Scientists criticize Bush administration for "suppressing" and "distorting" science

More than 60 prominent U.S. scientists on Wednesday released a statement criticizing the Bush administration for "frequently suppressing or distorting" scientific data from federal agencies when the information conflicts with the Administration's political viewpoints. The researchers' accusations also were detailed in a 38-page report, titled "Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: An Investigation Into the Bush Administration's Misuse of Science," released by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group. Among the specific concerns listed by the scientists were: pressure by the Administration on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to end a research project that found sex education is effective even if it does not advocate an abstinence-only message, which the Administration favors; the replacement of a CDC fact sheet on using condoms to prevent HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases with one that warns about the alleged failure rates of condoms; and the Administration's posting of information linking abortion with increased breast cancer risks on the CDC's Web site despite objections by CDC officials.

The report also claims the Environmental Protection Agency hid data supporting the existence of global warming; that the Office of Management and Budget delayed for more than nine months the release of a report that found high mercury levels in almost 1 in 10 women of childbearing age; and that the Administration has stacked scientific advisory panels with politically biased members, including placing opponents of abortion and birth control on panels overseeing reproductive health. "This is absolutely unprecedented," Kurt Gottfried, a retired Cornell physics professor and chair of the UCS board, told The Baltimore Sun. "There's something irrational about what this Administration is doing."

"When scientific knowledge has been found to be in conflict with its political goals, the Administration has often manipulated the process through which science enters into its decisions," the scientists said in the statement. The researchers, including 20 Nobel laureates, admitted other presidential administrations had occasionally engaged in the same practices "but not so systematically nor on so wide a front." The group called for congressional hearings to examine the Administration's practices of distorting or suppressing scientific information and for possible federal policies prohibiting the censorship or distortion of government scientific research.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan defended the Administration, saying Bush's team "makes decisions based on the best available science." John Marburger, director at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said the claims by the scientists "go far beyond reasonable interpretations" and said most of the "random" incidents mentioned in the report were individual actions that were not taken as a result of White House pressure or policies.

Among the scientists who signed the statement were Leon M. Lederman, the former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; F. Sherwood Rowland, also a former president of AAAS; Harold Varmus, the former director of the National Institutes of Health; and Nobel Prize-winning scientists from prestigious research centers at Princeton, Stanford, the University of Chicago, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia University, Harvard, and the Salk Institute. Several past science advisers to Republican presidents also were among the statement's signers.