A senior government adviser has described coalition plans to change the way the pilot badger culls are assessed as "an abuse" of the scientific method.
Prof Timothy Coulson is concerned the government is considering a less reliable way of assessing humaneness in the cull and numbers of badgers killed.
He is also concerned that it will scrap independent oversight.
It would also make it impossible to assess whether recommendations to improve the cull have worked.
Writing in Animal Ecology in Focus, Prof Coulson says that ministers must be "wilfully" ignoring the concerns of its own scientists.
"I am tempted to speculate that the government no longer wants to know whether the pilots are effective or humane," he says in his article. "They just want to cull badgers, regardless of whether the population or humaneness consequences can be assessed."
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