27. Science or Logic
The survey being carried out by the University of East Anglia into contamination around ReChem’s Pontypool plant was entitled the Panteg Monitoring Project because it covered the larger region of southern Pontypool in which New Inn resided. In addition to having overseer Lewis Roberts, the Welsh Secretary David Hunt established a steering group for the study. That steering group included representatives from Torfaen Borough Council, the Pollution Inspectorate, ReChem and the European Commission, all of whom had all played a part in the build-up to the survey.The University team began in earnest on February 1st 1991; a little over a year after the Parliamentary Welsh Affairs Committee’s meeting had resulted in the setting-up of the study. There were to be 7 reports in all from the University, in a project which would run beyond than the two years anticipated and which would dig deeper than originally intended. Before the University’s first report had suggested that the plant might be linked to environmental contamination, Rechem had challenged the credibility of the Council’s data so strongly that fear of legal reprisal was a deterrent to anyone who thought of making that association. In 1989 the journal Chemosphere published a Rechem research paper on dioxins, culminating in:
The only possible conclusion which can be drawn from such data, is that the sites around Rechem are essentially indistinguishable from background levels, and that the site has in no way contributed to environmental contamination in the Pontypool area.
That was then the authoritative position, so for anyone intimately involved in the controversy, the two “tentative” conclusions from the retrospective first stage of the UEA’s study represented a distinct swing of the pendulum. They said that:
Data on PCB in soils, indicate the presence of a small but, as yet, incompletely defined part of the Panteg area, bordering on the ReChem plant, in which levels cannot simply be regarded as background.
There is evidence that activities on the ReChem site have on occasions influenced the atmospheric concentration of particulate-phase PCBs at the nearby Pontyfelin site. Fugitive and not stack emissions appear to be implicated.
Not only was the University agreeing that there was contamination above expected levels but it was pointing towards ReChem as the source and, furthermore, homing in on a specific cause of the contamination. Other provisional conclusions in the report were that grass was contaminated by PCBs, too, but not with such a clear centre of concentration. The local river and a municipal reservoir further away were thought not to be affected. Even for a non-scientist, the large report’s conclusions were quite easy to comprehend but for anyone without the inclination to read it, there was an alternative interpretation which I felt may have received its makeover from Professor Lewis Roberts. A news release from the Welsh Office provided the spin, skirting around the significance of the findings with the abstruse comment:
The report indicates that although much information exists on PCB contamination in the Pontypool area, it is insufficient to identify all the possible sources, and to assess overall exposure levels among the local population. The second phase of the study will help to address these.
By now I was aware that the media tended not to read technical reports too thoroughly, but preferred short digests such as that from the Welsh Office. I also recognized that journalists who were eager to be quick with the news tended to devour the first news release on a subject and have less appetite for subsequent alternatives. In this process, the government had a head start by launching its own news release before I could counter it with an alternative bulletin. However, for this report and with those which were to follow, I was not far behind since I’d got into the habit of predicting possible conclusions, then preparing a number of potential responses and quickly fine tuning my comments when I saw the published details. Journalists who knew that I would have something ready for them usually came to me for a second opinion before broadcasting the official news. By now, most people in the local media had a good understanding of the issue and it was encouraging when they found my interpretations more meaningful than those of the government. With the initial University report on contamination, I didn’t need much time to decide that whereas the Welsh Office avoided the University’s confirmation of contamination, the overwhelming conclusion I needed to communicate was that the evidence of contamination was now indisputable, even if its cause was still not completely nailed-down. Secondly and not even hinted at by the Welsh Office, was my interpretation that doubt over the propriety of previous results had shifted from the Council to the company. As well as being important for the media, for the Council’s credibility and for the public, both outcomes of this phase of the study were crucial for my defence. As far as the general campaign was concerned, in the light of the findings I called for an end to waste importation and PCB burning. It didn’t happen, but the feeling was afoot that the government’s obfuscation was a tactic to buy time for ReChem.
