Imagine this scenario if you can: A new surgical technique has been developed by medical surgeons that is estimated will provide health and longevity benefits to U.S. citizens on the scale of tens of billions of dollars. Over a thousand controlled studies have been conducted to date, and the aggregate results are overwhelmingly positive. Moreover, many of the studies, and their meta-analyses, have been conducted by some the world’s most respected medical professors and surgeons. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which would have to pay for the new surgical procedure if it were to be approved for reimbursement under Medicare, wishes to conduct one final evaluation of the efficacy of the new technique. So, they contract with the scientific “court of last resort”, the National Research Council (NRC), to evaluate. The NRC agrees and, as usual, sets about recruiting experts to serve on a committee that will conduct the study and produce a final evaluative report. But, the NRC does not recruit any of the medical professors who have been studying the new technique and publishing their results in medical journals, nor does it recruit any of the medical surgeons who have tried the new technique on human subjects. It does recruit two medical doctors to serve on the committee, but they have no experience with the new technique or its research literature. Instead, the NRC recruits five veterinarians to serve on the committee, none of whom has any experience with the new technique or familiarity with its research literature. Moreover, they are holistic veterinarians, who accept the use of surgery only for exploratory purposes and condemn the use of invasive techniques that might decisively alter an animal’s, or a patient’s, condition. This scenario is fictional. But, change the four elements of medicine, surgery, veterinarians, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, respectively, to standardized testing, personnel psychology, education professors, and the U.S. Department of Labor, and the story is factual
