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More Accusations of Scientific Abuse by the Bush Administration
Saeed al-Sahaf writes "Last week, the Union of Concerned Scientists released new evidence that the Bush Administration continues to suppress and distort scientific knowledge and undermine scientific advisory panels. Of course we're not talking about such subjective issues like stem cell research which Bush objects to on religious grounds. Here we are talking about money. The cases discussed in this story detail incidents of suppression and distortion of scientific knowledge on issues ranging from mountaintop removal strip mining to endangered species such as wild Salmon in the Pacific Northwest."
Having said that, the context of this undermining is not clear. Certainly the administration may interpret scientific data any way they choose in forming political action, just as we are free to vote them out if we disagree with their policies or actions. Undermining access to the full set of data, however, should be a crime.
When the Union of Concerned Economists starts bashing Bush, then I'll be worried.
First of all, blaming the "Bush administration" for the actions of many varied government agencies is a bit disingenous. Does anyone suppose the FDA takes daily orders from the White House? Our government just doesn't work like that.
Second, what [these particular] scientists seem to lack is a sense of perspective. There are no solutions to real-world problems. There are only trade-offs. Sure, it would be great to have perfectly clean water, but at what point is "clean enough?" How much effort do you spend saving one endangered species?
If your answer to any of these is "more!" then you haven't considered that our society, government, companies and individuals can only spend so much money and effort. Spending it all on one area leaves other, possibly more important areas unattended to.
Science is about finding ideal solutions. Politics, and economics, is about managing a finite number of resources to accomplish things. Yes, it hurts when you recommend that a rare swan be saved and nobody listens, but it's likely you don't have any clue what the trade-off would be.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
Greenwatch, not a member of the 'vast right-wing conspiracy' lists UCS as part of the 'radical left': here
The Washington Times says here that the UCS is funded entirely by the left:
The administration did not say that non-stem-cell research funding will be cut from any organization that conducts stem-cell research, only that the government will not fund stem-cell research.
Yes, I understand how many people stem-cell research will help, and I'm all for this research. However, I'm not in favor of the government paying for it. What will happen is that taxpayers will fund the research, and then drug companies will take the result of this research and gouge the public that paid for it to begin with. Instead, let the drug companies pay for it themselves. True, it's very expensive. However, a single drug company does not have to fund the entire scope of stem-cell research, only the part of interest to them. As they stand to reap enormous profits for developing new drugs or treatments based on stem-cell research, they should pay the costs, not me.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
You are actually pretty close to the truth. You might have been thinking about the PCRM(Physicians Committe for Responsible Medicine) which is basically a front for PETA. Note that it is not a group of physicians(as the name would have you believe), but rather a group which contains physicians.
The UCS is similarly not a group of scientists, but rather a group which has some scientists as members and supporters. The only real difference between UCS and groups like PETA is in the way they choose to pursue their agenda. Their agenda is basically an environmental one. They protest against things like genetically modified foods and antibiotics in livestock. They also publish stuff about energy conservation, support for the Kyoto treaty, etc. They published statements opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq. They've also been critical of fossil fuel use.
UCS is essentially an agenda backed organization and they actively pursue evidence which supports their aggenda and ignore, or seek to discredit, everything else. This is, interestingly, very similar to what they criticize the Bush administration of doing.
We're talking about a list of specific issues that go beyond just biomedical research, signed by a number of scientists including some who have won a nobel prize. I'm normally sceptical too but this is simply too much too simply dismiss as propaganda. I'm well aware how the conservative right has dominated the political agenda the past few years and how it has effected society in numerous ways.
Jilles
Maybe so, but it didn't stop Newton and others of his time.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
"I think you're suffering from outrage fatigue. See 'The Onion: Nation's Liberals Suffering From Outrage Fatigue'".
No doubt about it. In fact in my case, "outrage despondency" might be more accurate.
