Scientists Decry Political Interference 248
RamblingMan writes "According to the BBC, the American Union of Concerned Scientists has put out a statement about the misrepresentation of date and a list of such interference by the U.S. government in scientific research. Besides the usual slew of Nobel Laureate signatories, they provide a number of examples besides the well-known example of the EPA's Global Warming Report." From the BBC article: "'It's very difficult to make good public policy without good science, and it's even harder to make good public policy with bad science,' said Dr Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security. 'In the last several years, we've seen an increase in both the misuse of science and I would say an increase of bad science in a number of very important issues; for example, in global climate change, international peace and security, and water resources.'"
Misrepresentation of Date? (Score:3, Insightful)
And, on that note, when thinking of misrepresentation, the phrase "Slasdhot editor" comes to mind.
politics and science have always been intertwined. (Score:3, Insightful)
It amazes me... (Score:3, Insightful)
Even when the press puts such statements up for rebuttal to our president, he goes around the question, dodging it and then says "...we have a lot of work to do for the American people..."
Scientific from religion to politics (Score:4, Insightful)
Where does all that money come from? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:politics and science have always been intertwin (Score:5, Insightful)
Funding certain areas of scientific research instead of others is one thing; actively suppressing or ignoring the results of said research is entirely another. The executive branch has some control over what gets researched, and I'm basically OK with that; what I'm not OK with is the government's control of the results.
Re:what do you expect... (Score:4, Insightful)
Frankly as long as there is money/power at stake where scientific findings are concerned, there will be biased, skewed science. Scientists are no less susceptible to bribes and threats, and no less prone to intellectual whoredom than regular people.
Re:Double standard... (Score:5, Insightful)
And the same reason you look at a label on the bottle before deciding whether to drink it... Instead of drinking something first, then deciding what it should say on the label ("joro spider toxin?")
A recent example is Iraq:
What should have been: (WMDs found?) -> (if YES, should we go to war?) -> (if YES, go to war)
Instead we got: (we want to go to war) -> (WMDs found?) -> (if NO say YES) -> (if YES, go to war)
All Scientists (Score:2, Insightful)
International peace? (Score:3, Insightful)
But international peace?
The Israelis and Palestinians hate one another -- what role does science play in that?
"Well, after looking under the microscope, we now see that they don't hate one another."
Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for science!
Let me know when science can solve the problem of people hating one another for generations upon generations -- oh, and when they can go MMORPG cheater and dupe Taiwan so that China finally will shut up -- then I'll be impressed.
Pot and kettle (Score:1, Insightful)
The Union of Concerned Scientists certainly has no room to talk about "politicized science." They were the ones who invented politicized science.
Re:Absolute Codswallop (Score:5, Insightful)
No, good public policy was never the norm, though lack of scientific knowledge hasn't been the only major reason (indeed, isn't even #1, which is "lack of interest in the public good among the governing elite".) But its certainly a limiting factor, nonetheless.
That's true. Unfortunately, almost any area of public policy requires knowing lots of things, some of which, for almost any policy question imaginable, are of the type that are non-obvious and for which systematic study is necessary to get right other than by chance.
And much of that received, traditional knowledge may be generally correct, but have rather severe limitations that don't become obvious until you try to apply it outside of the context in which that knowledge was generated. You can do that either by systematic study before you implement policy, or by implementing disastrous policy.
Of course, much of that received, traditional "knowledge" is just plain factually incorrect, too.
Re:what do you expect... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think if you look into this issue more closely you'll find that the issue is not corruption of scientists, but misuse and misrepresentation of their findings.
No scientist who acts as you imply could long remain employed as a scientist. The moment he (or she) published his (or her) findings that would be pretty much the end of it. Every published scientific study of any wide interest is peer-reviewed, scrutinized, and confirmed or refuted by many other scientists. Whenever a scientist is found to be massaging data he gets peer-reviewed into oblivion and his reputation is forever screwed. These are known in the business as "flaps" and you can find many examples of them.
Just on the practical level, consider how scientists operate in the real world. Scientists rarely work alone, and rarely are they the only individual looking into a class of phenomena. So frankly, one lone scientist with an agenda in a research group couldn't have much of an effect. You'd have to get a whole team of rogue scientists -- not an easy thing to do since Doctor Evil recruited them all to his research team back in the 60's.
In science there are few, if any, Karl Rove's. However, in politics there are plenty of reptiles anxious to suppress, distort, downplay, and misrepresent scientific findings. So this is what you get: Lackeys inserted at NASA to curtail serious climate research; findings reports edited and suppressed by the corporations that fund the research.
