Outrage at attacks on NASA - Democratic Underground

beam me up scottie

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Sun Feb-05-06 11:19 PM
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Outrage at attacks on NASA

Edited on Sun Feb-05-06 11:49 PM by beam me up scottie

From astronomer Phil Plait's blog:

Bad Astronomy Blog
Outrage at attacks on NASA science
February 4th, 2006

I’m slow to anger, I really am. I deal with infuriating attacks on science by the anti-science shysters all the time, so I have learned not to let my anger get the better of me.

But I have never, ever been as angry scientifically as I am right now. Never.

In this blog I have complained about the anti-intellectual, anti-science machinations of the current government (for example here and here). I have also said that creationists would be attacking astronomy soon.

Man, I hate being right sometimes.

You may have read the New York Times article on January 29 about a NASA scientist who was gagged by the government about his reports on global warming (the link requires a free registration). Dr. Jim Hansen, a top NASA scientist, had interview requests about his work with global warming denied by a NASA public affairs officer by the name of George Deutsch. While Deutsch works for NASA, he is actually a presidential appointee who worked for President Bush and Vice President Cheney during the 2004 elections.

Got this so far? Deutsch had this position as NASA public relations specialist given to him by the current administration, and according to Dr. Hansen he used it to suppress information about global warming. This issue was important enough to NASA officials that Mike Griffin, NASA’s Administrator, sent an email on Friday, Feb. 3 to all NASA employees (and which is now posted on the NASA website) saying that "It is not the job of public-affairs officers to alter, filter or adjust engineering or scientific material produced by NASA’s technical staff."

I agree wholeheartedly, of course, and I also want to make clear that I think that scientific suppression is not representative of the demeanor in general at NASA, nor of NASA’s Public Affairs Office as a whole. In fact, the NYT article makes this clear, stating " and intermediaries in the agency’s 350-member public-affairs staff said the warnings came from White House appointees in NASA headquarters" (emphasis mine; in the article Dr. Hansen clearly also strongly disagrees with policy statements by the other PAO political appointee, Dean Acosta).

But now let’s get to the next part. In the February 4 issue of the NYT, the plot thickens (all the following quotations are from that article). Other scientists have come forward and talked about how political appointees have tried to suppress or alter other information from NASA in order to make it conform to the President’s party line.

Here’s the money quote, folks, the part that has me so outraged. Sitting down? You’ll need to be.

In October, for example, George Deutsch, a presidential appointee in NASA headquarters, told a Web designer working for the agency to add the word “theory” after every mention of the Big Bang, according to an e-mail message from Mr. Deutsch that another NASA employee forwarded to The Times.

Maybe, just maybe, you’re thinking, Deutsch is just being pedantic over what to call the Big Bang, since it is in fact a scientific theory. Maybe you’re thinking this has nothing at all to do with a perversion of science.

But you’d be wrong.

The Big Bang memo came from Mr. Deutsch, a 24-year-old presidential appointee in the press office at NASA headquarters whose résumé says he was an intern in the “war room” of the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. A 2003 journalism graduate of Texas A&M, he was also the public-affairs officer who sought more control over Dr. Hansen’s public statements.

In October 2005, Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. The message said the word “theory” needed to be added after every mention of the Big Bang.

The Big Bang is “not proven fact; it is opinion,” Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, “It is not NASA’s place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator.”

Emphasis, once again, is mine.

Now gee, why would that statement make me angry? Why would a NASA politically-appointed employee suppressing science, gagging a scientist, and trying to insert a narrow religious (and demonstrably wrong– the Big Bang is most certainly not a matter of "opinion" ) viewpoint into government educational activities get me so angry I could hop in a plane right now, fly to DC, and testify before Congress about these insane actions against the core of what we know to be true?

Yet, incredibly, it gets worse:

continued: “This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most.”

"Factual information"? A "religious issue"?

Did you just hear a funny noise? It was my irony gland exploding.

Read the rest of the reasons why we should ALL be outraged at these attacks www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2006/02/04/outrage-at-attacks-on-nasa-science/