Bush 'bending science to his political needs'
Scientists accuse US of manipulating research


By Alok Jha, science correspondent


The Bush administration is guilty of misrepresenting scientific knowledge and misleading the public, a group of America's most senior scientists claimed yesterday.


"The open letter from the independent Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) said: "When scientific knowledge has been found to be in conflict with its political goals, the administration has often manipulated the process through which science enters into its decisions. "This has been done by placing people who are professionally unqualified or who have clear conflicts of interest in official posts and on scientific advisory committees; by disbanding existing advisory committees; by censoring and suppressing reports by the government's own scientists; and by simply not seeking independent scientific advice."

The letter was signed by 60 senior US scientists, including 20 Nobel prize winners, such as the physicists Steven Weinberg and James Cronin and the biologists Eric Kandel and Harold Varmus."
...

The UCS letter was published on the same day as a new report from the National Academies of Science, which expressed serious concern that the US government's plans to deal with climate change could be scuppered by a lack of funds.

The US equivalent of Britain's Royal Society, the NAS focused on the Bush administration's latest plans for the environment, coordinated by the US climate change science programme (CCSP).

The NAS conceded that the new research plans were a significant improvement on the CCSP's original strategy, which was the focus of much international criticism when it was published in November 2002.

At the time, scientists around the world said that the draft strategy flew in the face of international climate change research. It ignored existing science and a great deal of its planned research would merely repeat work that had been done already.

The strategy had followed the US withdrawal from the Kyoto protocol, which commits countries to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.

It also raised fears among environmentalists that the US would refuse to play its part in addressing the problems associated with climate change.


Source: "Bush 'bending science to his political needs'". The Guardian, UK. 19 February 2004. http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1151187,00.html