Re:Absolute Codswallop (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps you do not, but you almost certainly need a methodology that includes empirical tests and peer review at some point. Received wisdom -- about race, about god/godess/the gods, about how to cure ailments -- must be subjected to the same tests and the best tools we have for achieving some modicum of "truth" about the world. You don't have to argue for an absolute-truth epistemology or for modern science as the end of human progress to conclude that some ways of knowing are better than others, and that all attempts at knowing must be verified and critiqued as best we can.
More importantly, we live in a world where policy directly interacts with issues intimately connected with the sciences -- if you were making policy in 18th century Boston, you're not (except in the most remote senses) making policies that deal with the Internet, or nuclear weapons, or global warming. The spectre of these things makes science far more crucial in public policy than at any other point in human history.
Re:Double standard... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the complaint is that politics is too separated from science. Politicians are ignoring real science and creating a falsified pseudoscience to replace it.
Science, at it's core, is about recognizing and organizing patterns in factual observations. Government, at it's core, should be about a lowest common denominator - things that the vast majority of people can agree on. This lowest common denominator is factual observations.
There is considerable debate over the existence of a God entity but there is very little debate over the existence of gravity. Gravity can be observed. Governments should take the existence of gravity into account when making their decisions. Governments should not take the existence of a God entity into account when making their decisions (unless/until the existence of a God entity can be established as a matter of factual observation).
If a pattern of factual observations is indicating the global warming is occurring then governments should take this into account. Governments should always take factual observations into account regardless of whether the decision is military decision or a financial decision or any other decision.
The basic message to the government is this: "Don't ignore factual observations when making decisions."
Re:what do you expect... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Elitist mentality (Score:5, Insightful)
The same as doctors are "special" in their duties of preserving human life (even though killing off certain patients would save our insurance companies money)
Cops are "special" in that they uphold the rule of the law and not the will of a dictator (the reason Clinton could not throw all the Republican voters in jail in this country).
Shouldn't the voters decide what the truth is?
No. Voting the Earth flat will not make it so. Evolution will not disapear no matter what people believe. It will not stop raining the moment you impeach your Local8 weatherman. Voters can make up their policy given the facts, but they should not make up the facts
Re:Elitist mentality (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Pot and kettle (Score:4, Insightful)
(Of course it's common knowledge that the truth has a strong liberal bias.)
Re:now (Score:2, Insightful)
I always love it when someone is down they complain about the very thing they were doing when they were on top.
Global Warming is a perfect example
Several studies that I have seen quoted (on both sides) have faked their numbers when their models did not show what they wanted. Some have later been busted on it.
Yet people that are not climatologists keep quoting the worthless studies as if they meant something. Now I don't care what side you come down on unless you are six years old you know both side have faked their studies.
Another perfect example is when one side starts complaining about non-partisan work by congress. You know they think they are going to loose whatever the issue is.
And as several people have pointed out they take the money fast enough.
Re:Absolute Codswallop (Score:3, Insightful)
haha, you're not suggesting feed a cold, starve a fever is inaccurate are you?
It is funny how the parent assumes that everyone came from a sane upbringing where reason was taught rather than irrational hatred or any of the myriad of other attributes that make up this diverse world we live in.
Much of what we know as common sense now wasn't so common 200 years ago though and everything does need to get examined as you said, either through disastrous policy where thousands are injured or dead like Katrina or through scientific study before hand saving lives at the cost of money. Sounds like a no-brainer to me but I'm crazy like that.
I think you're right all around there, nice post.
Re:Scientific from religion to politics (Score:5, Insightful)
Note that when the church was constraining science was when the church was at its most powerful politically, thus making it pretty much the same as being co-opted by politics.
It is the nature of politics -- whether the political power is exercised by democratic governments or theocratic religious institutions -- to view everything as a tool through which to pursue the politician's objectives. Rarely if ever are things like science used to define the objective. The result is that if the science says something that goes against the political objective, then it is the science that must change.
While you're right to observe that science goes on regardless, and scientific progress is made, that isn't the point. The point is that today, right now, there are decisions being made that could use the information provided by science to produce a better decision. Instead, the decision is being made first, and the science is either being ignored or twisted to support that decision. The result is beneficial for the politicians, and usually detrimental to everyone else.
If you ever needed a practical example of how facts should aid the definition of policy, rather than policy causing the redefinition of facts, simply look at Iraq. Is it yet obvious the difference between somebody's belief as to what the answer should be irrespective of facts vs the answer suggested by the real facts has profound consequences? It was the policy of the administration that the Iraqis would welcome us with roses, Democracy would flourish, and Iraq would become a shining example of hope in the Middle East. It was strongly suggested by the facts that nobody welcomes invaders, chaos would flourish particularly if there was no plan to prevent it, and Iraq would become a disaster. Today, as we struggle to come up with a plausible way of preventing the worst-case scenarios that the policy said were impossible, I think the dangers of ignoring the politicization of science are apparent.
