POLITICAL MISUSE OF SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION

Two stories appear in the Washington Post today charging the Bush Administration with misuse and/or misinterpretation of Scientific Information.

The first, “Gore Says Bush Has Misled Americans” by Edward Walsh, is about a speech by Al Gore attacking the Bush Administration on a number of points. This quote attributed to Gore just about sums it up:

"The president's mishandling of and selective use of the best evidence available on the threat posed by Iraq is pretty much the same as the way he intentionally distorted the best available evidence on climate change, and rejected the best available evidence on the threat posed to America's economy by his tax and budget proposals. In each case, the president seems to have been pursuing policies chosen in advance of the facts -- policies designed to benefit friends and supporters -- and has used tactics that deprived the American people of any opportunity to effectively subject his arguments to the kind of informed scrutiny that is essential in our system of checks and balances."

The second story, “Bush Misuses Science, Report Says” by Rick Weiss, summarizes a report by the Democratic minority of the House Government Reform Committee criticizing the Republican Administration’s alleged misuse of scientific information in a number of different cases. The article and report draw on editorials from major scientific journals that have criticized the Administration in this respect.

The report “Politics and Science in the Bush Administration” is available on the Politics and Science website.

As I understand it, the United States has over several decades sought in many ways and cases to depoliticize international debate, seeking to make the process more factual, more based on scientific evidence, and more pragmatic. The articles suggest a major change in that policy, if this Administration is in fact seeking to politicize the scientific evidence on which climate change and reproductive health policies are built.

I suspect the legitimacy of U.S. efforts to help other nations move toward science based policies and knowledge based development will be challenged by these kinds of stories, and the reality they reflect.