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Wildlife Deputy Changed Science For Lobbyists
fistfullast33l writes "In another case of a government official creating a 'unique' interpretation of science, TPM Muckraker reports on Julie MacDonald, deputy assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks in the Department of the Interior in Washington. The Department's Inspector General issued a report today documenting evidence that MacDonald not only overrode opinions of department scientists to benefit lobbyists, and political interests, but also that she shared internal documents with said lobbyists and a friend in an unnamed online roleplaying game. My favorite episode: 'At one point, according to Fish and Wildlife Service Director H. Dale Hall, MacDonald tangled with field personnel over designating habitat for the endangered Southwestern willow flycatcher, a bird whose range is from Arizona to New Mexico and Southern California. When scientists wrote that the bird had a nesting range of 2.1 miles, MacDonald told field personnel to change the number to 1.8 miles. Hall, a wildlife biologist who told the IG he had had a running battle with MacDonald, said she did not want the range to extend to California because her husband had a family ranch there.'"
Suggested reading for everyone: The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney. Chapter 11 (documenting the ID movement) is available online, but the site is not responding (quite possibly something to do with this story breaking).
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
A few years ago, there was a story posted about how a biologist had used some big cat hairs to base his research on. Turned out, that the hairs had come from a cat in a zoo.
In South-West Utah, whenever some road work was going to be done, they would find a dead tortoise on the road, and the environmentalists would cry foul. After they did an autopsy on one, they found frozen lettuce in its stomach. The environmentalists had caught them live, fed them for a while, then froze them until "needed".
Ya, really good stuff there.
Don't steal. The government hates competition.
There's mention of it here.
I wouldn't put too much stock in any "science" from anyone at the Dept. of the Interior. Interior is a haven for folks who all share the same opinions and work towards the same agenda.
Here's an example of their "science":
Gov't researchers caught planting false ESA evidence
How many times have we seen perpetual motion reported as straight news?
For a journalist to be able to think critically about scientific subjects they should be reasonably well grounded in the subject (which is asking a lot for a journalist).
Otherwise all they do is pick a side in the argument, dumb it down till they think they understand it, then report it as undisputed fact.
So while you do have a point about presenting information to non-scientists the journalist should be somewhere in the middle. What we've gotten is regurgitated press releases being passed off as news by idiot reporters who can't ask the any intelligent questions.
I went to a University with a very well respected J-school. They took the same amount of math and science as the education majors (basically they were required to re-take the material they should have learned in middle school).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
If it weren't for lavishly funded free-market think tanks the truth might have never come out and anti-endangered species activists in the 109th Congress such as Richard Pombo would have been put in the awkward position of having to make up politically convenient but dubious anecdotes on their own. It's a relief they didn't have to do that.
Clearly this all fits into the larger pattern of career EPA employees purging all political operatives from sensitive policy positions and having them replaced with more nonpolitical people.
yeah! Cuz we all know right wing Republicans are against the EPA since the very beginning. Why, if that left wing loony Nixon handn't of signed it into law, we wouldn't have to do stuff like this!
3 1/0218245, reports a testable theory about violations of Newton's second law! The debate is NEVER over, it can always be opened if you have good science to prove your case. This guy doesn't have proof of his theory yet, and may never have it. But if he does get the proof people will have to re-open our understanding of that "Law".
Please, bad science is bi-partisan. All you have to do is hear Gore (as a recent, glaring example) state the "debate is over" on global warming. Any time you hear an absolute from a politician of any ilk you can be assured it is no longer science, but retoric.
Heck, the story right after this one, http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
From the second page of that article:
The point to remember, says Connolley, is that predictions of global cooling never approached the kind of widespread scientific consensus that supports the greenhouse effect today. And for good reason: the tools scientists have at their disposal now--vastly more data, incomparably faster computers and infinitely more sophisticated mathematical models--render any forecasts from 1975 as inoperative as the predictions being made around the same time about the inevitable triumph of communism.
Think of it like this: How good will your economy be when people take days off from work for bronchial infections, asthme, and are dropping like flies from cancer? Have a look at the heavy industrial cities of Russia and China, where life expectancy is falling by the year, and the economies are tanking because no one wants to live or invest there?
Worst polluted cites
DZERZINSK, RUSSIA
In Dzerzhinsk, a significant center of the Russian chemical manufacturing, the average life expectancy is 42 years for men and 47 for women. Despite the heavy toll on the populations health, a quarter of the city's 300,000 residents are still employed in factories that turn out toxic chemicals. According to a 2003 BBC report it is the young who are most vulnerable. In the local cemetery, there are a shocking number of graves of people below the age of 40. In 2003 it was reported that the death rate exceeded the birth rate by 2.6 times and it is easy to see why. The dioxins that get into the water as a by-product of chlorine production are reported to cause cancer even in minute doses.
LINFEN, SHANXI PROVINCE, CHINA
Shanxi Province is considered to be the heart of Chinas enormous and expanding coal industry, providing about two thirds of the nations energy. Within it, Linfen has been identified as one of Shanxis most polluted cities with residents claiming that they literally choke on coal dust in the evenings, according to a BBC report. Local clinics are seeing growing cases of bronchitis, pneumonia, and lung cancer. Lead poisoning was also seen at very high rates in Chinese children in the Shanxi Province.
LA OROYA, PERU
Since 1922, adults and children in La Oroya, Peru - a mining town in the Peruvian Andes and the site of a poly-metallic smelter - have been exposed to the toxic emissions from the plant. Currently owned by the Missouri-based Doe Run Corporation, the plant is largely responsible for the dangerously high blood lead levels found in the children of this community. Ninety-nine percent of children living in and around La Oroya have blood lead levels that exceed acceptable amounts. Sulfur dioxide concentrations also exceed the World Health Organization emissions standards by ten fold. The vegetation in the surrounding area has been destroyed by acid rain due to high sulfur dioxide emissions.