right political view, funders with no financial interests, etc. This would be totally unrealistic. Drug studies will always be funded by drug companies and medical procedures will be studied by doctors who perform those procedures.
Good science is promoted by looking at all of the data, doing the statistics correctly, peer review, etc. This is how we ensure that biased researchers produce unbiased results.
The pharmaceutical industry broke the rules by suppressing studies they didn’t like and publishing studies with favorable results. Now there are systems in place to prevent this (studies must be registered before results are in if they are to be published).
Saying that the researchers in the pain study are biased is not a condemnation of the research, although it might be a cause for concern. If the research is checked and correct, then the researchers bias is irrelevant. If they only looked at portions of the pervious literature that supported their opinion, then the research would be poor. I’m not an expert in this field, but that would be such and obvious error that in a politically charged case like this the critics would be all over it. I suspect that they looked at not just a random sample of studies, but at every study. That is the standard for this sort of review.
Gavin
August 27th, 2005 at 11:07 am
Maoz, I don’t understand your objection. Brownback based his view on “practical sense,” and then gives an argument based on common practice. It’s hardly a misrepresentation to leave out his common-sense argument; the point remains that he’s willing to throw away science to go with his feelings.
I have a different issue, not with the study but with the use of the study by pro-choice forces: I don’t think anyone should care. What matters is not whether the fetus feels pain, it’s that the fetus is not its own person — at that stage of development, it’s part of the mother. I can guarantee you that my toes feel pain, but if for whatever reason they need to be amputated then I should have the right to do so.
August 27th, 2005 at 3:39 pm
Part of what makes Brownback common sense argument so disingenuous is his failure to use his good “practical” sense to evaluate the behavior of this nation’s involvement in Iraq(there are dozens of examples in Brownback’s utterances over the last five years). If you want to make salient political points, then it doesn’t help to demonstrate your own garish hypocrisy in other matters.
August 29th, 2005 at 6:35 pm
Gavin, the issue in pharmacology isn’t just suprression of results. Rather there is evidence that funding affects ones results. And I think it demonstrable that people worry about funding issues affecting physics, medical research, and much else. Further I’ve heard from people in areas from chemistry to tree studies about pressure coming down due to funding. Often leading to “tweaking data.” There is always a subjective element to science and dealing with data. That’s why replication is so important.
The issue is why is bias acceptable discussion in some areas but not others?
It shouldn’t be. Ideally it shouldn’t matter whether a pro-choice or a pro-life activist did studies. But we all know it does, if only to raise a certain level of skepticism. That’s an important part of science. To criticize this skepticism (which some are) seems unwise.
August 29th, 2005 at 6:36 pm
Just to add, I don’t think bias ought invalidate *any* study. However it ought to affect how we view it and to what degree we urge replication before giving it too much weight. It seems to me that bias in science is one of the pressing issues before science right now.
August 29th, 2005 at 8:16 pm
Clark,
I don’t think we actually disagree, but I think you need to be a little more clear with some of your statements. For example your statement: “there is evidence that funding affects ones results,” suggests that biased funding dooms a study. I know that is not what you mean, but is exactly the argument that is being made in condemning this study. In fact, you know that funding does not directly affect results. Funding pressures can cause researchers to mess with the data, and messing with the data changes results.
I think that bias is always a reasonable thing to discuss when looking at a study, but it is not the end of the discussion. The criticism I have of the attack on this study is not that they shouldn’t be looking at bias, but that they shouldn’t suggest that once they have found it they can totally ignore the study. The bias of the researchers should make us concerned, but if they want us to ignore this result then they should give some hint of what the researchers actually did wrong. Otherwise we can just ignore everything in science because every researcher is biased.
Gavin