Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Never before has science been so highly politicized as during the Bush administration. As Chris Mooney so aptly demonstrated in The Republican War on Science, on issue after issue the Bush administration distorted, ignored or stifled science in the service of political aims. Emily Badger has an excellent review of the Bush administration and a look forward at how Obama can fix some of the problems.
Barack Obama received a relatively quiet endorsement on Aug. 23 from 61 of the country's Nobel laureates in physics, medicine and chemistry -- scientific heavyweights who used the occasion to both call for a scientific renewal in America and critique the state of American science at the end of the Bush era."During the administration of George W. Bush," their open letter charged, "vital parts of our country's scientific enterprise have been damaged by stagnant or declining federal support. The government's scientific advisory process has been distorted by political considerations. As a result, our once dominant position in the scientific world has been shaken and our prosperity has been placed at risk."
Badger says that this has forced scientists to be more of a presence in public disputes in reaction to the misuse and abuse of science by the Bush administration. In the long run, this may be a good thing.
The underlying concern -- that the Bush administration has been either ambivalent toward or downright hostile to their work -- elicited an outcry this election season from the normally staid scientific community."The number of papers, reports, recommendations, even seminars was just so overwhelming in comparison to past elections," said Joanne Carney, director of the Center for Science, Technology and Congress at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "It was amazing.
"Frankly, I think it was because of the disillusionment with the current administration."
Come January, George W. Bush will leave a legacy of stagnant stem cell research, increasing global warming and politicized public health. But he also leaves a generation of scientists who have found their voices at a time when nearly all of our greatest policy challenges have a scientific component.
She provides a textbook example of how the Bush administration subverted science to political expediency, particularly in order to appease the religious right and the anti-abortion base of the GOP:
Issues of reproductive health have always captured public attention in a way that global warming and stem cell research -- with their unknowable consequences and long-term payoffs -- haven't. And so the story of Plan B has offered one of the most vivid case studies of how the Bush administration has approached science.In 2004, Barr Pharmaceuticals sought permission to sell Plan B, an emergency contraceptive (different from the "abortion pill," RU-486), over the counter. The Food and Drug Administration's scientific advisers approved the request 23-4, and it was backed by agency staff experts. Still, the application was turned down on the grounds that Barr had failed to provide research on how the drug would affect younger women. A later General Accounting Office audit found that this was the only incidence in 10 years of the FDA overruling its advisory committee's recommendation to approve an over-the-counter drug.
"The Plan B decision clearly had nothing to do with either scientific and medical evidence or the normal government processes of how the FDA does business," said Susan Wood, who resigned as the director of the FDA's Office of Women's Health over the incident.
But the problem is much broader:
It was the culture of disregarding science within the government, she said, and the subsequent demoralizing of government scientists. And it was the way science was either ignored or misused to justify inaction on global warming, restrictions on the Endangered Species Act -- or the blurring of a link between abortion and the risk of breast cancer, a discredited claim that briefly and curiously appeared in 2002 on the Web site of the National Cancer Institute.Criticism of the Bush administration's approach to science extends beyond controversial topics like birth control and global warming to the minute rules governing how government scientists do and share their work -- and, ultimately, how they use it to inform regulations.
Another organization, the Union of Concerned Scientists, has documented hundreds of instances of political interference throughout government agencies charged with researching -- and then regulating -- issues of public and environmental health and safety. This past spring, UCS followed up earlier investigations at the FDA, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration with a survey of scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency. Of the 1,586 staff scientists who responded to a questionnaire, 889 said they had experienced some political interference.
Two-hundred and eighty-five said they had experienced "selective or incomplete use of data to justify a specific regulatory outcome." And 224 said they had been "directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information from an EPA scientific document."
"What we've seen under President Bush," said Michael Halpern, program manager of UCS's Scientific Integrity program, "is a culture of secrecy and suppression where if scientific information doesn't fit with predetermined policy decisions they wanted to put forward, that scientific information was summarily distorted, suppressed or misused to justify the decisions they wanted to make."
The whole article is well worth reading.
Politics
Comments
What? No comments on this? Oh sure, the Phelps sign stuff gets lots of attention, but government obstruction of science? Meh.
I'm a biologist, employed by the federal government. I won't say which agency.
