In The Honest Broker I argue that political context is an important determination of how information is used in decision making. I distinguish between what I call “Tornado Politics” and “Abortion Politics.” The former can be understood in terms of a hypothetical situation where a group a people have to make a decision about what to do in the face of an approaching tornado, and the latter in terms of a group of people making a decision about a policy on abortion for the group. I argue that the role of information will be very different in the two contexts, because Tornado Politics are characterized by shared values and a decisive role for scientific information, whereas Abortion Politics are characterized by values conflicts and little (or no) role for scientific information.

A common tendency in political debates is for advocates to present issues best characterized in terms as Abortion Politics as a matter of Tornado Politics. Thus, this tendency is the basis for the commonly invoked phrase that “the science says that we should . . .” take a particular course of action. In this manner science becomes a proxy for political battles. I argue in the book that when there is a values dispute, debate will necessarily take the form of Abortion Politics, regardless of efforts to characterize it as Tornado Politics. Below is Figure 4.1 from the book, which column best characterizes debates over climate change?