What do you all think? Does the administration “cherry pick” and manipulate science in a manner comparable to the way it is accused of handling intelligence about Iraq?
In short, does the Bush administration allow political and idealogical objectives to overrule science (and tangentially, intelligence)?
Is this group of scientists presenting a issue which should be taken seriously by the public?
The Bush Administration lacks all intellectual integrity and will say any damned thing to justify doing what it wants to do in the first place. That does not mean the administration is “anti-science” in any committed or ideological way. If, say, Judge Roy Moore became president, his administration would be anti-science on principle, at least as regards biological evolution, etc., and probably would not be generous in funding scientific research.
They’re not so much anti-science as they are just liars.
Of coures, W. thinks that 'the jury is still out" on evolution so it’s not he like he has even a junior high school understanding of science to begin with.
ISTM this administration is not so much anti-science as it is pro-faith. That is, there’s a certain foundational worldview that is held to regardless of opposing argument. This administration is profoundly postmodern in their approach to discourse: they reject information which conflicts with their foundations on the grounds that all interpretation is subjective. Factuality is not really important to them, adherence to their worldview is, as this reinforces power and advantage. Hence, inconvenient facts are dealt with on the same level as contrary opinion; nothing is absolute, therefore all interpretations are equally supportable. Naturally then, they support those which align with the favored worldview and reject the others.
Their attitude towards science is the same as their attitude towards intelligence and economics. Their mind is made up, and they will filter, ignore and discard any evidence pointing to the contrary. They are more a-scientific than anti-science - they’d tell you they love the 1% of scientists who support whatever their view is.
Nothing new - remember how long it took them to get a science advisor. I’d love to hear something from people who turned down the job.
That’s exactly what I was thinking when I saw this thread… that they “cherry-pick” (as the OP says) the science they agree with just means that they don’t see science as particularly valuable for their ends and for the most part, they ignore it. I don’t see them as aggressively working against science in any organized way.
What Voyager and xenophon41 said. pervert and I had a discussion of this (among other discussions going on) in this thread (most of the stuff in on the 2nd page of that thread). Below, I re-post is some relevant information and cites I posted there:
Actually, here is a site prepared by Democratic Senator Henry Waxman concerning science in the Bush Administration. Sure it is a partisan site but some of the basic points have been endorsed, for example, in an editorial in Nature [Vol 424, p. 861 (Aug 21, 2003)], which along with Science are almost certaionly the two most prestigious multidisciplinary science journals in the world. The title of the editorial was “No way to run a superpower” and the last paragraph reads “On major policy issues such as global warming, ballistic-missile defence and stem-cell research, Bush committed early on to an ideologically driven approach and has stuck to it. In an age when science pervades so many aspects of government, this is a remarkable, and remarkably ill-judged, approach t setting policy.” It was written just after the release of the full report that Waxman put out and while it doesn’t accept the report uncritically, it notes that it deserves to be taken seriously and its points responded to but that so far the Administration had not taken it seriously at all but had summarily dismissed it by saying Waxman was just “playing politics”.
By the way, fortunately the federal courts have been increasingly blocking Bush environmental rule changes on the basis of them flauting either the rule-making process or the science. Here is a New York Times editorial on the latest example, rules regarding efficiency standards for air conditioners.
…
Lest I leave people with the impression that it is only the editors of the British journal Nature who have taken the Bush Administration to task for its politicization of science, I’ll add that the Editor-in-Chief of Science has also weighed in strongly on this point in an [url=]editorial titled “Epidemic of Politics”:
[See the full editorial for the paragraphs of examples which I have left out here. By the way, the in-print citation for this is Science, Vol. 299, p. 625 (Jan 31, 2003).]
I agree with you all that “anti-science” is probably not the best choice of words. “Ascientific” (I love help coin new words) is much closer to what the scientists are accusing the Bush administration as being.
But how about the second part of my post? How concerned should the public at large be about this? Should it, for example, be a presidential campaign issue?
I think that the public should be concerned and I’d like to see it become a campaign issue. I am skeptical on whether it will though.
I think it could come up in a variety of contexts:
(1) In relation to Bush’s poor record on environmental issues.
(2) In relation to Bush’s catering to the religious right on issues related to health, abortion, and prevention of AIDS and other sexual diseases, and teen pregnancy.
