At the Center of the Storm Over Bush And Science

The average scientific dispute is a joust in obscurity, a clash over technical matters that few but the immediate combatants grasp or are even aware of.

Dr. John H. Marburger III, President Bush's science adviser, might relish a dose of that obscurity right now. Instead, he has become the first line of defense against accusations that the Bush administration has systematically distorted scientific fact and stacked technical advisory committees to advance favored policies on the environment, on biomedical research and on other areas like the search for unconventional weapons in Iraq.

Dr. Marburger says that pattern is illusory, a product of stringing together a few unrelated incidents within the vast canvas of government science, most of which is working just fine.

"From all the evidence I can find," he said, "it's certainly not true that science is being manipulated by this administration to suit its policy. It's simply not the case."

But to a degree not seen in previous administrations, a wide range of influential scientists — even many who say they like Dr. Marburger personally and respect him professionally — express dismay at White House science policy.

"I think this is as bad as it's ever been," said Wolfgang H. K. Panofsky, a retired Stanford physicist who has advised the government on science and national security since the Eisenhower administration. "This is an extremely serious issue. I believe it is true that there is such a thing as objective scientific reality, and if you ignore that or try to misrepresent it in formulating policy, you do so at peril to the country."

Other experts have been blunter. In a recent interview on National Public Radio, Dr. Howard Gardner, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard, said, "I actually feel very sorry for Marburger, because I think he probably is enough of a scientist to realize that he basically has become a prostitute."

Later, in an interview with The New York Times, Dr. Gardner said he had made the reference but added, "I wish I'd used it as a verb rather than as a noun."

An intent graying physicist and woodworking enthusiast who once built an entire harpsichord from scratch, Dr. Marburger, 63, is so unassuming that he routinely melted into the backdrop at announcements of scientific discoveries while working at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton on Long Island. He was director of the laboratory before moving to Washington in October 2001.

But just as in the now-you-see-it, now-you-don't world of quantum phenomena that Dr. Marburger, who is also director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, has spent much of his life studying, appearances may be beside the point. Widely believed to be excluded from the president's inner circle — he surprised many people by declaring soon after his nomination that he was a lifelong Democrat — Dr. Marburger is said by White House officials to have Mr. Bush's ear on all important technical matters. The president who is supposedly so antagonistic to science enjoys Dr. Marburger's explanatory style, the officials say.

In fact, Dr. Marburger, who has recently endured speculation that he might resign, may be just what fellow scientists have always longed for in the White House, an expert with deep knowledge of the technical issues, a bureaucrat's ease in palace politics, a ready turn of phrase and even a modest dose of mystique.

"He is closer to the pulse in the White House than any of his predecessors, to my knowledge," said Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff who also worked for Mr. Bush's father and Ronald Reagan. Not only does Dr. Marburger typically attend each morning meeting for the senior staff in the Roosevelt Room, Mr. Card said, but also "the president enjoys Jack Marburger."

Joshua B. Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said that Dr. Marburger was "either at or near the top of the list of those who participate most actively in the budget process, in my experience."

To colleagues and friends who suggest that Dr. Marburger could not possibly agree with many of the administration's science policies — for example, limits on embryonic stem cell research that many scientists have said hamper potentially therapeutic applications — he has a simple answer. "No one will know my personal positions on issues as long as I am in this job," Dr. Marburger said in an interview. "I am here to make sure that the science input to policy making is sound, and that the executive branch functions properly with respect to its science and technology missions."

Stem cells, for instance, "offer great promise for addressing previously incurable diseases and afflictions," Dr. Marburger said. "But I can't tell when a fertilized egg becomes sacred. That's not my job. That's not a science issue. And so whatever I think about reproductive technology or choice or whatever is irrelevant for my job as a science adviser."

That is the approach he took as chairman of Gov. Mario M. Cuomo's fact-finding commission on the Shoreham nuclear power plant on Long Island in 1983. Dr. Marburger later made it clear that he did not agree with everything in the consensus report on the reactor, which found that the plant probably should never have been built and would bring few if any benefits if it opened. The reactor never went into full operation.

