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Smithsonian 'Toned Down the Science' In Climate Change Exhibit
An anonymous reader writes "According to an International Herald Tribune article, the Smithsonian pre-emptively toned down the scientific content of a climate change exhibit put into place last year. The changes, including removal of scientist conclusions and muddying of displayed data, were made to ensure that the exhibit would not offend the Congress or the White House. Pressure brought to bear by Institute officials resulted in the resignation of Robert Sullivan, a sixteen year veteran of the organization. 'This is not the first time the Smithsonian has been accused of taking politics into consideration. The congressionally chartered institution scaled down a 1995 exhibit of the restored Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, after veterans complained it focused too much on the damage and deaths. Amid the oil-drilling debate in 2003, a photo exhibit of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was moved to a less prominent space.'"
Who ever has the gold, makes the rules.
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- Douglas Adams
The most troublesome part is that it was Smithsonian's administration that wanted the changes, not people from the US administration.
There's two kinds of people: those that change their beliefs to fit the facts and those that change the facts to fit their beliefs.
When you're changing the facts to fit other people's beliefs, well, I guess you get the budget dollars but lose all self-respect.
Well maybe the administration isnt responsible for all the stuff that goes on. If the Smithsonian would pre-emptively change how it does things just because it thinks thats whats expected of it, then all you need is the idea that you are going to suppress certain ideas, not actively pursue their suppression.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
"...the script...was rewritten to minimize and inject more uncertainty into the relationship between global warming and humans..." Imagine that! Uncertainty in science. If you want certainty, get a shaman/priest/rabbi.
"...officials omitted scientists' interpretation of some research and let visitors draw their own conclusions from the data..." Why would they do that? Don't they know the great unwashed can't be trusted to draw trhe "proper" inferences?!?!!?!!
"...changes were made for reasons of objectivity. And some scientists who consulted on the project said nothing major was omitted." Speaks for itself, I guess.
*AND*, despite the summary above, "Sullivan said that to his knowledge, no one in the Bush administration pressured the Smithsonian."
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Because your message is one of fear. You've got to learn to express things differently because fear only works if you have the might to back things up.
(Not you specifically.)
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Because both sides have abandoned reason and are trying to convince people emotionally (and if you don't think the green side fits this description, feel free to look into how Greenpeace recruits). I don't know if reason and logic can win in politics, but nobody should be surprised that when you completely abandon it then next thing you start to do is scream and throw feces at each other.
Al Gore toned down the science for his film. Or, he substituted science with hype. Even the scientist who accept the man-caused model find Al's wild *ssed misuse of science a little frightening.
If anyone is going to take it seriously, hyped arguments, with incredibly weak holes are going to drive people away from the true science. When a true scientist says, "Look, I have proof of man-caused climate change", the Gore-Hype-Doom-Weary-Joe-Everybody is going to ignore it.
Ignore Gore, DiCapprio, Robbins, Madonna, Rosie, etc. and lets get the truth separated from the hype, or it will be ignored.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
It's like your typical parent company shareholder override situation:
The Smithsonian institute are funded by the government of the United States.
Most of the current Congressmen / Senators / President which make up the government of the United States are funded by the big Oil companies.
The big Oil companies obviously don't want to see pictures of Climate Change or pictures of the national parks they are in the process of trashing and so get what they see as their subsidiary company to "make the changes".
Courtesy of United States Inc.
I guess these guys have to be as politically neutral as possible.
That's crap. Politics has no place in science. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it" comes to mind when politics and science meet.
Trolling is a art,
Whatever changes the Smithsonian makes in the name of giving science exposure, I am fine with. But when they get motivated by politics, and so openly at that, they are compromising everything the Smithsonian stands for!
Yet another reason I prefer NYC's American Museum of Natural History to its inferior counterpart in D.C.
And *I* am one of those folks who feels that there is less certainty to the science behind climate change than some researchers (let alone the public) do. So I should be pleased, but I'm not at all. Putting more research up, whether to clarify the picture or to show that most of it is inconclusive, that would be fine. But "toning down" stuff in an unscientific manner (you can "tone down" projections if a statistical analysis makes it appropriate, I suppose) and hiding information is just irresponsible.
I like basketball!!1!
First of all, I liked the movie. However, one thing that he did exaggerate (by omission) was his discussion of the 20 foot rise in sea levels. Sure, if either the ice on Greenland or the West Shelf of Antarctica melts, sea levels will rise (at least) 20 feet. If both melt, sea levels will rise 40 feet. Of course, no scientist (that I'm aware of) is predicting either to happen in the next 100 years. So, his facts were right, but the implication (that this would happen reasonably soon if things don't change) is not.
