Wildlife Deputy Changed Science For Lobbyists 174
fistfullast33l writes "In another case of a government official creating a 'unique' interpretation of science, TPM Muckraker reports on Julie MacDonald, deputy assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks in the Department of the Interior in Washington. The Department's Inspector General issued a report today documenting evidence that MacDonald not only overrode opinions of department scientists to benefit lobbyists, and political interests, but also that she shared internal documents with said lobbyists and a friend in an unnamed online roleplaying game. My favorite episode: 'At one point, according to Fish and Wildlife Service Director H. Dale Hall, MacDonald tangled with field personnel over designating habitat for the endangered Southwestern willow flycatcher, a bird whose range is from Arizona to New Mexico and Southern California. When scientists wrote that the bird had a nesting range of 2.1 miles, MacDonald told field personnel to change the number to 1.8 miles. Hall, a wildlife biologist who told the IG he had had a running battle with MacDonald, said she did not want the range to extend to California because her husband had a family ranch there.'"
Recommended Reading (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Recommended Reading (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Recommended Reading (Score:5, Insightful)
But you are certainly right, though. Having a bunch of scientifically-uneducated lawyers (which most Congresscritters are) set science policy is, shall we say, not exactly the best of ideas. I think this whole attitude goes back to the ancient stupidity which basically said that the king knows all.
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Can you think of any situations where a Democrat blatantly misrepresented scientific evidence in order to advance a partisan agenda? I've never heard of any. I'm sure it's happened at some point, but certainly not to the extend that this Administration is guilty of such things.
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You're right in that the scale is different. The biggest worry for me personally is the republicans push for "abstinence only" sex education, and the constant attempts to bring "intelligent design" into schools. Those two alone pretty much dwarf anything the dems have done. B
Re:Recommended Reading (Score:5, Interesting)
That comment demonstrates the "scale" of the problem. What specific point(s) of "research" and "evidence" do you consider questionable/lies?
BTW: Don't get me wrong, I agree that all politcians use and abuse dogma but the current US Administration has had way too many public spats with their own scientific advisers to ignore (and I live on the other side of the pacific ocean!!!).
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His assertion that second-hand cigarette smoke is a large contributor to global warming. While cigarettes are a perennially tempting punching-bag/revenue-source for the government, I think it worth noting that cigarettes are, at base, very small quantities of leaves. If cigarettes are a significant contributor, home fireplaces must be an ecological disaster.
This
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>His assertion that second-hand cigarette smoke is a large contributor to global warming
Where has Al Gore, or anyone, asserted that 2nd-hand cigarette smoke is a large contributor to global warming
One suspects you are the victim of a joke. Link please?
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I'm not disputing the
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This "ludicrous suggestion" can also be attributed to James Hansen [wikipedia.org], Hansen is a world renown scientist who is the head of a government department [nasa.gov] you may have come across while checking Gore's facts. Naturally this kind of "minor" political interference has nothing to do with the funding for monitoring the biosphere being redirected to putting a couple of daiper wearing adults onto the surface of Mars.
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Certainly saying "nukes are bad, umkay?" is anti-science.
Taking a long good look at the safety (no, pebble-bed reactors are not all that safe [wikipedia.org]), security (Iran's in the news again), waste disposal (still don't have a place to put it), and limited fuel availablity issues involved with fission and concluding that it is a poor choice for our long-term energy needs, is not. (Note that there are other nuclear
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go out at night and look at the sky. everything that is not pitch black is a place to put nuclear waste.
We have containment methods which are capable of withstanding the force of an accidental rocket detonation and impact.
it is not a question of having a place to put it, but a question of people not stepping up to pay the disposal fees (which WILL go down as space becomes more accessible).
in short: we could fire it into the sun or the core of a gas giant, where it will never be seen agai
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That's fucking insane. A percentage of rockets do blow up on ascent, and making a container that could survive that and not release highly poisonous waste into the air would weigh much more than the waste itself. It would cost billions to dispose of a few tons.
