U.S. Scientists Say They Are Told to Alter Finding

tree3075 writes "The LA Times is reporting that a survey by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility has found hundreds of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientists have been instructed to change findings to favor business interests. I'm not surprised anymore when I read these things."

Comments

Sad reality

[FiReaNGeL]

Slightly related to the post, but here's my 2 cents. Science is expensive. Very expensive. And when a scientist has the choice between getting his career ruined because of bad results / wrong hypothesis or lie in order to get a second chance, some do chose the second option. Of course, the 'lie' isn't always intentional, even conscious; some tend to alter to reality in order to see what they want to see. You can't be always right, but when you're wrong, funding (private or public) gets a lot tougher to get. It can be fatal to a scientific career... when you put your life behind an idea, you tend to want to be right. No matter what. The funding system is just bad; failure is punished too harshly.

Now back on topic, political ingerence in science is even worse. Especially when motivated by a $$ agenda. Your career versus a should-be-protected plant? Not everyone has the courage to say 'no'... I admire this group of scientist, they had the courage to stand up. Sadly, some don't, and we'll never know it.

Re:Another nail in the coffin of journalism.

[TellarHK]

Actually, having seen the parts of my family that follow the "red state" ideals over the course of the last election cycle, I'm thoroughly convinced that most of the people in the "red states" that voted for Bush with such vigor, really did not seem to care that they were being lied to.

I'll use my own mother as an example. She's generally a very level-headed person, but when it comes down to politics she -loves- burying her head in the sand and seeing things as a "black or white, good or evil" issue. And I suspect most mothers are the same way once they're close to sixty. The entire process the right-wing republicans have been using is to make everything a soundbite, a good vs. evil / us against them / with or against us argument. You cannot possibly tell me with a straight face that the democrats were ever this blatant, misleading or dense about anything remotely close to this kind of manipulative behavior.

The answer "But Clinton did it!" does not make it right, and on those occasions when the democrats get caught pulling this nonsense, they should get bitched out too. If anyone ever showed me evidence of them doing it on one tenth of the scale this administration's been caught in just the past -month-, I'd be one of the first ones bitching. It's just much, much easier to give the republicans a black eye for this shit because they're such masters of it. Did Clinton stand behind repeating grids of soundbite text at -every- appearance that didn't have him in front a huge flag instead? Did his administration bribe columnists to push his agenda? (If he did, please cite a Reuters/AP/UPI link so I can learn about it.)

These same people thought there were WMD's. These same people STILL fucking think they exist.

People like having things laid out for them in black and white, they don't like to think about them. Nobody wants to waste the time and energy to contemplate world affairs because they can't change them. So why worry? They put their trust in the person that makes the plainest-spoken argument, not even giving enough of a shit to think he's wrong.

Yes, there are some people out there that follow the Republican way of thought and actually give thought TO that belief. Unfortunately, what they don't do is win elections. John McCain and his type of Republican are an endangered species. The neoconservative wing has discovered how to pull all the puppets into line, and will cut loose the rogues it can't control.

The slow downward spiral

[abulafia]

There's a lot of babbling and finger pointing about political bias, the media, etc. Perhaps one voice of reason that's a favorite around here might have a thing or two to say on the topic that looks beyond party politics, and is extremely relevant to this discussion:

The success of the U.S. has not come from one consistent cause, as far as I can make out. Instead the U.S. will find a way to succeed for a few decades based on one thing, then, when that peters out, move on to another. Sometimes there is trouble during the transitions. So, in the early-to-mid-19th century, it was all about expansion westward and a colossal growth in population. After the Civil War, it was about exploitation of the world's richest resource base: iron, steel, coal, the railways, and later oil. For much of the 20th century it was about science and technology. The heyday was the Second World War, when we had not just the Manhattan Project but also the Radiation Lab at MIT and a large cryptology industry all cooking along at the same time. The war led into the nuclear arms race and the space race, which led in turn to the revolution in electronics, computers, the Internet, etc. If the emblematic figures of earlier eras were the pioneer with his Kentucky rifle, or the Gilded Age plutocrat, then for the era from, say, 1940 to 2000 it was the engineer, the geek, the scientist. It's no coincidence that this era is also when science fiction has flourished, and in which the whole idea of the Future became current. After all, if you're living in a technocratic society, it seems perfectly reasonable to try to predict the future by extrapolating trends in science and engineering. It is quite obvious to me that the U.S. is turning away from all of this. It has been the case for quite a while that the cultural left distrusted geeks and their works; the depiction of technical sorts in popular culture has been overwhelmingly negative for at least a generation now. More recently, the cultural right has apparently decided that it doesn't care for some of what scientists have to say. So the technical class is caught in a pincer between these two wings of the so-called culture war. Of course the broad mass of people don't belong to one wing or the other. But science is all about diligence, hard sustained work over long stretches of time, sweating the details, and abstract thinking, none of which is really being fostered by mainstream culture. Since our prosperity and our military security for the last three or four generations have been rooted in science and technology, it would therefore seem that we're coming to the end of one era and about to move into another. Whether it's going to be better or worse is difficult for me to say. The obvious guess would be "worse." If I really wanted to turn this into a jeremiad, I could hold forth on that for a while. But as mentioned before, this country has always found a new way to move forward and be prosperous. So maybe we'll get lucky again. In the meantime, efforts to predict the future by extrapolating trends in the world of science and technology are apt to feel a lot less compelling than they might have in 1955.

