The whole Nutt case

[andrewducker]

Just to be clear - I have no problem with researchers stating the results of their research, and scientists advising the government clearly have to be able to do so.

Where I'm coming from is that I saw a bunch of headlines on one day, where David Nutt was attacking the government over their drugs policy and accusing them of devaluing and distorting the evidence, followed by the unsurprising headline the next day that he had been sacked.

Now, had his lecture been a simple statement of the facts, he'd have been fine.  Stating his own preferred classification?  Not a problem.  But as soon as you start publically criticising your employer (no matter what kind of employment it is, paid, unpaid, consultancy or permanent) you are basically making it impossible to have a good working environment.  If you are correct to criticise them then you'll have to do it from the outside.  There are exceptions to this (criticising awful working conditions which management refuses to correct) - but this doesn't sound like one of those times to me.

Now, I'm sadly failing to find out what, exactly, he did say.  All the sentences I can find simply quote fractions of sentences, which is bugger all use.

Anyone able to find a decent quote for me?

Comments

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Try this one: http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/estimatingdrugharms.html

And as you'll see from: http://timesonline.typepad.com/science/2009/11/david-nutts-controversial-lecture-conformed-to-government-guidelines.html

Prof Nutt did not, as it happens, breach any guidelines at all.

(Edited to replace correct URL)

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

This.

[andrewducker]

I'm not too worried about whether he breached guidelines or not (which says that he can call the government a bunch of incompetent liars, so long as he does so in a personal capacity, which I don't think is conducive to a working relationship).

However - the first link is fantastically useful, because it can be seen that he's talking about the scientific weighing up of different policy measures, which is exactly what he should be doing. It rather looks like the media then blew it up in order to use it as an attack and the standard knee-jerk response was used.

Thanks!

[akicif.livejournal.com]

I don't believe Johnson's response was a standard kneejerk: his letter pretty much was the original attack (bear in mind the original lecture was quite some time ago).

[andrewducker]

There were articles on the 29th:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/29/nutt-drugs-policy-reform-call
and
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/29/cannabis-david-nutt-drug-classification
before he was sacked on the 30th.

Timeline can be seen here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/david-nutt?page=2

[lizw.livejournal.com]

(no matter what kind of employment it is, paid, unpaid, consultancy or permanent)

I think the fact that he was a consultant rather than employee actually does make an important difference. A consultant isn't in fact any kind of employee; they are independent, and as such are on the outside by design. They are not responsible for what their clients do, nor are their clients responsible for what they do (except, legally, in a very few tightly-defined legal cases involving special hazards and the like, which would not apply here). Their independence is supposed to be one of the benefits. It was therefore not wrong of him to criticise from the outside; if he had thought of himself has criticising "from the inside", that would have been wrong, because it would have meant he had lost sight of that independence.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

I prefer calling it Alan Johnson's Nutt Sack.

[andrewducker]

As it's f-locked, I'll simply quote the journal of a friend of mine:
"Between the Nutt sacking brouhaha and the American teabagging rallies it seems to me that politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are feeling a little testy lately."
which was followed up by:
"If it were up to me I'd give them all a good bollocking to let them know how silly they're being."

[sigmonster.livejournal.com]

The way I've ended up formulating this is that the evidence and advice presented by the advisory commission to the minister was public, and the minister is not bound by it. In fact, the Home Secretary of the day has overruled the commission twice, in reclassifying cannabis from C to B and in maintaining that classification at a later date.

So if the minister can publicly disagree with the advisors, shouldn't the advisors have a right to publicly disagree with the minister?

[andrewducker]

It's the advisors job to give advice. It's the minister's job to decide policy. It is not the advisor's job to tell the minister off publicly, nor is it their job to make policy.

As it happens, this isn't what happened anyway.

[akicif.livejournal.com]

I don't see anything in the articles on Google News to indicate that they pre-dated the letter. And to be honest, it wouldn't be the first time that a letter to request a resignation was sent to the official recipient after being released to the press.

(I was also out of the country when this blew up: you can imagine how it was playing in Amsterdam)

[andrewducker]

Without any evidence to the latter, it seems sensible to assume that Nutt made the statements, the press waved them about and then he was sacked. If conflicting evidence comes to light then I'll be happy to take it under advisement :->

And yes, the whole thing is stupid, and Britain (along with much of the world) has absolutely ridiculous drug laws.

