Scientists Form Group to Support Science-Friendly Candidates

[n2doc]

Scientists Form Group to Support Science-Friendly Candidates


By CORNELIA DEAN
Published: September 28, 2006
Several prominent scientists said yesterday that they had formed an organization dedicated to electing politicians “who respect evidence and understand the importance of using scientific and engineering advice in making public policy.”Organizers of the group, Scientists and Engineers for America, said it would be nonpartisan, but in interviews several said Bush administration science policies had led them to act. The issues they cited included the administration’s position on climate change, its restrictions on stem cell research and delays in authorizing the over-the-counter sale of emergency contraception.

In a statement posted on its Web site (www.sefora.org), the group said scientists and engineers had an obligation “to enter the political debate when the nation’s leaders systematically ignore scientific evidence and analysis, put ideological interest ahead of scientific truths, suppress valid scientific evidence and harass and threaten scientists for speaking honestly about their research.” The group’s organizers include John H. Gibbons and Neal Lane, who were science advisers in the Clinton administration, the Nobel laureates Peter Agre and Alfred Gilman, and Susan F. Wood, who resigned from the Food and Drug Administration last year to protest the agency’s delay in approving over-the-counter sales of the so-called Plan B emergency contraception.

“The issues we are talking about happen to be issues in which the administration’s record is quite poor,” Dr. Lane said. But he said the goal was to protect “the integrity of science” so that Americans could have confidence in the government’s science-based decisions. Mike Brown, the group’s executive director, said it would be a 527 organization under tax laws, meaning that it could be involved in electoral politics, and that contributions to the group would not be tax deductible. He said it would focus its resources — Internet advertising, speakers and other events — on races in which science issues play a part. The group is looking at the Senate race in Virginia between George Allen, the incumbent Republican, and James Webb, a Democrat; a stem cell ballot issue in Missouri; the question of intelligent design in Ohio; and Congressional races in Washington State, Mr. Brown said.

In what it described as a Bill of Rights for scientists and engineers, the group said that researchers who receive federal funds should be free to discuss their work publicly, and that appointments to federal scientific advisory committees should be based on scientific qualifications, not political beliefs. It said the government should not support science education programs that “include concepts that are derived from ideology,” an apparent reference to creationism and its ideological cousin, intelligent design. And it said the government should not publish false or misleading scientific information, something Dr. Wood said occurred when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention briefly posted an item on its Web site suggesting that abortion was linked to breast cancer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/us/politics/28science.html

[JohnnyLib2]

1. Getting out my checkbook

this is really needed, now that all of American life has been cast in Roviavellian terms.

[DaedalusSW]

2. Neo-Con Twisting of Science Attacked by New Book

Neo-Con Twisting of Science Attacked by New Book

Question: What do the following have in common: George W. Bush, Leon Kass, Milton Friedman, Charles Krauthammer, Francis Fukuyama, William Kristol, Arthur R. Jensen, Steven Pinker, Dwight J. Ingle, William B. Shockley, Senator James M. Inhofe, Frederick Seitz, the food industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the longevity industry, the tobacco industry, creationism, racist psychology, chiropractics, and alternative medicine? Answer: They are all attacked by Dan Agin in his new book JUNK SCIENCE: How Politicians, Corporations, and Other Hucksters Betray Us.

In a new book expected to be a political bombshell, Dan Agin, neuroscientist and editor of a science journal (ScienceWeek), uses heavy artillery to attack Milton Friedman, Charles Krauthammer, Francis Fukuyama, Leon Kass, and other conservatives for twisting science against the public interest to serve political agendas.

Agin says that during the next thirty years the American public will suffer from a rampage against reason by special interests in government, commerce, and the faith industry, and the rampage has already begun. In the new book, titled JUNK SCIENCE: How Politicians, Corporations, and Other Hucksters Betray Us, Agin offers a stinging condemnation of the constant warping of science for ideological gain.

A "centrist" who considers himself neither a leftist nor a rightist, Agin argues from the center that we will pay a heavy price for the follies of people who consciously twist the public´s understanding of the real world.

Agin separates fact from conveniently "scientific" fiction and exposes the data faking, reality-ignoring, fear-mongering, and outright lying that contribute to intentionally manufactured public ignorance. Many factions twist scientific data to maintain riches and power, and Agin outs them all in sections devoted to genetically modified foods, aging, tobacco companies chiropractics, health care, talk therapy, pollution, warfare, global warming, religion, embryos, cloning, genes, behavior, and race.

According to Agin, we already pay a heavy price for many groups´ conscious manipulation of the public´s understanding of science, and the purpose of the new book is to arm us with awareness of manipulations and cut through the fabric of lies to set the record straight.

JUNK SCIENCE: How Politicians, Corporations, and Other Hucksters Betray Us. Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2006. 336 pp. $24.95, C$33.95. (Publication date: October 3, 2006)

[Jim__]

3. That's good news!

The anti-science,pro-ignorance crowd may launch an attack against this group; and, unfortunately, they could win that fight. But, it's time to address the issue directly.

[bananas]

4. Only one woman on the board of advisors?

http://www.sefora.org/about.php

Who We Are

SEA is a grassroots organization with more than than 2,500 members. It is led by a Board of Advisors comprised of a number of America's leading scientists including:

*Peter Agre, Ph.D. (Chemistry, 2003)
Brian Athey, Ph.D.
*James W. Cronin, Ph.D. (Physics, 1980)
*Johan Diesenhofer, Ph.D. (Chemistry, 1988)
John H. Gibbons, Ph.D.
*Alfred Gilman, M.D., Ph.D. (Medicine, 1994)
Daniel L. Goroff, Ph.D.
Henry Kelly, Ph.D.
Neal Lane, Ph.D.
Michael MacCracken, Ph.D.
*Douglas D. Osheroff, Ph.D. (Physics, 1996)
*Martin Perl, Ph.D. (Physics, 1995)
*Norman F. Ramsey, Ph.D. (Physics, 1989)
*Burton Richter, Ph.D. (Physics, 1976)
Michael Stebbins, Ph.D.
Thomas C. Südhof, M.D.
Ellen Vitetta, Ph.D.
Susan F. Wood, Ph.D.

* Designates Nobel Laureate