James Hrynyshyn is a freelance science journalist based in western North Carolina, where he tries to put degrees in marine biology and journalism to good use.
The report of NASA's Office of the Inspector General on the clumsy attempts to censoring climate science makes for a most enjoyable read. We can laugh now that it's over, I mean. There are lots of gems among the overall finding the a small cabal of political appointees in the public affairs office tried to delay or bury new findings on climate change. Here, then are some of my favorites:
...we believe that many of these scientists (and the majority of career Public Affairs Officers interviewed) would argue that the actions of NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs -- in delaying, unduly editing, canceling, or converting to lesser media their news releases related to climate change -- were not in keeping with the mandates of the Space Act. In particular, that the Space Act required the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs to disseminate this information to the widest extent possible, but they did not.All of the NASA climate change scientists and career civil service Public Affairs Officers who were interviewed agreed that some form of political vetting or censorship or suppression existed within the climate change news release process.
...the Headquarters Office of Public Affairs would delay the issuance of a scientific news release until there was an overshadowing major NASA news event, such as a shuttle launch.
In early September 2004, a Goddard Institute for Space Studies' scientist prepared a draft news release, "Cool Antarctica May Warm Rapidly this Century" and submitted it to the Goddard Space Flight Center Office of Public Affairs.... The media product was not released until October 6, 2004, and then under the title "Study Shows Potential for Antarctic Climate Change." The scientist ... stated that the title change had the effect of deadening the media interest in the study because it "said nothing."
The first sentence of the proposed release authored by the scientist was, "The 'ozone hole' that develops over Antarctica was larger this year than in 2004 and was the fifth largest on record." In contrast, the first sentence of the actual release, as edited by the Headquarters Office of Public Affairs, stated, "NASA researchers, using data from the Agency's AURA satellite, determined the seasonal ozone hole that developed over Antarctica this year is smaller than in previous years." ... the proposing scientist (who was not notified of changes to the headline or to the first sentence) was approached by the media and asked to explain why the ozone hole was smaller. He said he had difficulty fielding such questions, as his study was in contradiction to the findings as put forward in the news release.
The Coordinator also stated that Mr. Mould commented that he was "tired of Jim Hansen trying to run an independent press operation . . . from now on I want to know everything he does."
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I could hardly believe it when out of boredom I went to Jerry Pournelle's Web site (my first mistake) and saw that someone there thought that the findings showed the problem at NASA was Jim Hansen.
Posted by: Mark P | June 5, 2008 1:42 PM