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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.'"
Overheard at the Smithsonian:
Worker: Sir, I have this old display of Noah's Ark you asked for. Where did you want it?
Curator: Put some dinosaur models on it then set it up in the Geology Wing.
Worker: Will do, sir. Oh I also changed all the signage in that wing from "millions of years" to "thousands of years".
Curator: That's what I like: proactive thinking! What about the Adam & Eve diorama?
Worker: It's where the Galapagos Islands exhibit was, just as you requested.
Curator: My boy, you have a bright future in science!
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SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
An alien with a green heart!! Shoot him!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Somehow I never though Science and Political Correctness fit together. If you are dying, does the doctor now tell you "Congratulations, you won't be paying taxes next year."
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
In a hundred years, the Smithsonian will be under water.
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.
By muddying the data, they're inferring that the climate will get wetter and the mud will obfuscate the data. I would love to see the memo that explicitly tells the janitorial staff NOT to clean up the mud off of the data! That would be a smoking gun!
Fucking Government, they think they outsmart me?!? HA!
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
"...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
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.
They are always toning down the science for Joe six-pack.
If they wanted a timely exhibit on climate change, they could randomly assign visitors to either side of an amphitheatre where they would don earplugs before yelling at each other at the top of their lungs while mathematical models that nobody in the room could understand flashed on an IMAX screen.
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,
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?
Are you guys still spreading misinformation about the hockey stick?!
It's 2007...
I think this is very important for people to remember. I forget who said it first, but the fastest way to lose an argument is to exaggerate. Even if you're right, if you're blatantly obvious about exaggerating your own points and failing to acknowledge your opponents points, people won't believe you. Even if you're right.
When dealing with a topic like global warming, credibility is incredibly important because almost no one (by which I mean among laymen) understands the science. Even relative to other sciences, studying climate and weather is incredibly complex and imprecise. So in order to preserve the credibility of those warning us about global warming-- people, please don't exaggerate. Don't try to convince people of things you yourself don't understand. Don't predict unlikely worst-case scenarios when the likely scenarios are bad enough. Just make honest arguments about only the things you understand, admit to the places where your understanding is unclear, and settle down on the hype.
If we exercised this sort of restraint, our arguments on a wide variety of subjects would probably be more productive. I say "probably" only because I'm basing this on nothing wider than my own personal experience. When you overstate your points and exaggerate the support for your arguments, you're only giving your opponents ammunition to shoot you down.
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)
Why don't you take a look at the US National Academy Assessment of the hockey-stick cluster of studies rather than relying on climateaudit.org? Though the 4th Assessment Report isn't a bad place to look either. Also, I believe that the hockey stick always came with error bars, and was fairly good for a first pass, and subsequent studies have mostly confirmed Mann's argument that the current global scale warming is likely unprecedented in the past 1000 years.
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?
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.
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.
And yet the removal of the bristlecone pines is the main thing that keeps McIntyre & McKintick's analysis from showing the same results as Mann's. So their analysis is not sensitive to the inclusion of the pines.
What ARE you talking about? The HS was replicated by McIntyre. The HS was the result of the massive overweighting of bristlecone pines, a proxy known to be NOT a temperature proxy. McIntyre showed that without the bristlecones, the HS shape disappeared.
Their analysis should that with or without the bristlecones, the HS failed multiple statistical tests for significance.
Oh? Please explain how it is statistically insignificant? No one, not even McIntyre & Mckintick, claimed that the findings were statistically insignificant -- they just disputed the data samples and reconstructed the graph according to their own cherry-picked data. Note that even when analyzed over the 1000-year mean, instead of Mann's original 20-year mean, the hockey stick still appears, and is still statistically significant.
It fails two key tests, R2 and the Durbin-Watson. Both showed zero significance.
M&M DID claim that the findings were statistically insignificant. And just in case you think its a fluke, a replication by friends of Mann, Wahl and Ammann also showed zero significance for the R2 test.
The rest of your statements are simply rubbish.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
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.