Oddly enough, I've just finished reading that very book. I was particularly struck by the scene where the bureaucrat, while wining and dining the girl from the bookstore, preparatory to bedding her, apparently has a brief moment of clarity.

This leads him to explain, in effect (my words not Benford's) "You shouldn't let people like me be in charge of science. We're too short sighted and we'll only fuck it up."

Incidentally, Happy Turkey Day, to all those that celebrate it.

I remember an episode of Yes, minister, where a scientist was going to give report on metadioxin, a compound that had the misfortune to sound like the chemical dioxin. Jim Hacker gently persuades the scientist to massage the data, so he can give in to popular, though misinformed, opinion, and ban a useful chemical. I suspected at the time that this wasn't just comedy we were being shown, but actual insights into governments.

David Langford's The Leaky Establishment, though played for laughs*, also captures something of the feel of government science.

*I hope. It's about a nuclear scientist who accidentally takes home a nuclear weapon while nicking a filing cabinet.