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Scientists Decry Political Interference
RamblingMan writes "According to the BBC, the American Union of Concerned Scientists has put out a statement about the misrepresentation of date and a list of such interference by the U.S. government in scientific research. Besides the usual slew of Nobel Laureate signatories, they provide a number of examples besides the well-known example of the EPA's Global Warming Report." From the BBC article: "'It's very difficult to make good public policy without good science, and it's even harder to make good public policy with bad science,' said Dr Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security. 'In the last several years, we've seen an increase in both the misuse of science and I would say an increase of bad science in a number of very important issues; for example, in global climate change, international peace and security, and water resources.'"
Funding certain areas of scientific research instead of others is one thing; actively suppressing or ignoring the results of said research is entirely another. The executive branch has some control over what gets researched, and I'm basically OK with that; what I'm not OK with is the government's control of the results.
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Because ideally scientists provide information for making decisions (military, financial, etc.). The same reason you check your weather before deciding to have a picknick.
And the same reason you look at a label on the bottle before deciding whether to drink it... Instead of drinking something first, then deciding what it should say on the label ("joro spider toxin?")
A recent example is Iraq:
What should have been: (WMDs found?) -> (if YES, should we go to war?) -> (if YES, go to war)
Instead we got: (we want to go to war) -> (WMDs found?) -> (if NO say YES) -> (if YES, go to war)
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
No, good public policy was never the norm, though lack of scientific knowledge hasn't been the only major reason (indeed, isn't even #1, which is "lack of interest in the public good among the governing elite".) But its certainly a limiting factor, nonetheless.
That's true. Unfortunately, almost any area of public policy requires knowing lots of things, some of which, for almost any policy question imaginable, are of the type that are non-obvious and for which systematic study is necessary to get right other than by chance.
And much of that received, traditional knowledge may be generally correct, but have rather severe limitations that don't become obvious until you try to apply it outside of the context in which that knowledge was generated. You can do that either by systematic study before you implement policy, or by implementing disastrous policy.
Of course, much of that received, traditional "knowledge" is just plain factually incorrect, too.
Erm... Actually, no. In general scientists are far less prone to intellectual whoredom than regular people.
I think if you look into this issue more closely you'll find that the issue is not corruption of scientists, but misuse and misrepresentation of their findings.
No scientist who acts as you imply could long remain employed as a scientist. The moment he (or she) published his (or her) findings that would be pretty much the end of it. Every published scientific study of any wide interest is peer-reviewed, scrutinized, and confirmed or refuted by many other scientists. Whenever a scientist is found to be massaging data he gets peer-reviewed into oblivion and his reputation is forever screwed. These are known in the business as "flaps" and you can find many examples of them.
Just on the practical level, consider how scientists operate in the real world. Scientists rarely work alone, and rarely are they the only individual looking into a class of phenomena. So frankly, one lone scientist with an agenda in a research group couldn't have much of an effect. You'd have to get a whole team of rogue scientists -- not an easy thing to do since Doctor Evil recruited them all to his research team back in the 60's.
In science there are few, if any, Karl Rove's. However, in politics there are plenty of reptiles anxious to suppress, distort, downplay, and misrepresent scientific findings. So this is what you get: Lackeys inserted at NASA to curtail serious climate research; findings reports edited and suppressed by the corporations that fund the research.
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Actually, the complaint is that politics is too separated from science. Politicians are ignoring real science and creating a falsified pseudoscience to replace it.
Science, at it's core, is about recognizing and organizing patterns in factual observations. Government, at it's core, should be about a lowest common denominator - things that the vast majority of people can agree on. This lowest common denominator is factual observations.
There is considerable debate over the existence of a God entity but there is very little debate over the existence of gravity. Gravity can be observed. Governments should take the existence of gravity into account when making their decisions. Governments should not take the existence of a God entity into account when making their decisions (unless/until the existence of a God entity can be established as a matter of factual observation).
If a pattern of factual observations is indicating the global warming is occurring then governments should take this into account. Governments should always take factual observations into account regardless of whether the decision is military decision or a financial decision or any other decision.
The basic message to the government is this: "Don't ignore factual observations when making decisions."
They are "special" where their public intelligence duties are concerned.
The same as doctors are "special" in their duties of preserving human life (even though killing off certain patients would save our insurance companies money)
Cops are "special" in that they uphold the rule of the law and not the will of a dictator (the reason Clinton could not throw all the Republican voters in jail in this country).
Shouldn't the voters decide what the truth is?
No. Voting the Earth flat will not make it so. Evolution will not disapear no matter what people believe. It will not stop raining the moment you impeach your Local8 weatherman. Voters can make up their policy given the facts, but they should not make up the facts
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Whereas in the past science was misused and constrained by the church, today it has been co-opted by politics.
