End the Politicization of Science

[Si modo]

....

If you believe that the disregard of science is a threat to the future security of the United States and the international community, then please sign our petition below to show your support!

By signing the petition below you also pledge to spend five minutes talking about this issue with a friend or a stranger. Only through factual, non-partisan dialogue, can we fight against the politicization of science, and create a more informed world!

....

And the petition:

End the War on Science

Greetings,

We, the undersigned, believe public policy decisions are best made under the guidance of scientific inquiry and factual reason, not politics.

We petition the international community to end the politicization of science, by taking the following actions:

• Declare that good policy comes from informed decisions based on facts.
• Support scientists and engineers running for public office.
• Bring serious scientists together to solve the most challenging issues through non-partisan technical analysis.
• Stop exploiting differences in public opinion on science-based issues by playing partisan politics and relying on anti-science views.
• Pledge to bring an end to invoking misrepresented expertise to justify a course of action.
• Minimize interaction with advocacy groups that increasingly rely on anti-science experts to justify their issue stance.

To further show our passion for this cause, we pledge to spend five minutes today discussing this issue with a friend or a stranger. It is our belief that it is only through factual, non-partisan dialogue, can we fight against the politicization of science, and create a more informed world!

[Your name]​

[Emphasis added]

FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS

What a damn good idea.

 

[G.T.]

I think petitions are like farting in the wind. And that thought is not very scientific.

 

[Samson]

"Declare that good policy comes from informed decisions based on facts"

......come on, really?

 

[goldcatt]

Don't let rdean see this!

 

[Samson]

Don't let rdean see this!

Booger!!!

 

[goldcatt]

Don't let rdean see this!

Booger!!!

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tqxzWdKKu8]YouTube - Dueling Banjos Deliverance[/ame]

 

[Immanuel]

I wonder if the Federation of American Scientists realizes that ending the politicization of science would have to include the end of government funding of research?

I mean really, politicians are not going to fund something they do not expect to get a return off of.

Have they thought about that?

Immie

 

[Bill Angel]

I wonder if the Federation of American Scientists realizes that ending the politicization of science would have to include the end of government funding of research?

I mean really, politicians are not going to fund something they do not expect to get a return off of.

Have they thought about that?

Immie

The decision to send a man to the moon was really a political decision, a decision elucidated in a speech by President John F Kennedy. Was it a poor decision, to set and then accomplish this goal? I suspect that a non-partisan panel of scientists (back in the 1960's) would not have assigned such a high priority to the manned spaceflight program that culminated in a moon landing. They would have directed more funds into basic research.

 

[Immanuel]

I wonder if the Federation of American Scientists realizes that ending the politicization of science would have to include the end of government funding of research?

I mean really, politicians are not going to fund something they do not expect to get a return off of.

Have they thought about that?

Immie

The decision to send a man to the moon was really a political decision, a decision elucidated in a speech by President John F Kennedy. Was it a poor decision, to set and then accomplish this goal? I suspect that a non-partisan panel of scientists (back in the 1960's) would not have assigned such a high priority to the manned spaceflight program that culminated in a moon landing. They would have directed more funds into basic research.

That is basically what I am saying.

If the AFoS wants to end the politicization of science, they would risk losing much of their funding.

Personally, I agree with them, politics and science mix about as well as religion and politics but government funding of science goes a long way to scientific advancement. Government will sponsor research into areas that do not appear to be profitable in order to promote research into fields that may some day prove useful i.e. stem cell research.

Immie

 

[Old Rocks]

Kind of like the grant for the research into an odd group of materials called semi-conductors.

 

[Old Rocks]

The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney

 

[Old Rocks]

Bush's War on Science

Published on Monday, July 5, 2004 by the Boulder Daily Camera (Colorado)
Bush's War on Science
by Gov. Howard Dean M.D.

I write this week's column as a physician.

The Bush administration has declared war on science. In the Orwellian world of 21st century America, two plus two no longer equals four where public policy is concerned, and science is no exception. When a right-wing theory is contradicted by an inconvenient scientific fact, the science is not refuted; it is simply discarded or ignored.

Egregious examples abound. Over-the-counter morning-after contraceptive sales are banned, despite the recommendation for approval by an independent panel of the Food and Drug Administration review board. The health risks of mercury were discounted by a White House staffer who simply crossed out the word "confirmed" from a phrase describing mercury as a "confirmed public health risk." A National Cancer Institute fact sheet was doctored to suggest that abortion increases breast-cancer risk, even though the American Cancer Society concluded that the best study discounts that. Reports on the status of minority health and the importance of breast feeding are similarly watered down to appease right-wing ideologies.

What about global warming? After withdrawing from the Kyoto Treaty, the Bush administration distanced itself from a climate report the Environmental Protection Agency wrote, because it affirmed the potential worldwide harm of global warming, the existence of which Bush had denied. The global-warming section of the 2003 EPA report on the environment was extensively rewritten, then dropped entirely.

Fighting HIV? Bush's initiative to help fund HIV efforts in Africa was trumpeted by the press, while the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control quietly removed information on the benefits of condoms and safe sex education from domestic HIV Web sites

 

[dilloduck]

Are those people who can only conduct half of an orchestra ?

 

[Truthmatters]

How I wish we could use our best knowledge to decide our futures.

