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Legislative Structure: Congress -- two houses: Senate (2 senators from each state, 6 year terms, must be at least 30 years old and have been a citizen for at least nine years) -- Constitution originally allowed state legislatures to choose the two senators but now elected by popular vote House of Representatives (number based on population of state, determined every ten years in a census -- number now set at 435; 2 year terms, must be at least 25 years old and have been a citizen for 7 years) Legislative Powers: Makes the laws -- any senator or representative can propose a bill -- if majority in one house favors it, bill goes to other house for debate -- if approved by both -- goes to the president to be signed into law -- President can veto any proposed law but can then be overruled if there is a two thirds majority in both houses favoring the law Elastic Clause -- can make all laws “necessary and proper” to carry out its other powers Only the House of Representatives can propose new taxes Only Congress can decide on how to spend the money raised through taxes Power to raise (pay for) an army and navy To declare war Approves treaties and executive appointments -- Senate How was the debate over how the president should be chosen resolved? The Electoral College System -- made up of electors who cast votes to elect the president and vice-president every four years Each state has as many electors in the Electoral College as the number of senators and reps it sends to Congress. The votes cast by electors are called electoral votes. Delegates left the method of choosing electors up to each state. Before 1820, state legislatures chose electors in most states. Today, people choose their state’s electors when they vote in presidential elections. The electors then cast their ballots for president and vice-president on a date chosen by Congress. Today must win at least 270 of the 538 total electoral votes
Write simple RCQ for kid beginners: Broken Arm Blues Kyle and Carrie did everything together. They worked on their homework together, played soccer together, and went to karate class together. "You're like two peas in a pod," their father liked to say. One day, while playing soccer, Kyle broke his arm. A doctor at the hospital put Kyle's arm in an arm cast. Three days later, Carrie broke her arm in karate! The same doctor put Carrie's arm in a cast, too. "Cool. We get to have broken arms together," Kyle said. "Let's get everyone to sign our casts," said Carrie. The first week they had their casts was exciting. Kyle and Carrie didn't have to run laps in soccer practice. Their parents wrote their homework for them. Everyone signed their casts, even their teachers. The second week they had their casts, Kyle and Carrie both had the broken arm blues. So many things were hard to do with one arm in a bulky cast. Carrie couldn't put her hair in a ponytail using just one hand. Kyle couldn't play video games, and neither of them could jump rope. "We can't do anything fun!" yelled Carrie. "I'm so bored," Kyle said. "I feel so blue," Carrie agreed. Kyle and Carrie had to watch their soccer team play without them. They couldn't even clap their hands when their team scored a goal. The third week Kyle and Carrie had their casts, they were angry. One of their best friends had a birthday party with a jumping castle at the pool. They couldn't jump or swim. They had to watch everyone else having fun. "I'm sick of having a broken arm!" yelled Carrie. "My arm is so itchy!" Kyle howled. "Mine, too," Carrie said. "And your cast is starting to smell." "Your cast stinks," Kyle said, holding his nose. The fourth week Kyle and Carrie had their casts, they decided to team up to beat their blues. Together, they could jump rope. They each used one of their hands to clap together when their team scored in soccer. "You're like two peas in a pod," their father said. After six weeks, their casts were off! Now they could swim, play soccer, and go to karate class. Now no one had the broken arm blues!
APATHY Lack of interest or concern CITIZEN Person who was born in or chooses to live in and become a member of a country. CONGRESS Legislative group consisting of the House of Representatives and the Senate CROSSOVER VOTE A vote by a member of one party for a candidate of another party DELEGATE A person given power or authority to vote for others; a representative DEMOCRACY Government that is run by the people who live under it ECONOMY The way a country produces, divides up and uses its money and goods ELECT To choose by voting ELECTORAL COLLEGE A group of representatives chosen by voters to elect the president and the vice president of the United States ELECTORATE Those eligible to vote GOVERNOR The person elected to be head of the government of a United States state INCUMBENT A person currently holding office INDEPENDENT VOTER A voter who does not belong to a political party ISSUES Problems and ideas to be talked about, questioned, decided upon and voted on NOMINATE To offer the name of someone to run for political office NONPARTISAN Not associated with a particular political party POLITICAL PARTY A group of people who join together because they share many ideas about what government should do POLLING PLACE Place where votes are cast PROPAGANDA Ideas or information that a group of people deliberately spread to try to influence the thinking of other people SUFFRAGE The right to vote VOTE A method by which people choose their leaders and decide public issues.