There are plenty of safer and much, much, cheaper ways to dispose of nuclear waste. Yucca Mountain is pretty ideal, except for those who live ne
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The current administration has been corrupting the work of one agency after another, from military hospitals to the FDA, the EPA is becoming a joke as it now looks for ways for polluters to be able to pollute more. What is really sick is they are destroying the future of th
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Engineering isn't basic science. Deciding they'd rather not support a technology is not much to do with supporting science. In fact, if these were economically viable, they wouldn't need government subsidy anyway.
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Mod parent up. If there's ever a profession that gets technology wrong like nobody else, it's the lawyers. Mind you, there is a solution. Just mandate that all lawyers must marry a geek to basically bring balance to the universe. Worked for me and my wife.
Actually this one was a scientist (Score:2)
Re:Recommended Reading (Score:5, Insightful)
Such people are dangerous everywhere but are outright toxic when allowed to tamper with the results of fieldwork.
People who substitute goodfact for realfact and own propaganda machines are inimical to democracy.
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The problem is that we have put politicians in charge of science!
It appears to me that the only practical solution then is to eliminate public funding of science, education, etc. That is the only way to do what you say. Even if you appoint a scientist (or committee of scientists) to supervise the distribution of these funds, that scientist becomes a politician as a result because they are in a strictly political position and getting paid to make political decisions.Re: (Score:2)
Who should be "in charge of science" then? The church? I guess you mean scientists should be in charge of science. But when it comes to spending money, as when someone actually wants to do science, the government has to pony up. And thus ultimately, politicians have a say; unless you're going to give scientists a blank cheque.
But I don't accept your claim that t
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So you don't have any actual examples then.
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Whatever the problems of government may be, at the end of the day, it is the people, through our elected officials, are in charge, and should be in charge.
Bravo to you for putting it so clearly. In a representative democracy, the senators, representatives, and various presidential subordinates, are not leaders. They are not even - in the ideal form of democracy - role models. Whenever I see them referred to as "leaders" (usually in glurge-for-kids, see: The Mini Page), I want to puke. The way I see it, politicians are actors - glorified lawyers, if you will. Their job is to say what you and I say, but say it in such a way that it's clean, precise, to the
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If a non-scientist can clearly present to other non-scientists a case of scientists being pressured by administrators with a politcal bent, then that is very compelling. It's much less compelling if it takes a scientist
Liberal Arts majors BS detectors are broken. (Score:2, Informative)
How many times have we seen perpetual motion reported as straight news?
For a journalist to be able to think critically about scientific subjects they should be reasonably well grounded in the subject (which is asking a lot for a journalist).
Otherwise all they do is pick a side in the argument, dumb it down till they think they understand it, then report it as undisputed fact.
So while you do have a point about presenting information to non-scientists the journalist should be somewhere in the middle. W
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Also, I have a science degree, but I'm at a loss as to how that qualifies me to research a story on the biasing of science in the fields of global warming or environmental protection regulations. And I was one of the SHARPER ones in the bunch.
In reality, some journalists are competent and some aren't, no matter what their major.
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I've never met a journalist (or read or listened to...) who was ever able to perform investigative journalism worth a damn. It seems a dying art. Journalists these days just pick a side then never deviate from the line.
That aside your science degree should equip you to ask tough questions. Just understanding conservation of energy would put you at the 99th percentile of working journalists. Conservation of energy is a basic part of any working BS detector.
For example one of the questions that should be
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That's great, only I didn't learn about it in college. I learned about it in high school. In college, I took biology and chemistry and the laws of thermodynamics were never covered.
Again, something that wasn't part of college for m
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I agree we shouldn't snub the good guys, but at the same time, it wouldn't be the 'good fight' if we didn't subject everyone to criticism equally.
