Three Way News
Your Source. For everything. Really.
Contributors
- Hammer
- Jambo
- Libby Mae
Current Poll
Recurring features
Hammer's Favorites
- Dobson v. Sponge-Bob
- Calvin, the nest egg
- Pat's predictions
- Bachmann spins Cupertino
- 205 atheists assume the bench
- Fox spins Oil for Food
- Fact check: highest taxed state
- Gen. Myers v. Reality
- Janice Rogers Brown
- Killing Field
- Kline hates Big Bird
- Vote Luca Brasi!
- Cornyn's Stalinist Supreme Court
- Rumsfeld's hidden metrics
Jambo's Favories
- Dolphin research updates
- We all shine on
- If you have to write...
- Columnist NY Times should have
- Truth about taxes
- Fourth of July
- Movie objects
- Lost in supermarket
- Dysfunctional Farmer Labor party
- Punks you hated
- Some preacher from east
- Winning issues
Friday, July 15, 2005
Is there any remaining doubt that the Bush administration is an enemy of good science?
I have no doubt that this sort of thing happens ALL THE TIME in the Bush administration and that scientists in many other agencies would report the same general problems. But this is a field in which I am tangentially involved and I have many friends who have made marine science and ecology their life's work so this hits close to home for me. Maybe this comes as no surprise to my friends in the field (heck some of them may have been among those surveyed) but I thought I would pass it along for them (and other interested parties) just in case. These are excerpts from a Union of Concerned Scientists survey of National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries Service Scientists. The full summary and links to the complete report can be found here.
Two out of five (40 percent) [of NOAA scientists] said they could not openly express “concerns about the biological needs of species and habitats without fear of retaliation” in public, while more than a quarter (29 percent) did not feel they could do so even inside the confines of the agency;
Almost a third (31 percent) felt they are not allowed to do their jobs as scientists; and
A significant minority (18 percent) of scientists reported having “been directed by NOAA Fisheries decision makers to provide incomplete, inaccurate or misleading information to the public, media or elected officials.”
...
Nearly two in three (64 percent) did not agree that the agency was effectively protecting populations and habitats of federally listed species, and more than two in three (69 percent) also doubted the agency could effectively aid in recovering threatened and endangered species;
...
More than one third of respondents positioned to make such recommendations (37 percent) have “been directed, for non-scientific reasons, to refrain from making findings that are protective” of marine life and nearly one in four (24 percent) of those conducting such work reported being “directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information from a NOAA Fisheries scientific document;”
More than half of all respondents (53 percent) knew of cases where “commercial interests have inappropriately induced the reversal or withdrawal of scientific conclusions or decisions through political intervention;” and
More than half of the scientists (58 percent) knew of cases “where high-level U.S. Department of Commerce administrators and appointees have inappropriately altered NOAA Fisheries determinations.” A substantial minority (42 percent) also cited incidents where members of Congress “inappropriately influenced NOAA Fisheries determinations.”