Global warming is serious and should be addressed in an intelligent, deliberate manner. Over-hyping it is counter-productive.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Honestly, from looking at the article, they were taking out the spin of global warming. For some reason, people act like the conclusions scientists make are golden and shouldn't be questioned, such as global warming. With as long as the Earth has been around (either if you believe millions or thousands of years), the amount of reliable statistical data we have about the Earth's climate is rather wanting and nowhere near enough to form solid conclusions about global warming existing or not. If they really want to push the envelope about it, wait for a few hundred more years to pass and continue to collect data, then you may have enough to possibly reach a definite conclusion. Seriously though, 100-150 years of meteorological data (and the fact that all that data doesn't even represent all the major climate regions of the Earth, especially the arctic regions) is like a grain of sand on the beach and doesn't amount to much at all.
"There are 10 types of people in this world--Those that understand binary, and those that do not..."
scaled down a 1995 exhibit of the restored Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, after veterans complained it focused too much on the damage and deaths.
Exactly what else was that exhibit supposed to focus on? It was a war. Contrary to what our mass media and politicians would like us to believe, people actually do die in war, and it normally doesn't happen as movies and television like to dramatise. That plane dropped an atomic bomb, the first of its kind and one of only two to ever be dropped, that was responsible for the most deaths ever from a single explosive. If it didn't have that distinction, no one would care. It would just be yet another bomber from World War II. Personally, I think the exhibit should have been far more detailed than it was. Maybe a few shots of the barren wasteland that was once Hiroshima, or victims' fucking shadows etched into the sand from the detonation. The after-effects of the radiation, perhaps.
All exhibits, however, regardless of how important they seem, should be as detailed as possible. We should absolutely strive to put them in the correct context, and present the facts, unabashed, to the best of our knowledge. Kowtowing to any particular group or person does a grave disservice to society as a whole, because it will only result in the dissemination of misinformation, or at the very least only partial information. We can all digest the facts and come to our own conclusions, but the facts themselves are essential to the process.
"We may face a scorched and lifeless earth, but they're accountable to their shareholders first."
Whether the museum curator in the parent posting existed or not, I salute anyone with the guts and gall to question assumptions and place integrity above deceit. And, yes, such people probably will lose jobs and - in rare cases - possibly a whole lot more. History teaches us, however, that in the long run, inaccuracies do get weeded out. Nobody these days uses Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the British Kings as a textbook, and popular Victorian school texts (which depicted Iron Age Britain as filled with unkempt cave-dwelling barbarians with no language or culture) have been replaced with more reliable and infinitely more believable studies of Celtic life.
Pissing off the public with the truth is inevitable. It will happen, sooner or later. May as well get it over and done with quickly, even if that carries risk. Life is all about risk - so why not take risks that might make a difference?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Or to put it more elegantly: You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Fucking retard.
I was on assignment in Washington DC for the spring and summer months of 2004. The last time I had been there prior to 2004 was when I was about 8.
In what time off work I could find, I went to the Smithsonians (except the portrait museum, as it was closed, and the Native American museum, because it had not yet opened), and was rather disappointed by all but one.
The Air and Space museum, although home to a lot of really cool planes, was filthy. Dust everywhere, stained floors, etc. Also, from what I do remember about my visit now nearly 20 years later, much of the museum's public collection was the same. In fact, I didn't find much to look at there beyond the planes themselves. There were no interesting placards that I can recall, no interesting multimedia, and seemingly no information newer than about 1991.
The same goes for the American History museum. It seemed very propaganda-y. Major cultural divides throughout US history were glossed over or ignored completely. I remember specifically reading about how something to the effect of "some native peoples were unhappy about the country's expansion across the Great Plains." Yeah, I bet at least a few were unhappy.
What saddens me the most is that while I was there, the Natural History museum was the best one. Their displays were modernized, they had exhibits about current issues, the IMAX I went to was great, the facility was clean and the placards with the exhibits, although were somewhat simplified, were appropriate for a somewhat educated audience.
The Smithsonian Institution really is one of America's treasures. When people visit London, they hit the British Museum. In Paris, it's the Louvre. DC has the Smithsonian(s). Those facilities are home to much of the physical historical record of this country. They see millions of visitors per year.
Why not put politics aside, at least mostly, and let them be run as well as they deserve to be?
Sadly, I suspect I already know the answer.
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Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Yeah, but the power of fear diminishes exponentially over time.
Thus, showing "An Inconvenient Truth" to high-schoolers four or five times makes them indifferent, or worse, nihilistic.
Get the kids some exercise, get them playing some sports, get them into photographing nature. Make the bad things seem boring.
