What Science Cannot Govern: Why follow-the-science disputes are value fights in disguise

It will not. Evidence can tell you how a system behaves. It cannot tell you which behavior to want. That second question is about values, and no quantity of data settles it. David Hume saw this in 1739 and called it the gap between is and ought. Most "follow the science" fights are really value fights wearing a lab coat, and the side that captures the experts wins an argument that was never theirs to settle.

I learned the shape of this from procurement, not philosophy. A committee once found that a minimum domestic-content rule on a construction tender had been set by technical officers citing industry norms, while the elected people who should have weighed the trade-off never touched it. The engineering standard was a costume. Under it was a distributional choice about who gets the work. I have signed quotations against rules like that, and I have lost tenders to them. The number on the page looked technical. The decision behind it was not.

This book draws the fact-value line cleanly enough to protect both sides of it. Honest science stays with what it can describe. Honest politics stays responsible for the choices that evidence can inform but never make. If you accept the facts and still want to argue the values, this is the book that says you are allowed to, and shows you where the seam is.

It runs on the fact-value distinction, the is-ought problem, Max Weber and Wertfreiheit, technocracy and scientism, evidence-based policy, and the place where risk assessment quietly becomes a value choice.

A note on context: I write from Indonesia, where I run an industrial pump business, a welding and engineering workshop, and a leather craft shop. The examples, currency, and regulatory references are Indonesian. The argument is not. Whoever hands you a political choice dressed as a technical verdict is doing it in every market on earth.