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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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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.
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.
"...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
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,
Are you guys still spreading misinformation about the hockey stick?!
It's 2007...
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.
The problem with your response is that the summary is not wholly accurate. The problem the veterans had with the exhibit is not that it had information on the thousands of deaths and the horror that came later. It was the lack of context. The original script for the exhibit spoke of a crippled japan desperately trying to defend itself against the aggression of the US. The implication also made in the original draft that the Japanese started the war with us due to our own racism was what really set people off. The complaint was not that the US killed people, but the lack of context which when coupled with the description of the Japanese's desperation at the end of the war gave what the veterans groups called a bias. Specifically lines such as "For most Americans it was a war of vengeance. For most Japanese, it was a war to defend their unique culture against Western imperialism." support this point when attached to planned photographs of Japanese religious symbols at ground zero. Not saying that the veterans don't have there own agenda, or that the Smithsonian should kowtow to special interests, but the issue was more complicated then the trite summary given.
You can find the original scripts, just search for the title "The Crossroads: The End of World War II, the Atomic Bomb, and the Origins of the Cold War"