Has the Bush Administration used Political Power to Subvert Scientific Studies?

by Bill Creasy

The Union of Concerned Scientists has issued several detailed reports that have accused the Bush Administration of attempting to influence scientific reports and advisory boards for political reasons. The topics have included global warming, abortion and reproductive rights, mercury emissions, and environmental policy. The first report was issued in March 2004. This document has gotten 4000 signatures by scientists. A response by the Bush Administration came from the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) director John Marburger III. UCS responded to the response in April 2004, and then issued another update in July 2004.

The topics are complex, and some charges are much more convincing than others. The reports are available at www.ucsusa.org.

Some of the topics are clearcut excesses by the Bush Administration officials. But the real question is, where is the dividing line between science and politics? Are the UCS reports scientific or a political documents?

The March report makes general charges that are repeated in the later reports. It is titled:

From Union of Concerned Scientists, March 2004, An Investigation into the Bush Administration's Misuse of Science: Scientific Integrity in Policymaking:

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 quantity and breadth of these charges warrant further examination, especially given the stature of many of the individuals lodging them.

To determine the validity of the allegations, UCS reviewed the public record, obtained internal government documents, and conducted interviews with many of the parties involved (including current and former government officials). [UCS, March]

The UCS says that politics and science are separate and should have separate treatment:

There is a crucial difference between political fights over policy and the manipulation of the scientific underpinnings of the policy-making process itself. Distorting that process runs the risk that decision makers will not have access to the factual information needed to help them make informed decisions that affect human health, public safety, and the well-being of our communities. [UCS, March]

The charges that the Bush Administration is interfering with science are serious. Science gets it's authority and credibility from objective examination of evidence. If the science is manipulated, it is no longer trustworthy. On the other hand, government officials require flexibility in appointing advisors that meet their needs.

There are some topics in which the ideology of the Bush Administration are clear. These include climate change, or the greenhouse effect, reproductive rights, and the Iraq War. We will look at these topics in some detail. The UCS discusses other topics, but they will only be mentioned in passing.

Climate Change: The UCS charge is that the White House exerted explicit control over the content of reports from the EPA, to the extent that they withheld clearance for releasing information.

DISTORTING AND SUPPRESSING CLIMATE CHANGE RESEARCH

Since taking office, the Bush administration has consistently sought to undermine the public's understanding of the view held by the vast majority of climate scientists that human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases are making a discernible contribution to global warming. ...The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the American Geophysical Union, the world's largest organization of earth scientists, have released strong statements describing human-caused disruptions of Earth's climate. Yet Bush administration spokespersons continue to contend that the uncertainties in climate projections and fossil fuel emissions are too great to warrant mandatory action to slow emissions. [UCS, March]

In the 2003 EPA report [on the state of the environment], the White House reviewed the report and demanded that statements of uncertainty about research on climate change had to be added.

the reviewers in the White House were attempting to introduce uncertainty about whether the global surface temperature was actually rising and whether human activity is contributing to climate change. [UCS, March]

As a result,

the entire section on climate change was ultimately deleted from the version released for public comment.According to internal EPA documents and interviews with EPA researchers, the agency staff chose this path rather than compromising their credibility by misrepresenting the scientific consensus. Doing otherwise, as one current, high-ranking EPA official puts it, would "poorly represent the science and ultimately undermine the credibility of the EPA and the White House." [UCS, March]

Russell Train, who served as EPA administrator under Presidents Nixon and Ford, in a letter to The New York Times, stated that the Bush administration's actions undermined the independence of the EPA and were virtually unprecedented for the degree of their political manipulation of the agency's research. [UCS, March]

The Bush administration has repeatedly intervened to distort or suppress climate change research findings despite promises by the president that, "my Administration's climate change policy will be science-based." [UCS, March]

Dr.Rosina Bierbaum, a Clinton administration appointee to the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) who also served during the first year of the Bush administration, offers a disturbing window on the process. From the start, Bierbaum contends, "The scientists [who ] knew the most about climate change at OSTP were not allowed to participate in deliberations on the issue within the White House inner circle." [UCS, March]

These quotes are characteristic of several quotes in the UCS report. They say that the interference is "unprecedented." However, there isn't much to support the quotes, beyond the opinions of the speakers.

Abstinence-only education: Anything related to abortion rights is the probably the ultimate ideological issue for the Bush Administration. There are several aspects related to reproductive rights. The first aspect is abstinence-only education.

