A culture of politics trumping science, many say, persists despite the president's promises

[Derechos]

The use of potentially toxic dispersants to fight the gulf oil spill is cited as just one example.

By Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger, Tribune Washington Bureau

Reporting from Washington — When he ran for president, Barack Obama attacked the George W. Bush administration for putting political concerns ahead of science on such issues as climate change and public health. And during his first weeks in the White House, President Obama ordered his advisors to develop rules to "guarantee scientific integrity throughout the executive branch."

Many government scientists hailed the president's pronouncement. But a year and a half later, no such rules have been issued. Now scientists charge that the Obama administration is not doing enough to reverse a culture that they contend allowed officials to interfere with their work and limit their ability to speak out.

"We are getting complaints from government scientists now at the same rate we were during the Bush administration," said Jeffrey Ruch, an activist lawyer who heads an organization representing scientific whistle-blowers.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-science-obama-20100711,0,4320861.story

[G_j]

1. the Gulf situation has made this painfully obvious nt

[xchrom]

2. I have several gay friends who are scientists

With the EPA - it's a hot mess - and that's being kind.

From the twin towers collapse to the gulf spill
to simple things like the effects of wood burning stoves -
programs cancelled, research denied, etc.

I'm hoping this will be made public at some point.

But it is certainly not functioning in the
publics best interest right at the moment.

Amazingly they all carry on - do the work they can.

[metapunditedgy]

3. Just curious... why can't your friends go public themselves with this stuff?

Or there's always wikileaks, if they don't want to be too high-profile.

[xchrom]

6. They are all older and they don't want to be fired. Nt

[metapunditedgy]

7. And I don't blame them. It's sad how all of that works... n/t

[depakid]

4. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) released this last week:

OBAMA’S ORPHANED SCIENCE INTEGRITY AND TRANSPARENCY PLEDGE — Promised Rules for Scientific Whistleblowers One Year Overdue and Counting

Washington, DC — Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of the date when new rules to protect federal scientists and science from political interference were supposed to have been in place. As a result, federal scientists continue to report the same sort of suppression and skewing of scientific and technical reports by agency managers that occurred under the George W. Bush administration, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

On March 9, 2009, President Obama issued an Executive Memorandum to all federal departments and agencies declaring his intent to adopt policies that protect scientific integrity. The accompanying White House fact sheet described the action as addressing “one of the President’s key campaign commitments on science policy, which was to ‘restore scientific integrity in government decision making.’” That order directed the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop proposed policies for Presidential action by July 9, 2009. That deadline has long since lapsed with no new due date and without a cogent explanation for the delay.

“The atmosphere under Obama for federal scientists remains largely unchanged from the Bush era,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, whose organization works with federal scientists seeking to remedy scientific misconduct and political obfuscation. “Federal agency science is still manipulated for political reasons largely because there are still no rules against it.”

The muddled federal response to the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico illustrates a lack of scientific transparency and candor in agency decision-making. Key examples include –

* Without any scientific undergirding, EPA approved widespread application of oil dispersants deep underwater, despite the fact that these chemicals were designed for surface application. EPA even lacked baseline information about oil droplet size, the information it would need to measure just how effective the dispersant is at breaking up the oil slicks;

* The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration has flip-flopped on release of scientific observations about the size and nature of swelling underwater oil plumes; and

* EPA also lacks information about dioxin and other toxic byproducts of burning large expanses of oil in the Gulf.

“The BP spill shows Obama officials displaying scientific opacity, not transparency in futile attempts at damage control and news management,” Ruch added. “The Obama White House is seemingly so devoted to message control that it cannot tolerate discordant, off-message transparency.”

In addition, Obama policies still embrace many of the hallmarks of what had been Bush practices, such as gag orders on scientists, allowing industry to control information submitted to the government (for example, much of the data oil companies submit to the former Minerals Management Service cannot be circulated even for purposes of peer review) and resisting Freedom of Information Act requests for technical information.

http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=1371

[gulfcoastliberal]

5. K&R! The behavior of the gov't is unconscionable. nt

[Igel]

8. Of course.

It's foolish to think it would be otherwise. The only people that think that government involvement in science doesn't always have political overtones is the person whose politics is being implemented by government.

Look at NIH funding. The amount, the earmarks are political. When you allocate money for stem-cell research, it's political; when you limit the money to non-HESCs or HESC lines created by certain means or after a certain date, it's political. When you campaign saying that you'll alter the funding, it's political.

When you set a NASA project or alter it, it's political.

When the EPA has the authority to do something and decides not to do it, it's political--and when it decides to do it, it's just as political. When you decide how to implement the law and set the regulations at a certain point, you're almost certainly looking at who'd be affected, for good and for bad, and how that drives health or economic or environmental policies. When precisely that mechanism was ruled out of bounds by the court, deciding to appeal is political.

When the scientists were hired, it was a political decision; when the choice of specialties was made, it was political. It's less clear in English, where we have a distinction between "politics" and "policy", but ultimately they're pretty much the same.

So in this case the scientists, whose job are there because of politics are complaining because they believe other policies should be implemented. In other words, they should set policy, their politics should be what's obeyed. Because, well, they know better. (Most of the scientists I've known have ordered their lives no better than most others, although they've mostly believed themselves to have done a much better job.)

[FBI_Un_Sub]

9. After The Moon Landings

Science took a back seat. Heck, we have a California Lady who led the parade to give computer technology to China -- and she claims that she "created jobs in California." She killed 40,000 jobs (at least) in California.