Precaution and Risk Assessment – A Counterpoint

Last year, Adam Finkel and Peter Montague exchanged views on the precautionary principle and risk assessment, which Dr. Montague kindly published. The occasion was Dr. Finkel’s review of Cass Sunstein’s book Risk and Reason. I much appreciate Dr. Finkel writing the review. The shorter Cass Sunstein I gleaned from Dr. Finkel’s review is: risk assessment beyond its role in managing environmental protection, is also anti-stupid medication for the millions of people who can’t think rationally about risk. I’ve already seen enough examples of risk analysts talking down to the other participants in environmental management, so I’ll probably pass on reading the book. I also wonder if it’s escaped Dr. Sunstein’s notice that the attitudes many people have about risks and risk assessments are shaped by a lack of trust, frequently justifiable, in experts, regulators, and responsible parties, coupled with the inability of analysts to articulate clearly the nature of health and environmental risks and the inability of decision makers to define how risk management activities address those risks.

My thinking about the precautionary principle has evolved of late, to the point that I recant my statement that it’s probably inarticulate as being overly harsh. Still, I feel that the way the precautionary principle is expressed by many is more as of a series of aspirations rather than a framework for reducing risks, and it still needs something like risk assessment yoked to it to be useful for decision makers. But as valuable as Dr. Finkel’s and Dr. Montague’s debate is, I don’t look at risk assessment/precautionary principle as a duality or even a continuum. And I know that Dr. Montague’s statement that “[r]isk assessment is the most powerful intellectual tool that the poisoners and destroyers of the planet have ever invented” isn’t correct - otherwise I wouldn’t be having to fight so hard to get funding for the risk assessments I’m responsible for preparing.

Several years ago, Dr. Finkel captured some interesting thoughts about risk assessment in a paper titled, “Disconnect Brain and Repeat After Me: Risk Assessment is Too Conservative”. When I return to the “debate” of risk assessment versus precautionary principle, I’ll provide some observations based on this paper.