Scientists and Censorship (757 hits)
Category: PoliticsRating: 1.67 on 8 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by HerdofWookies (View user info) at 2004-02-19 13:58:39 EST
I've just read a news item that 60 of the country's (U.S.) leading scientists, including 20 Nobel Prize winners and both Democrats and Republicans, came together to discuss and issue a report lambasting the current Bush administration for censoring their work. Some excerpts from the news item (not the report itself, which is entitled "Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: An Investigation into the Bush Administration's Misuse of Science.") include:
"Alarmed by what they call the 'suppression and distortion of science' by the Bush administration, more than 60 top scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, issued a scathing report yesterday detailing instances in which government agencies allegedly stifled legitimate research."
"'This is absolutely unprecedented. There's something irrational about what this administration is doing,' said retired Cornell physics professor Kurt Gottfried, chairman of the UCS board."
"'Its major purpose was to show how comprehensive and widespread these practices are. It's the overall picture that is most distressing,' said one of the signers, Rice University physicist Neal Lane."
"'It's quite apparent that scientific decisions are being made by political appointees,' said one of the signers, Lynn Goldman, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health."
Among the allegations included in the report:
The administration demanded that the EPA remove from a major report data supporting the notion of global warming.
The EPA withheld an analysis showing that the administration's plan to reduce air pollution was less effective than a competing proposal.
The Department of Agriculture stifled a researcher who was examining resistance to antibiotics in the swine industry.
Tommy G. Thompson, secretary of Health and Human Services, rejected qualified appointees to a committee on childhood lead poisoning, in favor of researchers friendly to the lead industry, including two with financial connections to it. The report details several instances in which the administration allegedly appointed biased researchers to such committees.
The Office of Management and Budget delayed a report that found high mercury levels in almost 1 in 10 women of childbearing age.
I find all of this highly disturbing...and would expect that anybody would, their political leanings aside. I am curious as to what the rest of you think. I await your comments and, most likely, abuse with bated breath.
User Reviews
Submitted by WookieSuave (user info) at 2004-12-16 14:27:08 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
AUTO +2
Wookiees Unite!
Submitted by xLisaCatx (user info) at 2004-02-19 15:41:42 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I've got some pictures at home of me stacking some bowling balls on my lawn.
Censor my work, and I'll destroy the world - after documenting it of the world of course.
Submitted by loki (user info) at 2004-02-19 14:40:49 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Ok, that last point wasn't exactly in the report but it was implied.
Submitted by loki (user info) at 2004-02-19 14:40:19 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
"Among the examples cited in the union's report:
• A 2003 report that the administration sought changes in an Environmental Protection Agency climate study, including deletion of a 1,000-year temperature record and removal of reference to a study that attributed some of global warming to human activity. .
• A delay in an EPA report on mercury pollution from some power plants.
• A charge that the administration pressed the Centers for Disease Control to end a project called "Programs that Work," which found sex education programs that did not insist only on abstinence were still effective. "
• Bush responded by saying that anyone who continued to insist that the earth was not flat would be executed for heresy.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/02/19/scientists.bush.ap/index.html
Submitted by wookie (user info) at 2004-02-19 14:34:51 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Here's a link... The Baltimore Sun takes a lot of heat for being biased (liberal), but I've read 4 or 5 articles on this now from a spectrum of sources, and they all pretty much say the same thing.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/health/bal-te.science19feb19,0,7537877.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines
What bothers me the most is that, while it's true enough government interference in research happens to some degree under all administrations, these scientists are so disturbed by the extent to which it's happening under the Bush administration that they were moved to hold a congress and issue a report about it.
Submitted by Phinch (user info) at 2004-02-19 14:32:11 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
the only problem is, that without government funding of science, pure science won't be done unless there is a profit in it.
Submitted by youarsoghey (user info) at 2004-02-19 14:13:11 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I like the post. I hadn't heard of this. But you should really post a link because for all we know it could be an article on The Onion.
Submitted by domenad (user info) at 2004-02-19 14:03:38 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
A link would have been helpful.
Assuming that all of what you wrote is absolutely true, I'd say that this is totally normal. Government has shoved its face into science for quite some time. Look at the UN censoring the WHO report that second hand smoke is not harmful, or censorship of reports that limited use of DDT can be tolerated by bird life. IT happened under Clinton (water arsenic rules), happend under Bush, happened under Reagan, happened under every President. Another reason to keep government funding out of the sciences - to prevent censorship through control of the purse strings.