Note that when the church was constraining science was when the church was at its most powerful politically, thus making it pretty much the same as being co-opted by politics.
It is the nature of politics -- whether the political power is exercised by democratic governments or theocratic religious institutions -- to view everything as a tool through which to pursue the politician's objectives. Rarely if ever are things like science used to define the objective. The result is that if the science says something that goes against the political objective, then it is the science that must change.
While you're right to observe that science goes on regardless, and scientific progress is made, that isn't the point. The point is that today, right now, there are decisions being made that could use the information provided by science to produce a better decision. Instead, the decision is being made first, and the science is either being ignored or twisted to support that decision. The result is beneficial for the politicians, and usually detrimental to everyone else.
If you ever needed a practical example of how facts should aid the definition of policy, rather than policy causing the redefinition of facts, simply look at Iraq. Is it yet obvious the difference between somebody's belief as to what the answer should be irrespective of facts vs the answer suggested by the real facts has profound consequences? It was the policy of the administration that the Iraqis would welcome us with roses, Democracy would flourish, and Iraq would become a shining example of hope in the Middle East. It was strongly suggested by the facts that nobody welcomes invaders, chaos would flourish particularly if there was no plan to prevent it, and Iraq would become a disaster. Today, as we struggle to come up with a plausible way of preventing the worst-case scenarios that the policy said were impossible, I think the dangers of ignoring the politicization of science are apparent.
The enemies of Democracy are
That's right. Science is simply an extension and justification of popular opinion. Too many of these elitists seem to think it's about objective study of the nature our universe.
I think the government hasn't gone far enough. All scientists should be denied funding until they provide conclusive proof of the existence and location of the Garden of Eden, our common ancestors in Adam and Eve and that God is white and conservative. Funding any research until that is done should be an offense attracting the death penalty. By public burning at the stake.
While we're at it, how come meteorologists get off so lightly? There's an example of elitism right there. From now on weather forcasts should always be for perfect beach weather in coastal areas, perfect snow cover in the mountains, and just the right amount of rainfall for the farms. All year round.
This is clearly the only way forward
I don't therefore I'm not.
That may be true but it was taken to new (heights/depths) by the current administration.
When the current administration came into power and were looking for a executive to head the CDC they replaced the Nobel laureate whom was the current director. And the interview where he was removed consisted of two questions. (Second hand from a former director at Center for Disease Control)
1) Are you a republican
2) Did you vote for this president.
That explains just about everything you need to know about our current administration folks. That is the same treatment the military and other branches of government received. It helped push the administrations policies, but the person who was selected was completely incompetent. (Think FEMA) But the only criteria the administration cared about was loyalty. This absolutely destroyed the CDC. New policies included bureaucratic overview of what was considered publishable and bureaucrats deciding certain studies were flawed despite no experience in the field.
Essentially the scientists were told what results they were required to give and had to conduct studies to prove them. Pretty much all of the top scientists fled so they could actually continue doing science. The CDC parking lot is almost deserted these days. And this is one of the most important scientific establishments in the nation. (The rest of the National institute of health received similar "adjustments")
Fundamentally science uses its own rules, logic, facts and deduction. Science is the only arm of the government that stands on its own merits rather than having to be forced upon us. For example science tells us the sun is very hot :) Regardless of who interprets it the fact remains the same. OTOH the financial arm of the government will say we have no money but if we were to have a separate group of accountants to view the same figures they would likely come up with a different conclusion. The latter is echoed throughout all governments. The only reason the government is so interested in science to begin with is that each scientific fact works for everyone in the same way and cannot be skewed, so it arises at the attitude "we are better to discover the fact then risk someone else find it first".
Back to the topic. Scientists are trusted to arrive at scientific conclusions, how can we trust the combustion engine but if they say the world is getting hotter in a bad way we should not? We should definitely challenge them by asking questions and seeking answers, but to discredit them for no reason is a very scary path to go down if you ask me.
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
I don't think your familiar with pharmaceutical studies. The drug companies pay for "independent" academic research and pretty much get the results they want. This is why congress and the FDA have had to back-track and issue warning on drugs already declared "safe". We just got another this week. The corruption can be hard to find on the surface. When prozac was studied for teen saftey the kids who suffered the worst side effects during "Activation" had to drop out of the study they weren't even counted in end results. A lot of scientists and universities aren't independent at all. Corporate money is behind a lot of "research" these days and its easy to see a lot of "research" has been created just to serve as marketing - it's a facade. The academicians, politicians and corporations often change hats. The university researcher who plays nice gets the corporate or political appointment. Bad science is everywhere. They hardly try to even hide it anymore.