THE POPULATION ESTABLISHMENT, CORRUPTION, AND REFORM Julian L. Simon0.1 Most academic economists are complacent about their freedom of inquiry...about the conditions under which research funds are made available to them by institutions other than the university. This complacency ...is exemplified in their failure publicly to challenge private patrons, foundations, and government agencies on their allocation of funds for economic research...it entails the risk of alienating the patrons and causing them to reduce further their support of university research. This risk is neatly avoided by the art of accomodation -- by quietly and gracefully submitting proposals for research grants that seem to fit the demands of the patrons (pp. 116-117). The distortions of economic research will not fade away by accomodating the patrons of research funds (p. 121). Nobel Prize-winner Theodore Schultz, 1981 INTRODUCTION It is not pleasant or easy to believe that one's community distorts knowledge and suppresses truth out of self-interest1. It is natural to presume -- a presumption which explains much conservative and pro-establishment action -- that the established institutions serve the public welfare, especially an institution motivated by such good intentions, and populated by so many decent people, as the "population establishment" in the United States. But to refrain from criticizing them on this ground serves no good. The corruption mentioned in the title of this essay refers to the nexus of connections among research funding, individuals' perquisites, individual and institutional decisions about research topics to pursue, choices of people to hire and invite, emphasis placed upon various findings in the research, and sometimes the research conclusions themselves. In his 1982 presidential address to the Population Association of America, John Kantner candidly discussed the place of money in the thinking of the profession. This was his colorful description of the prior years: Heady times those, and something in it for everyone-- the activist, the scholar, the foundation officer, the globe circling consultant, the wait-listed government official. World conferences, a Population Year, commissions, select committees, new centers for research and training, a growing supply of experts, pronouncements by world leaders and, most of all, money--lots of it. I agree with Kantner that much of that activity is no loss because it was wasteful.2 But I do not agree with him when he says that reduction in research funding3 -- aside from reduction in frills -- is bad. I judge that much of the research bought with the funding was scientifically worthless or worse. More about this later. THE POPULATION ESTABLISHMENT The make-up of the "population establishment" as of the early l970's was analyzed by Peter Bachrach and Elihu Bergman in Power and Choice. (1973) When read today, their description of the closely-woven pattern of people, organizations, and money that developed from 1956 to 1970 seems eerily up-to-date. The evolution of this establishment's views into national policy for the United States is set forth well in World Population Crisis (1973) by Phyllis Piotrow, a committed member of that establishment. The joining-together of population and environmental issues is the only recent development. The banner of that joining-together is the Global Tomorrow Coalition, which includes more than 50 organizations ranging from the Audubon Society to Zero Population Growth, and represents over 5 million members. The environmentalist movement is said by journalists to be among the two or three strongest lobbies in Washington. Its officers interlock, past and present, with each other, the State Department, AID, the Council for Environmental Quality, and other relevant government agencies. The Coalition is also inter-related with the Year 2000 Committee, whose l8 members include George Zeidenstein of the Population Council, Robert McNamara, George Mitchell (the Texas oil and real-estate billionaire who supports the Woodlands Conferences), and Walter Cronkite (see Appendix). GTC's publication Interaction (p. 11, date lost) boasts of its "elite Year 2000 Committee [which] is by design a small group of individuals...persons of such prominence, recognition, and accomplishment that they share a remarkable capacity for access to decision-making levels in both government and the private sector." The various individual organizations in the GTC work together to promote federal legislation. The scope and mode of their activity is shown in the February 1987 issue of Interaction which lists four full pages of "Member Initiatives for the 1987 Session of the 100th Congress". Two of theira typical "initiatives" are: POPULATION Objectives: 1. An adequate overall funding level for development assistance so as to provide a reasonable allocation for international family planning programs. The goal for FY 1988 is to maintain current year levels of $234.6 million. 2. An FY 1987 U.S. contribution to the United Nations Fund for Population Activities. AID withheld the entire $25 million it had budgeted for UNFPA in FY 1986 because of UNFPA's assistance to the Chinese population program. Supporting Organizations: Alan Guttmacher Institute, Population Crisis Committee. NATIONAL FORESIGHT At least two Coalition members, Zero Population Growth and Population-Environment Balance, support [Senator Mark]Hatfield's Global Resources, Environment and Population Act. That bill would establish a national policy of federal support for voluntary attainment of a stable U.S. population; require that the Federal Government establish the capability to derive internally consistent projections of population growth, environmental quality, and natural resource trends; and direct the Council on Environmental Quality to publish annually a report on global resources, population, and environment. GTC's own national foresight mandate, approved unanimously by the GTC Board, calls for improvement in U.S. foresight capability along lines similar to those in both the Gore and Hatfield bills, but does not include support for a national population policy (Interaction, February, 1987). Support is drawn from broader-based organizations as well. For example, the main-line organization of U. S. scientists, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), itself runs an active program of "research" on population and related matters, which is discussed at length below, and its flagship journal Science frequently carries news articles about population and environmental issues. The population establishment operates world-wide. Domestic and international groups take on assignments with U. S. taxpayer money that cannot (for reasons of legality or "delicacy") be handled directly by AID or U. S. Planned Parenthood. An official of OECD wrote this about the Pathfinder Fund: ...the relationship that has developed between Pathfinder and AID works well and is to the advantage of both parties. AID, which has always made extensive use of intermediary non-governmental bodies in all sectors of its development programme, finds that in the field of population assistance, Pathfinder, with its close and varied contacts in developing countries, offers possibilities for action that it would often be difficult for it to take itself, operating on a direct government-to-government