By MATT CRENSON
The Associated Press
Last November, President Bush gave physicist Richard Garwin a medal for his
"valuable scientific advice on important questions of national security." Just
three months later, Garwin signed a statement condemning the Bush
administration for misusing, suppressing and distorting scientific advice.
So far more than 4,000 scientists, including 48 Nobel prize winners, have put
their names to the declaration.
The scientists' statement represents a new development in the uneasy
relationship between science and politics. In the past, individual scientists
and science organizations have occasionally piped up to oppose specific federal
policies such as Ronald Reagan's Star Wars missile defense plan.
But this is the first time that a broad spectrum of the scientific community has
expressed opposition to a president's overall science policy.
Scientists' feud with the Bush administration, building for almost four years,
has intensified this election year. The White House has sacked prominent
scientists from presidential advisory committees, science advocacy groups have
released lengthy catalogues of alleged scientific abuses by the administration
and both sides have traded accusations at meetings and in the pages of research
journals.
"People are shocked by what's going on," said Kurt Gottfried, a Cornell
University physicist and chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, which
has been in the vanguard of the campaign against the administration's science
policy. Although generally not political, the group - which advocates for use
of accurate scientific information in policymaking - has occasionally taken
liberal positions, such as opposition to nuclear weapons.
Administration officials dismiss the scientists' concerns as misguided and
accuse them of playing politics - of attempting to undermine Bush
administration policies by claiming they are based on bad science.
"I don't like to see science exploited for political purposes, and I think
that's happening here," presidential science adviser John H. Marburger III said
in a telephone interview.
Some scientists critical of the Bush administration make no secret that they
would like to see the president defeated; four dozen Nobel laureates have
endorsed John Kerry for president.
But signers of the declaration include scientists with ties to both Republican
and Democratic administrations: Lewis Branscomb, a Harvard University
professor, headed the federal Bureau of Standards in the Nixon administration.
Russell Train was director of the Environmental Protection Agency under
Presidents Nixon and Ford and supported George H. W. Bush during the 1988
presidential campaign. Physicists Neal Lane and John Gibbons were both science
advisers to President Clinton.
Scientists' disapproval of Bush has not gone unnoticed by the Kerry campaign.
This week the Democrats used the third anniversary of Bush's decision to limit
federal funding for stem cell research as an opportunity to question the
president's commitment to science.
"At this very moment, some of our most pioneering cures and treatments are right
at our fingertips, but because of the stem cell ban, they remain beyond our
reach," Kerry said in an Aug. 7 radio address, two days before the anniversary.
Incorporating science into government has always been a sensitive proposition,
given the vast differences between them.
Scientists collect evidence and conduct experiments to arrive at an objective
description of reality - to describe the world as it is rather than as we might
want it to be.
Government, on the other hand, is about anything but objective truth. It deals
with gray areas, competing values, the allocation of limited resources. It is
conducted by debate and negotiation. Far from striving for ultimate truths, it
seeks compromises that a majority can live with.
When these conflicting paradigms come together, disagreements are inevitable.
For example, when a panel of experts, by a 28-0 vote, declared a drug safe for
over-the-counter sales in December, they expected the Food and Drug
Administration to approve it for nonprescription use soon thereafter.
But six months later the agency disagreed, citing a lack of data about the
safety of the drug for 11- to 14-year-old girls.
Three physicians on the FDA advisory panel protested in an editorial published
by the New England Journal of Medicine, claiming the agency was distorting the
scientific evidence for political reasons.
The drug in question: a morning-after contraceptive known as Plan B.
"A treatment for any other condition, from hangnail to headache to heart
disease, with a similar record of safety and efficacy would be approved
quickly," the protesting panel members wrote.
The federal government relies on hundreds of scientific and technical panels for
advice on a wide range of policy issues. Advisers range from wildlife
biologists who provide expertise on endangered species to physicists who help
guide the development of new weaponry.
Incorporating scientific advice into policymaking involves an implied contract
of trust between government officials and scientists. Scientists trust that
their advice will be weighed honestly, without attempts to distort, deny or
refute it. Government officials trust that scientists will not inject personal
opinions or a political agenda into their advice.
From time to time, both sides are accused of breaking that trust. In July, for
example, a panel of experts sharply lowered the recommended cholesterol level
for patients at risk of heart disease. Consumer groups challenged the
recommendation, pointing out that some panel members have financial ties to
companies that make cholesterol-lowering drugs.
In the larger dispute, scientists charge that the Bush administration has
violated its side of the bargain in two ways: By manipulating scientific
information to suit political purposes and by applying a political litmus test
to membership on scientific advisory committees.
The conflict usually centers on scientific advice involving politically
contentious subjects such as reproductive health, drug policy and the
environment.
Climate scientists, for example, complain they have been frustrated in their
attempts to include full and accurate information about global warming in
official government reports - a charge the administration denies.
The administration also finds itself at odds with many medical researchers over
use of embryonic stem cells. President Bush, concerned that harvesting the
cells requires the destruction of human embryos, decided in 2001 to restrict
federally funded research to a few dozen existing cell lines. But medical
researchers, believing stem cells offer a key to curing many debilitating
diseases, say the decision severely hampers their work.
"I don't get the sense that science was particularly part of the decision
making," said Elizabeth Blackburn, a University of California, San Francisco
biologist.
Marburger, Bush's science adviser, sees it differently: "The really important
questions here are ethical questions; they're not science questions."
Democrats further politicized stem cell research when they invited Ron Reagan,
son of the late president, to speak at their convention in Boston this summer.
"We can choose between the future and the past, between reason and ignorance,
between true compassion and mere ideology," Reagan said in his speech, urging
the audience to "cast a vote for embryonic stem cell research."
In any argument people will emphasize information that supports their position
and ignore contrary evidence, said Roger Pielke, Jr., a science policy expert
at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He calls the strategy "cherrypicking"
and considers it a legitimate debating tactic.
"That is different than actually going out and manufacturing or altering the
scientific process in a way that guarantees the result will agree with your
point of view," Pielke said.
Bush's critics say his administration is doing just that when it screens
scientific advisers based on their political views. They argue that when it
comes to science, professional qualifications should trump party affiliation.
Blackburn became a cause celebre for many scientists who felt her dismissal from
the President's Council on Bioethics in February was retribution for her
disagreements with the administration over stem cells and other issues.
Gerald T. Keusch, associate dean for global health at Boston University, says he
resigned as director of the National Institute of Health's Fogarty
International Center last year after the administration shot down 19 of his 26
picks for advisory positions.
He said one candidate was turned down because she had served on the board of a
nonprofit organization dedicated to international reproductive health, another
because she supported a woman's right to an abortion.
"I was hopping mad," Keusch said.
Dr. D.A. Henderson, a biological weapons expert, said that when President Bush's
father chose him for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy,
it didn't matter that he was a Democrat and that his wife was president of
Planned Parenthood of Maryland. All that counted was his expertise.
"I can't imagine that happening today," said Henderson, although he has worked
in the last three administrations and now advises the Secretary of Health and
Human Services.
Marburger dismisses such notions: "I can say from personal experience that the
accusation of a litmus test that must be met before someone can serve on an
advisory panel is preposterous," he said in an April response to the Union of
Concerned Scientists statement.
As proof, he offered himself. He's a Democrat.
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/247-08142004-348128.html
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