The War on Science

Nature, the most important peer reviewed journal in science has slowly been changing its editorial comments from passive political to very critical to the Bush administration. This is a reflection of the general sentiment in the scientific community towards the cases where science has been suppressed or watered down by the executive branch in the past 5 years. Attacks of this level in science have been unprecedented in United States of America.

This past week three articles were published in the journal alarming that we are at a point where the independence of scientific thought will be compromised in an irreparable way.

Science under attack

"Scientists need to recognize the potency of the threat this philosophy represents to the long-cherished independence of US science."[...] Baltimore [Nobel laureate, outgoing president of the California Institute of Technology, president-elect of the AAAS, and arguably the most eminent voice in all of American science] warned that the doctrine opens the way for "an exertion of executive hegemony over science". He called on researchers to "fight for a very different doctrine" under which "the executive's role is to defend intellectual freedom". [...] In its five years in office, the Bush administration has sought to exert tighter control of the branches of government where scientists work. This applies [...] to places such as the National Institutes of Health and NASA, where intramural researchers are used to the freedom of expression enjoyed by their university colleagues.

US scientists fight political meddling

In recent weeks, several researchers have gone public with charges that their government minders censored or otherwise manipulated their findings [...]

• In October 2004, a NASA press officer was reportedly pressured by her boss to delay a news conference on ozone and air pollution until after the presidential election the following month.


• A University of Colorado sea-ice expert argues that NASA last autumn watered down a university press release to remove mention of accelerating sea-ice decline. NASA is re-evaluating its media policies.


• Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have protested at the agency's public position that denies any links between hurricanes and global warming. The administration recently updated its website to acknowledge that some researchers see a connection.

On related news, do you remember how, just before the elections, Bush promised that we were going to Mars, and how he was going to increase NASA's budget?

US space scientists rage over axed projects

Proposed cuts to NASA's science budget have unleashed a storm of anger from US astronomers and planetary researchers, who say the reductions would cause irreparable harm and drive young people from the field. [...] Planetary scientist Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Washington says the cuts would devastate US space science just as physics was jolted when the Superconducting Super Collider was cancelled in 1993, after $2 billion had been spent on it. "High energy physics never quite recovered from that."

God save us.