This is obviously more Chris's area more than it is mine, but Time's cover story this week is on, essentially, the Republican war on science (the actual "war," not Chris's book of the same title).
Boehlert [Republican chairman of the House Science Committee] does not see a larger problem of Administration meddling ... And he noted that politics and science have never had an easy, hands-off relationship in Washington. "This is a town where people like to say they're for science-based decision making, until the scientific consensus leads to a politically inconvenient conclusion. Then they want to go to Plan B," he says. "That's seamless from one Administration to another; I don't care if it's a Republican or a Democrat."
Some who have experienced it from the inside, however, disagree. Dr. Gerald Keusch, former director of the Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), says he saw a marked change in its operations as the government moved from the Clinton to the Bush administrations. Under Clinton, Keusch says, he never encountered resistance in appointing experts to the advisory board that conducted peer reviews of grant proposals to the center, which focuses on international health issues, particularly in developing countries. He made seven nominations, and all were approved by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) within three weeks. Under Bush, his first four nominations were quickly endorsed by NIH but then, says Keusch, "it's 10 months before I hear from HHS, rejecting three of the four, including a Nobel laureate, with no reasons given." In return, HHS sent him the résumés of other people, many of whom had no expertise in infectious diseases or developing countries.
My first real exposure to all of this political use of science was back in 2002, when new National Cancer Institute head (now FDA head) Andrew von Eschenbach made the NCI change their fact sheet on the abortion/breast cancer "link" from stating that there was no causal link to that "tests disproving the abortion-breast cancer link are inconclusive" (which was changed back after many complaints by NCI and other scientists). Obviously it's something many other scientists are worried about as well, and it's things like this that make us so skeptical about the claims in Bush's SOTU address (well, that and, y'know, stuff like this doesn't help, either). Anyhoo, good to see this getting more coverage, especially in light of last week's speech.
Comments
Hey there, Dr Smith! Great topic today - I'm not a political blogger either, but we scientists have to be aware of some of this for our very survival and the integrity of our profession. I'm just shocked that the Time article didn't mention Rep Henry Waxman's compilation site of all the Bush Administration abuses of the scientific process. My first revelation of this meddling was Bush's removal of UCSF's Dr Elizabeth Blackburn from the Presidential Bioethics Council, where she was already outnumbered by non-scientist ideologues. Scientists just need to remain vigilant and expose these things as they happen, but the sheer mass of the abuses on Waxman's page boggles the mind.
As for von Eschenbach, he is a walking conflict-of-interest and Bush family butt-boy from his days at MD Anderson in Houston. After decimating NCI and making promises to the public that could never be kept, he is now also head of FDA. This would never happen under any other administration. Thanks for keeping attention on this issue.
Posted by: Abel PharmBoy | February 6, 2006 9:09 AM
This is an attack on *all* branches of science; even astronomy. The more scientists who speak out, the more the public will listen. My server has been shut down twice since I posted that blog entry yesterday due to the number of people trying to read it.
Posted by: Phil Plait | February 6, 2006 3:19 PM
Right you are Phil. It's great to have guys like yourself or Tara or Ken Miller in the trenches, but this problem needs a broad based educational approach. It's time for more practicing scientists to speak out and get over the idea that this is just a few loonies that aren't worth spending time on. These science attackers are politically savvy, and deliberately try to influence political and educational policy at the grass-roots level - circumventing the process of actually doing science, since saying you're doing science is almost as good as doing it.
Posted by: Dave S.
| February 6, 2006 3:35 PM
Absolutely--nothing's immune from this kind of garbage.
Posted by: Tara
| February 7, 2006 10:57 AM