basis. Thus it has been able to finance some modest population work in countries where government population policies are still ambivalent (Tanzania, Zaire), or are in the very early stages (Rwanda, N. Yemen), or even are overtly negative (Bolivia, Paraguay). Sometimes the AID grant may even enable Pathfinder to make a first contact in a country that has hitherto been opposed to any kind of family planning activity (Pathfinder is hoping to discuss possibilities in both Burma and Malawi, for example). In other cases, while there may be no problem about the government's sympathies, it may still be desirable to undertake some particularly controversial activity on a purely private basis...Where Pathfinder finances an activity out of the AID grant, it is AID's criteria that must be applied...However, when these constraints become particularly irksome, Pathfinder is always free to use its private source funds for activities that AID will not support (Wolfson, 1983, p. 173). The United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), in conjunction with the Population Crisis Committee and spearheaded by Werner Fornos, has since 1978 been mobilizing the opinion of "parliamentarians" throughout the world. This is how Fornos describes the effort in UNFPA's publication Populi (Vol. 11, No. 1, 1984): The growing awareness among legislators in developing and industrialized countries that rampant population growth must be contained is a major stride that has been achieved since the World Population Conference was held in Bucharest 10 years ago. Indeed, if the world is to cope successfully with the immense challenge of slowing down excessive global population growth, it is self-evident that legislators must play an integral role. United Nations Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar maintains the parliamentarians, as communicators between governments and peoples, are in "a unique position" to help secure policies appropriate for their time and place and to ensure the success of these policies once adopted. The aim of exerting influence to reduce population growth rates, rather than simply helping people plan their families, is obvious in the above quotation, and the quotation gives the lie to the UNFPA's (and especially the late head of UNFPA Rafael Salas') careful and frequent statements about individual rights, as do numerous statements in the UNFPA's official "Declarations". Conspiracy is not suggested, but rather a consensus of belief that leads to a concert of action which can be the equivalent of joint planning even if there is no actual joint planning. This may be seen in two decades of official pronouncements and media stories. SOME EXAMPLES OF "ESTABLISHMENT" ACTIVITIES Regrettably, I cannot present a broadly-based systematic investigation of this topic. Collecting a wide sample of evidence would be difficult due to lack of support, unwillingness of persons to weaken organizations they consider valuable, my own distaste for asking questions about such matters, and the infrequency with which the most pervasive abuses are put on paper.4 Therefore, I shall simply relate a few events which I can document with written evidence. It should be noted that my direct access to documentation is small because I have not held office in any of the organizations under discussion, or participated formally or informally in their politics or governance (or been invited to participate); also, I have few friends who have been participants. All the more amazing, then, that even this much material is available. 1) Mellon Foundation Letter to the AAAS. A committee of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) sought funds to study the relationship of population, resources, and the environment. Among other potential funding sources, the committee turned to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and received a feasibility grant. This is an excerpt from a letter to AAAS discussing further funding, signed by J. Kellum Smith, Jr., Vice President and Secretary of that foundation: Because the links among population, resources, and environment are so obvious and strong, I was very much in favor of the idea that the AAAS seek ways of thinking systematically about those links...I hope the suggestion of an alternative title [to the original one] does not indicate diffidence, in your group, on the matter of facing up to the malign consequences of rapid population increase. Should such diffidence exist, I would suppose that it might cripple the program and that therefore the exercise might as well be halted forthwith... ...the first task of the program must be to elucidate the links...Suggestions for improvement of the situation will come along later; and when they do, most obvious and important among them will presumable be methods of reducing the rate of population growth. Social and technological accomodations to high fertility, though perhaps of ancillary utility, are unlikely to be primary solutions.... I am disconcerted by the suggestion that there is a problem in handling "the widely divergent views of the Cornucopians and Malthusians". If by "the Cornucopians" is meant Julian Simon and his few allies, I should think a footnote would be sufficient to dispose of them... If there is nervousness on the point, it had better be faced up to forthwith. The issue of population increase is central to the proposed program...the crucial element in any responsible approach to the overall problem will be restraint of population increase. Although it may be unscientific to make the statement that boldly, I do so because I think that outcome so highly probable that if your group finds it unpalatable perhaps the exercise should be abandoned (January 12, 1984). This letter came into my hands only because my name was in it and a friend on the committee wanted me to see it. I cannot know how many other similar letters are not seen by me to be reported here. And Mellon is one of the key sources of funding for population work. The full text of the Mellon letter is available on request to this article's author for anyone who wishes to see the quotes in context. (Copies of all documents mentioned here also are on deposit with this book's editor.) 2) The AAAS Project and the Response to Mellon. As a result of that demand that the outcome of the inquiry be fixed in advance as a condition of the funding, one of the members of the AAAS committee protested against what was happening, and left the committee. Nevertheless, the AAAS took whatever actions were necessary to satisfy the Mellon Foundation. The grant was made, and the project is under way. On 30 May, 1986, Science announced that "a new interdisciplinary program on population resources, and the environment, supported by foundations is moving ahead. We mean to give it the best we have..." The same editorial by AAAS chief executive William D. Carey also asserted that "On the bright side, China emerges as a model for economic development," and presumably for population policy as well. (p. 1073). (It may also be relevant that the then-president-elect of AAAS, Gerard Piel, who is the Chairman of the Board of Scientific American which has published many articles on our subject, denounced in an editorial in Science the position of the United States in Mexico City in 1984 -- mis-stating it in the process, I might say -- as