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Article Excerpt
Introduction
When does scientific evidence successfully halt political controversy? It is commonly assumed that reducing scientific uncertainty closes political debate and leads to stable policy. That is, scientific closure conditions political closure. Building on the case of depleted uranium (DU), this paper challenges that perspective, suggesting that particular representations of science do have greater or less force, depending on their context, but that scientific and political closure have an articulated rather than a natural relation (Alatout, in press). All science at the leading edge of policy is ultimately negotiable and leaves holes for further challenges (Jasanoff, 1990; Salter, 1988; Weinberg, 1972); thus certainty and uncertainty are not absolute, serving as an explanatory variable for understanding controversy in technical matters, but rather negotiated within the policy-making process itself. Certainty and uncertainty are powerful resources in policy debate, buttressed or undermined by various sorts of scientific reports, but as such they do not precede, but are rather coproduced with, policy outcomes (Jasanoff, 2004).
DU is a by-product of uranium enrichment. Uranium enrichment concentrates [U.sup.235], leaving behind waste uranium that has a higher concentration of the less radioactive [U.sup.238]. This waste, DU, contains at least 70 percent less [U.sup.235] and is thus 40 percent less radioactive than natural uranium metal. For many years DU was treated in the United States as low-level nuclear waste--not considered particularly dangerous as nuclear waste goes but regulated nonetheless by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees its production and disposal. Disposal of DU has caused some controversy but primarily because of its quantity (estimated at over 750,000 metric tons in the United States; NAS, 2003, p. 60) rather than the sheer danger of the substance itself. (1)
In the 1980s, DU gained a new life, politically and materially, not because of its disposal, but rather through its use. The very high density and low cost of DU has made it attractive for a number of commercial and military uses. In particular, DU "penetrators"--antiarmor munitions that take advantage of uranium's high density, self-sharpening shearing, and pyrophoric (self-igniting) qualities--easily penetrate and explode within armored vehicles and are currently in use by militaries around the world. More than 286,000 kg of DU ammunition were used by coalition forces in the first Gulf War, 3,000 kg in Bosnia, 9,000 kg in Kosovo, an unknown amount in Afghanistan, and over 118,000 kg in the second Gulf War (Fahey, 2004, p. 8). And, one of the best defenses against these and other modern penetrators is DU armor, which thus covers all of the major battle tanks in the U.S. arsenal. Modern battlefields are, in other words, loaded with DU.
All of this use of a radioactive material on the battlefield raises questions--concerning its legality, its safety, and its environmental effects. Is this nuclear warfare? Is DU an indiscriminate weapon? Is it contaminating war zones for generations to come? Are we ultimately polluting and killing our own troops? Or is this merely the next generation of powerful weapons that will increase military efficiency and precision while protecting Western troops and citizens from harm?
Veteran's advocate Dan Fahey (2004) distinguishes between the pre-1999 and post-1999 periods in the politics of DU. The first, which he suggests was characterized by significant scientific uncertainty and government stonewalling, was a period of rational criticism and concern in which savvy activists used the government's own data to expose significant questions concerning DU safety and use. During this time, Gulf War veterans and NATO soldiers serving in the Balkans were returning with a range of unexplained, often debilitating, illnesses--what came to be called Gulf War syndrome (GWS). Cancer rates and birth defects in some parts of Iraq likewise climbed precipitously after the invasion. DU quickly became a prime suspect in explaining these problems and the U.S. government stonewalled. (2)
By 1999, argues Fahey, heightened rhetoric and propaganda among activists, greater scientific certainty, and increasing government openness characterized a period of irrational activism and dishonest catering to people's prejudices and fears. Indeed, between 1999 and 2002, no fewer than seven reports were issued by major scientific organizations declaring the relative safety of DU for use on the battlefield. In the same period, armed forces studies of troop exposure levels and postexposure epidemiological studies made clear that except in the most extreme circumstances, exposures were well below accepted limits, (3) and even in the extremes, evidence of either short- or long-term health effects was lacking.
In light of these reports, the mainstream media all but dropped coverage of DU debates, relegating it to the more insulated realms of conferences, listserves, and personal websites. Simultaneously, the U.S. Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs Administration used them to buttress official stances that DU exposure is not a significant problem warranting either changes in military procedures and weapons or particular attention in the health care of veterans.
This, then, is the face of policy closure. Governmental institutions, supported by the mainstream press, legitimately advocate policies to monitor and study DU but not to moderate use, take undue precautions, or subject themselves to moral and legal questions of just war.
Imperfect Closure
Early academic work on technical controversies often treated political closure and controversy as dependent on the degree of scientific certainty or uncertainty surrounding an issue (Mazur, 1981; Nelkin, 1984). More recent work has challenged this causal story. Schwarz and Thompson (1990), for example, suggest that uncertainty often consists of conflicting certainties, and thus facts alone are insufficient to produce either scientific or political consensus (Halfon, 2006). Processes of scientific consensus building, and the concomitant reduction of uncertainty, are inseparable from processes for achieving political consensus (Martin, 1991; see also, Jasanoff, 2004).
Scientific closure is thus contextual. Profound and complete closure from one perspective gives way to conflict and great uncertainty from another. The frame of reference itself is most at stake for DU opponents, who want to hold open scientific and political disputes by articulating scientific uncertainties and distrust of various dominant institutions. In the case of the dangers of DU, scientific closure has been most strongly upheld by public science institutions--those institutions such as the World Health Organization (WHO), Institute of Medicine (IOM), and RAND that translate laboratory science into public, policy-relevant, or regulatory knowledge (Jasanoff, 1990). This expression of closure was achieved through the reports mentioned earlier, which then serve as a powerful resource for political dismissal of critics. Political closure has been most powerful in those social, cultural, and institutional settings most attuned to the generalized conclusions of public science reports--the mainstream media and national and international governmental organizations, which have relied on such reports to dismiss DU concerns. Closure thus pertains to particular domains--not the classic domains of science versus politics but rather domains of authority in decision making--governmental versus public versus activist domains of science politics.
Claims to scientific and political closure on the DU issue are asserted within the particular, and closely related, domains of public-science institutions, government bureaucracies, and mainstream media outlets--that is, powerful national policy channels. This closure takes the rhetorical form "what we know suggests safety, but there are many unknowns, so more research is necessary." The first part--scientific evidence--gets deployed publicly, with the second part--uncertainty and scientific openness--used to buttress and legitimize the claim. From an argumentative frame (Fischer & Forester, 1993), the translation of this scientific closure into policy closure appears far more powerful than continuing challenges to the use of DU.
Such challenges, however, do continue to exist in the margins of activism, scientific research, political institutions, and the reports themselves, which invoke profound uncertainty and the need for more study. (4) These challenges cross the science/ policy divide by linking fissures on both sides of it. Thus, challenges to the credibility of public science institutions and government bureaucracies, and actors who know more or differently and can afford to read carefully, are avenues for maintaining both political and scientific controversy around this technology.
Two technical and a number of political openings are central to these challenges. First, new scientific studies continually threaten the closure narrative, particularly in the face of proliferating expertise (see Balogh, 1991). Some in vitro studies of cell mutations and in vivo animal studies done since the expert reports suggest that there may, in fact, be harms that were not initially accounted for--for example, immune system dysregulation and highly localized toxico-radiological effects that provide sites for cancer development (see, e.g., Miller et al., 2005;...
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