Politicization of science

The politicization of science occurs when government, business or interest groups use legal or economic pressure to influence the findings of scientific research which differ from the majority view, or influence the way the research is disseminated, reported or interpreted. Typically these findings have a bearing on public policy questions of interest to government, business or other interest groups.

Overview

A common allegation has been that politicians have appointed non-scientists, scientists with conflicts of interest or otherwise unqualified individuals to positions that influence public policy. However, politicians are not the only group responsible for the politicization of science. Special interest groups, industry advocates, and religious organizations have all conducted various campaigns to promote their narrow interests by politicizing a particular scientific issue or topic in defiance of scientific consensus.

Examples

Intelligent design

A current example is the intelligent design movement originating with the Discovery Institute, which seeks to "defeat [the] materialist world view" represented by the theory of evolution in favor of "a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions". In contrast to scientific consensus the Discovery Institute portrays evolution as a "theory in crisis" with scientists criticizing evolution and that "fairness" and "equal time" requires educating students about the controversy. The scientific community and science education organizations have replied that any controversial aspects of evolution are a matter of religion and politics, not science.

Food and Drug Administration

In July 2006 the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released survey results that demonstrate pervasive political influence of science at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Of the 997 FDA scientists who responded to the survey, nearly one fifth (18.4 percent) said that they "have been asked, for non-scientific reasons, to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information or their conclusions in a FDA scientific document." This is the third survey Union of Concerned Scientists has conducted to examine inappropriate interference with science at federal agencies. The Department of Health and Human Services also conducted a survey addressing the same topic which generated similar findings.

George W. Bush Administration

In 2004, The Denver Post reported that that George W. Bush administration "has installed more than 100 top officials who were once lobbyists, attorneys or spokespeople for the industries they oversee." At least 20 of these former industry advocates helped their agencies write, shape or push for policy shifts that benefit their former industries. "They knew which changes to make because they had pushed for them as industry advocates."

Also in 2004, the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a report, Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: An Investigation into the Bush Administration's Misuse of Science which formally made the charge that the Bush administration was putting political ideology over science when writing policy or when determining who sits on advisory panels set up to provide expert input into decision making, saying:

"A growing number of scientists, policy makers, and technical specialists both inside and outside the government allege that the current Bush administration has suppressed or distorted the scientific analyses of federal agencies to bring these results in line with administration policy. In addition, these experts contend that irregularities in the appointment of scientific advisors and advisory panels are threatening to upset the legally mandated balance of these bodies."

The report resulted in a petition, Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking, signed by more than 9,000 scientists, including 49 Nobel laureates and 63 National Medal of Science recipients. which said:

"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. This has been done by placing people who are professionally unqualified or who have clear conflicts of interest in official posts and on scientific advisory committees; by disbanding existing advisory committees; by censoring and suppressing reports by the government’s own scientists; and by simply not seeking independent scientific advice. Other administrations have, on occasion, engaged in such practices, but not so systematically nor on so wide a front. Furthermore, in advocating policies that are not scientifically sound, the administration has sometimes misrepresented scientific knowledge and misled the public about the implications of its policies."

In response to such criticisms in 2006 President Bush unveiled a campaign in his State of the Union Address to promote scientific research and education to ensure American competitiveness in the world, vowing to "double the federal commitment to the most critical basic research programs in the physical sciences over the next 10 years." Later the same year Francesca Grifo, the executive director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Scientific Integrity Program, reiterated their initial criticism, "We have reports that stay in draft form and don't get out to the public. We have reports that are changed. We have reports that are ignored and overwritten."

Dr. Richard Carmona, the first surgeon general appointed by President George W. Bush, publicly accused the administration in July of 2007 of political interference and muzzling him on key issues like embryonic stem cell research. Although he did not use his name, the Washington Post reported on July 29 that the official who blocked at least one of Carmona's reports was William R. Steiger.

Global warming

The global warming issue has long been a political issue for the Democratic party politician Al Gore. Climate issues have formed the center piece of his political career since he was a US Senator. He used the global warming issue as a means of advancing his Presidential and Vice Presidential ambitions. Recently Gore has continued to campaign for a global warming agenda that has won him an Academy Award for An Inconvenient Truth and a Nobel Peace Prize. The solidity of his global warming science has been questioned but few can doubt the effectiveness of the global warming issue on his personal political standing.

In 1991, a US corporate coalition including the National Coal Association, the Western Fuels Association and Edison Electrical Institute created a public relations front called the "Information Council on the Environment" (ICE). ICE launched a $500,000 advertising and PR blitz to, in ICE's own words, "reposition global warming as theory (not fact)." Burton and Rampton charge that the claims about the "politicization of science" regarding global warming are part of a deliberately engineered public relations campaign to reduce the impact any international treaty, such as the Kyoto Protocol, might have on the business interests sponsoring the campaigns. Conversely, skeptics of global warming have decried alarmism.

