15,000 Government Scientists Protest Political Meddling

Top Scientists Want Research Free From Politics

By Adrianne Appel, Inter Press Service

BOSTON, Feb 14 (IPS) - Leading U.S. scientists called on Congress Thursday to make sure the next president does not do what they say the George W. Bush Administration has done: censor, suppress and falsify important environmental and health research.

"The next president and Congress must cultivate an environment where reliable scientific advice flows freely," said Susan Wood, a former director of women's research at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Wood resigned her post in 2005 in protest over the FDA’s delay in getting emergency, over-the-counter birth control onto the market.

"Serious consequences can result when drug safety decisions are not based on the best available scientific advice from staff scientists and experts," she said.

Wood joined a panel of prominent scientists in Boston -- convened by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an activist group -- to announce a joint statement asking Congress to protect scientific integrity. Among the more than 15,000 government scientists signing onto the statement are Harold Varmus, president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre and former director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH); and Anthony Robbins, professor of medicine at Tufts University and former director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

Continued here. And from Business Week:

Making Science a Presidential Priority

Science Debate 2008 wants to put scientific issues front and center in the Presidential race by hosting a debate among candidates

by John Carey

When most of the Republican candidates for President proclaimed that they did not believe in evolution during a debate last year, astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss was one of many who were aghast. The Case Western University professor and best-selling author was even more upset when former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee shrugged off concerns, saying that he was running for President, not writing a middle-school curriculum. "How could being scientifically illiterate be perfectly acceptable?" Krauss asks. "No one would accept a candidate who, say, denied the Holocaust."

Instead of just fuming, Krauss seized on an idea then being proposed by screenwriter/director Matthew Chapman to stage a Presidential campaign debate focused on science. He linked up with Chapman and two other proponents, journalist Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science, and screenwriter Shawn Lawrence Otto. In December, the group launched an effort to elevate the visibility of science in the Presidential race, starting an organization called Science Debate 2008.

According to its website, Science Debate 2008 is

a concerned citizens initiative now cosponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Council on Competitiveness, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine, and signed by over 100 leading American universities and other organizations.

The Business Week article is continued here. For more info on political meddling with science, check out these links:

• Scientific Freedom and the Public Good
• Political Interference in Science
• Federal Science and the Public Good Report
• The A to Z Guide to Political Interference in Science
• Science Friday Discussion of the Report
• Science and Technology in the 2008 Presidential Election