I honestly think most folks would be absolutely horrified to hear some of the specifics of what has gone on under the Bush administration. Yeah, we hear about the regulatory and policy changes they've pushed through, and even some of the omission of key findings from reports, but I'm telling you, it goes much, much, much deeper than that.
It was immediately clear after Bush was "elected" in 2000 that federal agencies tasked with an environmental mission were in for a rough stretch, but no one I've talked to ever imagined it would end up as bad as it did. Political appointees in D.C. would call staff-level biologists and say, "Your opinion is X", and if the biologist argued that the data said otherwise, he either had his job threatened or was "reassigned" to meaningless busywork. This would go on and on until either someone was in place who would comply, or (what happened to me numerous times), the document would go up the ladder and would get "edited" to suddenly say the opposite of what it had said before. Yet there would be no record of this change, so it would appear the biologist wrote it.
But that's not all. These agencies regularly had their budgets cut (or frozen, which is the same, i.e. costs go up but your budget doesn't, you have to make cuts somewhere). Promotions were denied wholesale, and entire staffs in most offices would frequently work one or two pay grades below what they were actually doing. As I was fighting to get a pay grade I deserved, I came across a policy document that stated all reviews of employee grade levels must be consistent with the overall bureau efforts to reduce staff average grade! And when did this policy go into effect? Why 2001 of course.
Offices were split apart, administrative support was denied, basic office supplies were short, travel budgets were slashed, early retirements were offered so that when someone took an early out, their position was done away with rather than filled. Meanwhile, workload continues to skyrocket.
The end result of all this is a work force that is understaffed, underfunded, underpaid, yet faces an increasingly complex and heavy workload, and has had to endure 8 years of overt, agressive, and counterproductive political interference. As one former employee put it when interviewed by Slate Magazine, "We're walking around like a bunch of whipped pups".
Further, keep in mind Bush et al. have 8 years to put their cronies in key positions, and they in turn hire more neo-cons, who hire more under them, who hire more under them, and so on. The end result after 8 years is Bush loyalists who see environmental regulation as unnecessary in positions all the way down to the field office level. So the last couple of years, it hasn't been so much political appointees in D.C. you're fighting, but your immediate supervisor!
In sum, whatever you read (including this post) about the Bush administration treatment of science agencies, keep in mind the reality almost certainly 10 times worse.
Posted by: Jason F. | December 14, 2008 12:22 PM
I worked as a civilian for DOD, and I have no trouble believing you. We put up with a lot of similar crap.
Posted by: khan | December 14, 2008 12:55 PM
Jason - don't mistake a lack of comment for a lack of interest. I personally have no direct connection to this sort of government action - I don't work in an research office, I don't get grants, I don't have anything worthwhile to say. In such cases where what Ed is reporting is pretty much the extent of our knowledge, well, we've got nothing to add.
Which is where we depend on you (and others in your situation) to fill in the details on Ed's overview. We (some of us) already elected Obama, so we're hoping for change. We're certainly interested in fixing what Bush broke. Don't lose faith in us - we'll do what we can.
Posted by: BobApril | December 14, 2008 1:03 PM
Jason, I actually read this post before I read the one about Phelps. I just didn't have anything to say. (Especially since I tend more toward the smart-ass end of the posting spectrum...)
But I made a point to remember this part
so I could check out their website later when I have more time. I hadn't known anyone was keeping an eye on it, and was extremely glad to see that someone is. I think what they are doing is incredibly valuable, and I wish I would known about it sooner.
Posted by: Leni | December 14, 2008 1:18 PM
And let's not forget about George Deutsch, given a NASA public relations job by Bush II, who emailed NASA scientists and told them to add the word "theory" to every instance of the name "Big Bang" in official reports because:
Republican war on science? Absolutely. I hope Obama clears house. So far, signs are good that he supports actual science. I'm quite pleased with his pick of Nobel-winning physicist Steve Chu for Secretary of Energy.
Posted by: H.H. | December 14, 2008 1:19 PM
You know, Obama can't be seen to be firing staff for political reasons, even if those staff were put in place by Bush for political reasons.
So it would seem that the way to go would be to give the clearing-house job to the scientists working in these agencies. Have the guys with real academic qualifications form a review board to evalutes the performance of the various people at executive level, and recommend that persons be removed.
