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White House Clamps Down On USGS Publishing
An anonymous reader writes "The White House has begun implementing a new policy toward the U.S. Geological Survey, in which all scientific papers and other public documents by USGS scientists must be screened for content. The USGS communications office must now be 'alerted about information products containing high-visibility topics or topics of a policy-sensitive nature.' Subjects fitting this description might include global warming, or research on the effects of oil drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve."
"The Bush administration is clamping down on scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, who study everything from caribou mating to global warming, subjecting them to controls on research that might go against official policy."
The communications office must be notified "of findings or data that may be especially newsworthy, have an impact on government policy, or contradict previous public understanding to ensure that proper officials are notified and that communication strategies are developed.' and finally.... "In 2002, the USGS was forced to reverse course after warning that oil and gas drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would harm the Porcupine caribou herd. One week later a new report followed, this time saying the caribou would not be affected."
For what it's worth:
"Recent news reports suggesting the Bush administration is trying to muzzle scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) by placing new controls on approval and release of research plans and products are off base and misinformed about the intent of the changes being formalized at the agency. Speaking as the senior biologist at the USGS, I am deeply concerned that longstanding legitimate scientific peer review processes that have been the basis of scientific practices at the USGS and other scientific agencies and organizations have been mischaracterized as inappropriate political controls on research. Peer review is the bedrock of processes in any credible science organization that ensures scientific conclusions or findings are robust, independent and objective.
The USGS has had such processes in place for many years. As with any science enterprise, policies are periodically reviewed and updated to keep pace with changes in the organization. Our recently revised policy is an effort to do just that and has been developed by scientists and science managers (not political appointees) in an effort to coordinate existing review processes.
Research supervisors in the review chain are simply charged with ensuring all USGS information products have addressed peer comments and are in compliance with USGS procedures with regard to the review and release of scientific information. Furthermore, the notion that senior leadership in an organization should not be alerted to significant findings that will directly impact policy development and decision-making is disturbing. Under current policy this information is transferred to policy makers as it is released to the public.
Characterizing these reviews as an attempt by the Bush administration to control and censor scientific findings is inaccurate, is a disservice to those scientists who developed those processes in the spirit of continually improving our commitment to excellent science and undermines the bedrock of the peer review process as an arbiter of the credibility of individual science products and facilitator of science progress and discussion."
Also interesting about Mark Myers the new head of the USGS (from Nature 441, 266 (18 May 2006))
...Myers has a PhD in geology and has spent much of his career in Alaska, working for oil companies and for the state -- sometimes alone in remote locations, armed with a shotgun in case of grizzly bears...If confirmed by the Senate, Myers would be the first USGS director in decades to come neither from academia nor from within the agency....Myers worked most recently as head of Alaska's Division of Oil and Gas. In the past he has supported drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- a protected region of Alaska. And this has spooked some environmentalists. But if he gets the USGS job, Myers says, he would stay out of any decision making: "My job is strictly to provide the data, to help people understand the data and its limitations."
"Who is Mark Myers? That's what many US geologists are asking in the wake of an announcement that President George W. Bush will nominate Myers to head the US Geological Survey (USGS).
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
Well, the vast majority of them are funny, but the one that says 'the Republican Party will attempt to control science to meet political needs' deserves a prize. How about a 'Medal of Freedom', I hear they are going pretty cheap these days.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
Attention moderators -- being woefully misguided is not flamebait.
Try this one on for size. Your division is supposed to make 20 million dollars selling new improved widgets. You've been telling the main office that they've way underestimated the development and production costs all along. Now the financials this quarter make it undeniable: if they don't pull the plug immediately, the company will lose $20m not make it.
So... the main office lays down a policy that any data going into the SEC filings has be cleansed of information that indicates that their product plans are, financially speaking, a load of bullshit.
Is the business run to guarantee senior management their bonuses, or to make money for the stockholders?
We the people are the United States are the stockolder of US Government Inc. It's fine if management wants to make policy conclusions about the findings, that's their job. But they can't cook the books.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
How about...