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Re:Recommended Reading (Score:5, Insightful)
I read Mooney's book, and I read several of his articles. It was consistent with what I had been reading in Science, New Scientist, Scientific American, and Henry Waxman's documentation (which is where a lot of this comes from).
More convincing than their arguments is the Bush Administration's inability to give a convincing rebuttal. I also read the Wall Street Journal editorial page every day to get the other side, and I don't think they gave a coherent answer. Most significantly, when they got someone to rebut the scientists, they usually got an economist, not a scientist, and their economists seemed to make obvious logical and scientific fallicies. For that matter, the Wall Street Journal news stories pretty much took Mooney's perspective. (Science and New Scientist made a reasonable effort to give the opposing views too, and at least they got scientists.)
There was an editorial in Science signed by science advisors to presidents over 30 years denouncing the Bush Administration -- including many Republicans. Even Republican scientists said that they've never seen political pressure like this (and I saw political pressure on scientists under the Carter and Clinton Administration). The unanimity among scientists really is striking, bipartisan and unprecedented. It's always possible that they could all be wrong, but it's better than the evidence we usually have for other policy decisions (like Star Wars), and given the risks, you can't just say, "Let's put off action for 10 years while we get more evidence," like George W. Bush does.
So as a journalist, much of what Mooney does is merely summing up what highly-credentialed PhD-level scientists are saying, giving the arguments on both sides, coming to conclusions, and giving it a context. The scientists say that he's reporting their views accurately. Furthermore much of what he does is reporting on politics, and it's nice, but not necessary, to be a scientist to do that. (Gerard Piel, the publisher of Scientific American, was a history major.)
Lots of people do that, and still turn out to be wrong. But Mooney got generally good reviews in the scientific journals. He took a lot of stuff I read and made it easier for me to understand the context. In my reading, he does seem to have a good grasp of the subject. He wouldn't be qualified to do the hard science, like look at temperature data in ice cores and make a scientific judgment about it, but he doesn't make hard scientific decisions, he just talks to other people who do.
That's what qualifies him to write a book and report on this. He could be wrong, but he's at least as qualified as any journalist, columnist, or economist. Of course you have a perfect right to be skeptical, and you provide a useful service when you are skeptical. But I think there are good answers to your objections.
I don't suppose anyone would argue that the President of the United States has a fundamental grasp of these concepts.:)
Re:Global Warming is the Left's ID... (Score:5, Insightful)
Global Warming is Irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, we all know polluting the air is wrong. The earth is enveloped by the thinnest egg-shell layer of an atmosphere. Whether filling that thin memrane causes warming, cooling, or stasis for thousands of years, it doesn't matter. In the long run, it is objectively, undeniably stupid to fill the balloon with pollutants. So whether some sort of rapid onset of "global warming" is going to happen or not doesn't matter. What really matters is stopping the pollution of the air, which is undeniably a wrongful, stupid act.
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Air pollution is not a question of "is it wrong"
It is "how much is bad for you and me?"
U.S.A. businesses love countries with lax pollution laws, because it's cheaper to operate there & the pollution is Not In My Back Yard.
In the end, the Federal Government will never allow pollution laws to sig
Re:Global Warming is Irrelevant (Score:4, Insightful)
Excuse me, but you've got it completely ass-backwards: the question is, what does it matter if your economy is good, if the air is poisoned?
You can fix the economy a lot easier than you can fix poisoned air and water.
Rule number one for people in a self-contained space habitat, whether a Vostok caspule or a planetary ecosystem, is: Do not fuck with the spaceship's life support system.
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It may be in your country but there are quite a few countries in the world where social services, free and unencumbered services given to the people by the state, are even a big part of the country's constitution.
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Re:Global Warming is Irrelevant (Score:5, Informative)
Think of it like this: How good will your economy be when people take days off from work for bronchial infections, asthme, and are dropping like flies from cancer? Have a look at the heavy industrial cities of Russia and China, where life expectancy is falling by the year, and the economies are tanking because no one wants to live or invest there?
