I found the editorial on Page 10 of May 2004's
Scientific American unusually acidic in tone.
I take the liberty of relaying it below, as a
fair usage.
If you are made uncomfortable by political
sallies, this would be a piece to avoid.
Bush-league Lysenkoism
Starting in the 1930s, the Soviets spurned genetics
in favor of Lysenkoism, a fraudulent theory of heredity
inspired by Communist ideology. Doing so crippled
agriculture in the U.S.S.R. for decades. You
would think that bad precedent would have taught
President George W. Bush something. But perhaps he
is no better at history than at science.
In February his White House received failing
marks in a statement signed by 62
leading scientists, including 20 Nobel
laureates, 19 recipients of the
National Medal of Science, and advisers
to the Eisenhower and Nixon
administrations. It begins, "Successful
application of science has played
a large part in the policies that have
made the United States of America
the world's most powerful nation
and its citizens increasingly prosperous
and healthy. Although scientific
input to the government is rarely
the only factor in public policy decisions,
this input should always be
weighed from an objective and impartial
perspective to avoid perilous
consequences....
The administration of George W. Bush has, however,
disregarded this principle."
Doubters of that judgment should read the report
from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) that accompanies
the statement, "Restoring Scientific 1ntegrity
in Policy Making'' (available at <http://www.ucsusa.org> ).
Among the affronts that it details: The administration
misrepresented the findings of the National
Academy of Sciences and other experts on climate
change. It meddled with the discussion of climate
change in an Environmental Protection Agency report
until the EPA eliminated that section. It suppressed another
EPA study that showed that the administration's
proposed Clear Skies Act would do less than current
law to reduce air pollution and mercury contamination
of fish. It even dropped independent scientists
from advisory committees on lead poisoning and drug
abuse in favor of ones with ties to industry.
Let us offer more examples of our own. The Department
of Hea1th and Human Services deleted information
from its Web sites that runs contrary to the
resident's preference for "abstinence only'' sex edu-
cation programs. The Office of Foreign Assets Control
made it much more difficult for anyone from
"hostile nations" to be published in the U.S., so some
scientific journals will no longer consider submissions
from them. The Office of Management and Budget
has proposed overhauling peer review for funding of
science that bears on environmental and health regulations
--in effect, industry scientists would get to approve
what research is conducted by the EPA.
None of those criticisms fazes the president, though.
Less than two weeks after the UCS statement was released,
Bush unceremoniously replaced two advocates
of human embryonic stem cell research on his advisory
Council on Bioethics with individuals more likely
to give him a hallelujah chorus of opposition to it.
Blind loyalists to the president will dismiss the UCS
report because that organization often tilts left-- never
mind that some of those signatories are conservatives.
They may brush off this magazine's reproofs the same
way, as well as the regular salvos launched by California
Representative Henry A. Waxman of the House
Government Reform Committee [see Insights, on page
52] and maybe even Arizona Senator John McCain's
scrutiny for the Committee on Commerce, Science
and Transportation. But it is increasingly impossible
to ignore that this White House disdains research that
inconveniences it.