political interference

Today, the Nobel Committee announced the winners of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, equally shared between Elizabeth Blackburn of UCSF, Carol Greider of Johns Hopkins, and Jack Szostak of Harvard Medical School--all three American. This year's prize was awarded for the discovery of telomeres, the repeated sequences of DNA at the ends of chromosomes that protect the integrity of the chromosomal DNA, and for the discovery of telomerase, the enzyme that builds the telomeres. This prize recognizes seminal work in molecular genetics and biology that unlocked some of the basic…
Earlier today, President Barack Obama delivered a major speech on science policy to the National Academy of Sciences. Read more about it in my previous post. Now, though, Andy Revkin of Dot Earth is trying to annotate the speech with relevant background information. Go help him out by providing relevant information in the comments section of his blog post. I already submitted a comment about Obama's reference to his March 9th memo on political interference in science: President Obama refers to a March 9th memo, which can be found at http://tr.im/jOUz. The memo emphasized his…
In discussions lamenting modern day political interference in science and the less-than-prominent role science plays in formulating policy, bringing back the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) is commonly offered as a key facet of any comprehensive solution. And, this is for good reason, as Gerald L. Epstein explains in a new article at Science Progress: Over its history, OTA informed members of Congress and their staffs and helped shape legislation. But its reports played a far wider role. Since they explained complicated technical concepts to a non-technical audience, they…
Today was a great day for science in the Executive Branch. Firstly, President Barack Obama (finally!) lifted George W. Bush's August 2001 restrictions on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research in an executive order entitled "Removing Barriers to Responsible Scientific Research Involving Human Stem Cells": The purpose of this order is to remove these limitations on scientific inquiry, to expand NIH support for the exploration of human stem cell research, and in so doing to enhance the contribution of America's scientists to important new discoveries and new therapies for the…
Clearly, I owe my readers some true post-election analysis--something that has been slowed down by the insanely busy schedule I've been keeping in the lab and the totally overwhelming implications of the fantastic and historic recent election of Barack Obama. In the meantime, though, I'd like to point out a particularly insidious aspect of the Bush legacy that has so far gone underreported, although it has been publicized by AAAS president James McCarthy and was recently reported in The Washington Post: The president of the nation's largest general science organization yesterday sharply…
A week after a major report found widespread Bush Administration political interference with science in the EPA, the Chicago Tribune reported late this week that the Administration has forced the resignation of Mary Gade, head of the EPA's Midwest office: SAGINAW, Mich. - The battle over dioxin contamination in this economically stressed region had been raging for years when a top Bush administration official turned up the pressure on Dow Chemical to clean it up. On Thursday, following months of internal bickering over Mary Gade's interactions with Dow, the administration forced her to quit…
When the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) last week released a report detailing widespread political interference in science at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), I almost didn't blog about it, since the fact that political interference runs rampant in the Bush Administration shouldn't be news to anyone. And, since this interference is occasionally motivated by political or religious ideology but much more often driven by the disproportionate protection of the business interests of the Administration's industry supporters, one would expect political interference at the EPA to be…
Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum of The Intersection (along with Derek Araujo, Matthew Chapman, Austin Dacey, Lawrence Krauss, Shawn Lawrence Otto, and John Rennie) are spearheading a grassroots movement called Sciencedebate 2008 to try to convince the powers that be of the need for a presidential debate on science in 2008. For a comprehensive list of the reasons why this is a good idea, I would have to rehash almost everything I've written on this blog... and then some. The point is that science is playing a growing role in society and politics, affecting in some way almost every issue…
Another example of Bush Administration political interference in science came out in October 2006, when it was discovered that Julie MacDonald, the deputy assistant secretary of the interior for fish and wildlife and parks (a political appointee), had actively censored scientific information and inappropriately elevated industry concerns to prevent new additions to the Endangered Species list. MacDonald resigned in May 2007, and now the Interior Department is reviewing eight of her decisions. As The New York Times reports today, these are likely to be overturned: The Interior Department…
I meant to comment on this when I originally read it in the New York Times article on the political suppression by the Bush Administration of former Surgeon General Richard Carmona: Emily Lawrimore, a White House spokeswoman, said the surgeon general "is the leading voice for the health of all Americans." "It's disappointing to us," Ms. Lawrimore said, "if he failed to use this position to the fullest extent in advocating for policies he thought were in the best interests of the nation." "Yes, it's your fault, Mr. Surgeon General, that our political interference kept you from doing your job…
