This mistaken view of policy advocacy as a nonrational process is closely related to value relativism, that is, the belief that values are purely subjective and relative to the person who holds them. Values relativism leads to the position that values can neither be debated rationally nor studied with the methods of science. The belief that values have no rational content is related to the tendency to confuse prescriptive statements with unconditional imperatives, commands, pronouncements, or emotional appeals of various kinds (the original Latin meaning of “to prescribe” refers to acts of directing, ordering, or commanding in accordance with authority). Yet the act of recommending what people should do is not the same as telling or exhorting them to do it; it is rather “purporting to give them sound solutions to their practical problems.