Summary: the positive approach is the better long-term investment, unless you're a shrink or an anti-depressant vendor.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Ah, spin. Was Tennekes dismissed for asking uncomfortable questions? There is no evidence of this; as far as I can tell, he simply retired, and most of his public skepticism was after he left. (And even if he was dismissed, what were the circumstances? Was he speaking in an official capacity, or his own? He arguably doesn't have free reign to use his job title to trump up support for a position at odds with his employer.) Was Winn-Nielsen a tool of the coal industry? Did Sutera and Speranza lose funding for raising uncomfortable questions? Or because they were out-competed by other proposals? It's not as if they were blackballed: they're both still publishing, as is Lindzen!
The notion that if you're ignorant of something and somebody comes up with a wrong answer, and you have to accept that because you don't have another wrong answer to offer is like faith healing
A straw man. The IPCC does not push such a notion. When IPCC numbers are at the edge of the error bars, What IPCC numbers are at the edge of the error bars? and situations so laughably implausable as the A1FI scenario are treated as genuine risks, you've stepped far from the realm of science. The SRES emissions scenarios have their flaws, but are not "laughably implausible"; see, e.g., the conclusions of Tol, O'Neill, and van Vuuren (2005). In any case, the A1 scenarios are not believed to be the most likely.
It is not okay to say that we're going to put a large number of cities underwater
The IPCC does not say this.
and that we are certain that is all on the back of CO2.
Nor this.
Before accusing the US government of polishing up its record, check out what the kind, benign, "Hello Kitty" modern Japan is doing.
/. readers live in the US, it is appropriate for them to be concerned about standards in their own community first and foremost.
Why? What connection is there between how Japan portrays it's military history and whether the Smithsonian's exhibits are correct, other than the word "museum"? Both institutes have a duty to convey accurate information; they both failed to do so, and in my view that makes them both short of the standard.
And that's the point: if your standard is "not as bad as the other guy", you don't grasp what "standards" are. It doesn't matter whether you have 5 tons of bullshit or 50 tons, it's still bullshit, and attempting to justify one quantity with the other is a slow race to the bottom.
Defending the fellow Asians from the racist Europeans.
Pure propaganda to hide the events of 60 years ago. Fortunately, when we torture and kill civilians today, we're "liberating them in the name of democracy", so it's totally different.
It is the justification for the conquests presented in Yasukuni that we should be objecting to...
No, we should be objecting to any distortion of facts by anyone at all, regardless of how trivial it may seem (though I'd argue that unbiased presentations about climate change are more important to the future of the world than Japan acknowledging long past war crimes). Since the majority of
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When Bush and Congress stand up for their stump speeches and tout how well they've done they feel that its important that we actually believe that, particularly when they say they've done a good job studying global warming because we don't know enough as Bush is wont to say.
If, however the general public actually learns that the problem is real and hasn't been attacked aggressively then they'll start shopping around for someone else to protect them.
While historically speaking the comparison to evolution is apt it might be better to compare it with the level of "terrorist threat" or the war with Eurasia. In the former case the issue is one of protection, are we making our "way of life" safer. With the War on Terror(tm) the claim is that Bush and Cronies are fighting the enemy and succeeding (look how many terrorists we have convicted and put behind bars). With Global Warming the claim is that it isn't a problem so they don't have to act on it. In either case the tendency to lash out at those who say that they are doing a bad job with respect to terror (journalists, PBS, research scientists) or global warming (scientists again, schools and museums) is just a natural reaction. Because if they aren't doing a good job they lose the license to give kickbacks and generally ruin things that they now have.
At the end of the day it is all about power and money.
It seems you are just as arrogant an American as the rest of us.
I was in Japan last year for about 2 months. Although I've never been to the Yasakuni shrine, I have visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial with a Japanese friend. The memorial was suprisingly fair to America, and it must be pretty good to convince a republican Marine of this. I spoke at length with my friend about the bomb. She said, "the winners may write history, but the losers also have their story. They both are slanted."
My point is this: There are things like the Yasakuni shrine all over America. I'm not saying it's right, but they are out there. (read Lies Across America) It is the responsibility of US to teach our children not to take everything the government says as true, lest they become part of the ignorant masses.
There is a fate even worse than being uneducated. That would be ignorance with an intellectual superiority complex.
I don't quite understand this post, what has Japan to do with this particular story? There are plenty of biased museums around the world, that is for sure.
Anyway, while I do find the exhibits in Yasukuni's "museum" sick, there is a glaring difference between it and the Smithsonian:
Yasukuni is a privately run, privately funded institution - The americans made sure to separate it from the government during the U.S. rule of Japan after the 2nd world war.
Call it biased - it is, and doesn't hide that - but the japanese taxpayer money does not go into it.