LAT on "Science Fiction"

In an editorial Monday, the Los Angeles Times takes the Administration to task for several recent cases of rewriting scientific conclusions to suit a predetermined policy. The most recent example is the transformation of government scientists' conclusions that a new grazing policy would have "significant adverse effects" on wildlife and ecosystem health. In the final version of the report, that phrase was somehow morphed into "beneficial to animals." I discussed this case here, back on June 18.

Writes the LAT: "The Bush administration's efforts to undermine, ignore and edit scientific findings add up to something even more dismaying than the resulting poor public policy. It's bad enough to push an ill-considered idea - such as increasing budgets for abstinence-only sex education - despite studies that show the idea doesn't work. Even more disheartening is the rewriting and deletion of scientific truth. It damages the scientific disciplines that have held the rational pursuit of truth above all else and, in that pursuit, have produced technical and medical marvels. This country already faces unprecedented challenges to its scientific supremacy from India, China and Singapore. It's not going to help the nation's scientific prestige to downgrade the work U.S. experts do" [emphasis added].

If the grazing report were an isolated incident of this, it would still be wrong. But it's hardly an isolated incident. It comes, as the LAT notes, just a few weeks after a White House aide was found to have edited a report on global climate change, and several more examples are cited in the editorial. "These alterations of inconvenient fact have grown serious and pervasive enough that Congress should act to ensure that government research comes to public light, in its draft as well as final forms, and that government scientists are protected in their efforts to speak out," the LAT writes. I think that would be a more than fair step to take, although clearly free, fair and candid intra- and inter-agency debate over policy must be preserved, so that (in an ideal world) the best scientific result is what comes out in the final draft.

"If the administration wants to make industry-boosting federal policy, it should at least do so without the science fiction. Bush could have acknowledged that the grazing study found significant problems but said he felt the needs of a troubled industry outweighed those concerns - all without altering the findings. He would have been roundly criticized, but he will be anyway. The scientists would feel irrelevant, but at least they wouldn't see their hard-researched truths fall into a sinkhole of falsehood."

This I agree wholeheartedly with. If the Administration wants to disagree with science, or put industry ahead of it, they can do so. I'd rather them do that, and say they're doing it, than take the shady route and rewrite scientific findings to suit the conclusions. Operating this way makes it look like there's something wrong with the decisions that are being made. Imagine that.