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Actually, you're wrong (sort of).
My mom, Ethel McIntosh, worked as the Executive Assistant to Chairman Raymond P. Shafer on the 1972 National Commission on Marihuana[sic] and Drug Abuse (sometimes called the "Shafer Commission").
Their report, Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding, which was QUITE well researched, concluded that MARIJUANA SHOULD BE DECRIMINALIZED.
Without going into all the fascinating details about how Nixon wouldn't let them present the Report to him in the Oval Office (as is the norm for these types of Commissions), but rather made them go to some little hotel on the other side of town to "present" it to an AIDE (thus GUARANTEEING zero Press coverage!), suffice it to say that this report p.o.'ed President Nixon SO badly that he BURIED the report. Which is why you could make your statement with a clear, but ill-informed, conscience.
BTW, I do agree that this report WAS buried for no good reason, and that the 'War On Drugs', just like every other 'War on [x]', is little more than an excuse for Gummint to encroach further and further upon our liberty as Amurikans.
Although I have not personally read this book (but I will now), apparently, the rejection and burial of the "Shafer Commission" report has been very well researched and documented in this book, Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure, by Dan Baum.
Exactly my point. The administration assured us they did know; they lied.
Let me actually finish that sentence for you: "Iraq regularly fired upon US aircraft flying in their airspace." And let me also point out that if Iraqi aircraft were flying in our airspace, we'd be firing on them, as well. Not just the government, but every mother's son with a rifle, a rocket kit, or a potato gun. We'd be focusing lasers on their cockpits, running into them with our civilian aircraft, using our jumbo jets to crack them up using wake turbulence. We'd foul up the GPS data, unlink the old school LF navigation systems, and we'd shoot at them from kites, mountaintops, balloons and church steeples. And we'd be right to do it — every one of us. And why, again, is it that you are so offended that they shot at our aircraft flying in their airspace?
You mean like when Bush tried to kill Saddam in the very first bombing of the war? When we sneakily dropped all manner of high powered weapons on a major city in Iraq using aircraft that were invisible to Iraqi defenses? Without having been provoked? Without truth in representing the supposed threat? Is it OK for the Iraqis to bomb us, since we do have WMDs, and have used them to far greater effect than Saddam and crew ever did? Where does our "right" to bomb the Iraqis come from here? Where does our "right" to attempt to assassinate Saddam come from? Do we assign to Iraq an equivalent right to attempt to assassinate our president, then? Where does our right to invade Iraq come from? Where does our "right" to stay, when they clearly want us to leave, come from?
If Iraq or some other actor does something terrible, does that give us the "right" to do something terrible? Or should we stand our ground on higher principles? If we don't, why do we have them at all, eh? We had the choice of many, many actions post assassination attempt and post 9/11. The fact that we chose an entirely unjustified war from all those options is nothing to be proud of. And in fact, I am not.
Ah. So, Israel cannot respond to this alleged threat? We have to bomb the country back into the stone age because Israel is what, unwilling to cross borders? I don't think you can make the case. Israel has shown more than a token willingness to deal directly and militarily with any threats to them. Just ask the Lebanese, the Palestinians, or that motley group of fools who took the hostages in Entebbe. I fail to see how, despite any treaty obligations we have with Israel, this called us into action in any legitimate manner. If Israel had wanted Saddam's hindquarters, they would have had them, I believe. We never needed to act in the first place, post the first gulf war.
You mistake me. I am not anti-war. War is a problem solving tool that at times, is quite appropriate. It is just that this "war" is not. This war is stupid, was based entirely on lies, has generated entirely useless and troublesome results, is extremely costly, and shows no particular benefits. We are not going to "get democracy" in Iraq, we are not going to control the oil, we are not going to save any of the various sects of Islamists, we are not going to get any of the lost lives back, we are not going to stop losing lives there — there is literally no point in being there. At all. I'm not anti-war. I'm anti-stupid, which makes me pretty much anti-Bush by definition.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.