I usually had a good idea of what to expect from the government in news releases and I was alert to the way advantage could be taken of what I viewed as scientific naivety. With the attention that these reports would get, especially from those with vested interests, the wording of their conclusions was crucial. I felt the University did a great job in that respect, concisely summarizing the facts with scientific clarity yet also with readability.I wouldn’t have been surprised if the University team had raised their eyebrows at the news release from the Welsh Office, yet in being and economical with the truth the government couldn’t be accused of lying. It occurred to me that when scientists conduct their research and form conclusions in an area of public and political interest, as well as being clear about their own conclusions perhaps they should try to predict what might be incorrectly read into their remarks. I saw a need to identify invalid inferences and to publish them as anti-conclusions so as to minimize the potential for misleading spin. I was concerned that in being true to the scientific method, the people who were best placed to pre-empt the politicization of science often stood back while allowing distortions to be disseminated by officials and unwitting media commentators. A common form of incorrect interpretation in relation to chemicals and toxicology is, of course, that absence of evidence can be taken as evidence of absence. Although that incorrect inference had been given credence by officialdom over many years, the proven presence of chemicals in the first important report on contamination meant that the government lost the security of the previous absence of evidence.
One anti-conclusion I would have liked to see from the University was that nobody should infer that the study had ever aimed to identify all possible sources of contamination. I felt that the Welsh Office’s sudden introduction of that spurious aim was very misinforming. It could continue to put people off ReChem’s scent, as if not enough of that had been done already. In the same vein there was an important comment straining to come out yet it went unmentioned. To me it was as important as the confirmation of contamination and to my writ it was even more valuable. Why, I cried, has the report said nothing about the thousands of test results produced over many years by the company, the Inspectorate, the government laboratories at Harwell and the Welsh Office, all of whom found everything in the garden to be rosy? If the University was correct in its conclusions, what did that say about the previous participants in testing? In that respect, only the Council could hold its head high.Consequently the Welsh Office press statement could legitimately avoid the embarrassing question of why so many previous tests didn’t reveal the contamination. In keeping with the diversion into other possible sources of PCBs the detour around the facts was completed by the government’s erection of new goalposts in the hard-to-handle field of human health.
As frustrating as it was, trying to understand the politics behind the inferences was interesting and, when making my own sense of the UEA’s initial findings and the government’s response, I began to marvel at a coincidence that had come my way. Long before that, whenever I talked to friends about my love of logic at Bristol Polytechnic, I was asked what use it all was. At the time I didn’t have a good answer, only later finding the conversion of language to symbolic mathematical form of any practical use, first in industrial systems and then in electronics education. I also found formal logic to be an enjoyable play-thing and I never lost touch with it. After becoming a teacher, every year on World Book Day, I would read to teenagers from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” because of its author’s contribution to logic. My own adventures in toxic waste became as unlikely a setting as Alice’s, in which to pursue my little interest.
It was in the middle of 1991, when the Welsh Office kept us in waiting for the UEA report, that I had a call from Pamela Shimell who ran the highly regarded training and consultancy company named Industry and Environment Associates.Pamela explained that she was organizing a weekend seminar in Buxton during September. Its subject was dioxins, furans and PCBs. The seminar was to be attended by scientists, lawyers, environmental organizations, the chemical industry and government bodies. At first I first thought I was being invited to attend as a paying delegate, something which would have been out of the question, but instead I was asked if I would submit a paper and lead workshops at the seminar. In a state of shock and believing that sort of thing was really out of my league I tried to talk my way out of it.Formal papers such as I was being asked to produce were presented by professionals with expertise and authority, whereas I was an amateur in the subject matter of the seminar.Pamela was very persuasive and convinced me that I could make a valid contribution and I began to think that I was well known enough to provide some curiosity value at her event.Also, without being a specialist, I did know a lot about PCBs, dioxins and furans. Being a free agent and without any bureaucratic structures to impede me, I had scoured the Earth for information and in that narrow field of knowledge I felt I could compete with the best, especially when it came to knowing what information lay beyond British boundaries.I still felt uncomfortable about claiming to have something constructive to offer professionals at a seminar, but then an idea came to me. What I could offer them was a grasp of the public’s perception of the subject matter of the weekend. In particular I could explore the public’s confidence in the competence of those who were entrusted to handle issues involving dioxins, furans and PCBs.As my thoughts on public perception merged with my ideas about scientific conclusions, I remembered my amateur interest in logic and its relevance to language. The Mad Hatter’s tea party came back to me:
“Then you should say what you mean” the March Hare went on.
