Offering frequent news and analysis from the majestic Evergreen State and beyond, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's unconventional perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Bush tries to censor U.S. Geological Survey

The Republican War on Science (which, unlike the phony war on Christmas, actually exists, and is being waged by political hacks within the administration on government and non government scientists) continues:
New rules require screening of all facts and interpretations by agency scientists who study everything from caribou mating to global warming. The rules apply to all scientific papers and other public documents, even minor reports or prepared talks, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

[...]

Some agency scientists, who until now have felt free from any political interference, worry that the objectivity of their work could be compromised.

"I feel as though we've got someone looking over our shoulder at every damn thing we do. And to me that's a very scary thing. I worry that it borders on censorship," said Jim Estes, an internationally recognized marine biologist in the USGS field station at Santa Cruz, Calif.

"The explanation was that this was intended to ensure the highest possible quality research," said Estes, a researcher at the agency for more than 30 years. "But to me it feels like they're doing this to keep us under their thumbs. It seems like they're afraid of science. Our findings could be embarrassing to the administration."
Gee, ya think? This is an administration which wants creationism to be taught in science classrooms. In public schools. Which is skeptical about whether global warming is real...and whether it's caused by human activity, which is not even really a question in the scientific community any more.

(The answer is YES, IT IS!)

Science just isn't producing facts that fit their frame, the conservative worldview. That has led to a lot of inconvenient truths. Which is why there has to be a Republican War on Science. Any scientific conclusions that don't mesh with conservative values are simply "junk science".

The administration doesn't want to be embarrassed by its own scientists; hence this policy which essentially amounts to censorship of them. What else is a screen for? And such a policy cannot be beneficial to America because it means we could and probably will get cherry-picked information.

(Like, for example, the intelligence presented to lawmakers and the public before the disastrous preemptive invasion of Iraq).

As the Associated Press noted, "the changes amount to an overhaul of commonly accepted procedures for all scientists, not just those in government, based on anonymous peer reviews".

The commonly accepted procedure is for scientists to critique the findings of their colleagues to determine whether those findings ought to be published.

The administration is also trying to close libraries that contain tens of thousands of EPA documents and research studies. What's to hide? More inconvenient truths:
Unless you read the Federal Register, you may not be aware that the Environmental Protection Agency is quietly shutting down its 35-year-old national library system with unwarranted haste. EPA libraries are used by concerned citizens, universities and EPA staff to study critical issues such as air pollution, hazardous waste and threats to children's health.
These are unwelcome, unnecessary developments (and policies) that appear to be motivated by ideological politics. The public, and the 110th Congress, in its oversight role, should put an end to the Republican War on Science and force the administration to stop this nonsense.

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