"The governor didn't want my opinion," Dr. Marburger said. "He told me that. The governor wanted to know what the situation was. And I delivered that."

That was not the only contentious issue that he handled smoothly before going to Washington. When he took over as director of Brookhaven in 1998, there was widespread outrage over disclosures of a leak of radioactive tritium from a research reactor. Dr. Marburger was credited with creating policies and a dialogue that quelled the outrage. He finally presided over the shutdown of the reactor, a move that the Energy Department ordered. Dr. Marburger said he did not support that decision.

"I regret it," he said. "I thought it was a good reactor, and it still had years of life left in it."

Those episodes may afford a clue to the mind of the elusive Dr. Marburger, who was also president of the State University of New York at Stony Brook from 1980 to 1994 and before that was dean at the California Institute of Technology. He was born on Staten Island and grew up in Maryland near Washington before studying at Princeton and Stanford, where he received his Ph.D. in 1967.

However adroitly Dr. Marburger's credibility and communications skills helped him handle those crises, he is discovering that the forces of discontent focused on Washington are far less easily tamed. Many influential scientists remain convinced that Dr. Marburger has simply disappeared at the White House, after arriving 10 months into the administration, because of Mr. Bush's delay in appointing him. Even then, Dr. Marburger did not receive the prestigious title "assistant to the president" that some of his predecessors had, but instead reports directly to Mr. Card.

In the view of some scientists with decades of experience in advising the government, all those factors have helped open the way to widespread political interference in the technical advisory process across numerous agencies.

"I don't believe there's any precedent for it, I really don't, at least since World War II," said Dr. Lewis M. Branscomb, a physicist who is an emeritus professor of public policy and corporate management at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Dr. Branscomb was director of the National Bureau of Standards under President Richard M. Nixon and was also on high-level advisory panels for four other presidents, dating from John F. Kennedy.

Speaking directly about Dr. Marburger, Dr. Branscomb added, "I have a great deal of sympathy for his position, because I don't believe he has the authority, the power, to go back into all the agencies and unearth all the facts about all these cases."

Discontent among scientists has recently verged on insurrection. In late February, more than 60 influential scientists, including more than 20 Nobel laureates, signed a statement saying the administration had disbanded scientific advisory committees, placed unqualified people on other panels and censored reports by others when their scientific conclusions conflicted with administration policies.

"Other administrations have, on occasion, engaged in such practices, but not so systematically nor on so wide a front," the letter said.

That letter and a highly critical, detailed report by the Union of Concerned Scientists that was released at the same time pointed to, among other problems, what it called tampering in June 2003 with a draft report by the Environmental Protection Agency on climate change. Dr. Marburger voiced respect for the letter's signers, and he has asked them to discuss their concerns with him. But uncharacteristically, he also flashed rhetorical steel in responding to the criticisms in the two documents. He said that although a few isolated incidents might have "ruffled feathers," the effort to argue that they constituted a pattern had produced a "conspiracy theory report."

Even some scientists who are strongly sympathetic to his position suggest that this counterattack might have been hasty.

"I think it would have been better to say, `Well, it raises some serious allegations; I will look into them,' " Dr. Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences, said. "That would have been a more appropriate response and probably would not have hurt him at all with anybody, including the administration."

Some scientists, though, said Dr. Marburger's quick reaction was understandable, given what they say are flaws in the report by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

"It was really a generalization of a lot of individual things that might have happened or might not have happened," said Erich Bloch, a principal at the Washington Advisory Group, which does for-profit consulting on technical issues. "I'm not so sure that one should interpret that as being the majority opinion of the scientific community," said Mr. Bloch, who directed the National Science Foundation from 1984 to 1990 and is on the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology.

Still, Dr. Richard L. Garwin, a physicist who has advised the government since the mid-1950's and who signed the letter, said he was satisfied that the report showed "political influence in order to make the science come out right for preconceived notions."

A recent day spent following Dr. Marburger on his rounds in Washington provided some insights into his schedule but little into his own views on science policy. He gave an early-morning speech to a conference on the future of aging, presided over a staff meeting in his sixth-floor office on Pennsylvania Avenue, lunched at the Bombay Club with an official from the National Institutes of Health and gave another speech, this time before young scientists whom the government is courting for military research.

