Alan Johnson is right: the boss should make the decisions; the experts should advise

7 November 2009

Matthew Parris offers Another Voice

This is a problem not only of public esteem, but of self-esteem; and the self-esteem of our democratically elected representatives has never been lower. The recent expenses scandal has only served to lower it further. In the days when elective British politics centred upon the clash of interests — of class, of industry, commerce, agriculture and the land — it all felt simpler. MPs were advocates hired to represent an interest, and we knew where we stood. Today, when our politicians claim to have risen above the politics of class interest and to represent, each one of them, the whole nation, the public have become bemused as to where these people are really coming from. Who is their master? It is then easy to slip into the cynical assumption that their master is their own interests, their own convenience, their own advantage.

And so we begin to think of politics as a courtroom in which the party politicians are counsel for one side or the other — and (between elections at least) we lack a judge or jury. Hence the renewed, enhanced, and (in my view) exaggerated respect for experts.

Professor Nutt is right about drugs. But Alan Johnson is right about who is — or should be — boss.

Matthew Parris is a columnist on the Times.

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Derek Lambert

November 5th, 2009 7:36pm Report this comment

Having at first sided with Professor Nutt, I rapidly came to realise that I was with Alan Johnson. He is charged with talking the decision, right or wrong. I happen to think his political instincts are spot on. Intellectual fascism is unattractive, and that is what Nutt and his colleagues evince. The other lot that do this are the anthropomorphic warming climate-change proponents who equate those who question them with holocaust deniers. Not attractive, not scientific.

Noa Zrk

November 5th, 2009 10:07pm Report this comment

Subject to the most stringent caveats Professor Nutt's advice may be correct about the relative effects of drugs. Alan Johnson may be incorrect in his policy on drugs. However he is answerable for it at the next election. Nutt is not. Ultimately he argues, wrongly, for the unelected and unchallengeable supremacy of the 'expert'.

Ben Lovell

November 11th, 2009 9:30pm Report this comment

Being an unpaid advisor to the government, who has his own (drug research) job to do, it was certainly within Nutt's remit to publish a scientific paper on the drugs in question. He had no obligation to tow the party line, especially as it was explicit that the value judgements he was providing were his own personal opinions.

Bearing that in mind, Johnson's decision to sack Nutt appears as a rash overreaction to Nutt saying something that wasn't politically acceptable. His position is only superficially similar to your financial advisor - it is as if you were to be paying your financial advisor nothing for his advice, and then sacking him when he publishes a paper disagreeing with your theory of high inflation.

The high profile papers supporting following the experts are pointing out that the government are not only throwing out the advice on policy given by the advisors, but the positive, falsifiable statements given as the consensus of the entire scientific community.

Your extrapolation of experts culture is completely uncalled for, considering the peer reviewed and scientific nature of the committee in question. They provide policies, and facts. The facts can NOT be disregarded because they are inconvenient, and the experts should NOT be disregarded because of some silly extrapolation on the culture of experts.

Nutt doesn't hold an unchallengeable position at all, every fact he comes out with is _strictly_ peer reviewed and published via the scientific method, just like his recent paper that he got sacked over! This is how it should be, and this is not undemocratic, nor is it totalitarian - it is rational, and scientific. Science would not work in a totalitarian environment! But then again, neither does democracy.

Alan Johnson was wrong to sack an advisor over a difference of opinion when the said advisor was not giving the opinion as political advice. He is right to be able to disregard policy matters, but not FACTUAL matters.

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