Re:Still don't get it?

[Jack Auf]

> America has become a fascist state

Why yes, yes it has: http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm

Scientists???

[PaulBu]

Hey, those guys and girl are public sector employees (Dept. of Fish and Game, I think it was called, though now it is apparently Fish and Wildlife Service). Think of the last time you visited your loval DMV office -- maybe most of them have THAT particular type of personalty, you know what I am talking about. In any case, not too many are going to bite the hand which gives them nice govt. job (with GREAT benefits) when there is some "pressure" to look another way. On the other hand, they feel quite free to bitch in an (anonymous?) survey, no, it is almost impossible to fire them!

I guess the term "scientist" lost it luster when it stopped being applied to indepedently wealthy gentlemen with curiosity about how the World works (or ones so smart that wealthy private persons just feel like funding their work) and started being applied to everyone with some education and certain level in the society. I wish we would go back to 18th century in the way we do science. Otherwise it is all fake, serving this or that special groop (whoever pays).

And yes, technically my job title is "Scientist", working for one of the big defence contractors. No, I do not do "science" in the original sense of this word. But looking back at the University life -- it was prostitution as well... ;-)

Paul B.

Re:Let the Bush bashing begin!

[TheFlyingGoat]

I know your post was meant as a joke, and it is kind of funny, but I feel the need to respond to it. It is sad that it's always Republican vs. Democrat because both sides fail to see the benefits that the other brings to the table. Republican's goal of reduced taxes is great, just like Democrat's goal of environmental protection. Someone I read/listened to a few days back said the problem with politicians is that they get elected by saying yes to everything. However, in order to serve the people properly, they have to say no.

Re:Let the Bush bashing begin!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, having worked for the forest service and watched the shenannigans involved in some of the "environmental" impact reports, I have to say that I tend to believe the article, and I'm Republican. A report will come in saying something like "the cut as designed will have the following adverse effects ...," typically things like muddying the water and silting up spawning beds in really nice trout streams, "to avoid this the clearance along these streams should be be increased to say 90 horizontal feet."

The TMO had anticipated a 10 foot or 20 slope foot exclusion along the streams, and maybe a generous kickback from the multinational that wants to cut the timber and sell the best stuff to the Japanese - who at least appreciate nice wood. The original recommendation involved maybe 50 acres of timber out of 5,000. The TMO cries real tears in the SO's office and words are heard about "tree huggers" and "owl lovers" "jobs lost" and similar nonsense. The best timber is in those corridors!!

The SO may also be, almost unavoidably HAS to be, acquaintented with the multinational reps as well. Surprisingly the directive comes down, "change the corridor to 35 feet."

The backside of the story is that since many "specialists" know how these things work, they work very hard to identify "issues" that will protect their recommendations. Consequently, the stream is good but not critical trout habitat and some accountant (not a field scientist but a real, honest to god accountant who has never ventured into the woods alone in his life) has already determined how much stream the forest can "afford" to protect. His determination was made on the basis of a dollars and cents estimate he pulled from ... well ignore that. Anyway, it wasn't based on ANY environmental concern.

The biologist, knowing the dweeb who REALLY made the critical stream determination, has "fudged" the data, and another hot topic was inserted the hypothesis that creek corridor is nesting territory for spotted owls - who never harmed the biologist - but at least they'll protect his fish. When his crew is out "hoot owling" he'll be out there with a speaker system giving them something to listen and report. Most are pretty young, naieve, and honest, so he can't let them in on the secret.

The SO meanwhile knows perfectly well what's up. He recons that the entire issue is childish and that both the TMO and biologist would have been screaming just as loud regardless. He also knows the area is not pristine and that it was denuded 80 years ago, so there isn't any owl habitat really. But he does like fly fishing and plans to do some on that creek next spring now that biologist has pointed it out. So he pulls and other number out of the air, one he hopes will keep his multinational pals and the local loggers more or less happy, salt the beer of that conniving TMO, and piss on that biologist that lied about everything, all at the same time. Just maybe it'll protect the stream enough, too. Besides, he's retiring in 5 years anyway.