Congress often gets a collective bum rap when its individual members do precisely what most of their constituents want them to do. But a House committee’s bull-headed insistence on censoring results of important medical research makes one think of commentator Walter Winchell’s barbs aimed at the “House of Reprehensibles.”
Why representatives – especially ones who vaunt themselves as champions of free enterprise – would take such an anti-market stance that undermines economic efficiency is beyond me.
The case in question involves studies of the health effects of exhaust from diesel engines, particularly any links between such emissions and cancers. The scientific question dates back more than 20 years. Much of the delay in completing the research stems from the industry’s opposition to the government even funding such studies through the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute on Occupational Safety and Health.
Seven scientific papers dealing with the specific question of the effects of diesel emissions on the health of miners have been completed. Four papers, largely dealing with methodology, already have been published in medical journals. But two crucial ones have been held up by a court order that bars their publication unless the studies, and supporting documentation, are first disclosed to a mining industry trade association and to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
U.S. Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., who heads that committee, said in a recent statement that the injunction against publication is motivated by a need “to ensure the results of this research are accurate and meet the highest standards of scientific review.” This is preposterous and outrageous.
It also promotes economic inefficiency and is an anti-free market measure if there ever was one.
The whole idea of competitive free markets is that individuals make choices, based on their own self-interest, about what work they want to do, what they produce and what they consume. Through the impersonal social institutions we call “the market,” the myriad individual decisions of millions of people generate signals, through the mechanisms of supply, demand and prices, that result in resources being used in the most efficient way possible to satisfy people’s needs and wants.
This all depends on people having accurate information about all the costs and all the benefits – both monetary and nonmonetary – of each option open to them. The less complete and less accurate the information they have, the less efficiently resources get used.
Information is never complete or perfect. It is always scarce and some of it, especially about nonmonetary costs and benefits, is a “public good.” That means it has characteristics that prevent free markets from generating such information in optimal quantities.
In such cases, society is better off if government acts to produce the information itself, or to ensure it is produced by someone else. This might mean requiring corporations to provide shareholders or bond purchasers with accurate financial statements. And it might require funding medical research at universities and research institutes.
This principle, that more information improves economic efficiency and less information decreases it, is a crucial one, the importance of which is often ignored by people who claim to champion free enterprise.
The committee members might retort that inaccurate information would cause bad decision making. That is correct. But it is hard to conceive of any entity less qualified to determine the accuracy of scientific findings than a House committee.
Responsible leaders long recognized that elected officials face tremendous conflicts of interest and that few are competent scientists. Abraham Lincoln established the National Academy of Science 150 years ago precisely to have a source of reliable scientific opinion. Since then, we have established other government-funded scientific institutions, including the ones that carried out these studies on diesel emissions.
Of course, research results are not always correct. But science has a highly efficient way of dealing with this problem: publish the results so that anyone can examine the procedures and the results. If the research is flawed, other scientists will soon find that out.
General tax dollars went to perform research for the benefit of society as a whole. The idea that one particular interest group should have advance access to the results of this research and that it be given any ability to delay its publication violates basic principles of democracy. It also wastes resources and makes us economically poorer than we need be.