Science, imaginable risks, and public policy: anatomy of a mirage

Experimental predictivity, qualified by probability criteria, is the test that enables scientific inferences of causality and objective statements of fact. Yet, especially during this century the rational discipline of science has been assailed as arrogant by a rising fashion of intellectual laissez faire. In this ambiguous climate, health risk claims that are void or extremely weak in factual content are represented as if scientifically objective and forced at all levels of policy deliberations, especially in cancer risk assessment. Such pretensions deny essential guarantees of public fairness and undermine the credibility of science.