Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Bush's censorship draws protest

By Seth Borenstein
Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT)
February 20, 2004

WASHINGTON — A group of more than 60 top U.S. scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates and several science advisers to past Republican presidents, accused the Bush administration yesterday of manipulating and censoring science for political purposes.

In a 46-page report and an open letter, the scientists accused the administration of "suppressing, distorting or manipulating the work done by scientists at federal agencies" in several cases. The Union of Concerned Scientists, a liberal advocacy group based in Cambridge, Mass., organized the effort, but many of the critics aren't associated with it.

White House Science Adviser John Marburger III called the charges "like a conspiracy theory report, and I just don't buy that." But he added that "given the prestige of some of the individuals who have signed on to this, I think they deserve additional response and we're coordinating something."

The protesting scientists welcomed his response.

"If an administration of whatever political persuasion ignores scientific reality, they do so at great risk to the country," said Stanford University physicist W.H.K. Panofsky, who served on scientific advisory councils in the Eisenhower, Johnson, and Carter administrations. "There is no clear understanding in the (Bush) administration that you cannot bend science and technology to policy."

The report charges that administration officials have:

— Ordered massive changes to a section on global warming in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 2003 Report on the Environment. Eventually, the entire section was dropped.

— Replaced a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fact sheet on proper condom use with a warning emphasizing condom failure rates.

— Ignored advice from top Department of Energy nuclear materials experts who cautioned that aluminum tubes being imported by Iraq weren't suitable for use to make nuclear weapons.

— Established political litmus tests for scientific advisory boards. In one case, public health experts were removed from a CDC lead paint advisory panel and replaced with researchers who had financial ties to the lead industry.

— Suppressed a U.S. Department of Agriculture microbiologist's finding that potentially harmful bacteria float in the air surrounding large hog farms.

— Excluded scientists who've received federal grants from regulatory advisory panels while permitting the appointment of scientists from regulated industries.

"I don't recall it ever being so blatant in the past," said Princeton University physicist Val Fitch, a 1980 Nobel Prize winner who served on a Nixon administration science advisory committee. "It's just time after time after time. The facts have been distorted."

White House adviser Marburger, also a physicist, said, "I don't think that these incidents or issues add up to strong support for the accusation that this administration is deliberately acting to undermine the processes of science."

Each example cited was a separate case, Marburger said, often decided at the agency level for good reasons. He declined to defend any case.

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