Worst polluted cites [blacksmithinstitute.org]
DZERZINSK, RUSSIA
In Dzerzhinsk, a significant center of the Russian chemical manufacturing, the average life expectancy is 42 years for men and 47 for women. Despite the heavy toll on the populations health, a quarter of the city's 300,000 residents are still employed in factories that turn out toxic chemicals. According to a 2003 BBC report it is the young who are most vulnerable. In the local cemetery, there are a shocking number of graves of people below the age of 40. In 2003 it was reported that the death rate exceeded the birth rate by 2.6 times and it is easy to see why. The dioxins that get into the water as a by-product of chlorine production are reported to cause cancer even in minute doses.
LINFEN, SHANXI PROVINCE, CHINA
Shanxi Province is considered to be the heart of Chinas enormous and expanding coal industry, providing about two thirds of the nations energy. Within it, Linfen has been identified as one of Shanxis most polluted cities with residents claiming that they literally choke on coal dust in the evenings, according to a BBC report. Local clinics are seeing growing cases of bronchitis, pneumonia, and lung cancer. Lead poisoning was also seen at very high rates in Chinese children in the Shanxi Province.
LA OROYA, PERU
Since 1922, adults and children in La Oroya, Peru - a mining town in the Peruvian Andes and the site of a poly-metallic smelter - have been exposed to the toxic emissions from the plant. Currently owned by the Missouri-based Doe Run Corporation, the plant is largely responsible for the dangerously high blood lead levels found in the children of this community. Ninety-nine percent of children living in and around La Oroya have blood lead levels that exceed acceptable amounts. Sulfur dioxide concentrations also exceed the World Health Organization emissions standards by ten fold. The vegetation in the surrounding area has been destroyed by acid rain due to high sulfur dioxide emissions.
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Most people who believe in intelligent design do NOT believe that the world is only 6,000 years old. ID is *NOT* the same thing as creationism.
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Um, actually, the people who devised the whole ID nonsense are the same people (like Hovind, and so on) who were earlier trying to force public schools to teach Young Earth Creationism. So, ID as it is actually practiced is nothing more than Young Earth Creationism. Now, the idea that the universe may be designed to a particular degree by an unknown intelligence (
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Actually, there is. It is a perfectly rational and scientifically valid exercise to ask students "if you wanted to create a planet populated with various plants, birds and reptiles, what knowledge, tools, and skills would you need?". Unfortunately, the vast majority of evolutionists decry such a question being aske
Re:Global Warming is the Left's ID... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Are you fucking serious? (Score:2)
Intelligent debate...right...
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Actually, the question at the time was one of will the increase in carbon dioxide and other emissions create global warming or global cooling? Since atmospheric science was somewhat young in this regard, a lot of study was needed to determine what the long-term effects would be. It was a bunch of ignorant j
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Challenge! References, please. Three papers (other than some overblown sensationalist popular media misinterpretation of actual scientific results) would be a good start, although evidence of anything like a broad consensus would be better.
And you're basing this on...?
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When a single volcanic eruption has the potential to put out more CO2 than all human production over the last decade, I think it's fair to say that we're a pretty insignificant factor.
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Yes, since then the scientific ideas on these topics have changed (why do people think that's strange?). However, there is still a LOT of uncertainty on how ice ages happen.
"we started learning about holes in the ozone layer, and my first thought was "wait, if this stops the next ice age, isn't it a good thing?"
The holes in the ozone layer have nothing to do with the climate, and everything with CFK's and harmful ultraviolet
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Re:Global Warming is the Left's ID... (Score:5, Insightful)
My point is that the various claims of decades past don't come near the broad consensus and quantities of data we have today. The fact that some scientists have been wrong in the past doesn't mean that most scientists are wrong now.
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Ooooh, so now the fearmongering *media* represents the majority of scientists? Well, that clinches it, then, doesn't it?