In June 2005, US State Department papers showed the administration thanking Exxon executives for the company's "active involvement" in helping to determine climate change policy, including the US stance on Kyoto. Input from the business lobby group Global Climate Coalition was also a factor. In 2006 The Guardian reported that using data found in Exxon official documents, 124 organisations that have taken money from ExxonMobil or work closely with those that have, and that "These organisations take a consistent line on climate change: that the science is contradictory, the scientists are split, environmentalists are charlatans, liars or lunatics, and if governments took action to prevent global warming, they would be endangering the global economy for no good reason. The findings these organisations dislike are labelled 'junk science'. The findings they welcome are labelled 'sound science'."

In February 2007, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow made the claim that the United States was doing better at reducing greenhouse gases than the European Union -- a claim that turned out to be based on a subset of a complete data set -- in this case from 2000 to 2004 alone. When the complete record from 1990 (the index year for the Kyoto Protocol) is used, emissions from the European Union dropped 15% while US emissions rose.. This category of scientific abuse is also called the "selective use of data" by the Pacific Institute's project on the Integrity of Science, and cherry picking by the public.

Waxman report

In the United States, Democratic Congressman Henry A. Waxman and the minority staff of the Government Reform Committee released a report in August 2003 which concluded that the administration of George W. Bush has politicized science in many areas and appointed key decision makers who shared the administration position on major issues. The issues analyzed in the report include sex education based on sexual abstinence. The report concludes that the administration modified performance measures for abstinence-based programs to make them look effective. In so doing, the Waxman report articulates positions long held by the California politician. It also finds that the Bush administration appointed a prominent advocate of abstinence-only programs, Dr. Joe McIlhaney, to the Advisory Committee to the CDC’s Director. It claims that information about comprehensive sex education was removed from the website of the Center for Disease Control. Other issues considered include agricultural pollution, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and breast cancer. The report finds that a National Cancer Institute website has been changed to reflect the administration view that there may be a risk of breast cancer associated with abortions. The website was updated after protests and now holds that no such risk has been found in recent, well-designed studies.

Responses

In 2004 the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a series of reports charging that the Bush administration's political agenda had permeated "the traditionally objective, nonpartisan mechanisms through which the government uses scientific knowledge in forming and implementing public policy", and "The Bush administration has proven that federal government science can easily be suppressed, manipulated, and distorted." An update to the report concluded

...at a time when one might expect the federal government to increasingly rely on impartial researchers for the critical role they play in gathering and analyzing specialized data, there are numerous indications that the opposite is occurring. A growing number of scientists, policy makers, and technical specialists both inside and outside the government allege that the Bush administration has suppressed or distorted the scientific analyses of federal agencies to bring these results in line with administration policy. In addition, these experts contend that irregularities in the appointment of scientific advisors and advisory panels are threatening to upset the legally mandated balance of these bodies."

A petition appended to the report and signed by more than 60 pre-eminent scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates. These resulted in the "Restoring Scientific Integrity" program organized by the union.

In January 2007 the House Committee on Science and Technology announced the formation of a new subcommittee, the Science Oversight and Investigation subcommittee, which handles investigative and oversight activities on matters covering the committee's entire jurisdiction. The new subcommittee will be chaired by Representative Brad Miller of North Carolina. The subcommittee has authority to look into a whole range of important issues, particularly those concerning manipulation of scientific data at Federal agencies. In an interview Miller commented on if the subcommittee will investigate recent allegations of the politicization of science levelled against the government:

You certainly can count on our looking at scientific integrity issues under the Bush Administration. There have been lots of reports in the press of manipulating science to support policy, rigging advisory panels, and suppressing research by federal employees or with federal dollars. I've written about that here before, and you interviewed me a year ago about the manipulation of science. In addition to the published reports, the committee staff has been collecting accounts, some confidential, of interference by political appointees. I hope that more folks will come forward now that Democrats are in the majority and we show we're really going to pursue the issue.

See also

• Antiscience
• Artificial controversy
• Denialism
• Discovery Institute intelligent design campaigns
• Framing (communication theory)
• Kansas evolution hearings
• The Republican War on Science
• Spin (public relations)
• Scientists and Engineers for America
• William R. Steiger

External links

• Politics & Science: Investigating the Bush Administration's Promotion of Ideology Over Science. Website by US Congressman Henry Waxman and the Government Reform Committee.
• Examples of abuse, Scientific Integrity at Risk: The Food and Drug Administration The Union of Concerned Scientists (PDF file)
• Union of Concerned Scientists website
• Integrity of Science initiative of the Pacific Institute

Additional reading

• The Republican War on Science Chris Mooney (2005).
• Scientific Integrity in Policy Making: Investigation of the Bush administration's abuse of science Union of Concerned Scientists (2004).
• Political Science The New York Times (2005).