Families Work! Ellen Yung had a busy day at work! She put a cast on a broken arm, used a bandage to cover a deep cut, and helped twenty patients. Ellen is a doctor for children. Customers can get sick at any time, so pediatricians work long hours. They have hard jobs. Ellen's husband works long hours, too. Steve is a firefighter. At the fire house, he makes sure the tools work properly. He checks the hoses and fire trucks. At the fire, Steve rescues people from hot flames and smoke. The firefighters all work together to put out the fire. At home, the Yung family works together too. Hanna sets the table for dinner. She also helps wash the dishes. Everyone has weekly chores. Mom and Hanna do the dusting and mopping. Dad and her brother, Zac, do the laundry. They wash, dry, and fold the clothes. Mom makes a shopping list each week. She lists items they need and things they want. A short time ago, Zac wanted a new laptop. The family needed a new washing machine. They could only spend money on one item. Both cost the same. They had to choose. Clean clothes are needed for school and work. A new laptop is nice, but did Zac need it? Ellen and Steve thought about their family's needs. They decided to buy the washing machine. Zac knows that his parents have busy jobs. They bring home money to pay for their needs and wants. They needed that washing machine. Zac still wants a laptop. The family has decided to save some money each week so they can buy it in the future.
THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT Big movies on a small budget. Do you need millions of dollars to make a movie? No. Do you need millions of dollars to make a successful movie? Most people would answer 'Yes' to that question. But would they be right? We're used to hearing about really expensive Hollywood films. The 1997 Oscar-winner Titanic cost $200 million to make, and more recently, Spider Man 3, one of the most successful films of 2007, had a budget of more than $250 million. To be successful, however, a film doesn't need to be as expensive as the big Hollywood blockbusters. An example of this is the 2010 movie Monsters, which cost less than half a million dollars to make. Monsters is set in Mexico and is the story of two people trying to escape from aliens and get back to the USA. The film won several awards and got very good reviews from many film critics-for example, the website Moviefone put Monsters at number 3 in its list of the best sci-fi films for 2010. How did they make the film so cheaply? First of all, it only took three weeks to film, and the film crew was just seven people in a van. Secondly, the man who made the film, Gareth Edwards. decided to film it with digital video, which is cheaper than the usual 35mm film. (The film equipment cost only $15,000 altogether) There is also the fact that they used real locations, not a studio. And the cast of the film were Edwards himself and two friends of his all the extras in the film were people who were just there, and they weren't paid. Most importantly, Edwards did most of the production work himself. He spent eight months editing Monsters and then five months creating the special effects. And he did it all at home on his computer, using non-professional software. The amazing thing is that the final film looks nearly as professional as big, fancy Hollywood productions. Not everybody liked Monsters, of course. One person said: "That's 90 minutes of my life that I'll never get back. But overall, it was very well received. And at least it wasn't expensive to make.
Angels are spiritual beings. They do not have physical bodies. They are His servants; they obey God and do His will. Angels appear to people only when God has a purpose for them to be seen. People have entertained angels without being aware of it because the angels took on the appearance of ordinary men. They have appeared to people as bright and shining beings. In the Bible, angels have told people not to be afraid. Fallen angels, or demons, rebelled against God and followed Satan. As a result, they were cast out of heaven. The devil, or Satan, is one of these fallen angels. He is God's enemy. Satan was created as a beautiful angel, but his pride led to his downfall. God is infinitely more powerful than Satan, and God has set limits on Satan's temporary power on the earth. Satan tempts Christians to sin and causes some trouble in their life. However, Christians have various ways of overcoming temptation and staying true to the Lord despite the trouble. Being tempted to sin is not a sin; even Jesus was tempted but He never sinned. Christians are tempted by the devil, by their sinful nature, and by other people. Some of the ways that Christians can overcome temptation are by fleeing tempting situations, memorizing and applying Bible verses, exercising self-control, and keeping strong in their faith and their relationship with God.
