Science, policy, and partisan politics

The Bush administration has repeatedly manipulated the scientific process and distorted or suppressed scientific findings to advance political and ideological interests, according to a report by House democrats. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) last week released a report prepared by the minority staff of the House Committee on Government Reform, of which he is ranking member. The report and an accompanying Web site were created to expose the administration's "political interference with science," which Waxman claims has led to misleading statements, inaccurate responses to Congress, altered public Web sites, suppressed agency reports, and the gagging of scientists. "These actions go far beyond the typical shifts in policy that occur with a change" in administrations, the report states. Alleged beneficiaries of Bush's "scientific distortions are important supporters of the president, including social conservatives and powerful industry groups." The White House charges that Waxman's report was riddled with errors and was politically motivated. "One would be hard pressed to believe that anyone would consider Congressman Waxman to be an objective arbiter of scientific fact," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told The Scientist. "The administration places a great amount of weight and a premium on science-based decisions, and it's reflected in our policies," she said. "There are people who would like science to go whichever way they would like a decision to go. But science is not proven by a show of hands; it is done by the bright people in laboratories all around the world who are providing us information." It's not unusual for politicians and advocacy groups to use science to advance their political agendas, noted Roger Pielke Jr., director of the University of Colorado's Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. This is because policy and politics have opposing functions: a policy perspective uses science to increase the number of choices available to decision makers while a political perspective uses science to limit them. "Politics is about reducing choices, usually down to something you've decided is the 'right' choice. It's part of the job description of advocates and politicians to politicize science in that respect," he said. "It's no surprise politicians use whatever is available to their political advantage." The real problem, Pielke said, is that the scientific community lacks a "mediating role" between science and politics. "Historically, we've tried to uphold the notion that science is value-free and politics deals with values, and we try to keep them separate. But reality is much more complicated. You can't build a wall between them; the real action is how we connect and put them together." "Everybody's in favor of sound science. Nobody says we like biased, unfair science," said Fred Smith, president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a generally conservative research group in Washington, D.C., that nevertheless is suing the Bush administration over dissemination of global warming reports, which it says contain faulty data. "The problem is that science is a discovery process, and it means all scientific observations have some level of ambiguity and uncertainty to them," Smith said. "It's not surprising in a political debate that all sides would try to find scientists and science reports more conducive to how the policy should go." The Waxman report identifies 21 scientific issues it says were affected by Bush's "undermining of science," including abstinence education, global warming, missile defense, wetlands policy, and others. The administration purportedly pursued its agenda by "manipulating scientific advisory committees, by distorting and suppressing scientific information, and by interfering with scientific research and analysis." Many of the examples have previously been reported by the media or have been subjects of editorials in such journals as Science , Nature , and Lancet . The report accuses Bush of giving misleading information when he announced a new federal human embryonic stem cell policy in August 2001. The administration claimed that more than 60 stem cell lines were in existence when, in fact, only 11 cell lines were found to be available to researchers. In another case, three national experts on lead poisoning were dropped from a Department of Health and Human Services advisory committee and replaced with people who had ties to the lead industry. The Agriculture Department prohibited one of its microbiologists from publishing research indicating that industrial hog farming may contribute to antibiotic resistance. The scientist traced the department's actions back to communications with industry, according to the report. In another example, National Institutes of Health (NIH) officials warned HIV researchers to expect increased scrutiny of any grant requests using the words "gay" or "men sleeping with men." Pielke complimented Waxman for compiling the report but faulted him for not providing context or trends. "What did [science policy] look like for Clinton, George Bush, Sr., and the Reagan administrations?" Pielke asked. "I am a bit skeptical about claims that this is the worst ever because this is what politics often is about." Intrusions of politics into science are long standing. Last month, the House of Representatives narrowly defeated an amendment that would have rescinded funding for five peer-reviewed NIH grants for studies of human sexual behavior, which lawmakers found objectionable. The amendment was defeated by only two votes. Some lawmakers and policy experts have suggested that Congress reestablish the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), a congressional entity that, for more than 20 years, gave legislators information and reports on a variety of scientific and technical topics. OTA was disbanded in 1995, a victim of politics and budget cuts. Smith disagrees with Waxman's view that Bush has misused science. "I think the Bush administration's policies vis a vis science are more confused than biased," he said. But for Pielke, what scientists should do is more important than who is right or wrong. "What matters is not who is correct, but what actions the scientific community can take to lead to common interest outcomes," Pielke said. "The messy reality is that this requires getting into the details of policy context."

Science, policy, and partisan politics

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