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Published on Friday, August 8, 2003 by the Washington Post
Bush Misuses Science, Report Says
Democrats Say Data Are Distorted to Boost Conservative
Policies
by Rick Weiss
The Bush administration
has repeatedly mischaracterized scientific
facts to bolster its political agenda in areas ranging from
abstinence education and condom use to missile defense, according
to a detailed report released yesterday by Rep. Henry A. Waxman
(D-Calif.).
The White House quickly
dismissed the report as partisan sniping.
The
40-page document, "Politics and Science in the Bush
Administration," was compiled by the minority
staff of the
House Government Reform Committee's special investigations
division. It marks the launch of a new effort by Waxman and
others in Congress to highlight simmering anger among scientists
and others who believe that President Bush -- much more than
his predecessors -- has been spiking science with politics
to justify conservative policies in areas such as reproductive
rights, embryo research, energy policy and environmental health.
"The Administration's
political interference with science
has led to misleading statements by the President, inaccurate
responses to Congress, altered web sites, suppressed agency
reports, erroneous international communications, and the
gagging of scientists," according to the report, posted
yesterday at www.politicsandscience.org.
"The subjects
involved span a broad range, but they share a common attribute:
the beneficiaries of the scientific distortions are important
supporters of the President, including social conservatives
and powerful industry groups."
White House spokesman
Adam Levine said it would take time
for the administration to address the specifics of the report.
However, he said, "I'm hard-pressed to believe anyone would
consider Congressman Waxman an objective arbiter of scientific
fact."
Several prestigious
scientific journals have editorialized
about the Bush administration's dealings in science in recent
months, including Science, Nature and the New England Journal
of Medicine.
An editor at Science,
for example, recently said in print
that the administration was injecting politics into arenas
of science "once immune to this kind of manipulation."
And the editors of
the Lancet noted "growing evidence
of explicit vetting of appointees to influential [scientific]
panels on the basis of their political or religious opinions"
and warned against "any further right-wing incursions"
on
those panels.
The General Accounting
Office has been investigating
such allegations since some in Congress asked the agency
to do so in September, but it has not released any findings.
Among the purported
abuses documented in the report:
- "Performance
measures" used to determine the effectiveness
of federally funded "abstinence only" sex education
programs
were altered by the administration in ways that made it easier
to say the programs were effective. And information about
how to use a condom -- along with scientific data showing
that sex education does not lead to earlier or increased
sexual activity in young people -- was removed from a Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention Web site.
- In testimony before
Congress, Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton
omitted -- and in at least one case misstated -- federal
scientists' findings that Arctic oil drilling could harm wildlife.
- The administration
altered a National Cancer Institute Web site
in a way that wrongly implied there was good evidence linking
abortions to breast cancer.
- The Education Department
circulated a memo instructing employees
to remove materials from the department's Web site not "consistent
with the Administration's philosophy," prompting complaints
about
censorship from national educational organizations.
- Bush has appointed
to key scientific advisory committees numerous
people with political, rather than scientific, credentials. For
example, his appointee to a presidential AIDS advisory committee,
marketing consultant Jerry Thacker, has described homosexuality
as a "deathstyle" and referred to AIDS as the "gay
plague."
A spokesman for Waxman
said the report will be updated on the Web
as new examples arise.
© 2003 The Washington
Post Company
###