Make mcq quiz with 4 option in which one is correct -'10 Basis of Material Science • .....;;;";;;"~~;;,,;;,,,,;.;.,,;;,,,;,,;.;,.,------------ 6. Temporary materials: Some materials are meant to be placed in the oral cavity for a short period of time for different reasons. • Temporary crowns: While a permanent crown is prepared in the dental laboratory, the patient must wait for few days before it can be fabricated and cemented into place. Does patient experience any problems during this time period? If the tooth is vital (the pulp is alive), the patient is likely to experience pain and sensitivity while eating and drinking, also it looks unesthetic. What can be done to solve this problem? A temporary crown is placed before the patient leaves the clinic. It is constructed and luted in the same appointment in which the crown preparation is done. Temporary crowns are not very strong or esthetic but they serve adequately till the permanent crown is ready to be cemented. • Temporary restorations: Sometimes it is difficult to decide immediately the best line of treatment for a particular tooth. The exact condition of the pulp may not be obvious to the dentist from the patient's symptoms. A dentist removes all or part of the decay and then places a temporary restoration to have time to observe the behaviour of the pulp or to give the pilip time to heal before deciding the further treatment required. Classification based on Location of Fabrication 4,9 Materials can be classified based on the location of fabrication into: • Direct restorative materials. • Indirect restorative materials Direct restorative materials: They include those materials which are used to restore cavity preparations directly in the oral cavity (Box 1.5). Box 1.5: Examples of direct restorative materials Amalgam, composites, glass ionomer and other materials, which set by chemical reactions in the mouth. Indirect restorative materials: It includes those restorations which must be fabricated outside the mouth, indirectly on a cast/ model/ die, because their processing condition would harm oral tissues. Materials used in the construction of such prosthesis are called indirect restorative materials (Box 1.6). Box 1.6: Examples of indirect restorative materials Gold inlays, crowns of metal, ceramic and polymers, which are processed at elevated temperatures. Some indirect composite restorations can be processed under specific wavelength of light, e.g. Ceramage. Classification based on Longevity of Use 1. Permanent restorations: These restorations are not planned to be replaced for a particular time period. Though they are referred to as permanent, actually they are not, e.g. fillings, crowns, bridges and dentures do not last forever (Fig. 1.5). 2. Temporary restorations: These restorations are planned to be replaced in a short period of time, such as few days to weeks. For ~ Permanent C/) c c -.2 0 c- :;::; Cll co Interim ~ Q; 0 .8ll::1iJ C/) o~ Cll a:: c:=:J Temporary Time period Fig. 1.5: Diagram depicting the time period of use of a restoration. (Arrow in permanent restoration depicts that such restorations are not planned to be replaced for a long period of time.) Introducton to Dental Materials Dental materials Box 1.7: Characteristics of metals 1. High thermal and electrical conductivity 2. Ductility (pure metals are very soft and they can be bent without breaking) 3. Opacity (they do not transmit light) 4. Luster (they have a surface that strongly reflects light and appears bright and shiny) 5. They tend to dissolve to some extent in water or other aqueous solutions, producing cations. 6. All metals are white (actually gray) except for gold, which is yellow, and copper, which is reddish. 7. All metals are solid at room temperature except mercury, which is liquid at room temperature and is used with silver alloys as amalgam. 8. All metals have high melting temperatures because of high strength of the metallic bond that holds the atoms together. 3. Polymers 4. Composites Composites are mixtures of two or more of the first three classes in which the different components remain distinct from one another in the final structure. A common example is composite resin. Fig. 1.7a: Three-dimensional structure of iron (metal) Metals Metals are the oldest of the three classes of materials that have been used as dental materials. Metals are characterized by metallic bonds (Box 1.7) which will be discussed in the next chapter. Metals solidify with their atoms in a regular or crystalline arrangement (see Chapter 2), often in the form of a cube (Fig. 1.7a). example, temporary fillings done in a tooth during root canal treatment, which have to be replaced within 2-4 days during subsequent visits. They are used to protect the tooth and provide function till the final restoration is done. 3. Interim restoration: At times, dental treatment requires "long-term" definite temporary restorations or "interim" restorations. For examle, a 7-year-old child, met with trauma and fractured one of his central incisors. A large composite build- up may serve his immediate requirement until the root formation is completed and a permanent crown is placed. 