Bush administration aggressively prosecutes war… on science.

February 4, 2006 | General, Science | By: Mark VandeWettering

It seems that a collection of public relations officers appointed by the Bush administration are giving NASA a black eye by trying to “recast” (if one is charitable) or “rewrite” (if one is accurate) the scientific research that the technical staff at NASA produce.  In particular, Bush appointee George Deutsch pressured NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen to refrain from talking about global warming, threatening him with “dire consequences” if he continued.   He also worked to change the NASA website so that every mention of the Big Bang was changed to the Big Bang theory, since it was a just “a matter of opinion”.

Deutsch appears to be one of those people who think that the role of federal employees is to serve the commander in chief, when in reality they are supposed to serve the people of this nation and uphold the Constitution.

Phil Plait is even angrier than I, so go read his blog for more info.

[tags]Politics vs. Science, NASA, George Deutsch,Abuse of Power[/tags]

Comments

Comment from Theo Honohan
Time 2/5/2006 at 8:46 am

This is bad, but at least the problem is essentially a political issue rather than a philosophical one. Censorship of any kind is bad. Focusing on the big bang “theory” question makes me a bit uncomfortable, because it gets back into the ID debate, which is really a philosophical and ideological one, however much we want it to be about logic and facts.

Comment from Kevin VandeWettering
Time 2/7/2006 at 5:37 pm

I think if I was the president, I would have squished this too. My attitude would be “Don’t tell me about doomsday, come back with an idea to fix it.”

We can’t stop China from industrial growth. Even though they are eventually global doomsday. Game over.

The next generation is going to have to come up with some ideas we haven’t thought of yet.

We all knew this is a bad situation without a major press release from NASA.

I’m looking at a 6.7% increase in Bushs budget for NASA and other science research. That sounds pro science.

Global warming?. Tell us something we didn’t know.