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Junked science: Ideology trumps research in Bush administration By Susan Frick Carlman -Columnist Plainfield Sun - Plainfield, IL,USA - 8/15/08
Religion and politics aren't good dinner-table guests, we're often reminded. But what about science?
As a regime change in Washington quickly grows near, a lot of us can't help but feel hopeful that attitudes toward the free flow of information - especially the sound, well-documented kind of information - at last will change. A lot.
Ironic as it seems in this age of instant communication, the current administration has been by far the most secretive in modern times, repeatedly going far beyond the caution called for by the crusade against terrorists. In 2004 alone, the Bush administration spent $7.2 billion to classify some 15.6 million public documents.
But perhaps the most flagrant cover-up behavior of all is the way the administration again and again has junked the findings of good research when they haven't fallen in line with the ideologies of the people in power.
This has been going on for a while. I first wrote about it in this space seven years ago, shortly after then-Surgeon General David Satcher was chastised by the administration because he reported that research did not support abstinence-only as an effective approach to sex education. Satcher's big offense was calling on schools to discuss birth control with teens and urging communities to support health clinics that provide contraception. Now, $1.5 billion in abstinence-only sex ed funding later, teen pregnancy rates are up, the National Institutes of Health reported last month. And
half of all new HIV cases now occur in people younger than 25.
That's just one instance of this president dismissing scholars' findings that he has found inconvenient. In many cases, the weapon wielded to put these pesky conclusions in their place is the funding cut. The program that monitors pollutants spewed by industry, the Toxic Release Inventory, has seen drastic budget cuts in recent years. So has Mission to Planet Earth, NASA's research program that documents environmental degradation. Call me a cynic, but I have to believe there's some connection somewhere between those funding reductions and the president's well-documented doubts about the existence of a problem involving climate change.
The corruption of information has trickled through an assortment of federal agencies. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency suppressed health data about ground zero in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001; today, many of the responders and nearby residents are seriously ill because the air in the vicinity of the devastation was so very toxic, even though then-EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman had said again and again that the dust hovering over the attack site wasn't harmful.
The Consumer Products Safety Commission also has blood on its hands.
"A political appointee at my agency prevented my research on all-terrain-vehicle safety from reaching the public, even when deaths and injuries occurred," former CPSC statistician Robin Ingle said in wire reports earlier this year.
The Union of Concerned Scientists, which has followed the administration's doings within the research community, reports that some 1,200 scientists working for assorted federal agencies have told the group they fear backlash from their superiors because their studies have reached findings at odds with corporate or other interests.
"When science is falsified, fabricated or censored, Americans' health and safety suffer," Francesca Grifo, a former government researcher who now leads the organization, was quoted as saying.
Last winter at a gathering sponsored by the UCS, about 15,000 government scientists put their signatures on a statement imploring Congress to do what it can to protect scientific integrity. The signers included such empirical heavyweights as Harold Varmus, president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and former director of the National Institutes of Health; and Anthony Robbins, professor of medicine at Tufts University and former director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
So it's not just me indulging in another Bush-bashing rant. These are real scientists here in my corner.
We all hope that this time around, we'll do better.
http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/plainfieldsun/news/carlman/1103636,6_1_NA 15_PSCARL_S1.article
Contact Susan Frick Carlman at: scarlman@scn1.com or 630-416-5260.
Joel R Kupferman National Lawyers Guild Environmetnal Justice Committee
Religion and politics aren't good dinner-table guests, we're often reminded. But what about science?
As a regime change in Washington quickly grows near, a lot of us can't help but feel hopeful that attitudes toward the free flow of information - especially the sound, well-documented kind of information - at last will change. A lot.
Ironic as it seems in this age of instant communication, the current administration has been by far the most secretive in modern times, repeatedly going far beyond the caution called for by the crusade against terrorists. In 2004 alone, the Bush administration spent $7.2 billion to classify some 15.6 million public documents.
But perhaps the most flagrant cover-up behavior of all is the way the administration again and again has junked the findings of good research when they haven't fallen in line with the ideologies of the people in power.
This has been going on for a while. I first wrote about it in this space seven years ago, shortly after then-Surgeon General David Satcher was chastised by the administration because he reported that research did not support abstinence-only as an effective approach to sex education. Satcher's big offense was calling on schools to discuss birth control with teens and urging communities to support health clinics that provide contraception. Now, $1.5 billion in abstinence-only sex ed funding later, teen pregnancy rates are up, the National Institutes of Health reported last month. And
half of all new HIV cases now occur in people younger than 25.
That's just one instance of this president dismissing scholars' findings that he has found inconvenient. In many cases, the weapon wielded to put these pesky conclusions in their place is the funding cut. The program that monitors pollutants spewed by industry, the Toxic Release Inventory, has seen drastic budget cuts in recent years. So has Mission to Planet Earth, NASA's research program that documents environmental degradation. Call me a cynic, but I have to believe there's some connection somewhere between those funding reductions and the president's well-documented doubts about the existence of a problem involving climate change.
The corruption of information has trickled through an assortment of federal agencies. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency suppressed health data about ground zero in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001; today, many of the responders and nearby residents are seriously ill because the air in the vicinity of the devastation was so very toxic, even though then-EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman had said again and again that the dust hovering over the attack site wasn't harmful.
The Consumer Products Safety Commission also has blood on its hands.
"A political appointee at my agency prevented my research on all-terrain-
The Union of Concerned Scientists, which has followed the administration'
"When science is falsified, fabricated or censored, Americans' health and safety suffer," Francesca Grifo, a former government researcher who now leads the organization, was quoted as saying.
Last winter at a gathering sponsored by the UCS, about 15,000 government scientists put their signatures on a statement imploring Congress to do what it can to protect scientific integrity. The signers included such empirical heavyweights as Harold Varmus, president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and former director of the National Institutes of Health; and Anthony Robbins, professor of medicine at Tufts University and former director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
So it's not just me indulging in another Bush-bashing rant. These are real scientists here in my corner.
We all hope that this time around, we'll do better.
http://www.suburban
Contact Susan Frick Carlman at: scarlman@scn1.
Joel R Kupferman National Lawyers Guild Environmetnal Justice Committee
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"When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, he will either quit being mistaken or cease to be honest."
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