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Yes, I'm well aware that you claim that there was a large scientific consensus. I just don't believe you because I haven't been able to find evidence of it myself, and because it appears that you got that impression by remembering 30 year old accounts from the popular media. I'm saying that if you really dig into that claim to see the research that the media was referenc
Re:Global Warming is the Left's ID... (Score:4, Informative)
The point to remember, says Connolley, is that predictions of global cooling never approached the kind of widespread scientific consensus that supports the greenhouse effect today. And for good reason: the tools scientists have at their disposal now--vastly more data, incomparably faster computers and infinitely more sophisticated mathematical models--render any forecasts from 1975 as inoperative as the predictions being made around the same time about the inevitable triumph of communism.
MMOG? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:MMOG? (Score:4, Informative)
Obviously crafting related (Score:5, Funny)
"Ms. MacDonald, if you read the report you will see that the white-tailed prairie dog is clearly in need of protec-"
"NO!! I NEED TEN MORE HIDES TO COMPLETE MY CLOAK!!"
Save the dinosaur (Score:2, Funny)
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Nahh, once you've tasted human you never go back, they say. The only ones in deep shit are the ones not prepared to take that little step, close their eyes, and add lots of onions.
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Why do you think some American native tribes said that humans were "long pigs"?
Food for thought.
Isn't it about time.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I guess we could always lobby for it. Oh wait - uh, you first!
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Suprise, Suprise!!! (Score:2)
There needs to be a strict seperation between science and the state, the same way there is (or at least is supposed to be) as strict seperation between the church and the state!
If you insist that the government should fund and control science... the price that you pay is that science will become first and foremost a tool to promote political ideology and policy. That is inevitable. That i
is it me, or ... (Score:2)
government should work with the private sector (Score:2)
Government regulatory agencies should work with private industry. I agree that scientific research should not be altered, but I don't see why it was wrong for her to disclose a draft report to the private sector. I can understand why law enforcement a
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If she'd simply made the draft public that would be fine, but that's not what she is accused of doing. She'd accused of leaking the information to a select handful of organizations. Other organizations and the public were not informed until the final report was issued. Under the equal protection clause the governement is not allowed to play favorites like that.
the equal protection clause (Score:2)
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Because it offered them the chance to get their legal challenges rolling before the information was disemenated to the wider public.
But helping certain people and not others was is exactly what she's accused of doing. From the Washington Post [washingtonpost.com] article:
Republican != Conservatives (Score:2)
There's nothing about social conservatism AT ALL that suggests:
- It's OK for corporations to be more important than individual citizens.
- It's OK to go to war because you want to set an example (or any other
aspect of realpolitik thinking, either.)
- That it's sane to ignore environmental or social issues because addressing them
might possibly have a 4% impact on
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Or are you arguing that Ms MacDonald is performing an essential public service by correcting the exaggerations of her scientific staff and is just coincidentally benefitting herself and her allies?
If you're going to troll, you should probably stick to AC.
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Come on now. Utah isn't real, it's just somewhere you set your tall stories to fool credulous foreigners.
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As a side-note: Global warming is not something environmentalists discoverd. It was discoverd by mererologists that are scientists, meaning they did their best to get accurate results, no mat
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Uh, no. Only female environmentalists fake things*. Glad to clear that up for you.
*Although, being on Slashdot, I can only take others' word for this.
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Re:All too common (Score:5, Funny)
So Pat Robertson and other TV Preachers... (Score:3, Insightful)
I like the cut of you jib!
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And you have a report on this you can direct us to?
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Consider Astronomy. That's definitely a science, but it's fairly hard to repeat the Big Bang, star formation or even planetary formation with controls.
Theory and observation, that's what science is about.
You observe a phenomenon, then construct theories about it. If the theories hold true for another round of observartions, you're doing Science! If the theories don't hold, you either change them (still doing Science) or refute the observations (steppi
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Big Bang is cosmology, not astronomy.
