Anyone follow the sorry tale of one George Deutsch?
A Time magazine cover story today shines a spotlight on Bush's relationship of convenience with science. Mark Thompson and Karen Tumulty write that "growing numbers of researchers, both in and out of government, say their findings -- on pollution, climate change, reproductive health, stem-cell research and other areas in which science often finds itself at odds with religious, ideological or corporate interests -- are being discounted, distorted or quashed by Bush Administration appointees.
"White House officials don't see that pattern of interference. 'This Administration has been very supportive of science,' Bush's science adviser and respected physicist John Marburger told Time. 'The President wants us to do it right, and doesn't want us to do things that contradict the laws of nature.' But in the past two years, the Union of Concerned Scientists has collected the signatures of more than 8,000 scientists -- including 49 Nobel laureates, 63 National Medal of Science recipients and 171 members of the National Academies -- who accuse the Administration of an unprecedented level of political intrusion into their world. 'There have always been isolated incidents where people have played politics with science,' says Francesca Grifo, director of the group's Scientific Integrity Program. 'What's new is its pervasive and systemic nature. We get calls every week from federal scientists reporting stuff to us.'
"Rarely, however, are they willing to put their jobs and their research grants at risk by going public with their complaints. That's why it was so remarkable when one of the government's leading experts on climate change, 29-year NASA veteran James Hansen, who is director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, charged on the front page of the New York Times that he has been muzzled by the agency. He accused the agency of demanding to review his lectures, papers and postings to the NASA website, as well as screen his media interviews."
Andrew C. Revken followed up on that story in the New York Times on Saturday, writing: "A week after NASA's top climate scientist complained that the space agency's public-affairs office was trying to silence his statements on global warming, the agency's administrator, Michael D. Griffin, issued a sharply worded statement yesterday calling for 'scientific openness' throughout the agency.
" 'It is not the job of public-affairs officers,' Dr. Griffin wrote in an e-mail message to the agency's 19,000 employees, 'to alter, filter or adjust engineering or scientific material produced by NASA's technical staff.' "
Revken called attention to yet another example of political interference by George Deutsch, a 24-year-old presidential appointee in the press office at NASA headquarters whose resume says he was an intern in the "war room" of the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.
Deutsch "told a Web designer working for the agency to add the word 'theory' after every mention of the Big Bang, according to an e-mail message from Mr. Deutsch that another NASA employee forwarded to The Times. . . .
"The Big Bang is 'not proven fact; it is opinion,' Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, 'It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator.' "
Well, he was finally shown to the door...
From here:
washingtonpost.com |
