When the Truth Isn't REALLY the Truth

Ex-Surgeon General Says White House Hushed Him

USGS Scientists Object to Stricter Review Rules

Censorship is Alleged at NOAA

The latest of those three articles is the first one, published today in The Washington Post. As you can see by the two other links I placed below it, this is a recurring theme. Some of our nation's most divisive issues right now have been made political by the Bush Administration and the Congress. Not just the Republican members of Congress, but Congress in general. There are a lot of people to blame for this disturbing development. The White House can be blamed for trying to hide these things from the American people. Corporate science (AccuWeather, ExxonMobil and the like) can be blamed for helping further the political goals of those interested in "creating their own science," and Congress can be blamed for excessive oversight and mismanagement of issues they remain (mostly) unqualified to comment/legislate on.

I greatly dislike Chris Mooney. I dislike most things that portray issues as totally partisan with no in between. He tends to blame the Republicans for this trend. But you need look no further than lovable curmudgeon John Dingell (D-MI) for proof that it's not just Republicans who stand in the way of good science influencing policy. The battle over Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standards has pitted Dingell's Detroit-friendly politics against pretty much everyone else, it seems. How can you argue that cars and trucks shouldn't have higher fuel economies? it's tough, I know. But there he sits, fighting (maybe literally) to the death on the issue.

A quick search of Yahoo! Answers for the terms "global warming" or "climate change" reveals that a large majority of Americans view this as a political issue. Check out "stem cells" or"stem cell research." Same deal. Even "evolution" has a political undertone for a lot of people. And this is the way it's going to be for quite some time. Once these issues are established in the minds of the public as political ones, that's where they'll stay.

How do we undo this change? Should science be debated in Congress, or should they debate how to enact policies based on sound, peer-reviewed science? I think it should be the latter. A major problem with this is that the majority of Members of Congress don't understand the peer-review system, or the need for federally-funded basic research. The majority of their constituents don't either, and this poses a different problem. Two freshman Members offered amendments to the reauthorization bill for the National Science Foundation (NSF) this spring. These amendments would have eliminated specific research projects, effectively defunding grants based on their titles, which were deemed by these Members as "silly" and "pointless." One study was on eating habits by Native Americans who inhabited Puerto Rico in ancient times. This was support for research on diabetes in Hispanics. To the average American, this looks like a good idea - we don't want the government wasting our tax dollars. But it harms our scientific competitiveness. And that might be the magic word.

A group of lobbyists (not a bad word - if you're interested/involved in ANY cause, chances are extremely good there's a lobbyist working on behalf of that issue) began a push for scientific research in 2005 based on the assumption that China and India, among others, were going to overtake the United States in the science, math, and engineering disciplines. A report published by the National Academy of Sciences, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm," corroborated this point of view and added strength to the movement. A final concentrated effort in January 2006 led to the competitiveness issue being added to the State of the Union address and the American Competitiveness Initiative. This gets the attention of Congress and the Executive branch. America must be number one, and at pretty much any cost. How can we achieve this? By better funding basic research. And the Administration and Congress have done so, to the tune of double-digit or near double-digit increases for NSF, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and Department of Energy Office of Science (SC) for FY2008.

But what about the National Institutes of Health (NIH), you ask? Or NASA? Or EPA or NOAA or any other federal science agency? Here's where Congress and the Administration revert to their old personalities. NIH's budget was doubled from FY1998 to FY2003, and for many Members of Congress, the agency was "taken care of." The other agencies aren't viewed as filling immediate needs in the race to beat China and the others in the scientific disciplines. Will the federal government regret this? You bet. Will they do anything about it? They'll try. Can they do anything about it? This is not clear.

Most estimates show China graduating about 300,000 engineers annually from their universities; the US graduates about 60,000. Coincidentally, the population of China is almost exactly five times that of the US. There are a few numbers, though, that jump out when you dig deeper. China sends just 21 percent of 18-24 year olds to university/college, compared with 64 percent of Americans aged 18-22. And it's tougher for foreign students to stay in the US than it used to be. Growing numbers are returning home, including to China, after receiving their degrees.

This post could go on and on. Why aren't Americans entering the math, science, and engineering fields the way they used to? There's a lot of specific legislation designed to encourage this. Visit Thomas and search for something like "innovation." It's amazing. So I started on government censorship and ended with competitiveness. Not the most natural segue on the surface, but deep down, it's all interlinked. This Surgeon General thing isn't over. Watch the headlines.