SCIENCE AND POLITICS

The endless struggle between Science and Politics - through all of history - is footloose and very much in the open in early 21st Century relationships. During the second Bush administration, that conflict burst into open intellectual conflict where the weapons of war are electronic communications, government money, Presidential appointments, the aspirations and politicians and scientists, the avarice of money makers, perceived and investigated fact with an outrageous overlay of religious dogma and evangelistic fervor. Sans the house arrest - it sounds like the struggle of Galileo about issues of astronomy and Earth v. Sun and which circles which!

President Obama has a made a series of personnel decisions and policy decisions in the area of science and technology which reverses several decades of frustration for the science. He has elevated the science advisors in the White House to senior advisor status. He continues to encourage changes in the law in Congress that will encourage the science community, and sign Executive Orders to make major changes in government policy in areas like stem cell research.

Historical Perspective

This conflict between Science, Politics, and Religion is a part of the human existence in all the history we know. While it has varied in importance at different times, and is approached differently in different cultures, in the 21st Century, in the United States, it is a centerpiece in the struggle for intellectual freedom against government repression.

Suppression

The current fuss is directed against the President's attempt to suppress science that conflicts with his administration's political base. The easy example is science on Planetary Warming and research on Birth Control, Stem Cell Research, Abortions and other "body control subjects."

Other than the White House policy in general on these sorts of subjects, specific conflicts have arisen when his political appointees have altered the science of government scientists and scholars working on federal grants. Scientists and science groups have challenged this conduct aggressively for several years, but have been more successful at it in recent months.

Suppression of research - both by deprivation of funding and general public attacks - has its impact on new ideas and new search for fact.

As the so called "Conservative Movement" has gained power over the last half century, suppression of fact outside the party dogma has been business-as-usual. This dogma has dominated the Executive appointments of all the Republican Presidents since Reagan as a litmus test for appointment. Given the concept that intellectual integrity - telling the truth in line with observed fact - is at the core of scientific research, much of the suppression, much of political muscle of this era has been applied by appointees untrained or outside the scientific communities involved.

Impact of the Religious Overlay

The role of the Christian Right and other religious groups was to insist on certain conduct by the Republican Party since somewhere in the 1960's. The GOP didn't have much of a soul to start with, but sold whatever it had for votes, and science was a victim. In a larger sense, the struggle between religion and government took on a more obvious role in recent years - and that is a good thing - better it be regulated by the public over time than sneak around undercover to establish policy. That conflict between government and religion has not made it easy to be a political appointee in areas of government where religious groups have an agenda.

January 30 2007: An international conference of Scientists in Paris today set out proof that the Bush Administration had muscled scholars to eliminate key words in papers about the environment. The words were "global warming" and phrases referring to temperature change. Over-enthusiastic Bushies changed offensive words without authors' permission and published some of the papers in changed form. Ouch!

Bush appointments have been forced from office at NASA for similar acts of intellectual integrity. Source: Union of Concerned Scientists 01-30-07