Scientists Say Administration Distorts Facts - NYT

[Wonk]

By JAMES GLANZ
Published: February 19, 2004

More than 60 influential scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, issued a statement yesterday asserting that the Bush administration had systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry at home and abroad.

The sweeping accusations were later discussed in a conference call organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent organization that focuses on technical issues and has often taken stands at odds with administration policy. On Wednesday, the organization also issued a 38-page report detailing its accusations.

The two documents accuse the administration of repeatedly censoring and suppressing reports by its own scientists, stacking advisory committees with unqualified political appointees, disbanding government panels that provide unwanted advice and refusing to seek any independent scientific expertise in some cases.

"Other administrations have, on occasion, engaged in such practices, but not so systemically nor on so wide a front," the statement from the scientists said, adding that they believed the administration had "misrepresented scientific knowledge and misled the public about the implications of its policies."

more...

LBN thread

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/rsi/rsirelease.html

Among the statement signers are:

Philip W. Anderson*†
David Baltimore*†
Paul Berg*†
Lewis Branscomb
Thomas Eisner*
Jerome Friedman†
Richard Garwin*
Walter Kohn*†
Neal Lane
Leon Lederman*†
Mario Molina†
W.K.H. Panofsky*
F. Sherwood Rowland†
J. Robert Schrieffer*†
Richard Smalley†
Harold E. Varmus*†
Steven Weinberg*†
E.O. Wilson*

* National Medal of Science
† Nobel laureate

[LWolf]

1. They are a big proponent of systematically

crushing everyone and everything in their path, no matter how often their methods have been debunked. What is amazing is the scope they work on. Not one agenda at a time, but multiple frontal assaults. On the environment. On instructional theory/philosophy. On the food supply. On energy. It's all science, so everybody just stfu and get with the program. No matter that it's bad science, or that good science debunks it. Get with the program.