Add one more to the list. Yesterday, former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona testified before congress that he was subjected to extensive and systematic political interference in his work by the Bush Administration. From Gardiner Harris of The New York Times: Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona told a Congressional panel Tuesday that top Bush administration officials repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations. The administration, Dr. Carmona said, would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency…
Last week I mentioned an upcoming hearing by the Congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to "Examine Allegations of Political Interference with Government Climate Change Science." The hearing happened on Monday (19 March), and it even got a bit of media coverage in the process. The testimony of the witnesses can be downloaded here. I reported last week that a video would also be available on the site (as this is what I was told by the person who informed me about the hearing), and looking at past hearings, this seems to be the standard policy. Since no video has yet been…
First, the good news, though. Phil Plait (of the Bad Astronomy Blog) reports today at The Huffington Post that the House just passed HR 985, the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act. As he notes, scientists have plenty of reasons to be happy about this: Scientists in government agencies (NASA, NOAA, FDA, etc), laboring for years under the heavy cloud of scientific suppression, can now feel safer if they want to call foul. And call foul they will, since there has been cripplingly obvious, sweeping, and routine suppression of scientific findings for the past few years. There's no need…
(See update here.) The Congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform--chaired by Henry Waxman--will hold part two of its "Hearing to Examine Allegations of Political Interference with Government Climate Change Science" on Monday, 19 March, at 10:00 am EST. The full witness list is supposed to be made available later today (Update: It looks like the list isn't going to be posted today, but hopefully it will be sometime soon). To see it (once it's posted), and to watch the video of the hearing (once the hearing has begun), go to the committee's schedule page. The witness list…
Although the Bush Administration has already proven itself pretty effective at interfering with science and regulation through existing channels, yesterday's New York Times reports that this wasn't quite enough: President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy. In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political…
One of the most significant anticipated results for many--particularly within the scientific community--of a Democratic victory on Election Day was going to be a new-found ability to hold in check the Bush Administration and its penchant for political interference in science. It appears that the Democrats are looking to make good on their promise, and to do so in an impressively proactive way, by making oversight of the Bush Administration a top priority for the incoming Congress. This oversight will include taking on political interference in science and environmental issues, as Roll Call…
Yesterday's Washington Post reported that several environmental groups have obtained strong evidence that Bush Administration political appointee and deputy assistant secretary of the interior for fish and wildlife and parks Julie MacDonald has actively censored scientific information and given elevated and inappropriate consideration to non-environmental concerns in order to prevent the adding of new species to the Endangered Species list. The Union of Concerned Scientists, one of the original organizations to make the revelation, has detailed information on the actions of MacDonald and…
Last month, a group of prominent scientists launched the new organization Scientists and Engineers for America (SEA). The organization has already received quite a bit of press (including a nice article in The New York Times, but I would be remiss if I didn't give them a shout out and let readers know how they can help out. The group is dedicated to supporting science-friendly candidates for public office, pushing for the proper use of science in formulating science policy, and opposing political interference in science. Among the points in its "Bill of Rights for Scientists and Engineers"…
...since Bush announced his restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, according to SexDrugsandDNA.com. Well, not exactly, but close enough. I think it's actually been five years and seventeen days, but who's counting? ... Ummm... anyways.... From the site that brought us the Bill Frist Stem Cell Clock, now comes (you guessed it) the George Bush Stem Cell Clock. Michael Stebbins, who kept pressure on Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist during his year-long delay of HR 810 has now set his sights on President Bush, whose veto of the eventually passed HR 810 is the one obstacle standing…
...Or at least that's the impression that college freshmen with US Department of Education Smart Grants are getting, the The Chronicle of Higher Education reported Tuesday: Like a gap in the fossil record, evolutionary biology is missing from a list of majors that the U.S. Department of Education has deemed eligible for a new federal grant program designed to reward students majoring in engineering, mathematics, science, or certain foreign languages.... The awards in question -- known as Smart Grants, for the National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent program -- were created by…