Think Progress.org is on the case as Henry Waxman's Oversight committee shines a light into some dim, dark, rarely observed corners of the Bush Presidency here, here, and here. Of course, this is not "news" because I remember, years ago, articles in The Nation (to which I no longer subscribe for a vareity of reasons; originally it was a temporary money problem) in which scientists were complaining about the Bush Administration working to edit and manipulate scientific data to serve partisan or ideological ends. I thought then that this was such a minor complaint that it was hardly worth discussing. While troubling, certainly, it was hardly an issue to excite the public.
The preoponderance of the evidence, however, makes the issue no longer just one among many outrages of the Administration. They refuse to discuss the geological age of the Grand Canyon; they block stem-cell research funding; they try to come-up with science-fiction-inspired methods for blocking sunlight (which proves a point I have long held that too much immersion in science fiction creates an anti-scientific world-view); they manipulate debate on global warming. All of these pieces, taken together, show an Administration dangerously close to the Soveit Union's refusal to adhere to Darwinian evolution and Mendelian genetics. Famously, Josef Stalin argued that Lamarckin evolution and genetics was more in keeping with Marxist-Leninist principles, and therefore forced Soveit agriculture to work on Lamarckian principles. The result, of course, was wide-spread crop-failure and the concomitant repeated famines in the Unkranian breadbasket, exacerbated by the forced relocation of the traditional field workers, the kulaks. Adherence to bad science led to horrific results.
I do not believe for an isntant that Bush, Cheney, or most of those in the Administration care a fig one way or another about questions about science versus religion or other such issues. Their hostility to global warming is expedient, as they choose to support a position that helps their cronies in the energy industry. They refuse to discuss stem-cell resarch and block discussions of geological time because it appeases their fundy-Christian base. They are hostile to science for immediate political gain. Period.
The problem, of course, is that such immediate political gain is undermined by the long-term implications of ignoring scientific research because it may cause political problems down the road. As long as we refuse to discuss, coherently and with a full accounting for all relevant scientific materials, global warming, we continue to make the problem worse. Interestingly, an oil-friendly group of politicos who adhere to creationism will find it difficult actually to find oil, because one needs to understand geology - real geology, not faith-based geology - in order to find it and then get to it, so, at least in this case, we have a potential scenario in which the Administration ends up at loggerheads with itself.
The political manipulation of scientific data is a dangerous road down which to travel. Science deals with discreet phenomena, open to public scrutiny, debate, and possible refutation. Politics deals with power, an aspect of which is controlling information. Completely open and public discussion of scientific matters can be detrimental to those who wish to control information in order to serve limited, political ends. We have a history in this country, at least since the Second World War, of open access to all but the most sensitive scientific information. We also have a history as a leader of scientific and engineering education. Sixtty-odd years of greatness is being pissed away by a small group that wishes to control information for partisan political purposes. Our country's reputation, its strength, its future is endangered by those who would suppress scientific data because it contradicts their political views or those of their supporters. Like WMDs in Iraq, the whole "war on terror", missile defense systems that don't work, and a whole host of other things, we have an Administration that is suite simply incapable of dealing with reality or the truth. The manipulation of science and scientific information is a special case of a much larger problem of having a truth-challenged group in power who believe that it is possible to force reality to fit their pre-conceived ideas through the simple manipulation of information. The result is the mess we have right now in our country - an Administration at war with reailty.
We need to rescue ourselves from the delusion that is the Bush Administration. Part of that process should be opening up previously closed windows and doors, and discussing scientific matters on their own terms, free from the manipulations and machinations of those afraid of reality.
Virtual Tin Cup