“I do,” Alice hastily replied; “at least - at least I mean what I say - that's the same thing, you know.”
“Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter. “You might just as well say that I see what I eat is the same thing as I eat what I see!”
“You might just as well say,” added the March Hare, “that I like what I get is the same thing as I get what I like!'
“You might just as well say,” added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, “that I breathe when I sleep is the same thing as I sleep when I breathe!'
“It is the same thing with you,” said the Hatter, and here the conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute, while Alice thought over all she could remember about ravens and writing-desks, which wasn't much.
I liked the way Lewis Carroll tried to make sense of silliness, to make silliness of sense and plausibly put meanings in reverse. It seemed akin to the topsy-turvy nature of many things in the ReChem controversy, including my writ. The Reverend Charles Ludwidge Dodgson, or Lewis Carroll, as well a being a lecturer in Mathematics at Oxford, was an inventor, author and eminent logician who applied mathematical techniques to the determination of the truth. I could see parallels between his playing with logic in Alice and some of my thoughts on the interpretation of science, as my ideas ran away with me. Being well acquainted with the public’s suspicion of experts, I knew many people who were not well versed in science but instinctively knew if they were being told the whole truth by the professionals. Therefore I decided that for Buxton, I wouldn’t pretend to be an authority on the theoretical aspects of PCBs dioxins and furans but I would make the most of my experiences in an area where an amateur’s perception might tell more of the truth than expert opinion. Others more qualified than I would be giving the scientific facts at the seminar but I could illustrate the abuse of facts and show how logic could separate fact from fiction, as support for my own perceptions of the subject. To do that I might take some of the scientific statements that I’d found irritating and try to cut through the shroud of disinformation by using the tools Lewis Carroll helped to provide. A paper from me in that style could be a basis for some workshops where I could get participants to critically examine the terminology surrounding toxic chemicals and the regulation of them.After that I could even turn the participants into objects of research by assessing their opinions on the extent to which the situation was under control.I was rapidly getting somewhere in my thoughts and beginning to believe that I could compose something which was relevant, interesting and with a fair degree of authority. I wrote to Pamela with a suggested approach. She accepted, and then I wrote my “paper” as a basis for the workshops. The paper was about the identification of incorrect inferences, using Latin classifications of fallacies in logic. I aligned some classical examples of those fallacies to contemporary sophistry on the subject of PCBs, dioxins and furans, tantalizingly including remarks from Rechem’s own science. Pamela was delighted with what I wrote.
I arrived at the Palace Hotel in Buxton, for the weekend seminar, on the evening of 20th September. It was Friday and I’d driven in heavy traffic for five hours, straight from school. After seeing my paper, Pamela had asked me to be the after dinner speaker and, although I was late for the food, I was just about in time for that appointment. Being a defendant in a libel action on a subject connected with the seminar I decided that humour would be inappropriate and so I spoke seriously about my situation, hoping to get the participants to understand that they might be indirectly involved in the mess. They would have been disappointed by my lack of levity late on a Friday evening but the shock tactics seemed to keep them awake. I was then back in action on the Saturday, when amongst the impressive people in my workshops were Dr. Colin Creaser, who I admired as the leader of the U.E.A. analytical team, and non other than Dr. Peter Jones, ReChem’s chief scientist, who must have been responsible for much of Rechem’s science and propaganda about contamination. I hoped I knew more about that subject than he would have expected. Things appeared to go smoothly from the start and I was even adopted by another workshop leader, Swedish Professor Christopher Rappe, to help with his presentations. Having factored in the possibility of having a hard time at the seminar I ended up enjoying every minute of it.
Toxic waste had taken me into some strange settings, but when I stepped back to see myself in Buxton it was easily the most unexpected, surreal experience I had ever had. Pamela was happy with the outcome and I came away satisfied that I may have achieved my aims of informing some people who mattered. Perhaps more importantly from a personal point of view, some of my opponents had now seen me in the flesh.