Population increase, our representatives declared, is not of itself a bad thing...On the supply side, they argued, intervention by the state must not be allowed to inhibit the response of sufficiently motivated entrepreneurs. This advice, not endorsed by the delegations of other market economies [but quite consistent with the NAS report of 1986, as I read it] , carries the faults inherent in prescription from narrow ideology [whatever that is]" (26 October, 1984) In an editorial the following month, the then-president of AAAS wrote about "the relation of growing populations to aspects of social and economic development. Concern over these issues is also reflected in the creation of a AAAS Committee on Population, Resources and the Environment" (David A. Hamburg, 16 November, 1984) And AAAS has long been active as an advocate of population control. The Controller General, in the Report to the Congress on AID (1986?, p. 55) mentioned: Under a $1.2 million contract the American Association for the Advancement of Science organized working groups of U.S. and developing country anthropologists and others to provide policymakers with information on consequences of rapid population growth and to help family planning program administrators identify and modify cultural factors associated with expansion and improvement of family planning delivery systems. Can there be doubt that, in a case like this one, there is danger that the conclusions have been affected by the views of the funding sources? 3) Loss of Research Funds for Disputing the Conventional Wisdom. An example of how people and institutions pay a price for voicing views that run against those of the establishment is found in the experience of the University of Pennsylvania population center. Its head, Samuel Preston, was the principal author of the "revisionist" NRC-NAS report. Mellon grants went to several population study centers in 1986, but a grant was denied to the University of Pennsylvania, one of the most prestigious among the centers. Preston is head of that center. 4) Laundering of AID Funds to Support Domestic Activities. The lengths to which institutions and individuals are willing to go to obtain funding money is illustrated by the unethical (if not illegal) money-laundering6 that takes place whereby AID funds are funneled back (sometimes directly, sometimes through the United Nations Fund for Population Activities) to U.S. population organizations (e.g. Worldwatch, Population Institute, Population Crisis Committee, Institute of Society, Ethics and Life Sciences, Population Council, Pathfinder Fund, AVS, Planned Parenthood, and so on, and used for domestic population-control propaganda. These activities are documented in my 1981 book; no question has been raised about the factual validity of that evidence in the years since publication. Evidence of the persuasive and ideological (in contrast to research) activities of all those organizations may also be found in that book. Additional documentation arrived the day this is being written, an advertisement for "Globescope 87", a conference to be held April 29-May 1, 1987, organized by The Global Tomorrow Coalition in conjunction with the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) and Cleveland State University. This conference is a domestic activity of the environmental movement; the roster of speakers includes representatives from the entire range of environmentalist and population organizations. The "Donors" include UNEP, funneling back into this domestic propaganda program money which it receives from U.S. taxpayers. Another "Donor" is Worldwatch Institute, which gets money from UNFPA, which in turn gets money from U.S. taxpayers; in this case the money makes three stops after leaving the taxpayer. Other "Donors" include National Wildlife Federation, National Audubon Society, World Resources Institute, and Population Crisis Committee, some of which almost surely get U.S. taxpayer money at present, both directly and by way of the U.N., though I have not been able to check the present status. It should be kept in mind that I have made no systematic investigation of these matters since 1979. It would be interesting to learn what an inquiry into these flows of money could uncover. But no one is employed in tracking down this scandalous mess. 5) Propagandizing the U.S. Public. The extent to which one point of view--that population growth is bad--is accepted by the relevant professions, and promulgated as scientific fact, may be seen in the report on "Population Education in the Schools," by the Population Information Program at Johns Hopkins (March-April, 1982), which is funded with millions of dollars from AID. It begins: "Formal population education is designed to teach children in school about population issues and, in many cases, to encourage them eventually to have smaller families." The "education" programs are shot through with assertions about population, environment, and resources which have no scientific support and are founded upon a particular set of values. Planned Parenthood is so much involved with changing public opinion that it spent $197,000 to pay for advertisements opposing a nominee to the Supreme Court in 1987 (Washington Post, March 27, 1988, p. A8). 6) Buying the Political Action of Demographers. This item is revealing because of its amazing pettiness. At the IUSSP conference in Florence in 1985, a form was circulated by the Chair and the Past Chair of the Population and Family Planning Section of the American Public Health Association which "facilitated" (their word) members of IUSSP sending telexes to their U.S. senators and congresspeople in opposition to the Kemp amendment. (That amendment was intended to prevent federal funds from going to any organization which "supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion.") The organizers "facilitated" by providing the language for the telex, and stating that "Your message, sent by telex, will be adapted by APHA to suit the Senate and House situations...All you need do is put your name, home address and zip code on this sheet and place it in boxes being distributed for the purpose" (italics in original). The circulated cover memo also said, "If you are willing for a telex to be sent in your name, at no cost to you..." (italics in the original.) Several persons who accepted the offer and sent telexes denied to me that they were influenced by wanting to keep funds flowing to such organizations as IUSSP which finance a large part of the travel to the conference. He who pays the piper does not call the tune among IUSSP demographers, I was told by them. But clearly the persons who drafted the request thought that the tiny cost of a telex could affect people's propensity to telex their congressional representatives. And if a handful of dollars for a telex -- less than the cost of a cheap meal -- is thought by the organizers to influence IUSSP members, is it unreasonable to think that thousands of dollars of travel money and/or grant funds might have influence, too? The cover memo is available upon request if you wish to see the quotes in context. 