Since his tenure as governor of Texas, President Bush has made no secret of his view that sex education should teach teenagers "abstinence only" rather than including information on other ways to avoid sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. Unfortunately,despite spending more than $10 million on abstinence-only programs in Texas alone, this strategy has not been shown to be effective at curbing teen pregnancies or halting the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. The state ranked last in the nation in the decline of teen birth rates among 15-to 17-year-old females. Overall, the teen pregnancy rate in Texas was exceeded by only four other states. [UCS, March]

The fact that the Bush administration ignores the scientific evidence, troubling though that is, is not the primary concern of this report. Rather, it is the fact that the Bush administration went further by distorting science-based performance measures to test whether abstinence-only programs were proving effective, such as charting the birth rate of female program participants. The Bush administration has required the government to track only participants' program attendance and attitudes [rather than whether the program is effective]. [UCS, March]

The CDC was forced to discontinue a project called "Programs that Work," which identified sex education programs found to be effective in scientific studies. All five of the programs identified in 2002 involved comprehensive sex education for teenagers and none were abstinence-only programs. [UCS, March]

The CDC's website was altered to raise scientifically questionable doubt about the efficacy of condoms in preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS. When a source inside the CDC questioned the actions, she was told that the changes were directed by Bush administration officials at the Department of Health and Human Services. [UCS, March]

Information suggesting a link between abortion and breast cancer was posted on the National Cancer Institute website despite objections from CDC staff, who noted that substantial scientific study has long refuted the connection. After public outcry on the matter, the information has since been revised and no longer implies a connection. [UCS, March]

Another charge by the UCS is that the Bush Administration nominated unqualified, ideological partisans to advisory positions.

In several cases, the Bush administration's candidates for advisory positions have so lacked qualifications or held such extreme views that they have caused a public outcry. One such case involves the appointment of Dr. W. David Hager to the U.S.Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Reproductive Health Advisory Committee, which advises the agency on contraceptives and abortion. The Bush administration initially suggested that Hager, an obstetrician-gynecologist with scant credentials and highly partisan political views, chair the FDA advisory committee. But, after widespread public outcry, he was installed simply as a committee member. His nomination represents a dramatic departure from any past appointments to this committee. He is best known for co-authoring a book that recommends particular scripture readings as a treatment for premenstrual syndrome and, in his private practice, Hager has reportedly refused to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women.[UCS, March]

Similarly, Dr. Joseph McIlhaney, known for his disdain for the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, was appointed to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS and selected to serve in a four-year term on the Advisory Committee to the Director of CDC despite his dearth of published, peer-reviewed scientific research. [UCS, March]

Molly Ivans, in her book Bushwacked, reports that the delegates to the World Health Assembly meeting had traditionally been from the American Medical Association or the American Public Health Association. The Bush appointees were Gene Head, a professional anti-abortion activist, and others associated with the Religious Right. Ivins calls this an "eccentric delegation" who are not experts in public health. She says the Department of Health and Human Services under Tommy Thompson is known for appointing advisers based on ideology rather than credentials.

This topic is the most convincing case of the Bush Administration ignoring scientific results. It isn't a big surprise, though. An important part of their political platform was the opposition to abortion.

Mercury emissions: This example shows the alleged influence of industry on writing regulations that control emissions from the industry.

Bush administration has long attempted to avoid issuing new standards to regulate mercury emissions by coal-fired power plants as required by the Clean Air Act. [UCS, March]

The new rules the EPA has finally proposed for regulating power plants' mercury emissions were discovered to have no fewer than 12 paragraphs lifted, sometimes verbatum from a legal document prepared by industry lawyers. [UCS, March]

Political appointees at the EPA completely bypassed agency professional and scientific staff as well as a federal advisory panel in crafting the proposed new rules. [UCS, March]

Buckheit and other EPA veterans say they cannot recall another instance when the agency's technical experts were so thoroughly shut out of the process in developing a major regulatory proposal. According to Buckheit, the incident is representative of "a degree of politicization of the work of the Environmental Protection Agency that goes beyond anything I have seen in my career in government." [UCS, March]

Iraqi Aluminum tubes that were allegedly for uranium enrichment: This is an example of cherry-picking the results that agree with the policy preconceptions.

In the weeks leading up to the [Iraq] war, senior administration officials repeatedly stated that Iraq had attempted to acquire more than 100,000 high-strength aluminum tubes for gas centrifuges to be used for enriching uranium. [UCS, March]

The contention was also featured in Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003, regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. [UCS, March]

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) advocated the view that the tubes were intended for centrifuges, and argued that the tight tolerances on the tubes' dimensions and finish could have no other interpretation. However, a set of technical experts from the Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge, Livermore, and Los Alamos National Laboratories reviewed the CIA analysis and disagreed with this interpretation because the tube dimensions were far from ideal for this purpose. [UCS, March]

This critique of the CIA interpretation was seconded by the State Department's intelligence branch and, independently, by an international group of centrifuge experts advising the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). [UCS, March]

Powell's speech dismissed this disagreement by lumping the U.S. experts with the Iraqis: "Other experts, and the Iraqis themselves, argue that they are really to produce the rocket bodies for a conventional weapon, a multiple rocket launcher." Many experts, especially at the DOE, felt "that was really a slap in the face...my friends in DOE felt shocked...we were thrown in the same camp as the Iraqis." As Dr.David Albright,a weapons expert and president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, DC, has noted, "It bespeaks something seriously wrong that a proper technical adjudication of this matter was never conducted. There was certainly plenty of time to accomplish it." [UCS, March]

Appointment of advisors to scientific committees:

UCS charged that advisors for panels to study lead levels and ergonomics were selected by HHS Director Tommy Thompson to be against action and to preserve the status quo.