Posted by: Paul Murray | December 14, 2008 9:48 PM
Ten points to Paul Murray, immediately above. That's the best suggestion I've seen for clearning the obscurantist cronies out of the system.
Alternately, the cronies could be shunted sideways into busywork jobs that are calculated to drive them nuts and produce bad performance for which they can be fired.
I don't care how it's done. Boil them in oil, feed them to alligators, use them in demonstrations of the law of gravity, or sprinkle them with magic fairy dust and make them disappear.
Posted by: g336 | December 15, 2008 1:06 AM
As stated above, please don't think that this isn't a concern to us, as I receive the UCS newsletters, so I've been following this somewhat, and I know that many here have expressed their disgust with the alternate realities imposed by the Bush admin.
Paul Murray's suggestion is a winner. Please let it happen.
Posted by: trog69 | December 15, 2008 3:07 AM
Big Bang Theory? It is a theory isn't it. Can you ever prove it? Of course the scientist most stifled by the administration has been James Hansen, isn't that so? That's what he says yet he is the most quoted scientist anywhere in the world on global warming nonsense and was allowed to travel to the UK to act as an "expert witness" for Greenpeace in a court case where perpretators of criminal damage were set free as a result of his ramblings before a jury. Union of Concerned scientists? Anyone can join for a fee, you can sign up your cat if you want.
Posted by: harbinger | December 15, 2008 3:27 AM
Eh, I should know better than to engage trolls, but shrug.
Harbinger: Yes the Big Bang Theory is a theory. It's a scientific theory which means it is considered proven beyond reasonable doubt. I'd say "just like the theory of evolution" but I somehow doubt that this would get a lot of traction with you.
Can you ever prove it? That depends on your definition of proof. Can you prove Napoleon conquered a lot of Europe? There's evidence that he did, but were you there? This may seem like a silly analogy but in scientific terms this is roughly the extend you need to go to to argue against the proof of a well-established theory.
As for the global warming "nonsense" ... I know of only one country in the developed world where AGW is considered to be in doubt and that's the US. In my (anecdotal I'll admit) experience the degree of AGW-denial has a very strong correlation with several other socio-cultural aspects like religion and party, which leads me to deduce that the opposition that does exist is motivated not by science but by ideology.
I'm not aware of the specifics of Dr Hansen's trip, but I'm amazed at your word choice here. He was "allowed" to travel to the UK? I find the fact that you consider this a noteworthy freedom a sad commentary on the state of liberty.
Posted by: Mithandir | December 15, 2008 5:59 AM
harbinger
first of all what do you mean by theory? small "t" as in a vernacular substitution for the more appropriate "hypothesis"? or large "T" as in a miss-use of it as encompassing wholly "THE Theory of the Formation of the Universe" (of which I'd say "big bang" is just a proposed mechanism within that theory that seems to fit the evidence so far -- like natural selection is A mechanism within the TOE that seems to be consistent with evidence)?
If you have observed or experimental evidence that you think FALSIFIES the mechanism of "big bang" or even the broader ToFoU please publish it properly.
As to can I prove it - well no not exactly but I can propose TESTS for it in math and observations and predictions and attempt to FALSIFY it ... and therefore it qualifies as a legitimate scientific proposal that so far has not been falsified and indeed is useful in predicting, testing further proposals, and expanding knowledge.
As to ".... nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator." -- well of course SCIENCE does discount ID and should because that hypothesis has NO scientific testability and thus cannot be falsifiable and thus is not something science can or should address, nor even include it in any serious scientific discussion. Our science institutions are for science work not theological abstraction.
As to your attack of James Hansen -- straw man comes to mind.
As to Union of Concerned Scientists.. unless you can specifically discredit the findings or signatories of something UCS advanced in relation to the topic at hand I say again -- straw man comes to mind.
Posted by: ConcernedJoe | December 15, 2008 6:24 AM
I also know better than to feed asshole trolls, but I'm simply done with people constantly lying about what we do.
Big Bang Theory? It is a theory isn't it. Can you ever prove it?