Science , History and all higher education are hated by the right.

 

[Si modo]

I wonder if the Federation of American Scientists realizes that ending the politicization of science would have to include the end of government funding of research?

I mean really, politicians are not going to fund something they do not expect to get a return off of.

Have they thought about that?

Immie

The decision to send a man to the moon was really a political decision, a decision elucidated in a speech by President John F Kennedy. Was it a poor decision, to set and then accomplish this goal? I suspect that a non-partisan panel of scientists (back in the 1960's) would not have assigned such a high priority to the manned spaceflight program that culminated in a moon landing. They would have directed more funds into basic research.

That is basically what I am saying.

If the AFoS wants to end the politicization of science, they would risk losing much of their funding.

Personally, I agree with them, politics and science mix about as well as religion and politics but government funding of science goes a long way to scientific advancement. Government will sponsor research into areas that do not appear to be profitable in order to promote research into fields that may some day prove useful i.e. stem cell research.

Immie

This is not the point of the petition. The points of the petition are:

• Declare that good policy comes from informed decisions based on facts.
• Support scientists and engineers running for public office.
• Bring serious scientists together to solve the most challenging issues through non-partisan technical analysis.
• Stop exploiting differences in public opinion on science-based issues by playing partisan politics and relying on anti-science views.
• Pledge to bring an end to invoking misrepresented expertise to justify a course of action.
• Minimize interaction with advocacy groups that increasingly rely on anti-science experts to justify their issue stance.​

The politics of grants and the point of this petition are not the same thing. There may be similarities, but with intense grant review procedures in place by the scientific granting agencies, the grant awards are already scientifically informed.

 

[Old Rocks]

“Undermining Science: Suppression and Distortion in the Bush Administration” published (posting from Climate Science Watch)

Undermining Science: Suppression and Distortion in the Bush Administration” published
Posted on Saturday, November 18, 2006


Yesterday we picked up a copy of the just-published book, Undermining Science: Suppression and Distortion in the Bush Administration, by Seth Shulman. Shulman, an investigative journalist, authored the Union of Concerned Scientists report, “Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policy Making,” which served as the basis for a highly publicized scientists’ statement accusing the Bush administration of misuse of science. Check it out, as a companion to Chris Mooney’s outstanding The Republican War on Science.



Undermining Science: Suppression and Distortion in the Bush Administration
by Seth Shulman
University of California Press

Chapter 2 of this very readable book, “‘Icing’ the Data on Climate Change,” covers suppression and distortion of climate science communication and includes something of our story on pp. 18-21. The chapter begins with this quote (p. 16):

In my 14 years of government I have never seen a situation like the present one involving climate science in which politicization by the White House has fed back directly into the science program in such a way as to undermine the credibility and integrity of the program in its relationship to the research community, to program managers, to policymakers, and to the public interest.
—Rick S. Piltz, former senior associate at the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, in his letter of resignation, 2005

 

[Si modo]

Poor Rocks. After seeing a petition asking scientists to pledge to cut out politicization in science and to cut out partisanship in science, Rocks does exactly the opposite.

Rocks is obviously, an enemy of science.

 

[Old Rocks]

Odd to see someone that denys the findings of science pushing this agenda. After all, it is what we were preaching from 2001 to 2009 when science was being suppressed by that administration in this nation, because they did not like the results.

 

[Si modo]

Odd to see someone that denys the findings of science pushing this agenda. After all, it is what we were preaching from 2001 to 2009 when science was being suppressed by that administration in this nation, because they did not like the results.

Poor Rocks. Still can't grasp the petition, nor the basics of the logic of scientific discovery.

Or, reading comprehension, for that matter.

 

[editec]

....

If you believe that the disregard of science is a threat to the future security of the United States and the international community, then please sign our petition below to show your support!

By signing the petition below you also pledge to spend five minutes talking about this issue with a friend or a stranger. Only through factual, non-partisan dialogue, can we fight against the politicization of science, and create a more informed world!

....

And the petition:

End the War on Science

Greetings,

We, the undersigned, believe public policy decisions are best made under the guidance of scientific inquiry and factual reason, not politics.

We petition the international community to end the politicization of science, by taking the following actions:

• Declare that good policy comes from informed decisions based on facts.
• Support scientists and engineers running for public office.
• Bring serious scientists together to solve the most challenging issues through non-partisan technical analysis.
• Stop exploiting differences in public opinion on science-based issues by playing partisan politics and relying on anti-science views.
• Pledge to bring an end to invoking misrepresented expertise to justify a course of action.
• Minimize interaction with advocacy groups that increasingly rely on anti-science experts to justify their issue stance.

To further show our passion for this cause, we pledge to spend five minutes today discussing this issue with a friend or a stranger. It is our belief that it is only through factual, non-partisan dialogue, can we fight against the politicization of science, and create a more informed world!

[Your name]
​

[Emphasis added]

FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS

What a damn good idea.

If the Federation of American Scientists wants to get politics out of science, they're going to have to figure out how to conduct science WITHOUT also taking government money for their research.

The GOLDEN RULE is no less in effect in scirntific reasearch than in any other field.

And since the government gives SO DAMNED MUCH MONEY to fund research, getting politics out of it is freaking IMPOSSIBLE.