7) Pre-determination of Research Conclusions by NIH. Much of the research work done with the money mentioned by Kantner in an earlier quotation was purchased to bolster one particular conclusion arrived at in advance, a conclusion that the data do not support. In l979 the NIH Center for Population Research promulgated a Request for Proposals (RFP) for projects on the consequences of population growth in MDC's, following upon (if memory serves) two conferences in preparation of the RFP. The RFP contained this statement in introducing the subject: "The proposition was derived from these conferences that a reduction in the rate of population growth is both inevitable and useful." Such an introduction--and please keep in mind that it referred to MDC's and not LDC's--is not likely to lead to unbiased research, and must surely discourage application for, and approval of, studies that would show positive consequences. In effect, those who responded to the RFP were handed the direction of the conclusions before they began. They were told which side of the bread the butter was on. The bias of federal research support can be seen in the list of topics discussed by the Interagency Committee on Population Research (ICPR) listed in the annual Inventory and Analysis of Federal Population Research published by NIH. Four to six topics have been discussed each year since 1970. There has not been a single listing which suggests the support of disinterested economic research concerning the effects of population change. But there have been such listings as "Foreign Public Opinion on Issues Relating to Population Control" (1972, note "Control"); "The United States Role in Resolving the World Population Problem" (1975, not "Problem"); "Report on a Trip to Asia to Study Population Problems, Programs, and Policies" (1976); "Observations of Recent Visit to China: Implications for Population Research" (1977); "Population and Energy Issues" (1980, in response to the oil price rise in 1979); "Global 2000 Study: Overview and Population Aspects" (1980); and "Impact of Population Change on Urbanization and Agricultural Land" (1980). 8) Influencing the Products of the NAS-NRC Study. My 1986 review of the NAS-NRC study (Simon, 1986) documents how the conclusions and the press release were affected by funding at Congressional pressure. 9) Starving of Research on the Consequences of Population Growth. A major reason for the poor state of knowledge about the consequences of population growth is that remarkably little research has been funded on the entire topic of population growth's consequences (perhaps on the assumption that the consequences are obvious). In preparation for a conference on future directions for population research held by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1981 or 1982, I looked at the l976 and l980 issues of the NIH Inventory and Analysis of Federal Population Research which happened to be at hand. A few of the pages are appended. The topic "Consequences of population change" received funding of $l34,000 for 3 projects in l976, out of $l8 million total for 227 projects in Social and Behavioral Science. In l980 the figures were $22l,000 for 3 projects out of $33 million for 23l projects -- much less than l% in each year. More was spent on the consequences of animal behavior than of human behavior. Furthermore, the studies listed under the heading "population change" do not seem intended to assess economic changes. In 1986, there was exactly one (1) study on "consequences of population change", accounting for $50,000 among a total of $43 million for the "social and behavioral sciences" (page 28), a total of $203 million overall (p. 25), and that was a study of "Aging and the Interaction of Demography and Hearing Loss". . Economics was listed as having one study, for $342,000 (p. 30); I could not determine which study that was, but odds are that it concerned the determinants rather than the consequences of population change. I do not wish to judge studies that I have not examined, but I do note that Senator Proxmire could have a ball with his Golden Fleece Award and such research titles as -- here is just one page's sample that I picked almost randomly -- "Female Partner Satisfaction", "Sexual Adjustment of Alcoholic, Maritally Conflicted, and Normal Couples", Psychological Impact of Pregnancy for Rural Adolescents",, "Attachment Across Generations in Families of Adolescents", "Consequences of Pregnancy Loss to Urban Adolescents", "Arousal and Anxiety in Dysfunctional Men and Women", "Eastern Caribbean Fertility Transition", and "Genetic Counseling and Reproductive Decision making" (p. 172). And that represents well over a million dollars of taxpayer money. (The preceding page 171 goes for about $7 million of similar topics.) I am confident that inspection of the document from which I have drawn these examples will reassure the reader that I have I have not selected examples that misrepresent the overall situation. Vast amounts of government funding go to support studies that might help implement policy that follows from the conclusion that population growth is bad, that is, studies of the determinants of fertility. I do not suggest that all or even most of that work is without scientific value. I do suggest, however, that its scientific payout relative to its cost would not seem favorable compared to many other things the society might do with its research budget, unless one assumes that there is a very high value in reducing population growth throughout the world. Yet the PAA (Population Association of America), through the Population Resource Center (PRC) officially lobbies for more money to be given for research. Also relevant is the pattern of institutional funding. Large sums go to population organizations and to environmental organizations that are explicitly or implicitly anti-natal (Simon, 1981, p. 298). I know of not a single penny going to any organization that might recognize any positive aspects of population growth. More generally, reduction of population growth is urged by a very large set of organizations, many of them part of the Global Tomorrow Coalition. On the other side are--no organizations at all. Is it any wonder that those who espouse lowering population growth claim that "all informed persons agree" with their belief? They are so sure of the rightness of their views that they even call for stopping inquiry and discussion of the issues: In the words of Sirageldin and PAA President Kantner: "This is not an area for frivolous approaches [they were referring to my work] or one where academics may contend confusedly with no great harm to anyone. It is an area where an effective mobilization of public will and commitment based on understanding of issues is essential" (1982, p. l73). Imagine yourself a demographer considering research into the consequences of population growth, facing the institutional situation described above. How would you conduct your professional life? It should not be surprising that the economic studies of the consequences of population change that have shown positive effects--for example, the effects of population change and density on productivity, investment in irrigation, road networks, agricultural practices and the like--have largely been done by persons who are not members of the demographic establishment, and mostly without funding by the organizations that ordinarily support population research. The real surprise is that with the incentive structure being what it is, few if any studies funded by population organizations (or any