Sure, it's a theory, but guess what--that DOES NOT imply any weakness in its power to explain the origin and evolution of the universe, no matter how often you scientific illiterates screech that it does. And if I'm being mean here by referring to you as a scientific illiterate, it's because your comment strongly implies that it's a very accurate label. Why? First, you apparently don't understand that we don't fucking prove things in science; we disprove them. Second, your comment belies a complete misunderstanding of what a theory is, despite the fact that we scientists seem to spend half of our internet commenting time continuously repeating the difference between hypotheses and theories for people who apparently slept through school.
Forgive my language here, but I have to write this type of shit so often to so many that I'm becoming convinced that there isn't a single high school teacher in the country who is doing their damn job. As most commonly used, "proof" implies a guarantee that a result is True with a capital T. There is no mechanism in science for such a guarantee. Science is asymptotic with respect to truth. If you drop a pen on Earth a billion times, all you do is increase our confidence that the next run of the experiment will produce the predicted result (the pen hitting the ground). You cannot EVER guarantee it. You can become so confident of the predicted result that seriously arguing that it won't happen is kind of dumb, but that is different than a guarantee. Science offers no mechanism for the guarantee. Period. Everything in science is goddamn tentative. Theories are tentative; laws are tentative; FACTS ARE TENTATIVE. And guess what--despite this, we can still put people on the fucking moon. So unless you're going to stop using the fruits of science altogether, perhaps you should stop being a hypocritcal asshole and insisting that it doesn't work (which is what you're doing whenever you whine that something is "only a theory"). Let it go and learn to read.
...global warming nonsense...
The Earth warms. The Earth cools. Deal with it. To deny that the Earth's climate changes over time requires you have to explain away about as much evidence as do those who assert that there was a global flood about 4000 years ago. I suggest getting to work. It's gonna take a minute.
Posted by: Josh | December 15, 2008 8:41 AM
Re harbinger
Mr. harbingers' comment relative to "proving" the big bang theory or any other scientific theory for that matter, demonstrates something that is generally not appreciated by even educated laymen. The fact is that, unlike mathematics, there is no such thing as "proof" of a scientific theory. As Mr. ConcernedJoe has stated, there is only evidence that either supports a scientific theory or falsifies it. Thus, as we sit here today, all evidence so far uncovered supports the big bang theory and no evidence so far uncovered is in conflict with it.
Posted by: SLC | December 15, 2008 8:45 AM
Wow. The troll showed up at 3:30 in the morning...and still got comprehensively slammed before I woke up.
Almost as much as Ed's clear and sensible analysis, the intelligence level of comments here are why I read Dispatches. Thanks to the last four posters for keeping that level high.
Posted by: BobApril | December 15, 2008 9:33 AM
...and still got comprehensively slammed before I woke up.
Uh yeah, my apologies for the venom in that last comment. Sometimes my patience with teh stupid fails me.
Posted by: Josh | December 15, 2008 9:40 AM
A little passion does not detract from your answer, Josh. I have nothing but admiration for it.
Posted by: BobApril | December 15, 2008 10:00 AM
Paul Murray wrote:
Great idea but even that may be very difficult, especially in the cases of those that are civil service employees. One way to deal with them, however, is to promote them to positions outside of civil service and then fire them when they inevitably screw up.
Posted by: c-serpent | December 15, 2008 4:26 PM
harbinger: Can you prove god created the earth in six days? "I can't conceive of any other possibility besides god did it" is not proof.
I recently came across an article on Ottawa Skeptics about "Expelled". It said that there might not be a "religious war on science" so much as a "conservative war on science" because between climate change and peak oil, science is starting to tell us that the party cannot last forever. Interesting stuff.
Posted by: Blue Nine | December 16, 2008 1:39 AM
I never worked for the federal government but I did work for Al Gore in one of his civilian companies for a period of around a year. My job was a high technology telecomuting job that would never have been possible had it not been for the "Gore" bill and the investment in the DARPANET and MOSAIC isp architecture, that allowed for the widespread use of the internet and the creation of the informations superhighway. I was also working in a govenment position that involved conservation on a local level and as such between the two roles it was heartbreaking to imagine how much farther our conservation and scientific policies would be under a Gore administration. I know that this has little relevance to the discussion at hand but its just hearbreaking to read and to know the stiffling situation that existed where we should have been leading the world rather than letting the oil companies and extreme religous right dictate our nations direction.
Posted by: Gabe | December 20, 2008 7:57 PM