Re:Elitist mentality (Score:3, Insightful)
Academic freedom doesn't mean scientists are completely unregulated, in fact, there are many ethical restrictions placed on them when conducting research (and for good reason, I assume I don't have to point out historical examples here...), however, it means that the direction of the research and the publishing of conclusion ought to be unrestricted so it may come under the review of the scientist's peers.
Re:politics and science have always been intertwin (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Scientific from religion to politics (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, for the record, that was simply the last in a long line of sales pitches that the administration put before the American People, and since it stuck they've continued to act as if it was the point all along.
It should be obvious by now (and frankly it was pretty obvious then) that they never really had any interest in this agenda. The war was about control of resources. And as a bonus the war was a clever way to funnel taxpayer money - "It's your money!" - into the pockets of defense contractors, and thence right back into the Republican party.
Clever, but not admirably so.
Re:Pot and kettle (Score:3, Insightful)
They're a watchdog group whose only agenda is full disclosure and absolute rigor.
I see that you don't know much about the UCS. They're a Left-wing advocacy group whose original goal was to shut down nuclear power. Having largely succeeded at that, they then went on to other left-wing causes.
Unless you can prove they ignore the suppression and misrepresentation of findings only in a very selective way
There's plenty of proof of that out there already. Just Google it.
Their donor's list reads like a Who's Who of the Far Left. And THAT, my friend, is their only agenda. They're not the least bit interested in "full disclosure and absolute rigor", whatever the heck that may mean. They're certainly not interested in "full disclosure" of their agenda!
Re:now (Score:3, Insightful)
In any case, I don't think any research has itself stated that humanity must or mustn't curtail their emissions of hydrocarbons, only that there are predictable consequences of action versus inaction.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. If you know all about which studies are worthless, and who's quoting them, it would help if you provided some examples.
And not to be too much of a grammar nazi, but the word is lose not loose. And I think you meant to say partisan and not non-partisan. No one complains about "non-partisan work by Congress."
Re:It amazes me... (Score:1, Insightful)
As for this scientist claiming findings to be misrepresented, the people on the other side say the exact same thing. This is just more bullshit from global warming alarmists seeking funding for their "research." Everything goes back to money (it's the reason there's an embryonic stem cell research controversy...adult and cord stem cells have yielded results and therefore private funding, while embryonic cells haven't yielded squat, so the scientists involved have turned to the government looking for handouts because no investers are interested).
For crying out loud, these are the same morons who said we were hitting a second Ice Age in the 1970s and actually suggested melting the polar ice caps to stave off the effects.
Re:what do you expect... (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you kidding me? It varies field by field, and some fields are much more susceptible to what the GP is describing. Political, medical, language science, economics, and history (just to name a few) are ones obviously influenced by all kinds of cultural and political biases. And don't tell me that these are not "real" sciences, for in each of these fields one can apply the scientific method. The only bogus science today, I think, is psychology. (Flame away, that's not my point.)
Just on the practical level, consider how scientists operate in the real world. Scientists rarely work alone, and rarely are they the only individual looking into a class of phenomena.
Yeah, they work in communities and cliques, and some of these communities are heavily biased, and some of the cliques are bought out. So they have their peer review and wide acceptance of their methods and results, no matter how loopy they are.
Invented? Hardly... (Score:3, Insightful)
Heck, the cloak of modern empirical science was probably grabbed by political factions for their own ends without regard to scientific merits about a day after the first politician noticed that the whole idea of empiricism had started to catch on and have some influence. Politics are like that: any thing, religion, science, etc., that has utility for selling ideas it is associated with will be used to sell them.
Re:Double standard... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's also about politicians distorting and lying about the reports and findings of scientists. That is just as abhorrent when the politicians are distorting intelligence reports, or financial ones. So no, it's not a double standard. The politicians should be condemned whenever they distort and lie about stuff.
Re:Pot and kettle (Score:3, Insightful)
So they publish a statement saying that the earth is becoming overpopulated. They say it is therefore imperative that abortion be universally available. (Coded, "reproductive decision.")
Saying that populations are exceeding expected future ability of the planet to sustain a minimal lifestyle...that is a relatively politically neutral statement. Just saying "overpopulation" is a bit more political, but only because you aren't stating your assumptions. Saying then that abortion is the solution is overtly political, and everyone should acknowledge this. There's probably a million potential solutions to overpopulation. Why do you suppose that abortion was chosen instead of generic population culling; or enacting a global one-child policy; launching a campaign to change cultural values; MANDATORY abortion; etc.
