Countdown to CAOmageddon: Flaw #53 - Shireene Hale & Zebras

Shireene Hale has been the point person for keeping the CAO moving. As the previous post described, she's played a vital life-saving and life-supporting role for Dr. Adamus' credibility.

A full description of Hale's destructive influence on the CAO process would be a tome. She's facilitated wrong turns. She's contributed false science herself, dismissed the experiences and scientific advice of qualified citizens, ignored warnings, falsely accused dissenters of crimes, played the victim, given priority to the concerns and comments of eco-extremists, and insinuated that anyone who disagrees with her is following a personal agenda.

Rather than write a long diatribe about Hale, we'll describe one recent moment that captures how she's handled the entire CAO process. At the Council meeting on September 21, Councilman Rich Peterson proposed the idea of local monitoring. Lovel Pratt opposed the idea and asked Hale if there were any GMA provisions that required the County to produce local science. In response, Hale said, "No, there is a lot of information from national and international sources about the effects of development," and she said that we can use that data in place of local data.

That answer is exactly wrong, and Deputy Prosecutor Jon Cain just sat woodenly next to Hale and said nothing. In fact, there is an entire section in the regulations stipulating the characteristics of a valid scientific process. Regarding the local applicability of science from elsewhere, it says:

WAC 365-195-905(2) Counties and cities may use information that local, state or federal natural resource agencies have determined represents the best available science consistent with criteria set out in WAC 365-195-900 through 365-195-925. The department will make available a list of resources that state agencies have identified as meeting the criteria for best available science pursuant to this chapter. Such information should be reviewed for local applicability.

No such review has been completed for us, and Hale regularly ignores or misconstrues the remaining provisions of WAC 365-195 "Growth Management Act - Best Available Science." Hale would like us to believe that evidence from "somewhere else" is the same as evidence from here. Hale would like us to believe that evidence from "somewhere else" requires no validation of local relevance performed by qualified experts in pertinent fields, but that is incorrect. Taking information from "somewhere else" without proper evaluation is not a valid scientific process, and is a violation of WAC 365-195. Moreover, it's just plain foolish.

The process of identifying environmental problems is akin to making a specific medical diagnosis. As has been stated by prominent diagnosticians:

In making the diagnosis of the cause of illness in an individual case, calculations of probability have no meaning. The pertinent question is whether the disease is present or not. Whether it is rare or common does not change the odds in a single patient. ... If the diagnosis can be made on the basis of specific criteria, then these criteria are either fulfilled or not fulfilled.      -- A. McGehee Harvey, James Bordley II, Jeremiah Barondess

The danger of over-generalization is illustrated by an aphorism from medicine which says, "When you hear hoofbeats behind you, you don't expect to see zebras." However, Hale doesn't believe in zebras, and her preconceived beliefs about development "everywhere else" mean that we're lumped in with the rest of the herd.