[IP] Election: Science Plays Politics
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From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: August 16, 2004 6:30:24 PM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Election: Science Plays Politics
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Election: Science Plays Politics
Associated Press
Story location:
<http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,64589,00.html>
01:55 PM Aug. 14, 2004 PT
With more than 4,000 scientists, including 48 Nobel Prize winners,
having signed a statement opposing the Bush administration's use of
scientific advice, this election year is seeing a new development in
the uneasy relationship between science and politics.
In the past, individual scientists and science organizations have
occasionally piped up to oppose specific federal policies such as
Ronald Reagan's Star Wars missile defense plan. But this is the first
time that a broad spectrum of the scientific community has expressed
opposition to a president's overall science policy.
Last November, President Bush gave physicist Richard Garwin a medal for
his "valuable scientific advice on important questions of national
security." Just three months later, Garwin signed the statement
condemning the administration for misusing, suppressing and distorting
scientific advice.
Scientists' feud with the Bush administration, building for almost four
years, has intensified this election year. The White House has sacked
prominent scientists from presidential advisory committees, science
advocacy groups have released lengthy catalogs of alleged scientific
abuses by the administration and both sides have traded accusations at
meetings and in the pages of research journals.
"People are shocked by what's going on," said Kurt Gottfried, a Cornell
University physicist and chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists,
which has been in the vanguard of the campaign against the
administration's science policy. Although generally not political, the
group -- which advocates for use of accurate scientific information in
policymaking -- has occasionally taken liberal positions, such as
opposition to nuclear weapons.
Administration officials dismiss the scientists' concerns as misguided
and accuse them of playing politics -- of attempting to undermine Bush
administration policies by claiming they are based on bad science.
"I don't like to see science exploited for political purposes, and I
think that's happening here," presidential science adviser John H.
Marburger III said.
Some scientists critical of the Bush administration make no secret that
they would like to see the president defeated; four dozen Nobel
laureates have endorsed John Kerry for president.
But signers of the declaration include scientists with ties to both
Republican and Democratic administrations: Lewis Branscomb, a Harvard
University professor, headed the federal Bureau of Standards in the
Nixon administration. Russell Train was director of the Environmental
Protection Agency under Presidents Nixon and Ford and supported George
H. W. Bush during the 1988 presidential campaign. Physicists Neal Lane
and John Gibbons were both science advisers to President Clinton.
Scientists' disapproval of Bush has not gone unnoticed by the Kerry
campaign. This week the Democrats used the third anniversary of Bush's
decision to limit federal funding for stem-cell research as an
opportunity to question the president's commitment to science.
"At this very moment, some of our most pioneering cures and treatments
are right at our fingertips, but because of the stem-cell ban, they
remain beyond our reach," Kerry said in an Aug. 7 radio address, two
days before the anniversary.
Incorporating science into government has always been a sensitive
proposition, given the vast differences between them. Scientists
collect evidence and conduct experiments to arrive at an objective
description of reality -- to describe the world as it is rather than as
we might want it to be.
Government, on the other hand, is about anything but objective truth.
It deals with gray areas, competing values, the allocation of limited
resources. It is conducted by debate and negotiation. Far from striving
for ultimate truths, it seeks compromises that a majority can live
with.
When these conflicting paradigms come together, disagreements are
inevitable.
For example, when a panel of experts, by a 28-0 vote, declared a drug
safe for over-the-counter sales in December, they expected the Food and
Drug Administration to approve it for nonprescription use soon
thereafter. But six months later the agency disagreed, citing a lack of
data about the safety of the drug for 11- to 14-year-old girls.
Three physicians on the FDA advisory panel protested in an editorial
published by the New England Journal of Medicine, claiming the agency
was distorting the scientific evidence for political reasons. The drug
in question: a morning-after contraceptive known as Plan B.
"A treatment for any other condition, from hangnail to headache to
heart disease, with a similar record of safety and efficacy would be
approved quickly," the protesting panel members wrote.
The federal government relies on hundreds of scientific and technical
panels for advice on a wide range of policy issues. Advisers range from
wildlife biologists who provide expertise on endangered species to
physicists who help guide the development of new weaponry.
Incorporating scientific advice into policymaking involves an implied
contract of trust between government officials and scientists.
Scientists trust that their advice will be weighed honestly, without
attempts to distort, deny or refute it. Government officials trust that
scientists will not inject personal opinions or a political agenda into
their advice.
From time to time, both sides are accused of breaking that trust. In
July, for example, a panel of experts sharply lowered the recommended
cholesterol level for patients at risk of heart disease. Consumer
groups challenged the recommendation, pointing out that some panel
members have financial ties to companies that make cholesterol-lowering
drugs.
In the larger dispute, scientists charge that the Bush administration
has violated its side of the bargain in two ways: By manipulating
scientific information to suit political purposes and by applying a
political litmus test to membership on scientific advisory committees.
The conflict usually centers on scientific advice involving politically
contentious subjects such as reproductive health, drug policy and the
environment.
Climate scientists, for example, complain they have been frustrated in
their attempts to include full and accurate information about global
warming in official government reports -- a charge the administration
denies.
The administration also finds itself at odds with many medical
researchers over use of embryonic stem cells. President Bush, concerned
that harvesting the cells requires the destruction of human embryos,
decided in 2001 to restrict federally funded research to a few dozen
existing cell lines. But medical researchers, believing stem cells
offer a key to curing many debilitating diseases, say the decision
severely hampers their work.
"I don't get the sense that science was particularly part of the
decision making," said Elizabeth Blackburn, a University of California,
San Francisco biologist.
Marburger, Bush's science adviser, sees it differently: "The really
important questions here are ethical questions; they're not science
questions."
Democrats further politicized stem-cell research when they invited Ron
Reagan, son of the late president, to speak at their convention in
Boston this summer.
"We can choose between the future and the past, between reason and
ignorance, between true compassion and mere ideology," Reagan said in
his speech, urging the audience to "cast a vote for embryonic stem-cell
research."
In any argument people will emphasize information that supports their
position and ignore contrary evidence, said Roger Pielke, Jr., a
science policy expert at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He
calls the strategy "cherrypicking" and considers it a legitimate
debating tactic. "That is different than actually going out and
manufacturing or altering the scientific process in a way that
guarantees the result will agree with your point of view," Pielke said.
Bush's critics say his administration is doing just that when it
screens scientific advisers based on their political views. They argue
that when it comes to science, professional qualifications should trump
party affiliation.
Blackburn became a cause célèbre for many scientists who felt her
dismissal from the President's Council on Bioethics in February was
retribution for her disagreements with the administration over stem
cells and other issues.
Gerald T. Keusch, associate dean for global health at Boston
University, says he resigned as director of the National Institute of
Health's Fogarty International Center last year after the
administration shot down 19 of his 26 picks for advisory positions.
He said one candidate was turned down because she had served on the
board of a nonprofit organization dedicated to international
reproductive health, another because she supported a woman's right to
an abortion.
"I was hopping mad," Keusch said.
Dr. D.A. Henderson, a biological weapons expert, said when President
Bush's father chose him for the White House Office of Science and
Technology Policy, it didn't matter that he was a Democrat and that his
wife was president of Planned Parenthood of Maryland. All that counted
was his expertise.
"I can't imagine that happening today," said Henderson, although he has
worked in the last three administrations and now advises the Secretary
of Health and Human Services.
Marburger dismisses such notions: "I can say from personal experience
that the accusation of a litmus test that must be met before someone
can serve on an advisory panel is preposterous," he said in an April
response to the Union of Concerned Scientists statement.
As proof, he offered himself. He's a Democrat.
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