Union of Concerned Scientists in a statement made in 1992 regarding overpopulation: "We must ensure sexual equality, and guarantee women control over their own reproductive decisions. "
Regardless if one agrees or not with their statement, it is OVERTLY POLITICAL and has NO connection to scientific method or rigor!
http://www.actionbioscience.org/environment/world
The fact of the matter is, they are and have been for many years taking political positions on scientific findings. So the Bush administration says they disagree with some scientific finding or another. That's less destructive to science (maybe not the planet, however) than SCIENTISTS deriving concrete moral imperatives from cold scientific statement of fact.
Re:Elitist mentality (Score:5, Insightful)
Back to the topic. Scientists are trusted to arrive at scientific conclusions, how can we trust the combustion engine but if they say the world is getting hotter in a bad way we should not? We should definitely challenge them by asking questions and seeking answers, but to discredit them for no reason is a very scary path to go down if you ask me.
Re:what do you expect... (Score:5, Insightful)
It needs to be remembered that government isn't the only, or the most flagrant, abuser of scientific research. Commercial firms are, if anything, worse (on the average).
Also, there's a culture against the reporting of negative findings. These are just as important as positive findings, but they don't tend to qualify for publication OR for alternate forms of public exposure and preservation.
Things aren't very rosy. Computer science is, perhaps, one of the purest forms of science around. This is partially because of it's strong footing in mathematics, but even more strongly because it's easy and cheap to check out revealed algorithms and procedures. The GPL is one solid foundation here. It ensures the publication of significant results. (Negative results are still not recorded or revealed.) I tend to think of the GPL as the scientific ethos solidified into a legal structure.
Politics/science separation? (Score:2, Insightful)
Take for example, the pressure from scientists to implement the Kyoto protocol. A decision on whether or not to implement the Kyoto protocol is surely outside the domain of science, as it is a decision that must weight scientific data on the likely outcomes of global warming against non-scientific data on the economic effects of the Kyoto protocol. Do scientists have the advisors to balance the former against the latter? I'd argue not, and that therefore their advocacy for the Kyoto protocol is distorted. We would be better off if scientists presented neutral data.
I find it unreasonable that scientists bash the Bush and Howard administrations for not signing the Kyoto protocol when scientists only have half of the available data.
It's all very well to decry politicians interfering in science, but surely scientists should be held to the same standard.
Re:what do you expect... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Double standard... (Score:4, Insightful)
Belief in the fact that water will boil at 212 degrees at sea level requires little effort.
Re:What's the scientific term for "hypocrite"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yay, since you try to turn this into a political issue, now you set the scene for the political indoctrinated biases to work their way. The republicans now can just go home and ignore the whole report, because, obviously, they are against republicans so they must be democrats.
The way I see things is that the organization presented their findings now, because they noticed a huge drop of respect for science since the previous administrations. That's only a rep. vs dem. issue if you let it be one.
This description of yours fits into the "it was written by DEMS, don't listen!!!!111" conclusion you seem to be advocating.
Good excuses for not listening to a bunch of Nobel laureates. Especially since because only about 7% of them believe in any personal god at all, so they must be stupid atheist too, right? What do they know?!
Re:Double standard... (Score:3, Insightful)
So we should respect these guys - http://www.mufon.com/ [mufon.com] - instead of calling them fruitcakes?
Or perhaps you mean "noble" in the chemical sense and are suggesting they're congenitally unable to form stable relationships? If that's the case, there's going to be a lot of bowing and scraping amongst the Slashdot community in the days ahead...
Re:NOT just global warming, by a long shot (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:politics and science have always been intertwin (Score:3, Insightful)
When writing my MS thesis, I was precise and correct and detailed. When posting on
Besides, in my post I was precise and correct; I stand by my characterization of the exec. branch having "some control" over funding, for reasons already mentioned. But I concede I didn't even need to single out the exec. branch; you win the
I mentioned distortion and suppression by "the government."
Distortion: Whoo boy. I'll start with this masterpiece about mercury (pdf) [house.gov] by Pombo et al. Then you have Mr. Deutsch [wikipedia.org]- there's distortion and suppression all wrapped up in one nice package. And incompetence. I'll leave you with this resignation letter [climatesciencewatch.org].
I like how you narrowly interpreted my comments to refer to strictly to publishing. Narrow interpretation is your favorite tool, isn't it. But I am more broadly concerned with the suppression/distortion of science in the government's decision making process. Refer to the situation regarding the U.S. National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change described in the last link. See also this book [waronscience.com].
I concur that we have it better than in China. There should be a corollary to Godwin's law- if you have to compare your country to China to argue that your government isn't so bad, you lose.