(3) In relation to security, i.e., the Administration spending tens of billions of dollars to rush to deployment a missile defense system that won’t work vs. how that money could be spent on things that do work and would actually provide protection against WMDs the way they would most likely be delivered (which is not by ICBMs).
These are all important issues and the general theme dovetails with the Bush Administration’s abuse of intelligence in Iraq and abuse of economics in their domestic policy.
It seems that he regards science to be a subject that can be bent to make it fit what he’d like; hence his ignoring of global warming as an issue, and his desire for creationism to be given credance as a valid scientific alternative to natural evolution, which it definately isn’t. In 1930 Herbert Hoover expressed amazement when asked if he believed in evolution; he said that any man of intelligence and learning surely accepted it. I would say that he is anti-scientific - its not that he dismisses scientists as valueless; but more that he ignores what they have to say.
What I find odd is the number of times I hear the administration claiming they will only support programs based on hard science. I seem to encounter this most often on environmental issues such as global warming, pollution limits, etc.
I’m a lawyer, not a scientist. But it seems to me that this position seems to misunderstand the level of certainty that science can provide when identifying causes and trends in complex processes. It seems as long as a position has any gap at all, or if an arguable minority position can be phrased against a portion of it, the administration is willing to toss out an entire line fo thought/study as “not based on good science.” Of course, doing so seems to generally favor industry, development, and others willing to degrade the environment. A valid choice - just not generally mine.
Dinsdale, bingo!! Actually, if you want to see someone who is really awful in this regard, check out Senator Inhofe, head of the Subcommittee on Environment and Public Works (or something like that). This is a man who seems to have defined “sound non-political science” to mean that science which is supported by a small cadre of industry- or right-wing-think-tank-funded scientists. Apparently, the vast majority of the peer-reviewed science then falls into the unsound politically-driven science! It’s a very good reason why it is so important to get the Senate out of Republican hands.
Interesting that there is so much opinion, so much castigation, and so little light.
Many of the issues that have been raised here are highly controversial in ‘scientific’ circles and not well represented even in prestigeous journals. Many, especially the environment issues, have significant uncertainties. Solutions offered often have significant costs and glossed over implications (e.g. Kyoto treaty) that seem to get swept under the rug.
What I see in this thread lacks intellectual integrity because it is taking a disagreement with process and opinion as a matter of the ad hominem.
What I do see in this administration is a very careful consideration of risks, costs, and returns. I do not see the kind of certainty that is portrayed here and is illustrated here in the many assertions about both the science and well as the positions of others.
Well here’s a few things that aren’t controversial is scientific circles that the Bushies don’t seem to get:
1.) Global warming is real.
2.) The jury is not “out” on evolution.
3.) “Abstinence Only” education is a fucking disaster.
The administration has shown no “carefdul consideration” of these issues only a self-serving political agenda and a willingness to supress, distort and lie in order to serve that agenda.
The issue isn’t global warming, it is man’s influence on it, if any. So a first step is to get the issue right, which you haven’t.
I am not sure what you mean by evolution from either end. AFAIK, the current administration has no position and has not advocated any position in this area.
As far as abstinence, there is a lot of data to indicate that your conclusion is incorrect or misinformed. I know of no pregnancies or STD events related to abstinence.
As far as a “self-serving political agenda” that is bad science as it is not defined in any useful way.
But the main issue is that you take up the ad hominem - and, to me, that casts significant suspicion on your arguments.
So, Bryanl you basically think that over 60 leading scientists, including 20 who have won Nobel prizes, are full of crap? Do you understand that it is they, not SDMB members, who have brought this accusation against the present administration?
Did you read the documents I linked my OP to?
Do you have anything like a factual rebuttal to the statements these scientists have made?
and you accuse others of getting the issues wrong…
you understand that no scientist is saying that abstinence from sex is a poor solution to the teenage sex drive? you understand that it is the teaching of abstinence only that is statistically shown to be flawed yet still pushed by the administration?
i’m going to take a guess and say you do understand that. then why did you avoid that issue in favor of raising another? no one, as far as i know, is saying letting kids know that abstinence is the best answer is wrong. i believe that the scientific community advocates, and their position is backed up by data, teaching sexual responsibility as well as proper respect for the situation, rather than teaching that not having sex is the only way to deal with the problem. so why did you completely ignore that fact in favor of attacking something no one has mentioned? and why are you so committed to the attack, in general?