5 Classification based on the Chemical Nature of the Material These are the atoms that make up a material and the way they are bonded together determine the properties of that materiaLS Weak bonds make for weak materials and vice versa (Table 1.4). Materials can be classified into different categories based on their primary atomic bonds (Fig. 1.6): 1. Metals 2. Ceramics Fig. 1.6: Classification of dental materials based on chemical nature 12 Basis of Material Science Box 1.9: Benefits of ceramics in dentistry 1. Many ceramic oxides are used as pigmenting agents. These oxides produce good range of colors. Due to this characteristic, we are able to match almost any tooth color with good esthetic results. 2. They are inert, i.e. not chemically reactive. This quality provides ceramics with good bio- compatibility. 3. Ceramic materials are translucent, like natural teeth. This translucency gives the ceramic crown a more natural appearance than any other dental material. Fig. 1.7b: Internal arrangement of tetrahedral structure of ceramic (silica) four large oxygen atoms surround smaller silicon atom Ceramics A ceramic is a compound formed by the union of a metallic and a non-metallic element (Box 1.8). Most of these materials are oxides, formed by the union of oxygen with metals such as silicon, aluminum, calcium and magnesium (Fig.1.7b). Ceramics may be simple or complex. Examples of simple ceramics are alumina and silica. Examples of complex ceramics are feldspar (potassium aluminum silicate) and kaolin (hydrated aluminum silicate). Ceramics may be crystalline or non- crystalline (i.e. amorphous). Porcelain is a specific type of ceramic used extensively in dentistry (Box 1.9). Box 1.8: Characteristics of ceramics 1. High melting points. 2. Brittleness, which means they cannot be bent or deformed (no sliding) to any extent without actually cracking and breaking. 3. They are poor conductor of heat and electricity. 4. They are chemically inert. 5. They have excellent esthetic result in terms of matching natural teeth. Fig. 1.8: Stucture of synthetic polymer Polymers They are the latest addition (early to mid- 1900s) to dental materials. Most of the polymers are nowadays synthesized by humans. Polymers are giant, long-chain organic molecules (Fig. 1.8). Polymers are characterized by covalent bonds within each molecule, giving them tremendous strength in a single direction. Try to break a nylon rope by pulling it! They are poor conductors of heat and electri- city. Most polymers have a structure containing thousands of carbon atoms linked together like beads on a string. Others, such as silicone polymers are formed with silicon-oxygen bonds. Introducton to Dental Materials Table 1.4: Characteristics of different materials 13 Characteristics Bond Properties Crystal structure Metals Metallic bonding High strength and hardness, high electrical and thermal conductivity BCC, FCC, or HCP unit cells Ceramics Ionic or covalent bonding, or both High hardness and stiffness, electrically insulating, refractory, and chemically inert Crystalline or amorphous Polymers Covalent bonding Low sensitivity, high electrical resistivity, and low thermal conductivity, strength and stiffness vary widely Amorphous and crystalline Composites Composites are combinations of any of the basic ceramic, metallic and polymeric materials (Box 1.10). Each material that makes up composites is called a phase. Their properties tend to be somewhere between those of their basic constituents and are used to enhance their performance, longevity and handling chracterstics. Box 1.10: Types of composites in dentistry 1. Ceramic - metallic composite: Tungsten carbide bur. 2. Metal - polymer composite: Die materials in dental laboratory. 3. Ceramic - polymer composite: Enamel, dentin, bone and restorative composites. A composite is a kind of "combination" of materials, which compliment each other. The properties lacking in one material are compensated by those of the other material. For example, restorative composite has two phases, namely resin and fillers. Teeth and bones are examples of natural composites. Enamel is a composite of hydroxyapatite (which is a ceramic material) and protein (which is a polymer). EVALUATION OF DENTAL MATERIALS Most manufacturers of dental materials maintain a quality assurance programme (As per international standard like ADA specifications) and materials are thoroughly tested before being released into the market for dental practitioner (Fig. 1.9). Laboratory Evaluations Most ADA/ ANSI specifications involve laboratory tests. The tests performed as per these specifications are useful but they all are performed in vitro, (carried out in the laboratory away from the clinical conditions) which have a lot of limitations in clinical practice.lO Clinical Notes 1. For example, most of the direct restorative materials are tested for their compressive strength but ultimately the material is subjected to a combination of compressive, tensile and shear stresses, which may decide the final success or failure of the material under masticatory load. 2. Similarly upper dentures mostly fracture along the midline because of bending. Hence a bending or transverse strength ~B-a-s-is-o-f-M-a-t-e-ria-I-S~c-ie-n-c-e-------------- ---------. test is far more meaningful for denture base materials than a compression test. Clinical Trials The majority of new materials are subjected to extensive clinical trials normally in co-operation with a dental college or hospital departments prior to their release. CONCLUSION As the number of available materials is going up, it is important that the dentist remains more aware about new products so that their judgement about the selection of material remains successful. Materials which have not been thoroughly evaluated should be avoided, specially with clinical dentistry falling under Consumer Protection Act (CPA). I Research and development I iI Manufacturer/analysis Ideal requirements for clinical use: Thermal, optical, mechanical, chemical, biological Available materials and their properties are evaluated Launch of new I product Choice and selection of material by the dentist Critical assessment based on clinical performance I I H feedback to I
“There’s No Such Thing as Sound Science” by By Christie Aschwanden was a lead science writer for FiveThirtyEight. FiveThirtyEight, Science, Dec. 6, 2017 Science is being turned against itself. For decades, its twin ideals of transparency and rigor have been weaponized by those who disagree with results produced by the scientific method. Under the Trump administration, that fight has ramped up again. In a move ostensibly meant to reduce conflicts of interest, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has removed a number of scientists from advisory panels and replaced some of them with representatives from industries that the agency regulates. Like many in the Trump administration, Pruitt has also cast doubt on the reliability of climate science. For instance, in an interview with CNBC, Pruitt said that “measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do.” Similarly, Trump’s pick to head NASA, an agency that oversees a large portion the nation’s climate research, has insisted that research into human influence on climate lacks certainty, and he falsely claimed that “global temperatures stopped rising 10 years ago.” Kathleen Hartnett White, Trump’s nominee to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said in a Senate hearing last month that she thinks we “need to have more precise explanations of the human role and the natural role” in climate change. The same entreaties crop up again and again: We need to root out conflicts. We need more precise evidence. What makes these arguments so powerful is that they sound quite similar to the points raised by proponents of a very different call for change that’s coming from within science. This other movement strives to produce more robust, reproducible findings. Despite having dissimilar goals, the two forces espouse principles that look surprisingly alike: Science needs to be transparent. Results and methods should be openly shared so that outside researchers can independently reproduce and validate them. The methods used to collect and analyze data should be rigorous and clear, and conclusions must be supported by evidence. These are the arguments underlying an “open science” reform movement that was created, in part, as a response to a “reproducibility crisis” that has struck some fields of science.1 But they’re also used as talking points by politicians who are working to make it more difficult for the EPA and other federal agencies to use science in their regulatory decision-making, under the guise of basing policy on “sound science.” Science’s virtues are being wielded against it. What distinguishes the two calls for transparency is intent: Whereas the “open science” movement aims to make science more reliable, reproducible and robust, proponents of “sound science” have historically worked to amplify uncertainty, create doubt and undermine scientific discoveries that threaten their interests. “Our criticisms are founded in a confidence in science,” said Steven Goodman, co-director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford and a proponent of open science. “That’s a fundamental difference — we’re critiquing science to make it better. Others are critiquing it to devalue the approach itself.” Calls to base public policy on “sound science” seem unassailable if you don’t know the term’s history. The phrase was adopted by the tobacco industry in the 1990s to counteract mounting evidence linking secondhand smoke to cancer. A 1992 Environmental Protection Agency report identified secondhand smoke as a human carcinogen, and Philip Morris responded by launching an initiative to promote what it called “sound science.” In an internal memo, Philip Morris vice president of corporate affairs Ellen Merlo wrote that the program was designed to “discredit the EPA report,” “prevent states and cities, as well as businesses from passing smoking bans” and “proactively” pass legislation to help their cause. The sound science tactic exploits a fundamental feature of the scientific process: Science does not produce absolute certainty. Contrary to how it’s sometimes represented to the public, science is not a magic wand that turns everything it touches to