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Modded "Informative"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Modded "Informative"? (Score:4, Informative)
Please, bad science is bi-partisan. All you have to do is hear Gore (as a recent, glaring example) state the "debate is over" on global warming. Any time you hear an absolute from a politician of any ilk you can be assured it is no longer science, but retoric.
Heck, the story right after this one, http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/
Re:Modded "Informative"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, it's telling, isn't it, that the current president and administration make Nixon look a "left-wing loony" by contrast? Of course, Nixon didn't act alone in forming the EPA, nor did he do so in a political vaccuum. The EPA was formed in response to massive public pressure in the wake of a number of highly visible environmental disasters — the kind of popular political force the current Whitehouse may be doggedly determined to ignore, but which even the Nixon administration occasionally bowed to.
Please, bad science is bi-partisan. All you have to do is hear Gore (as a recent, glaring example) state the "debate is over" on global warming. Any time you hear an absolute from a politician of any ilk you can be assured it is no longer science, but retoric (sic).
There is a near-universal consensus amongst climate scientists that global warming is occurring, and almost agree that the anthropogenic climate change is a significant factor. For most intents and purposes, the scientific debate on that topic is over, though the political debate may rage on unabated by fact or reason. No one, including I think Al Gore, would claim that major questions don't remain to be answered, but whether or not global warming is happening isn't one of them. You may feel free to 'disagree' all you like; until you've invested the years of time and effort to earn a PhD in climatology and the respect of your academic peers, nobody is really obliged to care.
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I disagree on the basis of accepted scientific method, not my PhD in any subject. That requires less than a Slashidiot level of ed
Sure you understand Popper? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Hey, make the "anthropomoric global warming" theory equivelent to sociology or economic theories, but it is not a scientific theory if we cannot challenge it. There are plenty of very good theories with evendence that point to the current heating of the earth being largely unrelated to humans, and ev
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Eh, when even most Republicans think Bush is a douchebag (even if they won't admit it out of some sort of party-loyalty; I knew Democrats who felt similar about Clinton), it doesn't matter if he makes Nixon look left wing or not. It's when he starts making Nixon look likable that we know the man has fucked up.
Of course, I think most politicians are douchebags, so maybe I'm the wrong guy
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There's this thing called "Google" thats good for looking things like this up. I hear some non-socialists use it and trust it though, so feel free to disbelieve your eyes when it returns results you don't like.
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The leading paragraph from the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] on the Times:
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Sure. The leftist media has the same thought process as you: "This event doesn't support my political position, therefore it didn't happen."
Pretty convenient for you really. Leftist news media don't report politically damaging news. Non-leftist news media can be disbelieved without investigation. Therefore, all news supports socialism! And anything that doesn't support socialism isn't really news. It must save you a lot of
Re:Science at the Dept. of the Interior? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you saying you would rather put your "stock" in a political appointee that's been caught numerous times altering government reports, in one case because she didn't want the habitat to intrude on her husbands's ranch!? The nice thing about science is you must publish your results and data for peer review. If you try to fabricate your results, somebody will eventually catch you and your career is over. But every time a Bush appointee is caught altering data, they quit and go to work for Exxon. What we need are some real criminal consequences for altering government reports. It's a criminal offense for a company to alter its books or for me to lie on my taxes. People like this lady should be going to jail.
2002 called... (Score:5, Informative)
If it weren't for lavishly funded free-market think tanks [exxonsecrets.org] the truth might have never come out and anti-endangered species activists [google.com] in the 109th Congress such as Richard Pombo [hcn.org] would have been put in the awkward position of having to make up politically convenient but dubious anecdotes [washingtonpost.com] on their own. It's a relief they didn't have to do that.
Clearly this all fits into the larger pattern of career EPA employees purging all political operatives from sensitive policy positions and having them replaced with more nonpolitical people.