Way back in February of 2004 the Union of Concerned Scientists published a report “SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY IN POLICY MAKING — An Investigation of the Bush Administration’s Misuse of Science”. The report has been signed by over 8000 scientists in the US, including 49 Nobel Laureates, 63 National Medal of Science recipients, and 169 members of the National Academies.
The basic complaint is that the Bush administration continually and systematically modifies, suppresses or invents scientific evidence so as to support their own agenda and political and religious beliefs. Much of the text of the examples that follow has been lifted directly from this report:
1) The Bush administration has consistently sought to undermine the public’s understanding of the view held by the vast majority of climate scientists that human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases are making a discernible contribution to global warming.
2) Senior Bush officials suppressed and sought to manipulate government information about mercury contained in an EPA report on children’s health and the environment, as part of an attempt to to avoid issuing new standards to regulate emissions by coal fired power plants.
3) Bush has made no secret of his view that sex education should teach teenagers “abstinence only” rather than including information on other ways to avoid sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. Despite the fact that this strategy has not been shown to be effective at curbing teen pregnancies or halting the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, the Bush administration refused to allow performance measures to test whether abstinence-only programs were proving effective, such as charting the birth rate of female program participants. In place of such established measures, the Bush administration has required the government to track only participants’ program attendance and attitudes, measures designed to obscure the lack of efficacy of abstinence-only programs.
4) Fact-based information on the CDC’s website has been altered to raise scientifically questionable doubt about the efficacy of condoms in preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS.
5) Information suggesting a link between abortion and breast cancer was posted on the National Cancer Institute website despite objections from CDC staff, who noted that substantial scientific study has long refuted the connection. (Note: After public outcry on the matter, the information has since been revised and no longer implies a connection.)
6) The claim that the aluminum tubes purchased by Iraq were intended for the manufacture of uranium for nuclear weapons was central to Secretary Powell’s case to the UN that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program, despite disagreement from the International Atomic Energy Agency and the DOE. A set of technical experts from the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak Ridge, Livermore, and Los Alamos National Laboratories stated that the tube dimensions were far from ideal for a nuclear weapons program. In fact, the dimensions and the aluminum alloy were identical to those of tubes acquired for rockets by Iraq in the 1980s.
7) The Bush administration created a “review team” made up of predominantly nonscientists who proceeded to overrule a $12 million science-based plan for managing old-growth forest habitat and reducing the risk of fire.
8) The current administration has repeatedly allowed political considerations to trump scientific qualifications in the appointment process. The administration has picked candidates with questionable credentials for advisory positions, used political litmus tests to vet candidates for even the least political of its government review panels, and favored the candidates put forward by industry lobbyists over those recommended by its own federal agencies.
9) According a former CDC staff member “The current administration has instituted an unheard-of level of micromanagement in the programmatic and scientific activities of CDC. We’re seeing a clear substitution of ideology for science and it is causing many committed scientists to leave the agency.”
10) In 2002, just as an expert advisory committee to the CDC appeared ready to consider a more stringent federal lead standard, the administration rejected highly qualified experts nominated by CDC staff scientists to serve on the committee, instead appointing two with financial ties to the lead industry— effectively blocking debate on the more stringent standard.
11) In an apparent attempt to block a pending report that would recommend changes in the flow of the Missouri River to comply with the Endangered Species Act, the administration removed scientists from a study years in the making.
12) An official at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) overruled the advice of the agency’s staff and two independent scientific advisory panels when he decided recently to deny women over-the-counter access to the emergency contraceptive levonorgestrel (sold under the brand name “Plan B”). Numerous FDA officials and medical advisers to FDA involved in and familiar with the approval process call the move an almost unprecedented repudiation of government scientific expertise. By law, the FDA is required to approve drugs that are found to be safe and effective. Former FDA officials stated that they could not remember a single instance when someone had overruled both an advisory committee and staff recommendations. The switch of the drug to nonprescription status in the United States was also endorsed by some 70 scientific organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The list goes on and on.
You can read the full report or an executive summary here, along with the Bush Administration’s rebuttal and the UCS’s followup response.