As it happens, I'm not a liberal. I'm eclectic. (Although the Republican Party has given us the two Presidents most threatening of civil liberties and separation of powers, the two most imperious and cynical and morally corrupt Presidents -- concerning *national* issues -- in my lifetime.) And there's a non-trivial number of card-carrying conservatives who share some of my concerns.
Lately I've begun to think that a Kerry victory will make little difference. Things like the Patriot Act are undone only with the greatest difficulty, especially with such a polarized electorate and closely-divided (and likely to remain so) Congress.
The Great American Experiment succeeded (at least for a while, and excepting slavery, native Americans, and the era of Manifest Destiny) because there was always enough room for the individual to navigate one's boat between the rocks -- and if not, one could always escape to the frontier. One could always find a place and an opportunity to Start Over, to perpetually remake one's self -- largely due to a tradition of jealously guarding the principles of individual liberties and limited-purpose limited-power government.
Can you imagine what the Founders would have thought of a central government which wishes to record and monitor every act of its own citizens, to effectively confine the vote to the landed gentry, to give the Executive Branch the power to conduct secret searches, forbid the disclosure of those searches after the fact, detain persons indefinitely without benefit of counsel, claim immunity (without using the word) to disclosing its actions to Conress, sanction torture -- ALL without judicial review, and thinly clothed with totalitarian-sounding use of words like Patriot and Homeland?
I no longer regard the US as the best (free-est) place to live on earth. In all seriousness, I've started to make plans to emigrate, before DHS starts to require national ID-cards, internal passports, and Exit Permits with retina-scans.
The reason I have little respect for the UCS is their history of producing politically motivated bad research and calling it science.
Like their attacks on SDI in the 80's for instance, which were badly error-ridden. They calculated the number of satellites needed to target a massive Soviet missile barrage based on the line of sight to a single point on the globe, for instance, when the missiles in question were actually staged in an arc across the breadth of the Soviet Union. As a result, they estimated 2400 satellites were needed, when the number using the correct math was around 100.
Scientists can be as blind as anyone else, particularly outside their own field.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
I don't see any evidence of censorship, even in the PDF report. The reports were still published, albeit without the administration's blessings.
t sheet/fsbush.htm
:-)
To summarize this page, the EPA's Report on the Environment in 2003 was released without a section on the climate or any mention of global warming -- because White House officials (this site does not name them) allegedly wanted to change that to an extent that would misrepresent the scientific consensus, by including discredited research and . Also, the White House (yes, directly) allegedly blocked reprinting of a brochure listing ways for farmers to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
They distort this conclusion to represent that Texas has higher pregnancy rates that most other states. Of course, they really mean that Texas has higher rates among secually active couples.
No, actually, that means what it says. They might be lying, but that should be easy to demonstrate. This is a source the UCS used: (Scroll past the quotes to "Texas' Recent Record") http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/publications/fac
Quote:
* Texas' teen pregnancy rate is 113 per 1,000 teen females aged 15 to 19. Only Nevada, California, Arizona, and Florida have higher teen pregnancy rates.
* Texas has the second worst teen birth rate among 15- to 19-year-old females, ranking 49th out of 50 states. Only Mississippi has a higher teen birth rate.
(I suppose that means Texas has a low rate of abortions and miscarriages? That's something good.)
A very simple google search for ["teen pregnancy rates" texas] seems to confirm these statistics.
In other words, if you teach abstinence, and they have sex anyways, they are more likely to get pregnant.
Um. Well, that makes sense to me. And they will. Really. It may surprise you to learn this, but teenagers are both rebellious AND horny. (A shocker, I know.)
Really, I'm not trying to push a radical gay whale-saving communist agenda on you, but you ought to at least read the site instead of briefly skimming it before you accuse them of spin-doctoring and shoddy research. And I personally don't imagine that it would be much different under a different administration. This one is probably more extreme, but the same shit goes on in any bureaucracy.
We already know a lot of eggheads don't like our cowboy president.
Why, what a subpontibian thing to say
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."