Most agencies of the federal government, from the Food and Drug Administration to the National Weather Service, gather and analyze huge amounts of scientific data for use in developing national policy. One quarter of the scientific research done in this country is funded by the federal government. But what if, rather than being a seeker of truth, the federal government rejected the judgment of impartial researchers and began manipulating science to reach a political end?
According to a group of more than 60 leading scientists, including a number of Nobel laureates, that is precisely what the Bush administration has been doing. The group, which includes scientists who have worked for Republican administrations, is charging that the Bush administration has politicized science - raising questions about the integrity and accuracy of governmental data.
For quite a while now the press has been reporting on situations where the White House has suppressed or distorted data in order to make it appear to conform with the administration's policies.
One famous example was a 2003 climate change report by the Environmental Protection Agency in which the White House ordered the removal of any reference to a review confirming that human activity contributed to global warming.
Another involves abstinence-only sex education, a pet program of the Bush administration. So anxious was the administration to demonstrate that abstinence-only education was effective in preventing unwanted pregnancies, it required the Centers for Disease Control to alter their evaluative method in order to make the programs appear to work better than they did.
A 38-page report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent organization that also organized the scientists' statement, lays out a series of disturbing examples of how the administration has packed advisory panels with unqualified ideologues or industry insiders, or forced a change in a scientific method to skew results.
Politics, not truth, has been the driving force of the Bush administration. From its distortions of the record on Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction to its irresponsible claims about the Bush tax cuts and their impact on the budget deficit, the White House has seen little political advantage in sticking to the facts. George Orwell would have recognized this "Ignorance is Strength" approach to governance.
The statement by the scientists demands an end to the administration's "distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends," and asks Congress to provide oversight hearings. Congress should take a hand in reversing this trend, before American science - the great knowledge base that the world has come to depend upon - becomes little more than federal government propaganda.
