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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."
Does anyone else find it odd that a story on "scientific abuse" was submitted by a Wiccan?
I don't follow your point. Are only christians allowed to comment on scientific abuse? Or are Wiccans assumed to be anti-science?
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
Because the Union of Concerned Scientists is right up there with the Clown College in my book.
Admission standards to Clown College are a bit higher than I would have thought:
"62 preeminent scientists including Nobel laureates, National Medal of Science recipients, former senior advisers to administrations of both parties, numerous members of the National Academy of Sciences, and other well-known researchers..."
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
...my interpretation was colored by my political views ...
What was the "politicial" interpretation?
Your subatomic particle data was in favor of gay marriage?
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
That would be 4000 total, including "48 Nobel laureates, 62 National Medal of Science recipients, and 127 members of the National Academy of Sciences."
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.
To be precise there were 48 Nobel laureates who singed that document mentioned in the article. You seem to imply that such people would put their signature on any document just so that the annoying organization bugging them to sign it would get out of their hair. I do believe this time it's different and they actually mean it. When will you start believing Bush needs to go? If only for the damage he's done to science and ecology.
I find the "suppression" of stem-cell research acusation particularly interesting. The administration did not ban stem-cell research...they simply banned federal funding of it. If stem-cell research is so great and promising, then let private industry fund the research. After all, they're the ones who are going to make money off it.
Too often millions of tax dollars are spent in R&D at government labs to develop a new drug, which is then licensed for pennies to a pharmacutical company, which then charges consumers (that is, the taxpayers who paid to develop it in the first place) $100/dose. Shouldn't liberals be happy we're ending this "corporate welfare?"
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Apparently you are unfamilar with President Bush's extensive background in particle physics.
No because probably a good amount of liberals think the government should be spending money to do that itself and then providing those drugs itself for cheap or free. I'd have to say I agree with the argument as far as public health goes. There are lots of things that involve heavy initial investment for which there isn't necessarily a large opportunity for profit (for instance, studying the bad health affects of junk foods isn't something that the junk food industry or cholesterol lowering drug pharmaceuticals are going to invest in). Why spend all that money on something new when you can take an existing drug, change it ever so slightly and squeeze another 5 years of profits out of it? If all else fails simply brand everything as Generic Anxiety Disorder and pump out some drug for that.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
About point 2, this style of politics seems to have replaced reason and common sense in the US. Both parties know most people will never get a chance to examine evidence in detail so instead they depend on making lots of noise in the media.
But still, when a large group of respected, smart and well educated people supports these accusations I think that is more credible than the white house telling us everything is fine. Getting Nobel prize winners to support this means that a few very smart people made a balanced judgement and came to the conclusion that they wanted to support this.
It takes some enormous wisdom or stupidity to dismiss such a thing. I'm afraid there's plenty of stupid americans who will just do that. I'm as pessimistic to believe that the current US government is actually so stupid that they actually believe they know better.
Jilles
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.
Your point is valid, that we do not possess precise information about the trade-offs of certain decisions (eg, continue logging in old-growth forests vs. effect on those ecosystems). But whitewashing the language of critical reports is not going to further the cause of improving the precision of what we know. The contrary is true.
The main problem is not just that advocates of one particular choice (usually involving the economic well-being of ME and MY_INDUSTRY trading off against some more diffuse, hard-to-measure and potentially severe long-term costs to the public) have great influence on policy-making through financial channels, but that these advocates are attempting to actually bias the raw reports that would potentially improve the situation about things we're trying to find out about.
Don't get me wrong: this kind of strong-arm advocacy would be just as bad done from the left as from the right (which just happens to be where it is happening now).
For example, although I tend to agree with a policy that is somewhat leftward of the current U.S. federal government, that does not mean I would condone policy makers attempting to whitewash the trade-offs that went counter to my preferred policy.
For example, an economic impact statement concluding that the livelihood and economic well-being of loggers and their families would be severely impacted by an abrupt and total moratorium on old-growth logging should be evaluated as a data point. Advocates of a moratorium should not whitewash the language, watering down the conclusions in an effort to promote their cause.
Likewise, people advocating a rape of the environment and "removal of burdensome red-tape regulatory bureaucracy" should not try to whitewash the language of scientific reports.
It reflects poorly on the methods and character of the policy makers, and it cheapens and sets back the cause of dispassionate scientific study that we so desperately need to help in formulating rational policy.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Check this out:
White House Tries to Rein In Scientists
Remember when the Arab world led scientific thought? They invented and led math, geometry, an alphabet, astronomy, engineering, etc. Then the fundies took over. Arab versions of Bush and Pat Robertson.
Fundamentalism had nothing to do with the fall of Arab culture. In fact, Islamic fundamentalism is more or less a twentieth century invention, whereas Islamic culture lost its "edge" around the time of the Renaissance. Rather, the fall of Arab culture had a lot to do with a society and an economy that was utterly dependent on constant expansion to maintain itself. When no more expansion was available (thanks to geographical boundaries for the most part) the culture began to go into decline.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Do you honestly think that statements from a scientific body are more partisan than those from a political body? We scientists strive to present the government and public with the best data we can and allow the politics to occur elsewhere. There is no room for politics in science. In science one can make a big name for oneself by proving that the accepted dogma is wrong. Ideology cannot survive in such an environment, unless facts are suppressed.