truth. Instead, it’s a process of uncertainty reduction, much like a game of 20 Questions. Any given study can rarely answer more than one question at a time, and each study usually raises a bunch of new questions in the process of answering old ones. “Science is a process rather than an answer,” said psychologist Alison Ledgerwood of the University of California, Davis. Every answer is provisional and subject to change in the face of new evidence. It’s not entirely correct to say that “this study proves this fact,” Ledgerwood said. “We should be talking instead about how science increases or decreases our confidence in something.” The tobacco industry’s brilliant tactic was to turn this baked-in uncertainty against the scientific enterprise itself. While insisting that they merely wanted to ensure that public policy was based on sound science, tobacco companies defined the term in a way that ensured that no science could ever be sound enough. The only sound science was certain science, which is an impossible standard to achieve. “Doubt is our product,” wrote one employee of the Brown & Williamson tobacco company in a 1969 internal memo. The note went on to say that doubt “is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’” and “establishing a controversy.” These strategies for undermining inconvenient science were so effective that they’ve served as a sort of playbook for industry interests ever since, said Stanford University science historian Robert Proctor. The sound science push is no longer just Philip Morris sowing doubt about the links between cigarettes and cancer. It’s also a 1998 action plan by the American Petroleum Institute, Chevron and Exxon Mobil to “install uncertainty” about the link between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. It’s industry-funded groups’ late-1990s effort to question the science the EPA was using to set fine-particle-pollution air-quality standards that the industry didn’t want. And then there was the more recent effort by Dow Chemical to insist on more scientific certainty before banning a pesticide that the EPA’s scientists had deemed risky to children. Now comes a move by the Trump administration’s EPA to repeal a 2015 rule on wetlands protection by disregarding particular studies. (To name just a few examples.) Doubt merchants aren’t pushing for knowledge, they’re practicing what Proctor has dubbed “agnogenesis” — the intentional manufacture of ignorance. This ignorance isn’t simply the absence of knowing something; it’s a lack of comprehension deliberately created by agents who don’t want you to know, Proctor said.2 In the hands of doubt-makers, transparency becomes a rhetorical move. “It’s really difficult as a scientist or policy maker to make a stand against transparency and openness, because well, who would be against it?” said Karen Levy, researcher on information science at Cornell University. But at the same time, “you can couch everything in the language of transparency and it becomes a powerful weapon.” For instance, when the EPA was preparing to set new limits on particulate pollution in the 1990s, industry groups pushed back against the research and demanded access to primary data (including records that researchers had promised participants would remain confidential) and a reanalysis of the evidence. Their calls succeeded and a new analysis was performed. The reanalysis essentially confirmed the original conclusions, but the process of conducting it delayed the implementation of regulations and cost researchers time and money. Delay is a time-tested strategy. “Gridlock is the greatest friend a global warming skeptic has,” said Marc Morano, a prominent critic of global warming research and the executive director of ClimateDepot.com, in the documentary “Merchants of Doubt” (based on the book by the same name). Morano’s site is a project of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, which has received funding from the oil and gas industry. “We’re the negative force. We’re just trying to stop stuff.” Some of these ploys are getting a fresh boost from Congress. The Data Quality Act (also known as the Information Quality Act) was reportedly written by an industry lobbyist and quietly passed as part of an appropriations bill in 2000. The rule mandates that federal agencies ensure the “quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information” that they disseminate, though it does little to define what these terms mean. The law also provides a mechanism for citizens and groups to challenge information that they deem inaccurate, including science that they disagree with. “It was passed in this very quiet way with no explicit debate about it — that should tell you a lot about the real goals,” Levy said. But what’s most telling about the Data Quality Act is how it’s been used, Levy said. A 2004 Washington Post analysis found that in the 20 months following its implementation, the act was repeatedly used by industry groups to push back against proposed regulations and bog down the decision-making process. Instead of deploying transparency as a fundamental principle that applies to all science, these interests have used transparency