Why policies control data and data cannot determine policies

Abstract

In a book on The Politics of Mistrust, we sought to show how the scientific effort made to estimate oil and gas reserves and resources was overwhelmed by fundamental political differences among the major participants in energy policy. Part of the contribution we hoped to make concerned the relationship, both in analysis and in decision making, between policy and data. For the story lends itself well to a demonstration of the proposition that data do not and cannot determine policy; rather, it is the policy perspectives of the participants that determine what data are important. The real choice is among alternative policies with associated sets of data, not between sets of data considered on their inherent merit. The controversy over energy policy that has overwhelmed analytic considerations illustrates this generic condition that characterizes the relationship between data and policy.