Read the article(s). Most points are not about ethics. This is about ignoring scientific evidince that disagrees with the administration's ideology, placing industry representatives in positions that are a clear conflict of interest, and suppressing and editing scientific reports after the fact. (My favorite is increasing the amount of lead allowed in drinking water, placing a lead industry representative on the committee responsible, and suppressing the report indicating that low levels of lead are more harmful to children than previously thought)
This is not about ethics. It is about misleading the american people. We ignore this warning at our own peril.
-- Bob
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
See that great big yellow sidebar on the right side of all the ucsusa pages, with "Reports", "Cases", and "Activism" headings? It takes up nearly half of each page. The "Cases" section, as you might surmise from the name, contains links to specific pieces of evidence.
/. summary contains a "Related Links" box with a link to a 351k PDF. (The text is "Read the new report".)
l icationID=877
l icationID=730
The page linked to in the
Here's the link, in case you still can't find it:
http://www.ucsusa.org/publications/report.cfm?pub
Here is the full report, published in February:
http://www.ucsusa.org/publications/report.cfm?pub
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
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.
The Washington Times says
You mean the newspaper owned by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the man who was recently coronated on Capitol Hill [entertaining account] in the presence of a number of Congressmen?
"Provided by the management for your protection."
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.
Son, sit down and let me explain something to you....
The UCS is attacking the Bush administration, because (and the articles reference this) the Bush administration is directly telling agencies to put policy in place that ignores the scientific facts.
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?
You're so ignorant of this case it's not funny. Bush is allowing power plants to dump higher levels of mercury into water supplies for starters. The Bush administration is rolling back environmental protections anywhere and everywhere it allows some business to make a buck, especially RNC contributors. This isn't some nitpicking little lefties handwringing over some endangered swan. This is a wholesale assault on our health and safety. We're not talking about perfectly clean water, we're talking about water that causes massive increases in birth defects. And guess what, contaminated water doesn't wind up in rich neighborhoods where they can afford to take care of expensive birth defects, it happens in poor ones, where people don't know any better. And what happens when half the kids in the trailer park turn out retards cause of the mercury? You pay for it in higher taxes and social costs. Unless you want some eugenics along with your laissez faire environmental policy, it's going to wind up costing you way more to let pollution go than it does to regulate it.
The progressive movement (modern lefties, Clinton Third Way folks and all) believes in regulating business and green environmental policies because the others just hide the cost. You may think you're getting cheap stuff out of this, or the economy will do better, but it will wind up costing you more in the long run.
The only people who are being unreasonable in this situation are the people on the right. But don't believe me, go do some freaking research. Quit trying to be so non-partisan, the Bush administration have demonstrated that they are irresponsible and incompetent time and again. They don't deserve your benefit of the doubt, everytime anyone gives it to them, it turns out to be a bad idea (i.e. War in Iraq).
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
Wait, I want to get this straight.... You brought up a Washington Times story to refute an attack on a GOP administration?
Are you aware the Times is operated at a loss of $1 million a week by the Moonies as a propaganda tool? It's not a credible newspaper, especially when critiquing a GOP administration. Go do some research on the Times and the Moonies, it'll make you feel like you stepped into some bizarre world.
Uhm, Greenwatch is funded by the "vast right-wing conspiracy". Scaife funded organizations call anyone to the left of Attila the Hun, radical leftists. Please try discrediting the UCS again. Media Transparency
I haven't got time to go pick apart a 20 page doc right now, but I can't say that I trust much that comes from the White House these days. And about the guy being a life-long Dem, so's Zell Miller, but he's speaking at the GOP convention.
Quit listening to right wing media, it will rot your brain.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
Not any more. I've gotten to know some, and while we disagree, I understand their viewpoint.
For my money, what's been going on is the Republican party has been hijacked, just as surely as the Taliban hijacked Afghanistan. It's been taken over by business "interests" to the point that public policy is not created without it being directed in some way towards making someone money.
A good friend of mine is a policeman at the VA hospital where I work. He's clearly very conservative, and I'm quite the opposite, and we're both vets. We don't agree on much but we enjoy talking. One thing we do agree on: this is not the country we promised to defend. We don't know where it is, what happened to it or when, but we're both damn sure this ain't it.
And I doubt the Democrats are much different, except for the fact that the richer and therefore more powerful "interests" have collected within the Republican party, leaving the Dems weaker.
I've seen exactly this sort of political driving of science done at NIH. If it's not popular with the administration, you risk your career to pursue it, and it's a damn long way to fall if you fall from NIH.
The US is losing its edge in science in part because researchers are not moving to the US to work, and some US researchers are leaving.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Two signs of partisanship are an unwillingness to debate issues and a change of focus to the supposed character of whoever is delivering a certain message. You've demonstrated both in your various posts in this thread, presumably because all you have to say is "I'm suspicious." Be as suspicious as you like; the UCS isn't getting rich or getting elected on the basis of their message, so I remain more concerned with the evident motives for bias that the Bush administration doesn't even deign to defend.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.