Report: more lies from the Bush administration.

Bush Misuses Science Data, Report Says


By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS

WASHINGTON, Aug. 7 — The Bush administration persistently manipulates scientific data to serve its ideology and protect the interests of its political supporters, a report by the minority staff of the House Committee on Government Reform says.

The 40-page report, which was prepared for Representative Henry A. Waxman, the committee's ranking Democrat, accused the administration of compromising the scientific integrity of federal institutions that monitor food and medicine, conduct health research, control disease and protect the environment.

On many topics, including global warming and sex education, the administration "has manipulated the scientific process and distorted or suppressed scientific findings," the report said.

"The administration's political interference with science has led to misleading statements by the president, inaccurate responses to Congress, altered Web sites, suppressed agency reports, erroneous international communications and the gagging of scientists," the report added.

The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, dismissed the report. He contended that its sponsor, Mr. Waxman, who is widely known for his aggressive inquiry into the tobacco industry, was seeking to score political points.

"This administration looks at the facts, and reviews the best available science based on what's right for the American people," Mr. McClellan said. "The only one who is playing politics about science is Congressman Waxman. His report is riddled with distortion, inaccuracies and omissions."

Some of the examples from the report's 21 subject areas have already been reported in the media. They include the Environmental Protection Agency's decision last year to delete a section on global warming in its comprehensive report on the state of the environment and President Bush's overstatement of the number of stem cell lines available for research under controls imposed by the administration.

The report's authors say federal agencies have jeopardized scientific integrity in many ways, including stacking scientific advisory committees with unqualified officials or industry representatives, blocking publication of findings that could harm corporate interests and defending controversial decisions with misleading information.

With respect to sex education, the report said, the Bush administration has advanced what the report described as an unproven "abstinence only" agenda and abolished an initiative at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that listed scientifically validated safe-sex techniques that included using condoms.

On agricultural pollution, the Agriculture Department has issued tight controls on government scientists seeking to publish information that could have an adverse impact on industry, the report said. It cited the case of a microbiologist, James Zahn, who was denied permission to publish findings on the dangers of antibiotic-resistant bacteria near hog farms in the Midwest.

On the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the report said that Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton, a firm advocate of drilling for oil in the region, misrepresented to Congress her agency's scientific opinion on how drilling would affect the region's caribou population. She told lawmakers most of the caribou calving occurred outside the refuge; her scientists said the opposite was true.

 

giddyup, I'm confused by your map. Where are you? And how does another person have a Houston (fan) Greenville (where I was born) Salt Lake City (where I live) connection.

 

I updated my 'show email link' settings. I changed them a while back when heypartner was harrassing me.

giddyup, it really is a small world. I am contacting someone at Duke this next week to see if there's a fit for gradschool.

To clarify, I was 'born and raised' (until ~15 years of age) in Greenville. I moved to Charleston at ~15. I later went to college in Charleston... and then moved to SLC in 1995.

btw, who's your friend from SLC? What's he doing in Greenville? Work related stuff?

 

Oh yeah, Bush is a ****ing liar (just to get back on topic).

 

I forgive you.

 

Definitely. Upon first review of your link I thought they were the same article.

an article on washington post

Another Brick in the wall....

Bush Misuses Science, Report Says
Democrats Say Data Are Distorted to Boost Conservative Policies
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By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 8, 2003; Page A15

The Bush administration has repeatedly mischaracterized scientific facts to bolster its political agenda in areas ranging from abstinence education and condom use to missile defense, according to a detailed report released yesterday by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.).

The White House quickly dismissed the report as partisan sniping.

The 40-page document, "Politics and Science in the Bush Administration," was compiled by the minority staff of the House Government Reform Committee's special investigations division. It marks the launch of a new effort by Waxman and others in Congress to highlight simmering anger among scientists and others who believe that President Bush -- much more than his predecessors -- has been spiking science with politics to justify conservative policies in areas such as reproductive rights, embryo research, energy policy and environmental health.

"The Administration's political interference with science has led to misleading statements by the President, inaccurate responses to Congress, altered web sites, suppressed agency reports, erroneous international communications, and the gagging of scientists," according to the report, posted yesterday at www.politicsandscience.org. "The subjects involved span a broad range, but they share a common attribute: the beneficiaries of the scientific distortions are important supporters of the President, including social conservatives and powerful industry groups."

White House spokesman Adam Levine said it would take time for the administration to address the specifics of the report. However, he said, "I'm hard-pressed to believe anyone would consider Congressman Waxman an objective arbiter of scientific fact."

Several prestigious scientific journals have editorialized about the Bush administration's dealings in science in recent months, including Science, Nature and the New England Journal of Medicine.

An editor at Science, for example, recently said in print that the administration was injecting politics into arenas of science "once immune to this kind of manipulation."

And the editors of the Lancet noted "growing evidence of explicit vetting of appointees to influential [scientific] panels on the basis of their political or religious opinions" and warned against "any further right-wing incursions" on those panels.

The General Accounting Office has been investigating such allegations since some in Congress asked the agency to do so in September, but it has not released any findings.

Among the purported abuses documented in the report:

• "Performance measures" used to determine the effectiveness of federally funded "abstinence only" sex education programs were altered by the administration in ways that made it easier to say the programs were effective. And information about how to use a condom -- along with scientific data showing that sex education does not lead to earlier or increased sexual activity in young people -- was removed from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site.

• In testimony before Congress, Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton omitted -- and in at least one case misstated -- federal scientists' findings that Arctic oil drilling could harm wildlife.

• The administration altered a National Cancer Institute Web site in a way that wrongly implied there was good evidence linking abortions to breast cancer.

• The Education Department circulated a memo instructing employees to remove materials from the department's Web site not "consistent with the Administration's philosophy," prompting complaints about censorship from national educational organizations.

• Bush has appointed to key scientific advisory committees numerous people with political, rather than scientific, credentials. For example, his appointee to a presidential AIDS advisory committee, marketing consultant Jerry Thacker, has described homosexuality as a "deathstyle" and referred to AIDS as the "gay plague."

A spokesman for Waxman said the report will be updated on the Web as new examples arise.

I seriously doubt that people believe Bush is a good guy, but I'm blown away by the lack of conservatives in either of our threads, reallybaked. Shouldn't someone at least refute these claims? Has FoxNews not put out a talking points memo in response to the report?