other studies, for that matter) have found empirical evidence of negative effects of population growth on long-run social or economic performance. It also seems amazing that despite all the research and publicity about the conventional view, there is as much public interest about (in Kantner's term) "revisionist" thinking as there is, as well as the positive reception that Kantner deplores. Given this situation, cuts in funding of research by NIH, AID, and other sources may not be a social evil. 10) Support for Coercive Population Programs. The population establishment claims to be "pro-choice" with respect to the individual rights of women and couples. But at the same time, these organizations and individuals speak in favor of reducing population growth, a goal which is inconsistent with the goal of simply helping people attain their individual preferences. This leads them to the "consciousness-raising" dodge: If people don't want to do what you want them to do, press on them until they change their minds and are ready to do what you want. The most casual reading of population establishment documents -- even the most carefully written of them, the UNFPA statements -- make clear that this is the explicit strategy. And of course this is how the Chinese family- planning program obtains what it calls "voluntary" one-child families. (See Simon, 1988.) Indeed, in their desire to reduce births--let us leave their motivation aside as not being a desirable subject of inquiry here--the population establishment has embraced China's population program. We have seen this earlier in the quotations from William Carey and Gerard Piel of AAAS. The UNFPA gave its first award to China (along with India), and Theodore W. Schultz, who was on the committee as a Nobel prizewinner, promptly resigned in protest, saying that the selection process "was a travesty completely at variance with the good faith with which I accepted your invitation. (His shocking letter of resignation, dated July 18, 1983, is available upon request.) The central policy issue for the population establishment at the moment (1988) is to restore the AID funds that were cut from UNFPA in order that the money would not go to China for abortions. The emphasis on this is seen in the legislative "initiative" quoted earlier, and also in a series of expensive newspaper advertisements by Planned Parenthood (e. g. The Washington Post, March 12, 1987, p. A17), referring to those who want to cut the funds as "irresponsible extremists" who are "standing in the way" of "Women in the developing world [who] want choice." (See Figure 1.) Figure 1 As this is being written, there arrived the Newsletter of Californians for Population Stabilization (formerly California ZPG), inviting the reader to attend an "Awards Dinner in Honor of The People's Republic of China." The details -- please note the omnipresent Werner Fornos -- are as follow: Guest Speaker Werner Fornos, President Population Institute, Washington D.C. Comments and Film Lin Guozhang, Deputy Consul General People's Republic of China Entertainment Chorus music during social hour Roving Microphone available for commentary by individuals and organizations during dinner Ceremonial To honor People's Republic of China for acknowledging overpopulation and encouraging family planning. Educational To raise general awareness of California's elected representatives and public of the need for population concern abroad and at home. Information packets available for all guests. Social To introduce members of the private public- interest sector to elected representatives and to each other; to explore the possibility of united action; to impress upon the members of the public-interest sector the impact of population problems upon their individual concerns. Cultural To introduce to California's elected representatives and the public-interest sector the people, philosophies, problems, and concerns of the People's Republic of China in a relaxed atmosphere of food, drink and general good fellowship. The above may seem like a satire, but I assure you that it is direct quotation. 11) PAA Involvement With Political-Activist PRC. Concerning the financial and personnel relationship between the Population Resource Center (PRC) and the Population Association of America (PAA): i) The publicly-stated basis for the connection lacks justification. And ii) the connection supports activities that are obviously inappropriate for a scientific organization. These two matters will be examined in order. i) The PAA-PRC connection is said by the officials of the PAA to be good for the demographic profession. More specifically, it is said that the PRC acts as the PAA's "eyes and ears in Washington" to help get more money for demographic research. (Yes, money again.) That the PAA ought to lobby for more money is simply assumed to be an unquestioned good thing.7 There is apparently no concern that a) the research funds in question come from taxpayers, and b) there may be other uses of the resources which may be of higher social value than the demographic research which might be foregone -- even (!) the spending of the moneys for their personal use by the taxpayers who earn the money. Perhaps demographers believe that what they are doing is more important than what others do -- a belief held by almost every other known group of human beings, of course, and therefore suspect because of the mutual inconsistency in those views. Or perhaps demographers simply believe that it is justification enough that the funds will do good for their own group, a view which is cynical even if it is common. I do not. Neither of these propositions is self-evident or is supported by evidence, and therefore the PAA's tie with PRC is unjustified. ii) The funds which go to PRC come from PAA members' dues, and are commingled with other PRC funds which go to further purposes that at least some members find partisan and objectionable. PRC is a politically-oriented group working to advance the idea that population growth is a danger and ought to be controlled. No one with even slight knowledge of the population movement can look at the Board of Directors -- which includes names like Harriet Pilpel, Richard Benedick, Charles F. Westoff, and Congressman John E. Porter -- without knowing that this is an organization dedicated to reducing the world birth rate. An example of its activities is the description in the Appendix of one of the "briefings" that PRC puts on; it is not unrepresentative of many others. It is unfair to tax members to support activities that run against their professional knowledge and personal values. In 1982, as part of a longer letter to the officers of PAA (from which I have extracted other paragraphs above) I complained as follows about the association of PAA and PRC, as mediated by the PAA Public Affairs Committee: Particularly inappropriate is the matter of the PAA's Public Affairs Committee. This group of persons is designated by the PAA to give PAA's "official" view to Congress and bureaucrats about public policy related to demographic issues. Such a group inevitably creates the impression that its pronouncements are settled scientific doctrine. And it pronounces not only about strictly demographic variables, but also about issues concerning food, immigration, resources, and so on. For example, the description of the