Posted on 03/07/2002 6:28:28 AM PST by George Frm Br00klyn Park
Elko Daily Free Press
Internet Edition
3/7/2002
Biologists conspired to submit fake {LYNX} fur, GAO official says
By JEFFRY MULLINS, Associate Editor
WASHINGTON -- Federal and state employees conspired with each other to submit bogus lynx fur in a forest study and had no explanation for their failure to follow protocol, a House subcommittee learned today.
And if they hadn't been caught, the false results would have become part of the final study, according to a General Accounting Office (GAO) investigation.
The GAO probe contradicted earlier testimony that the false submissions were isolated from one another and that there was no collusion among the employees.
When the topic turned to the employees' motivation, the audio feed from the hearing was mysteriously cut off. An employee at the Longworth House Office building said it appeared to be a technical problem.
Just prior to the audio failure, GAO Acting Managing Director Ronald Malfi testified that the biologists talked with each other before and after collecting fur from a captive lynx and agreed to submit it as part of the survey, knowing that it violated protocol.
When asked if the employees were forthright and honest in answering investigators' questions, Malfi said, "They seemed to be very guarded in the comments that they made."
They knew there were alternative methods to test the lab, he said, but the biologists from the U.S. Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service had no explanation for their decision to violate protocol. A Washington state biologist said it was done to assure that the samples were treated the same as others in the survey, he added.
Those involved believed one of the Forest Service employees would report to the lab that false samples had been submitted, Malfi said.
\"But when we asked them why, if they were going to contact the lab and tell them that there was a false sample, why did you submit it as part of a survey?" Malfi said. " ... We asked him, you know, why would you allow one of your coworkers to submit this as part of the survey when you knew that they had to falsify or make up documentation to accompany that survey, if you had intentions all along to contact the lab? And, basically, he couldn't explain that away, he just stated that he always intended to contact the lab."
The three captive lynx fur samples were the only ones to test positive. But after they were revealed to be false, the data was discarded to protect the integrity of the survey.
Had they not been reported by one of the Forest Service employees -- on the day before he retired -- the bogus fur would have been included in the result, Malfi said.
An official at the University of Montana lab doing the testing told him "that once these results were put together, they would issue the results of their survey for that year. It was not like a draft was going to go to them and they would have time to make corrections and go back. He said there was no procedure and there was no vehicle in place for them to actually go back to correct that survey, so it would have been made part of the national survey," Malfi said.
Later panelists testified that the overall survey had "firewalls" that would have prevented scientists from coming to false conclusions affecting land use decisions in the two Washington-state forests.
Malfi said the employees offered no explanation for their actions other than their desire to test the lab.
Instead of grilling accused employees, congressmen relied on the testimony of Malfi and other investigators stating secondhand what they had been told in interviews.
At the opening of the hearing this morning, House Resources Committee Chairman Rep. James Hansen, R-Utah, said he wondered why the employees received merit pay raises following the incident.
Even if the excuse that they were merely trying to test the lab were true, Hansen said, it shows "a fundamental distrust" scientists have for their own science.
Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., speaking for the minority, said he took issue with suggestions that the incident was "the tip of the iceberg" and that scientists routinely attempt to skew the surveys they are working on. He said investigators found no evidence this was a common occurrence.
"Wildlife biologists nationwide live by a code of ethics," Inslee said.
Those involved in the lynx study were merely trying to assure the lab wasn't getting any "false positives," he added.
Inslee said the incident should not provoke any changes to the Endangered Species Act (ESA). He also questioned why the allegations would warrant four separate investigations, when federal failures to enforce environmental laws don't generate any outrage from Congress.
Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., is not on the resources committee but he said at the opening of the hearing that the lynx case involved "outright fraud."
The employees abandoned science for their own personal agendas, he charged. That eroded the public's trust, which was already undermined by scientific flaws in the spotted owl listing and in the federal shut-off of irrigation water in the Klamath Basin.
ESA listings have "devastated" Western communities, Hastings said. Biologists are still debating the preferred habitat of the spotted owl, he said, and the "science" behind the Klamath decision was determined by the National Academy of Sciences to be flawed.
Many residents of central Washington and elsewhere in the West believe federal land use policies are often void of sound science, Hastings said.
Forests and Forest Health Subcommittee Chairman Scott McInnis, R-Colo., had harsh words for the biologists, saying their excuse was "nothing short of a cover for wrongdoing."
"There is a well-established protocol" for the testing of a lab's accuracy, he said, and they didn't follow it.
"We don't expect police officers to plant evidence," McInnis said, and the same code of ethics should apply to federal land managers.
McInnis also questioned why a Fish and Wildlife Service biologist went to great pains to hide the fact that he had submitted an unauthorized sample, and why admissions from the employees didn't surface until 15 months after the incidents, after the congressional inquiry began.
The lynx case "explains why a lot of folks in the West view these agencies with an increasingly skeptical eye," McInnis concluded.
When the audio feed resumed, Deputy Chief Tom Thompson of the Forest Service told congressmen the investigation "is ongoing and may warrant further action."
He said Forest Service Director Dale Bosworth has been working to restore the agency's integrity.
Thompson also repeated that the lynx survey was not compromised by the actions of the employees, and no land management plans had been changed as a result of the false samples.
"Scientists still believe they can verify the authenticity of the National Lynx Survey," Thompson said.
THIS Article at the Elko Daily FREE Press
LFS, Yep. Why, I'll bet there were even a few bioligists back in Darwin's time who "faked it" to "make themselves look good." Peace and love, George.
When the result has political or financial ramifications for the investigator, I trust no scientist.
The only way to convince me is to have replications by people with nothing to gain.
M, "Nothing", to include fame and/or fortune and/or "friendship" in "high" places. Peace and love, George.
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