Aetiology: Time magazine on politics & science.

This is obviously more Chris's area more than it is mine, but Time's cover story this week is on, essentially, the Republican war on science (the actual "war," not Chris's book of the same title).

Boehlert [Republican chairman of the House Science Committee] does not see a larger problem of Administration meddling ... And he noted that politics and science have never had an easy, hands-off relationship in Washington. "This is a town where people like to say they're for science-based decision making, until the scientific consensus leads to a politically inconvenient conclusion. Then they want to go to Plan B," he says. "That's seamless from one Administration to another; I don't care if it's a Republican or a Democrat."

Some who have experienced it from the inside, however, disagree. Dr. Gerald Keusch, former director of the Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), says he saw a marked change in its operations as the government moved from the Clinton to the Bush administrations. Under Clinton, Keusch says, he never encountered resistance in appointing experts to the advisory board that conducted peer reviews of grant proposals to the center, which focuses on international health issues, particularly in developing countries. He made seven nominations, and all were approved by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) within three weeks. Under Bush, his first four nominations were quickly endorsed by NIH but then, says Keusch, "it's 10 months before I hear from HHS, rejecting three of the four, including a Nobel laureate, with no reasons given." In return, HHS sent him the résumés of other people, many of whom had no expertise in infectious diseases or developing countries.

My first real exposure to all of this political use of science was back in 2002, when new National Cancer Institute head (now FDA head) Andrew von Eschenbach made the NCI change their fact sheet on the abortion/breast cancer "link" from stating that there was no causal link to that "tests disproving the abortion-breast cancer link are inconclusive" (which was changed back after many complaints by NCI and other scientists). Obviously it's something many other scientists are worried about as well, and it's things like this that make us so skeptical about the claims in Bush's SOTU address (well, that and, y'know, stuff like this doesn't help, either). Anyhoo, good to see this getting more coverage, especially in light of last week's speech.

Science, Politics

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Bush's misrepresentation and cronyism is most apparent when it comes to science. Here, facts are the name of the game and politicoes trying to ignore them are pretty obvious. As the Aggie in NASA who tried to dictate to scientists how the Big Bang did not haveenough intelligent design in it. Here we have cronies of Bush being used instead of Nobel prize Laureates. Typical. This sort of specious leadership is one reason the US will fall behind others, unless it is stopped. this is not something that is likely to happen with this administration.   11:54:10 PM