More Bad Science From The AdministrationFollow

Editor's Note: This is a long post with lots of quoted materials. I'm sure few of you will actually read through it. But I feel better for having posted it anyway.

Back in the day, I posted about a report deriding Bush & Co for playing fast and loose with science to further their agenda. Mainly in the forms of pressuring scientific agencies to supress findings or else stocking agencies with corporate shills. Now we get this additional loveliness:

More than 200 scientists employed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say they have been directed to alter official findings to lessen protections for plants and animals, a survey released Wednesday says.

The survey of the agency's scientific staff of 1,400 had a 30% response rate and was conducted jointly by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

A division of the Department of the Interior, the Fish and Wildlife Service is charged with determining which animals and plants should be placed on the endangered species list and designating areas where such species need to be protected.

More than half of the biologists and other researchers who responded to the survey said they knew of cases in which commercial interests, including timber, grazing, development and energy companies, had applied political pressure to reverse scientific conclusions deemed harmful to their business.
[...]
Mitch Snow, a spokesman for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said the agency had no comment on the survey, except to say "some of the basic premises just aren't so."

The two groups that circulated the survey also made available memos from Fish and Wildlife officials that instructed employees not to respond to the survey, even if they did so on their own time.
Source: LA Times

Forty-two per cent of scientists in the survey said they could not openly express concerns about the needs of species outside the agency for "fear of retaliation". And nearly one-third felt they could not do this even within the FWS. The survey also found that 32% felt they were not allowed to do their jobs as scientists.

"I have been through the reversal of two [species] listing decisions due to political pressure," wrote one scientist. "Science was ignored and worse, manipulated, to build a bogus rationale for reversal of these listing decisions".

Another complained of many findings and recommendations being turned around at regional or Washington level. "All we can do at the field level is ensure that our administrative record is complete and hope we get sued by an environmental or conservation organisation," said one scientist.
[...]
At the worst level, scientists could fear for their jobs if they speak out, says Shultz. She cites the case of a panther expert, Andrew Eller, who worked for the FWS in Florida.

He filed charges in spring 2004 that studies relied upon by the FWS to make decisions about proposed developments in south-west Florida had inflated panther population numbers and inaccurately minimised the big cats' habitat needs. He was sacked in November 2004 and is now challenging his dismissal.
Source: New Scientist

Forty-four percent of the scientists who responded to the survey said they have been asked by their superiors to avoid making findings that would require greater protection of endangered species.

One in five agency scientists reported being directed to alter or withhold technical information from scientific documents.

And more than half of the respondents -- 56 percent -- said agency officials have reversed or withdrawn scientific conclusions under pressure from industry groups.
Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer

I'm hoping for Gbaji to come along in a bit and explain how we have more "forest" now than fifty years ago and that cows are the major source of ozone depletion.

Edited, Sun Feb 13 02:22:18 2005 by Jophiel

I used to work on a dairy farm...I can tell ya this, the gases that come out of a cow cannot possibly be good for the environment.

Either way, that's pretty disturbing that they're getting stiffarmed by the government that way.

I once read somewhere that when dinosaurs roamed the earth their methane output significantly heated up the atmosphere, not sure how true that is.

To the report, I'd like to believe it, but the pollsters seem rather biased just due to their names, I'd need to know the exact questions asked to see how leading the poll was. And I wouldn't put it past an activist group to fudge results. Maybe that's in the link, didn't bother to check it.

If true it would certainly jibe with other heavy-handed manipulation and pressure of the Bush Administration I've heard of. They really want every agency to toe their line, period.

Damn PDF. Acrobat tends to crash my whole system for some reason--I still tried to open those but a blank white screen is all that came up. Still, from the quotes on the site the questions seem explicit, and I'll tend to view the poll as valid from that. Thanks for the link.

I don't even know. Just tried to go back and open up that pdf to check version # and it made me have to ctrl-alt-del out of the internets. I don't have any reason to use Acrobat at all (knock on wood), but is 7.0 especially bad or something?

Save the ozone! Eat your children!

Bush is only reversing what those long haired, pot smokin' tree huggin' "Scientists" have been lying about for years. Everyone knows God put the earth and all it's natural resources here for human explotation. We will never run out and if we do God will provide.

Not that I'm going to read any of it, I'm just waiting to see how far gbaji can top it in length and useless verbiage.

Regardless of natural climatic changes, dumping large amounts of additional emissions into the atmosphere isn't going to do it any favors. The fact that there's a climatic cycle doesn't justify potentially hastening the situation when there's means to prevent it even if they're not as economicly "friendly" as simply going with the status quo.

The fact that there is a large percentage of the scientific population who thinks these emissions are making the global situation worse is, to me anyway, justification for lowering those emissions until we are certain or at least as certain as we ever are in matters of global science. Given that there's no easy way to reverse any damage done, it'd seem the more responsible would err on the side of caution rather than saying "Well, it'll probably get warmer one of these days so who's to care what we do?"

Regardless of all which, global warming per se has little to do with the original topic on hand. Talking about dissent in the scientific field over exact causes and effects of global warming does make for a convenient strawman though to distract discussion from other global ecological concerns.

I would assume as soon as he has done something illegal....

Research fraud, in this case, is illegal. Forcing someone to commit it is just as bad.

Edited, Sun Feb 13 16:38:15 2005 by scubamage

Irrelevent to the OP...but Clinton wasn't impeached...he finished both terms kthxbye.

In other words, a lot of wasted time and money.

Impeachment is the process by which a sitting President is tried for malfeasance, so indeed he was. Saying he wasn't successfully impeached is like saying OJ Simpson wasn't successfully charged - he WAS - he wasn't convicted. Two different parts of the process.