"From Spin City to Fat City"

OpinionJournal - Wonder Land: "Science, of its nature, is always confusing. Medicine is uncertain. But public-policy formation in the U.S., especially as concerns health policy or the environment, whether obesity or the melting of the polar ice caps, admits to very little confusion. We claim to know. But in fact we usually don't know...

Public officials will always ride in the slipstream of an evident crisis. But there is a cautionary tale here. The informational world we inhabit has become a volatile mixture of news, rumor and often incomplete science. This or that threat, need or cause comes at us constantly. But there may be a limit to how often politicians can lower a bucket into the well of public credibility, asking people to alter their behavior and pay handsomely for the privilege--as here, or climate change or fuel alternatives. There might not be much left when the authorities most clearly must ask people, for example, to prepare for an avian flu pandemic before it arrives from Asia.
When the 400,000-dead obesity study unraveled, the CDC's director called it a "lesson in humility." In a world that is evermore complex, busy and costly, it would be a good thing if the people in Washington with the power to impose solutions to the problems of life on all of us made their new watchword "humility." Fat chance. "