activities of the Public Affairs Committee as of Fall, 1982, includes this description of "The Project on Population and the Private Sector": designed to identify specific areas of mutual interest and concern both to private corporations and to organizations working in the field of population and international development...Executives from U.S. corporations were brought together with senior leaders from the U.N. Fund for Population Activities, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the State Department, foundations, private population and development groups and the U. S. Congress...Five major points of intersection between the interests of the corporate community and those of population and development organizations were identified by the participants in this Project: *creation of a more favorable environment for investment, trade, and commerce in Third World countries over the medium and long term, which will be assisted by reductions in adverse population pressures"... (P. A. A. Affairs, Fall, 1982, p. 1, italics in original). Not only is this out-and-out propaganda for one point of view -- a point of view which, at a minimum, may now be said to be a matter for mainstream controversy [see the 1986 NAS report], but also suggests that the reason for U.S. involvement in world population control is for self-interest rather than for "humanitarian" motives -- the Ravenholt scandal again (see Simon, 1981). To assert that the PAA's involvement is solely in connection with purely "technical demographic" matters is simply throwing dust in the eyes of those who question the matter. Furthermore, the PAA Public Affairs Committee does this in "collaboration" (PAA Affairs, Summer, l982, p. 2) with the Population Resource Center. The latter organization says that it "does not espouse a particular population program or philosophy to `solve' population problems" (l98l Annual Report, p. 2). But it clearly evinces the belief that population growth in LDC's and elsewhere is a bad thing. (This shows through in the appended first pages of its Annual Report and Executive Summary, and it is signaled clearly in the Population Resource Center's participating membership in the Global Tomorrow Coalition along with such organizations as Environmental Fund, FAIR, Negative Population Growth, Population Crisis Committee, Population Institute, U.S. Club of Rome, World Population Society, ZPG, and a host of environmental organizations.) Since I first made this complaint I have found that -- contrary to the "non-espousal" quoted above from PAA Affairs -- "The Public Affairs Committee has been working hard through its association with the Population Resource Center (Fall, l982, p. l)" on the "Project" mentioned above. But curiously, this "project" was claimed by PRC as an apparent sole activity in its 1981 "Year-End Report." Such is the close association between PAA and PRC. The non-dissociation of the PAA from these political and ideological and propagandistic "briefings" is made crystal-clear by the following extract from PAA Affairs: Public Affairs Committee Michael Teitelbaum and Al Hermalin delivered the committee's report with the assistance of Anne Harrison Clark of the Population Resource Center. During 1981, the Population Resource Center, in collaboration with PAC, organized 24 briefings and policy discussions in 16 cities involving over 70 PAA members. The sessions involved the connections between population factors and a wide range of policy issues on the local, state, national and international levels. Representatives from private foundations, Congress, US Government agencies, State and Local governments, international organizations and private corporations participated in these discussions. A brochure outlining these sessions is available from the Population Resource Center and summaries of the briefings are available from the Population Reference Bureau. Another busy year of briefings is anticipated and may well be highlighted by an invitation to provide a large briefing for the National Governor's Association. PAC and the past, present and future presidents of PAA have sent a letter to all members of Congress to protest provisions of the "super Hyde" bill sponsored by Sen. Helms which would prohibit all research related to abortion. PAC also has provided input to the debate concerning the Population Policy Bill and to the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1982. PAC has provided advice concerning witnesses and issues to the agencies of Congress involved with these matters. PAC has also sponsored and will continue to sponsor meeting with key members of the federal administration to assure that the interests of the population research are well known to those conducting oversight of population data gathering and research support. (PAA Affairs, Summer, 1982, p. 2.) Hewlett Foundation funds are given for this PAA activity. This is said to absolve the PAA of responsibility for PRC. But if the funds for the activity come from elsewhere, why are they channeled through PAA? The continuing organizational goals of PRC are made clear by the background of the president it installed in 1987. Jane S. De Lung has been chosen to be the new President of the Population Resource Center. De Lung brings to the Center twenty years of experience in family planning, demographic research in the health and human service area, and public policy. Recently, De Lung started her own consulting firm through which she designed a $7.1 million demonstration project working with teen mothers on welfare. She also assisted in a demonstration project to increase minority male participation in family planning and reproductive health clinics. (PAA Affairs, Winter, 1987, pp. 2-3) 12) Ad Hominem Attacks Upon Persons Perceived as Threats. The extent to which an establishment is prepared to go in defense of its beliefs and prerogatives can be judged by the tactics that it uses. Standard for the population establishment are vilification, religion-baiting, and aspersions on the motives of those who disagree with them. These are some frequently-used varieties of the ad hominem device: 1) Allege that the person making the charge is paranoid. (Even if true, so what?) 2) Say that the person making the charge is motivated by the sense of failure and the desire to get even because of the failure. (Again, even if true, so what?) 3) Dismiss the person making the charge as a pathological arguer who gets his or her kicks by saying the opposite of everyone else. (No notice is taken of the fact that science is only useful when its findings are counter- intuitive and counter-conventional. Under such circumstances it has high "information value," in the sense of information theory.) 