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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.'"
It gets massive government funding, so you don't want to piss off the funders. Also, anything that is socially or politically charged is always toned down nowadays in the bigger institutions. You get the occasional out there displays, usually from smaller places trying to make a name for themselves.
It's like newspaper reporting now- skimp on the facts and give some conclusions, maybe put in a few emotional bits. Good luck trying to find objectivity, anywhere, anymore.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
By most accounts, and I've talked with curators at the Smithosonian about this, Small was a terrible leader of the organization. He apparently did bring a lot of money into the organization, but you didn't see any evidence of this behind the scenes at the museum. Instead, he had almost $50,000 spent on furniture for his office, $15,000 spent on the doors at his house, spent $160,000 spent on renovating his office at the Smithsonian castle building, and by using his house to host a few Smithsonian functions, was given $1.15 million dollars in housing allowances. All your tax dollars. Not to mention, his total salary for 2007 was supposed to be $915,000- nearly a million dollars, more than the president and vice president combined. Meanwhile, science seems to have taken a back seat at the Smithsonian, and I suspect the scientists threw a party when he finally resigned. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2007/03/18/AR2007031801369.html
But Small is just one symptom of a much larger problem, which is appointing incompetent hacks to important government positions, and pushing politics over facts. This is what happened at FEMA with Heckuvajob Brownie. This is what happened in Iraq, when the White House sent over people who had the proper Republican Party credentials, but not the credentials to do the job; it's one of the major reasons the occupation there has been such a disaster. The problem has been summed up pretty well by the phrase, "the triumph of the hacks over the wonks". See, the wonks are the policy guys, the analytical guys who can analyze the facts and tell you what you need to do in order to achieve a desired outcome. They are the political equivalent of a computer geek, except they write policy instead of code. The hacks are the political guys, the guys who don't give a shit what the facts are, they are only there to push their party agenda. And this administration has favored the hacks over the wonks, so the result is that facts get shoved aside by politics, whether it's climate change, or the debatable effectiveness of "abstinence-only" education, or the infamous case of General Shinseki getting sacked by Rumsfeld after he said we would need several hundred thousand troops to effectively occupy Iraq.