Several qualified appointees were rejected base on political litmus tests. They either didn't support Bush policies, or didn't vote for him. They said that they were specifically asked during an interview for a scientific advisory panel whether they supported particular policies.

One advisory committee was abolished after it didn't support Bush policy on development of new nuclear weapons. Members of the committee had published articles opposing development of "bunker buster" nuclear weapons.

The administrator has justified the abolition of the committee because there is "no shortage of advice" and "there are a lot of physicists who work" at the weapons labs.. That, of course, has always been true,and yet Cold War presidents from Eisenhower to Nixon understood that such a serious and dangerous subject requires the advice of outstanding experts independent of the government. [UCS, March]

Response from the White House OSTP to the UCS Report.

Response [by OSTP]: The UCS document concludes with a series of quotations but does not provide a single instance of an actual suppression of agency research or an appointment irregularity occurring. Individual opinions are not actual events whose facts can be determined. With no context, one must assume these opinions are based upon the type of misinformation presented throughout the UCS document. [OSTP response, April 2004]

Response from the White House OSTP to the UCS Report, in the UCS's opinion.

On April 2, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a statement by John H. Marburger, III, the director of OSTP, that claims the descriptions of the incidents in the UCS report are all "false," "wrong," or "a distortion." Analysis of the particulars in the White House document shows that these claims are unjustified. Aside from a couple of minutiae, the White House document fails to offer much evidence to support its claims. [UCS, April 2004]

Is Science above Politics?

No administration has been above inserting politics into science from time to time. However, a considerable number of individuals who have served in positions directly involved in the federal government's use of scientific knowledge and expertise have asserted that the Bush administration is, to an unprecedented degree, distorting and manipulating the science meant to assist the formation and implementation of policy. [March UCS]

Dr.Marvin Goldberger,a former president of the California Institute of Technology who has advised both Republican and Democratic administrations on nuclear weapons issues, compares the attitude of this administration to those he has served by stating, "Politics plays no role in scientists\rquote search for understanding and applications of the laws of nature. To ignore or marginalize scientific input to policy decisions on the basis of politics is to endanger our national economic and military security." [March UCS]

The UCS documents indicate that scientific reports should be independent of politics. But is that possible? Robert S. Walker, former U.S. Representative, spoke for the Bush Administration in an interview in Chemical and Engineering News, the newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society. Walker

call[ed] the UCS report a purely political document and warn[ed] that scientists had better understand what they are getting themselves into. [He said,] 'A lot of scientists who come out of the academic community come from institutions that have a heavy liberal bias,' cautioning that scientists should not let their objectivity be compromised by partisan politics. 'Science does itself a disservice when it mixes with politics in a way that can engender a pushback in the future.' Asked what he meant by pushback, Walker said he did not mean to imply that politically active scientists could be punished for their activism, but added, 'My point is, if they get into politics, then they're going to find they're in politics.' [Chemical and Engineering News, October 18, 2004, p. 35-36.

Is he right that scientists are getting into politics? Wayne A. R. Leys wrote in Physics Today in 1952 about scientific ethics. The article was reprinted in Nov. 2004, pp 55-60. He writes, "The scientist who knows that his work will have practical consequences is apt to worry lest he provide the weapons for an unjust war, the means of reaping unjust profits, or the material for dishonest propaganda... The scientist who suspects that he is serving evil purposes is not in a unique predicament. Any workman may experience the same difficulty."

Then he talks about working for the Nazis, a topic of concern for scientists soon after World War II.

"The fact that he is a scientist does not deprive him of the necessity of making decisions... A scientist still faces hard choices in the publication and use of his findings.... No code will ever finally settle all issues regarding the need for political reform."

Discussion

With this statement in mind, is the UCS report a political document? If a scientist should have the option of making a decision about use of his or her results, why shouldn't the politicians consider the results to be political? If the results are objective and scientific, how can that be demonstrated?

Both the OSTP and the UCS make valid points. The OSTP is correct that the most inflamatory statements in the UCS report are opinion statements that are not supported by facts. This makes the UCS report sound like political opinion, rather than a scientific study.

On the other hand, the UCS points out that the Bush Administration has many dogmatic policies that conflict with a significant amount of scientific evidence. These policies may be based on Bush's morality or political ideology, but that doesn't mean that they are immune to scientific evaluation. But overt opposition to the policies should be made as a political statement, not hidden behind a report that claims to be science.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the policies of the Washington Area Secular Humanists.