4) Say that the person making the charge has another axe to grind. The press is particularly quick to speculate that one's motivation is either an "ideology" or a money payoff from a business organization. It is simply unbelievable to many that a person may be mainly motivated by the feeling of a responsibility to determine the scientific truth and then bring it to people's attention, just for its own sake, in the belief that in the long run the human enterprise is best served by the truth. Dismissing this as a possible motivation is a sad commentary on the members of the profession who say it. Colin Clark, a world-class economist who might well have won a Nobel prize if he had not spoken out about population growth, was for long the target of much abuse and belittling as a way of getting rid of his views. When discussing his work, Lincoln and Alice Day refer to him as "Colin Clark, an internationally known Roman Catholic apologist" (1964, p. 134). And Ehrlich, Ehrlich, and Holdren (1977, p. 807) embellish a bit more by calling him an "elderly Catholic economist." I feel confident that if the Days, the Ehrlichs, and all the other respected members of the population establishment were to discover comparable racial epithets made by someone in public life -- even if the remarks were made privately (as with Earl Butz or Jesse Jackson), let alone in print -- these good people would be up in arms to pillory the epithet-maker. But there is no campaign to pillory the Days, the Ehrlichs, and the Hardins. Reluctantly, I shall resist the temptation to quote the choicer descriptions that I, too, have been granted over the years. SUGGESTIONS FOR CHANGES It is always more attractive, and usually more virtuous, to go beyond criticism and offer suggestions for changes to mitigate problems being criticized. In that spirit, I offer the following suggestions to the PAA, the only organization among those referred to here to which I belong. Furthermore, as a professional organization, it has special responsibilities not to further any political ideology. I also have a few brief suggestions for the professional journals in the field, and for the federal grant process. 1) The PAA should sever its connection with the PRC. 2) If some connection between PAA and PRC is to continue, it would seem reasonable to "balance" it with equal support for one or more organizations with an opposite interest. I believe that this is a vastly inferior suggestion to the first one, however, because I believe that all such partisan activity is inappropriate, and furthermore, it would be difficult to produce truly "separate but equal" treatment. 3) Whether all PAA "public affairs" activities should be terminated, and whether there should be a Public Affairs Committee, given the difficulty of constituting it to provide a fair and balanced view, are matters requiring serious discussion. Given the unsavory history, the Committee's activities should at least be halted until such an investigation is complete. 4) If there is to be a Public Affairs Committee, it not only should have balanced representation, but it should have no special formal or informal relationship to a special-interest lobbying organization such as Population Resource Center. 5) If a PAA president gives a partisan presidential address which will then be published in PAA's official journal, Demography, as with Kantner's, space for rebuttal should be made available. 6) The official journal Demography should find ways to publish work on the consequences of population change, along with work on the determinants and on mathematic demography. And it should ensure that all sides of the matter are represented. I believe that it will be possible to find papers which meet the highest "professional" standards if the conventional prejudices are not operating. In the U.S. (unlike the U.S.S.R.) the difficulties for unconventional research do not stem from conspiracy or centralized authority. Rather, the main difficulty is that in each academic discipline there are only one or a few journals that will give wide distribution to, and confer legitimacy upon, a writer's views; if unconventional views are published elsewhere, the majority who hold the conventional view can simply overlook or ignore the unconventional view, whether it deserves to be ignored or not. And, inevitably, most potential referees and editors hold the conventional view. Therefore the odds necessarily are against the unconventional view even if it does not run into sheer prejudice. Prejudice is not necessary for a view not to be heard; because a view runs counter to what was learned in graduate school it is enough to have it adjudged as "kooky" and without merit. One possible solution is a partial shift from a representative, and supposedly neutral, system of article refereeing to an advocate system. Science has such a system; it asks authors to supply the names of potential referees. So far as I know, however, Science is alone among professional journals in this respect (though some university presses use such a system, too). Authors of unconventional but worthy research often can find respected persons who will agree with them and are willing to "sponsor" the work. If so, there is some presumption that the work should be published. If my 1980 Science article had been sent out to "representative" referees in the field, it would have been a miracle squared if the article had made it through the refereeing process. (Assume that 2% of potential referees would recommend that such a paper be published. Having two referees recommend it would then have a probability of .02 x .02 = .0004.) A professional journal might adopt an advocate system as a complement to the current systems, rather than a substitute. Another possibility: A court of last resort for major journals, or within disciplines, which would hear appeals by respected persons in the field on behalf of others' papers. (If there were such a system in demography or in economics, I guarantee it would get some business immediately.) Perhaps the drawback is that too many claims would be made. But estimating the demand for such a service is done most efficaciously by actually trying it. 7) An advocate "sponsor" system might be applied to the federal grant process. REFERENCES Bachrach, Peter, and Elihu Bergman, Power and Choice: The Formulation of American Population Policy (Lexington, Mass: Lexington Books, 1973). Coale, Ansley, and Edgar M. Hoover, Population Growth and Economic Development in Low-Income Countries (Princeton: PUP, 1958). Day, Lincoln H. and Alice Day, Too Many Americans (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1964). Ehrlich, Paul R., Anne H. Ehrlich, and John P. Holdren, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment , 2nd ed., (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1977). -----, review of The Resourceful Earth, in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, February, 1985, page 44.) Everett, Alexander H., New Ideas in Population (New York: 1826/1970, A. M. Kelley). Fornos, Werner, "A Time For Action," Populi, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1984, pp 32-35. Hamburg, David A., "Population Growth and Development," Science, Volume 226, Number 4676, November 16, 1984. Hardin, Garrett, The New Republic, October 28, 1981, pp. 31-34. Hazlitt, Henry, Economics in One Lesson (New York: Arlington House, second edition, 1962) Hirshleifer, Jack, "The Expanding Domain of Economics", The American Economic Review, Vol. 75, December, 1985. Holden, Constance, "A Revisionist Look at Population and Growth," Science, Vol. 231, March 28, 1986, pp 1493-1494. "Implications for U.S. Policy of the NAS Report on Population Growth and Economic Development: Policy Questions," Xerox, March 6, 1986. Jaffe, Frederick S., cited in Simon, 1981, taken from Elliott, Robin; Lynn C. Landman; Richard Lincoln; and Theodore Tsuruoka. 