Senator Clinton received a burst of applause at the Texas debate February 21 when she denounced “George Bush’s war on science.”
War? The word has frequently been applied to the Bush administration’s dealings with science. But it’s off the mark, and clouds understanding of what’s been happening between science and government over the past seven years. Rather than warring on science, Bush and company are selective science bashers, abusing science and scientists when it serves their ideological and political purposes, but otherwise keeping hands off.
The subjects that grip them and set off their worst behavior are fortunately few. Pandering to its fundamentalist religious base, the administration is on guard about anything related to reproductive biology. Hence the restraints on stem cell research, false alarms about the health effects of abortion, and discouragement of research on contraceptives and simplified methods of contraception.
Subtle boosting of intelligent design as a credible alternative to evolution is another sop to the religionists, with Bush himself evenhandedly saying both sides “should be properly taught.”
Then there’s the environment and, in particular, global climate change, which the administration had long depicted as a left-wing myth designed to cripple American industrial competitiveness. Under fire from other governments and many of its own domestic allies, the administration has grudgingly acknowledged that global warming exists and requires a serious response by government and industry, but the performance so far is negligible.
When scientific evidence conflicts with ideological and political preference on these matters, the administration has attempted to muzzle the messengers. Scientists being chatty and difficult to discipline, even when in government jobs, these attempts often end in embarrassing failure. Recently, for example, Dr. Julie Gerberding, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was about to testify in Congress about the potential health effects of global warming. On orders from above, her testimony was gutted. Nonetheless, the story leaked out, as has been the case with numerous other attempts by administration officials to bury unwelcome information.
A real war on science should show up in leadership appointments at major federal research agencies. There is no doubt that the White House could easily find ideological kin for those jobs. But Bush’s appointees for these agencies are politically nondescript mainstream scientists and administrators who might just as easily have been selected by a Democratic administration. Elias Zerhouni, head of the National Institutes of Health, spent most of his career at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and of late has even publicly questioned the administration’s policy on stem-cell research. Arden Bement had a long career in high-tech industry, academe, and government before becoming head of the National Science Foundation. At the Department of Energy, Raymond L. Orbach was chancellor of the University of California at Riverside for 10 years prior to becoming head of DOE’s Office of Science.
In the pecking order of government science, the top official is John Marburger III, head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, who doubles as the President’s science adviser. Marburger, who says he’s nominally a Democrat, has served as an apologist for the administration’s sins against science, lamely arguing that the bashing and muzzling are isolated events attributable to junior bureaucrats overstepping their authority. But even Marburger gagged on the issue of creationism, stating, in response to a question, that “Evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology. Intelligent design is not a scientific concept. One cannot be an alternative to the other.” Be assured, there are plenty of Bush-leaning ideologues who would joyously take his job, but he’s still there — in fact, he’s one of the longest-serving appointees on the Executive Office staff.
Science, as always, clamors for more government money, but there’s no evidence that Bush is using the budget to war against science. Bush’s latest budget proposes a 13-percent increase for NSF and an 18-percent increase for DOE science. NIH’s budget again remains flat, for the fifth consecutive year. Painful, says the NIH community, but not so bad, given that the NIH budget doubled between 1998 and 2003, says Marburger, who contends NIH must make better use of its money.
War on science? At most, it’s a limited war. And for that we should be grateful, because the scientific enterprise is fragile and a truly hostile administration could do serious damage.
The lesson to be drawn from the Bush experience is that the scientific enterprise must resist intrusions on its integrity. So far, it has responded with petitions protesting suppression of scientific information and restraints on research — with little effect. Mobilization aimed at the ballot box is the way other sectors respond to their grievances. But that’s not the way of science.