[sigmonster.livejournal.com]

But the point is that Nutt was *not* a civil servant and does not have the same responsibilities as a civil servant - he's a full-time academic, taking this additional rather tedious job on as a public duty, and the resulting advice was public. When elsewhere in his career a publication or a lecture disagrees with the government of the day that should be neither here nor there. (I'd even go further and say that as an academic and as a citizen he has a positive duty not to self-censor or to submit to censorship.)

The PRO, to take a random example, has a whole bunch of advisory boards for various aspects of its work. But these advisors still get to publish articles and comment pieces calling the PRO's policies stupid and counterproductive - or indeed calling them wise, far-sighted and efficient.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

For future reference (and reuse of this seminal series of jokes), I think it's also worth noting that Johnson got rid of someone in a plum job.

[simont]

It's a good job nothing in all of this is actually illegal, or else someone would be liable to get caught by the fuzz.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

The game I play to myself when examining such circumstances is: What Happens Next.

Presume that Mr. Nutt (and boys, boys, he's heard all the jokes long time before) kept his current post after publicly offering political criticism of the decisions made based on his scientific advice. OK, next month he's part of a committee required to advise a government minister on another aspect of drugs policy and the law. What advice does he give, and how would it be received by the minister, as political or scientific advice? He is now an unreliable source of advice and so could not continue in his position. The request for his resignation is appropriate.

I think the government is wrong about its drugs policy in large but I'm not in charge nor do I ever wish to be since I am very aware that my best efforts could bring down a word of hurt on a lot of people if, as is likely, I got it wrong.

Policy-based Evidence making?

[akicif.livejournal.com]

No. The whole point of being an independent advisor is so that you can provide independent advice. If the Government doesn't want to take it, fair enough, after a fashion, but they don't get to either lie about the advice they received or try to coerce the advisor into backing their position.

Also, I'm afraid you've not been keeping up: there is nothing in the good professor's terms and conditions to indicate that he could not say what he said, and further, it is becoming clear that Alan Johnson didn't just misjudge the situation his sacking letter, but actually either lied or got the facts wrong (see, for example, Evan Harris' letter: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/nov/03/nutt-johnson-drug-policy-adviser).

Re: Policy-based Evidence making?

[nojay.livejournal.com]

But what happens next time a report authored by Professor Nutt lands on a minister's desk? The minister will always have in the back of their mind that if they don't do what Professor Nutt says they should do he'll publicly disagree with the decision and this will cause all sorts of trauma downstream. The science may be impeccable, the advice of the highest quality but it will still be tainted, the minister condemned whether they accept (they buckled under pressure) or reject (reflexive knee-jerk opposition) the advice given.

The government don't want Professor Nutt's advice any more for political reasons; the call for his resignation is not revenge or retaliation or vindictiveness, it's because they can't work with him any more.

Re: Policy-based Evidence making?

[akicif.livejournal.com]

But his terms of reference state that the advice he gives is public. A minister, when given expert advice - especially publicly - should always bear in mind the cost of ignoring it.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

caught by the fuzz
Pulled by the plod, nicked by the rozzers, tackled by the beedles etc. :-)

[anef.livejournal.com]

Just to say that the summary is one of the most lucid and interesting pieces of writing I've read for some time.

[andrewducker]

The linked PDF?

Yup, very well written and sensible too!

[andrewducker]

Response:
http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/1861603.html?view=12273891#t12273891

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Ah. bohemiancoast will be well up-to-date on that. I was mostly basing my response on what I remembered of the external folk working on the NHS report I was involved in back in the early 90s (the Culyer report on R&D funding) - and it occurs to me now that academics on a one-off committee would have different terms of engagement than members of a semi-permanent advisory board.

It's a pity, because I still think the "don't confuse me with facts" attitude is most pernicious!

[andrewducker]

I think there's a balance to be struck. Saying "The data indicates that X is better method than Y" should be fine, whether or not ther government is advocating Y. Saying "I tried to explain that X is better than Y, but 'some people' are fuckwits who couldn't find their arse with their elbow." clearly isn't. Somewhere between is the point where you can still have a working relationship :->