1970. U.S. population growth and family planning: a review of the literature. In Family Planning Perspectives, vol. 2, repr. in Daniel Callahan, ed., The American population debate (New York: Anchor Bks., 1971), p. 206. Kaminskaya, Dina, Final Judgment: My Life as a Soviet Defense Attorney (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982). Kantner, John F., "Population Policy and Political Atavism," Demography, (forthcoming). Kelley, Allen C., "The National Academy of Sciences Report on Population Growth and Economic Development," Xerox, April 10, 1986. Lee, Ronald, "Economic Consequences of Population Size, Structure and Growth," International Union for the Scientific Study of Population Newsletter No. 17, January-April 1983, pp 43-59. -----, review of World Development Report 1984, Population and Development Review, 11, March, 1985, pp. 127-130. McGreevey, William Paul, "World Development Report 1984 - Two Years Later," Xerox, April 1986. National Research Council, Committee on Population, and Working Group on Population Growth and Economic Development, Population Growth and Economic Development: Policy Questions (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1986) Oldenburg, Don, "Whistle Blower's Anguish," The Washington Post, March 31, 1987, p. C5. Piel, Gerard, "Let Them Eat Cake," Science, Volume 226, Number 4673, October 26, 1984. Piotrow, Phyllis, World Population Crisis (New York: Praeger, 1973). Population and Family Planning Section American Public Health Association, Memo to "All US Citizens, Members and Attendees at the IUSSP Conference," undated. Repetto, Robert, "Why Doesn't Julian Simon Believe His Own Research?", Letter to the editor, The Washington Post, Nov.2, 1985, p. A21). Schultz, Theodore W., Investing in People. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.) Simon, Julian L., "The Concept of Causality in Economics," Kyklos, Vol. 23, Fasc. 2, 1970, pp. 226-254. _____, The Economics of Population Growth (Princeton: PUP, l977). _____, The Ultimate Resource (Princeton: PUP, l98l). _____, "Disappearing Species, Deforestation, and Data", New Scientist, 15 May, 1986, pp. 60-63. -----, and Paul Burstein, Basic Research Methods in Social Science (New York: Random House, third edition, 1985) Sirageldin, Ismail and John F. Kantner, "Review," Population and Development Review, March, l982, pp. l69-l73. Wolfson, Margaret, Profiles in Population Assistance (Development Centre of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1983). FOOTNOTES 0.1 Samuel Preston, Donald Warwick, and Susan Watkins gave me useful advice about this essay. Before writing this article and aiming it for a "public" audience, I have raised many of these matters "internally" to the profession -- in long letters with much of the documentation contained herein, to two presidents of the PAA, to the IUSSP, and to the president and chief executive and board of the AAAS. And there have been people within the "establishment" who have conscientiously given a public hearing to the views about population economics which I espouse, or have themselves fairly represented similar views, and on some occasions suffered for doing so. Among these persons are Richard Easterlin, Allen Kelley, Dudley Kirk, Ronald Lee, Larry Neal, William Peterson, Edmund Phelps, Samuel Preston, and Theodore W. Schultz. Scholars in this category but outside the establishment include Colin Clark, Thomas deGregori, Nicholas Eberstadt, Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Jacqueline Kasun, and Alan R. Waters. There are others in both categories whom I have unfortunately forgotten. I hope that none of these persons is embarrassed by being included in the list. It surely is because of their professional knowledge of what is at heart an economic subject -- the usable-resource effect of population growth -- that almost all of the persons in the list are economists. It is more puzzling that many of the most zealous persons on the other side of the issue are biologists. The only explanation I can offer is that biologists assume the absence of the peculiarly-human adjustment mechanisms which are the crux of the difference between human and animal systems. 1 An interesting example of the reluctance to believe otherwise is Dina Kaminskaya the attorney with the most experience in defending Soviet dissidents, and the person who had shown the most courage in doing so, She tells in her memoirs (1982) how difficult it was to believe that psychiatric treatment is used for repressive purposes in the USSR. For completeness, I note that theThe United States also is not perfect in this respect. Psychiatry has been mis-used for political purposes here, too. See Oldenburg (1987). 2For example, after seeing how much money was obviously being spent for the meeting of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) in Helsinki in l979, I consulted the Union's annual report. Extraordinary sums were being received from governments (at the same time that membership fees were going up by leaps and bounds) and then being disbursed mostly for travel and meetings, with the attendees seeming to be part of a well-orchestrated international old boy's club. Not being on the gravy train certainly makes it easier to feel that the train should be stopped. But even some of those who are on that train are appalled by the waste. 3Kantner refers to as "an outbreak of criticism aimed at the foundation of population policy." This he considers as "add[ing] insult to [funding] injuries I have been reviewing" (p. l3). This is the "line of argument which, for convenience, we may refer to as `revisionist'." (I do not like the label, but will use it for convenience here.) 4The reader will understand that because of the evanescent nature of the process under discussion, it is most difficult to find hard evidence. The business usually is conducted with "You know what I mean?" and a wink. And it is discussed after pledge of confidentiality; for example, staff members of the UN have told me privately that they knew that aspects of working papers for the Mexico City conference twisted the facts because that was what was wanted, but I cannot document the conversations or even attribute them. 5On the front cover of the Broad-Wade book is blazoned a testimonial -- and only one testimonial -- quoted from a review in Science 83, sister AAAS publication of Science, for which both Broad and Wade worked. 6By "money laundering" I mean transfers of funds which enable the funds to be used for purposes not intended, not acknowledged, or not legal by the original donors. 7PAA president George Stolnitz wrote as follows: As to the Population Resource Center and its relations to the PAA, it is enough to relate that half of PAA's funding to the Center for Association purposes is to foster active "lobbying" support for precisely the non-policy advocacy objectives stated above. The other half of PAA's funding of the Center's work for us, financed by a Hewlett grant to PAA, is for educational briefings on factual population trends. Such briefings are conditioned by the precisely specified understanding between the Center and PAA that substantive-policy advocacy positions or other normative positions are to be avoided. So far as others and I can tell, such instructions have been scrupulously observed. (Letter of April 22, 1983.) Roberts 88-131 9-11-8 article8 September 20, 1989 Roberts 88-131 9-11-8 article8 September 20, 1989