Along the way he offered a few conjectures about the reasons for the attacks by some scientists. "I know that we are in the early stages of a very bitter political campaign," he said. "I don't think it is appropriate for people who are concerned about their country to act with such bitterness. But it's a fact."

In response to a report in the journal Nature on the speculation that he might resign, he said he was not considering it. But when asked whether he would accept a second four-year term as science adviser if Mr. Bush is re-elected, he demurred. "I'm focused on this term," Dr. Marburger said. "I haven't, honestly, given a thought to what I would do next."

Dr. Charles M. Vest, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said, "If I were seeking science advice, I would be very glad to receive it from Jack."

But even Dr. Vest, who said he did not believe that the Bush administration was much different from others in its use of science, cautioned against "a very long-term trend toward selective use of scientific information driven by a political and ideological motivations."

You know, this is about as fair and balanced an article as you can generally find in today's press, but . . .

There aren't any facts in it! There aren't any specific citations of science that has been rejected for political reasons, except for the general statement that the EPA report was not accepted by the President. All we have are opinions on whether science is being politicized.

I'm not surprised, but it is a sad indictment of modern 'journalism.'

sucking sound

starving scientists

homeless scientists

science used for political gain in this administration - shocking NEW "discovery" by scientists

federally-funded gravy train's RADAR system at Brookhaven Labs, etc., cannot see what happened to TWA-800, but it can get a whiff of the slightest anomalies in the traces of reduced cash flow to "the science community"

Headlines:

N.A.S.A. to Be Disbanded, Closed! --- All Space Exploration Bids Won by Outsourcing to India, for A Fee of $1,000,000.00 U.S. American Scientists Distressed at Competition

Headlines:

India Puts Multi-Cultural Team on Moon; Cost - $100,000!

Ah yes, "C" student Gore lecturing us on science. How refreshing!!

It appears that to liberals, and ultraleft media outlets like the NYTimes, conservative scientists just aren't "scientific enough."

Just like conservative blacks not being "black enough," or conservative Hispanics not being "hispanic enough."

"a very long-term trend toward selective use of scientific information driven by a political and ideological motivations."

See Webster's Dictionary, "Global Warming".

The left's first message was "Bush is a moron", and that didn't work because people saw for themselves, especially after 9/11 that Bush was more than intellectualy qualified for his job. Then they tried "Bush is a religious fundamentalist," trying to draw an analogy between both him and the terrorists who demolished the WTC. That didn't work because it insulted not the just the many religious people who voted for Bush, but the "silent majority" within the non-religious population (such as yours truly) who knew from the evidence that Bush is no fundamentalist or mystic. Now they are trying "Bush is the enemy of science"-and I'm afraid this MAY work, because most of us don't have the intensive science backgrounds necessary to thoroughly critique or appraise the specific claims being brought against him, and we usually (and quite sensibly) trust the expert opinions of scientists in such matters.

All I can tell you is that Jack Marburger is everything they say he is (with the term "they" not comprising the Union of Concerned Scientists, which by the way is remarkably thin on scientists). His abilities as a scientist, as a teacher of science, and as a scientific administrator are all legendary. But perhaps my perspective is skewed, since I first met him as an awestruck undergraduate at Stony Brook (class of '86).

I'll echo Physicist's post and add that I seriously doubt Dr. Marburger would be involved in any science-for-policy's-sake scheme. A person's gotta be able to sleep at night, and a scientist has to be able to live with him/herself after making critical decisions. I trust Dr. Marburger's judgement.

My reaction: the 'controversy' has been cooked up by a group of politically active, anti-Bush scientists. As a working scientist, the only impacts Bush has had on my research have been positive. Global warming and stem-cell research are first and foremost political issues.

Physicist is very positive about Marburger. I guess I wasn't as positive. I will say that while the chemists at Stony Brook weren't crazy about him (we felt Physics got all the perks), he's definitely better than the other chancellors I've had the misfortune to observe in action.

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