as a weapon to attack very particular findings that they would like to eradicate. Now Congress is considering another way to legislate how science is used. The Honest Act, a bill sponsored by Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas,3 is another example of what Levy calls a “Trojan horse” law that uses the language of transparency as a cover to achieve other political goals. Smith’s legislation would severely limit the kind of evidence the EPA could use for decision-making. Only studies whose raw data and computer codes were publicly available would be allowed for consideration. That might sound perfectly reasonable, and in many cases it is, Goodman said. But sometimes there are good reasons why researchers can’t conform to these rules, like when the data contains confidential or sensitive medical information.4 Critics, which include more than a dozen scientific organizations, argue that, in practice, the rules would prevent many studies from being considered in EPA reviews.5 It might seem like an easy task to sort good science from bad, but in reality it’s not so simple. “There’s a misplaced idea that we can definitively distinguish the good from the not-good science, but it’s all a matter of degree,” said Brian Nosek, executive director of the Center for Open Science. “There is no perfect study.” Requiring regulators to wait until they have (nonexistent) perfect evidence is essentially “a way of saying, ‘We don’t want to use evidence for our decision-making,’” Nosek said. Most scientific controversies aren’t about science at all, and once the sides are drawn, more data is unlikely to bring opponents into agreement. Michael Carolan, who researches the sociology of technology and scientific knowledge at Colorado State University, wrote in a 2008 paper about why objective knowledge is not enough to resolve environmental controversies. “While these controversies may appear on the surface to rest on disputed questions of fact, beneath often reside differing positions of value; values that can give shape to differing understandings of what ‘the facts’ are.” What’s needed in these cases isn’t more or better science, but mechanisms to bring those hidden values to the forefront of the discussion so that they can be debated transparently. “As long as we continue down this unabashedly naive road about what science is, and what it is capable of doing, we will continue to fail to reach any sort of meaningful consensus on these matters,” Carolan writes. The dispute over tobacco was never about the science of cigarettes’ link to cancer. It was about whether companies have the right to sell dangerous products and, if so, what obligations they have to the consumers who purchased them. Similarly, the debate over climate change isn’t about whether our planet is heating, but about how much responsibility each country and person bears for stopping it. While researching her book “Merchants of Doubt,” science historian Naomi Oreskes found that some of the same people who were defending the tobacco industry as scientific experts were also receiving industry money to deny the role of human activity in global warming. What these issues had in common, she realized, was that they all involved the need for government action. “None of this is about the science. All of this is a political debate about the role of government,” she said in the documentary. These controversies are really about values, not scientific facts, and acknowledging that would allow us to have more truthful and productive debates. What would that look like in practice? Instead of cherry-picking evidence to support a particular view (and insisting that the science points to a desired action), the various sides could lay out the values they are using to assess the evidence. For instance, in Europe, many decisions are guided by the precautionary principle — a system that values caution in the face of uncertainty and says that when the risks are unclear, it should be up to industries to show that their products and processes are not harmful, rather than requiring the government to prove that they are harmful before they can be regulated. By contrast, U.S. agencies tend to wait for strong evidence of harm before issuing regulations. Both approaches have critics, but the difference between them comes down to priorities: Is it better to exercise caution at the risk of burdening companies and perhaps the economy, or is it more important to avoid potential economic downsides even if it means that sometimes a harmful product or industrial process goes unregulated? In other words, under what circumstances do we agree to act on a risk? How certain do we need to be that the risk is real, and how many people would need to be at risk, and how costly is it to reduce that risk? Those are moral questions, not scientific ones, and openly discussing and identifying these kinds of judgment calls would lead to a more honest debate. Science matters, and we need to do it as rigorously as possible. But science can’t tell us how risky is too risky to allow products like cigarettes or potentially harmful pesticides to be sold — those are value judgements that only humans can make.