Cato’s Center for the Study of Science is pleased to announce that on Monday, September 14, Trevor Butterworth, Director of Sense about Science USA, and editor for STATS.org, a collaborative project with the American Statistical Association to promote statistical literacy, will be featured on Cato Connects, our online interactive forum hosted by Caleb Brown, Director of Multimedia at the Cato Institute.

Sense About Science’s mission is to advocate for the public interest in sound science and evidence as the basis for informed decision-making and political engagement. “The challenge,” says Butterworth, “is that science is not always sound and that evidence is often missing — or misinterpreted or manipulated. The opportunities for making poor policy decisions — or cherrypicking the data to fit a belief or policy objective — are enormous.” As a result discussions on everything from GMOs, medicines, recreational drugs, the environment, and nutrition have become more and more politicized and less and less insightful.

“We can do better,” says Butterworth. “And we should do better, given that evolutionary and even revolutionary developments in technology, statistics, and science can help us chart a course to more reliable knowledge.”