Posted on 02/19/2004 8:39:41 AM PST by MegaSilver
More than 60 top scientists accuse the Bush administration of manipulating and censoring science for political purposes.
WASHINGTON - A group of more than 60 top U.S. scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates and several science advisors to past Republican presidents, on Wednesday accused the Bush administration of manipulating and censoring science for political purposes.
In a 46-page report and an open letter, the scientists accused the administration of ''suppressing, distorting or manipulating the work done by scientists at federal agencies'' in several cases. The Union of Concerned Scientists, a liberal advocacy group based in Cambridge, Mass., organized the effort, but many of the critics aren't associated with it.
White House science advisor John Marburger III called the charges ''like a conspiracy theory report, and I just don't buy that.'' But he added that ``given the prestige of some of the individuals who have signed on to this, I think they deserve additional response, and we're coordinating something.''
The protesting scientists welcomed his response.
''If an administration of whatever political persuasion ignores scientific reality, they do so at great risk to the country,'' said Stanford University physicist W.H.K. Panofsky, who served on scientific advisory councils in the Eisenhower, Johnson and Carter administrations. ``There is no clear understanding in the [Bush] administration that you cannot bend science and technology to policy.''
The report charges that administration officials have:
• Ordered massive changes to a section on global warming in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 2003 Report on the Environment. Eventually, the entire section was dropped.
• Replaced a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fact sheet on proper condom use with a warning emphasizing condom failure rates.
• Ignored advice from top Department of Energy nuclear materials experts who cautioned that aluminum tubes being imported by Iraq weren't suitable for use to make nuclear weapons.
• Established political litmus tests for scientific advisory boards. In one case, public-health experts were removed from a CDC lead paint panel and replaced with researchers who had financial ties to the lead industry.
• Suppressed a U.S. Department of Agriculture microbiologist's finding that potentially harmful bacteria float in the air surrounding large hog farms.
• Excluded scientists who have received federal grants from regulatory advisory panels while permitting the appointment of scientists from regulated industries.
''I don't recall it ever being so blatant in the past,'' said Princeton physicist Val Fitch, a 1980 Nobel Prize winner who served on a Nixon administration science advisory committee.
Having them complain about politicizing science is like having the NAACP accuse republicans of playing the race card.
Tsk, tsk. I guess what goes around, comes around.
Muleteam1
I wonder why?</ sarcasm>
Replaced a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fact sheet on proper condom use with a warning emphasizing condom failure rates.
I wonder why?</ sarcasm>
Because Bush puts his political and social agenda above science and the truth. If you don't like the results (as I don't in the EPA report), then do another scientific study in hopes that the previous study will be solidly debunked.
It is of no benefit to us or the progress of science if reports are simply repressed. Repression results in apparently valid conspiracy claims such as this one, while counterstudies further science and discredit the junk science out in the open.
Aside from that, there's the issue of trust in the administration to do what's right. If this report is correct, then Bush has a "fox guarding the henhouse" approach to scientific advisory panels. Admittedly it's better than packing them with chicken-little ecoweenies, but one would hope that Bush would appoint balanced panels.
The probability that this is right is nil. The "Union of Concerned Scientists" is a knee-jerk bunch of leftists, most of whom are NOT scientists, and all of whom are ready, willing, and able to distort science to foster their own agenda. I suspect that the real thing they are bitching about is that Bush has levelled the playing field that was stacked by previous administrations (read Clintigula) in favor of positions they are pushing.
In that case, it was clear junk, mostly already discredited. They needn't publish every piece of claptrap that comes along.
Several of the complaints are essentially that he doesn't form panels that are ALL "chicken-little ecoweenies".
This one: "• Suppressed a U.S. Department of Agriculture microbiologist's finding that potentially harmful bacteria float in the air surrounding large hog farms," is the only complaint listed which requires more than cursory examination. The others are basically dispute over not enough ecowienes - and people whose job has come to be to make sure there's more money for studies - to watch over studies.
I know it has, and I know I've seen some of it before, but just in case some of my liberal schoolmates push it, could you point me to some articles discrediting these scientists' claims? I'd like to have some ammunition.
That's the way politics works, not the way science works. Personally I'm glad another BS chicken little paper isn't circulating, but I don't like the science community being beholden to a political agenda. That's one reason we have this whole global warming thing in the first place.
I'd like to see the makeup of these panels.
I'll bet all these lying little dweebs wear lynx fur coats. ;-)
And if it's incorrect, then these "scientists" have a "lynx guarding the henhouse" approach to scientific advisory panels.
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