Maintaining Scientific Integrity under Pressure: The Experience of the Southern California Water Research Authority

Abstract

The experience of of the city of Los Angeles demonstrates that if political pressures are combined with ignorance of both economics science on the part of active participents in a democracy a city can be forced into unnecessary and expensive ‘anti-pollution' measures. The author has been for 14 years, since 1972 the representative of the city of Los Angeles on the governing board for the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project (SCCWRA) formed in 1969 by five southern California sewage discharging agencies, to obtain a date base on on the ecology of the near-shore ocean watesr and the effect of sewage on those waters, in order to ensure that legislation and regulations concerning that discharge would be rationally based, It is a small research laboratory with capabilities in physics, chemistry, biology and engineering. Because the only source of available founding was the agencies themselves, two mechanisms were put into place, in order to ensure the scientific credibility of the research (1) a commissior of five elected representatives, one from each of the sponsoring agencies would be responsible to the public, and (2) a consulting board of eminent scientists, with no political connection to any of the agencies,would guide the research and lend the weights of their reputations to the rasults, The commission selects both the consulting board and the project manager. In actuality, the commission is not seen as a presence which bestows reliability on the research; for the scientific communty, the integrity of the research done has depended, as it always does, on publication of reports and review of the procedures by fellow scientists, The commission, although powerful, is invisible. For the public, the research results are made to speak for themselves, and they are interpreted in the light of the demand for 100% purity of both seafood and bathing waters.