Scientists Say Administration Distorts Facts

[aeon flux]

February 19, 2004
Scientists Say Administration Distorts Facts
By JAMES GLANZ

More than 60 influential scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, issued a statement yesterday asserting that the Bush administration had systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry at home and abroad.

The sweeping accusations were later discussed in a conference call organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent organization that focuses on technical issues and has often taken stands at odds with administration policy. On Wednesday, the organization also issued a 38-page report detailing its accusations.

The two documents accuse the administration of repeatedly censoring and suppressing reports by its own scientists, stacking advisory committees with unqualified political appointees, disbanding government panels that provide unwanted advice and refusing to seek any independent scientific expertise in some cases.

"Other administrations have, on occasion, engaged in such practices, but not so systemically nor on so wide a front," the statement from the scientists said, adding that they believed the administration had "misrepresented scientific knowledge and misled the public about the implications of its policies."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/19/politics/19RESE.html

[TXlib]

1. That is because truth is the enemy of the fascist.

And this machine, for one, is very impatient to kill fascists at the ballot box in November!

[StClone]

2. Knocking Science: Killing two birds

1) Christan Fundamentalists see science as an alternate and completing 'belief system' that threatens and contradicts them.

2) Bush works for the 'Corporate Capitalists Belief System' that sees any and all things that take 'profits' as a threat to be undermined, destroyed and obliterated.

[Brian Sweat]

3. Is that the new euphemism for lying?

[LWolf]

4. Distorting facts?

It's one of many, isn't it. Misrepresenting, distorting, etc.

But don't call a lie a lie, or a liar a liar.

I originally received this link from a professional educators' group. We've known the "science" behind the one-size-fits-all instructional philosophy currently stuffed down our throat was bullshit. We've known it since the beginning. We just don't get heard.

So it really doesn't surprise me to hear scientists from other fields saying the same thing. We need to repeat it often enough to make sure that it actually penetrates the american consciousness.

[mainer]

5. Website showing Administration science distortions:

Henry Waxman's website-- a good roundup of Bush Admin. idiocy:

http://www.house.gov/reform/min/politicsandscience/