More than 60 leading scientists - including Nobel laureates, leading medical experts, former federal agency directors and university chairs and presidents - issued a statement calling for regulatory and legislative action to restore scientific integrity to federal policymaking. According to the scientists, the Bush administration has, among other abuses, suppressed and distorted scientific analysis from federal agencies, and taken actions that have undermined the quality of scientific advisory panels.

In conjunction with the statement, the Union of Concerned Scientists today released a report Scientific Integrity in Policymaking that investigates numerous allegations in the scientists' statement involving censorship and political interference with independent scientific inquiry at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Departments of Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Interior and Defense.

The statement demands that the Bush administration's "distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease" and calls for Congressional oversight hearings, guaranteed public access to government scientific studies and other measures to prevent such abuses in the future. The statement further calls on the scientific, engineering and medical communities to work together to reestablish scientific integrity in the policymaking process. >from *Preeminent Scientists Protest Bush Administration's Misuse of Science*. Nobel Laureates, National Medal of Science Recipients, and Other Leading Researchers Call for End to Scientific Abuses. February 18, 2004.

related context
> scientific integrity in policymaking. an investigation into the bush administration's misuse of science. union of concerned scientists. 2004
> challenges to evolution education. november 14, 2003
> berlin declaration: science and culture accessible to all internet users. november 5, 2003
> xenophobia may slow scientific progress. june 6, 2003
> science commons: building a free flow of knowledge. march 15, 2002
> attacks on science: ethics and public health. january 11, 2002
> artists and scientists in times of war by roger malina. september 23, 2001

imago
> science retracement

From 'Appel contre la guerre à l'intelligence'. France, February 18, 2003: "Tous ces secteurs du savoir, de la recherche, de la pensée, du lien social, producteurs de connaissance et de débat public font aujourd'hui l'objet d'attaques massives, révélatrices d'un nouvel anti-intellectualisme d'Etat. C'est à la mise en place d'une politique extrêmement cohérente que nous assistons. Une politique d'appauvrissement et de précarisation de tous les espaces considérés comme improductifs à court terme, inutiles ou dissidents, de tout le travail invisible de l'intelligence, de tous ces lieux où la société se pense, se rêve, s'invente, se soigne, se juge, se répare. Une politique de simplification des débats publics, de réduction de la complexité... Cette guerre à l'intelligence est un fait sans précédent dans l'histoire récente de la nation. C'est la fin d'une exception française : un simple regard chez quelques-uns de nos voisins européens, dans l'Angleterre post-thatchériene ou l'Italie berlusconienne permet pourtant de voir ce qu'il advient des écoles, des hôpitaux, des universités, des théâtres, des maisons d'édition au terme de ces politiques qui, menées au nom du bon sens économique et de la rigueur budgétaire, ont un coût humain, social et culturel exorbitant et des conséquences irréversibles... Et maintenant ? Fort de cette prise de conscience, il s'agit de partager les luttes et les mobilisations, de fédérer nos inquiétudes, d'échanger ces expériences alarmantes, et d'adresser au gouvernement une protestation solidaire, unifiée, émanant de tous les secteurs attaqués par cet anti-intellectualisme d'Etat qu'aucun parti politique, de droite comme de gauche, n'a encore entrepris de dénoncer. Chacun d'entre nous doit continuer à porter ses propres revendications, à élever ses propres défenses, mais nous devons aussi interpeller collectivement nos concitoyens sur ce démantèlement des forces vives de l'intelligence."
http://www.lesinrocks.com/inrocks/galeries/appel/appel.html

People is the responsible of all that :-(

For the last (20?) years Scientist have been asked "what is the use of what you do?" and funding agencies only fund projects with an applied-usefull goal from where companies can extract benefits, banks capitalize money, conutries feel richer, companies pay taxes and punks and homeless assisted to avoid social revolution...

Science has been completely sold to the market, as we are doing with all the other social services like transportation and health care... great!

so no surprise that now science stinks.

Someone was fascinated by the fact that tobacco leaves do not get eat by insects, alwats nice and shinny... after analysis and wonder, someone found that was the alcaloid molecule nicotine the responsible (somehow) for that. Nicotine is toxic to the insects, nicotine protect the plant. Waow, beatuiful, useless, we already new that tobacco plants had shinny and uneated leaves,nothing else, as Einstein said, science only provides refined explanations to the day-to-day observations... Science analyces and questions, who answer is the priest and the politician. The scientist observing and questioning tabacco plant is not responsible of Monsanto's genetic modified crops. Bussines guys, stock holders, middle class men, and all the rest are the responsibles to endanger the environment producing sterile seeds (bastards!!)

And you are dangerously naive if you think that you could stop Monsanto (and the rest of western capitalistic sciety) by killing the scientist...

You can not stop progress, and you do not need science to progress and develop, trial and error are enough and brought us here from the treas to the skycrappers in few 35.000 years or so...

So, why not link science and society to balance against abusive developments? What it is wrong with penicilline? The man who discover the vaccines is not necesarily rich, the owners or the farmaceutical companies are obcenously rich. The medicines are not bad things, there is not god or evil in nature (despite Bush and followers believings...).

Man is bad, not science. Science may help man to cure it or distroy it, but we will distroy ourselves with stones and sticks if we wish, no science needed (or, otherwise, where did the neenderthals go?)

In fact, Science is useless, it is only about analysis and questioning, about practicing the spell made by nature, about excercising the mind and learning to respect the complexity unattainable of the worlds which are around us...

Science can be useless and futile, but not responsible of... political misuse.

I wish that the social revolucionaries take science as a friend who can not change the world but may help to expolained and appaise the intelectual anxieties... Instead than the surrealistics calls anti-tech made from a cell phone tracked by satellite so my mum sleeps sound at night...

In an essay published in PLoS Biology, two members of the President's Council on Bioethics, Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco, and Janet Rowley of the University of Chicago, outline their concerns about two recent reports issued by the council--"Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness" and "Monitoring Stem Cell Research" --and about the process that generated these reports.

The first report deals with, among other issues, current research in fertility and aging, and with related advances in biotechnology that could potentially cure genetic diseases or promote longevity. The second report concentrates on stem cell research and governmental funding of this research.

Blackburn's and Rowley's criticisms center on the reports' selective use of science to support what they describe as an ideologically conservative political agenda. The first report raises the specter of "designer babies" and criticizes aging studies as focusing entirely on the desire for immortality. Blackburn and Rowley suggest that these characterizations misrepresent both the current science as well as the diversity of scientific opinion on the research. The second report promotes adult stem cell research while minimizing the limitations of that research, suggesting that research into embryonic stem cells is unnecessary. Blackburn and Rowley again contend that such a report should have presented the entire breadth of scientific research into stem cells and the full range of scientific opinions.

Blackburn and Rowley conclude, "Continuing discussion will form the basis for future decisions on these topics; keeping such discussion open and balanced is of paramount importance."

On February 27, 2004, Blackburn, an outspoken critic of the reports even before this essay, along with William F. May, a retired professor of ethics at Southern Methodist University, were dismissed from the President's Council on Bioethics by White House directive.

See "Reason as Our Guide" by Elizabeth Blackburn and Janet Rowley. Published March 5, 2004
http://www.plosbiology.org/plosonline/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0020116