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Attacks On Science 2008 - A Very Partial List
The attacks on science continue in 2008. The following list
outlines specific items making the news (some in a very limited
fashion). But perhaps the biggest items are those that do not
make headlines. The current administration has taken no action on
stem cell research since the November 2007 veto of legislation that
allowed embryonic stem cell research to continue, and none of the
current major
party presidential candidates, have raised the issue substantively in
their campaigns. Although the Bush Administration no
longer openly denies the science behind global warming, not a single
regulation addressing the pressing issues of greenhouse gases or other
related topics has been raised. Issues related to public
health and the environment have also been denied with further evidence
of the muzzling of government scientists in agencies such as NASA, the
EPA, and others coming to light. Equally chilling are the
increasing efforts to roll back women’s reproductive rights and to
force religion into science classrooms. Creationist bills are “brewing” in state
legislatures across the country - and have been passed and signed into
law in Louisiana (see below). And it is alarming in this context
that issues relating to science and scientific thinking are nearly
absent from substantive discussion in the presidential campaign - with
the “exception” of Vice Presidential nominee Palin’s creationism and
Biblical literalism.
March 2008. The EPA ignored its own science advisory board and
lowered the ozone standard from 84 to 75 parts per billion. The
advisory board had recommended a more stringent standard of 60 to 70
parts per billion. In addition, in announcing the standard, EPA
Administrator Stephen Johnson noted he is prohibited from considering
the economic consequences of the standard and urged Congress to change
the law so the costs of protecting public health would be considered
when establishing future standards. Under Johnson’s proposals, if
the cost were high, the EPA administrator would not be legally required
to recommend regulation or protective standards. In short, not
only did the EPA ignore the advice of scientists, Johnson requested
making it a matter of law that scientific standards could be ignored in
the future if there were “economic consequences.”
April 18, 2008: The Ben Stein movie/documentary "Expelled: No
Intelligence Allowed" is released. The movie casts Stein (former Nixon
speech-writer with a minor acting career) as an “anti-establishment
rebel” facing off against “Big Science”. It is a crude attack on
evolution, insidiously framed as defending the “Freedom of Speech” of
scientists who dare to go up against the "scientific
establishment". The movie openly poses religion in opposition to
evolution, and panders to the prejudices of its intended Christian
fundamentalist audience. It poses the "little guy" vs. “Big Science”;
“faith-based common sense” vs. the complexities of reality; and
Americanism and freedom of speech vs. the way science has really
developed and what science has learned about the world. Although
not a box office success, the fact that this anti-science rhetoric
received funding and millions of dollars of promotion, especially among
the religious community, is not good for science.
June 25, 2008: Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, signed the Science
Education Act. This new onslaught of creationism/intelligent design is
modeled on a template from the Discovery Institute, the nerve center of
the intelligent design version of creationism. The heart of the act is
the latest misleading argument from the intelligent design forces -
that scientists and teachers who raise so-called “scientific”
criticisms of evolution are intimidated, unfairly denied tenure, and
otherwise retaliated against. This argument denies the fact that there
are no scientifically credible criticisms of the theory of evolution
(although specifics are debated) and that alternative views such as
creationism and intelligent design are not science but are in fact
religious notions and have no place in a science curriculum - as the
courts have repeatedly stated.
July 11, 2008, Despite four major international conferences on climate
change, the Bush Administration has failed to take any substantial
action to address the issue. For example, in a move to delay
regulation of greenhouse gases, EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson
announced that further public comment will be sought regarding the
impact of global warming on human health and the environment. The
Bush Administration, in compliance with a 2007 Supreme Court ruling,
was to make a determination regarding the impact of global warming and
to regulate greenhouse gases should the health risks warrant
regulation. The new public comment period extends well into 2009
and it is now clear that the administration will never issue any
regulation limiting greenhouse gas emissions. (Rumors surfaced in
December 2007 that EPA scientists had concluded that there were
negative health and environmental impacts from global warming, but the
administration refused to so much as open the email attachment
detailing the findings and sent the report back for further review and
editing.)
July 15, 2008: The Bush Administration and other forces within society
continue to work to overturn the rights of women to reproductive
control and freedom. According to the NYT (July 15, 2008), “The
Bush
administration wants to require all recipients of aid under federal
health programs to certify that they will not refuse to hire nurses and
other providers who object to abortion and even certain types of birth
control.” The definition of abortion in the regulation as “any of
the various procedures… that results in the termination of the life of
a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether
before or after implantation” is significant. It includes
oral contraceptive and emergency, or day-after, contraception as
abortion. It also states that a “human being” is any group
of cells after conception, which then leads to defining abortion
as murder as a logical next step. Although the Department of
Health and Human Services has not sent the draft regulations forward,
the available information is chilling.
August 2008: The Endangered Species Act has been under nearly
continuous attack by the Bush Administration, and this month Interior
Secretary Dirk Kempthorne proposed revising regulations to eliminate
the required independent scientific review of projects with the
potential to harm endangered species on federal lands. Under the
regulations proposed August 11, the Fish and Wildlife Service or
National Marine Fisheries Service would no longer review Department of
Transportation projects, or Interior Department dam projects, or other
large-scale projects on federal land to determine the likely impact on
endangered species - the departments themselves would make the
determination. This would eliminate input from scientists who are
knowledgeable of, and committed to, the protection of endangered
species and creates conflict of interest in the review process.
The Bush Administration has attempted to block the implementation of
the act at every turn, for example, by delaying the regulating of
commercial shipping speed in the migration route of the endangered
right whale (and protecting the right whale in a much smaller
geographic area than recommended by marine mammal experts), and only
listing the polar bear as a threatened species after explicitly
allowing natural gas and oil exploration to continue within the bear’s
habitat. On August 12, 2008, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
announced that habitat set aside in Oregon, Washington and California
for the spotted owl would be reduced by 23%, this in the face of
evidence that the population is declining at a rate of 4% per year.
August 2008. After over 7 years of doing nothing to protect
worker health (one regulation limiting exposure to a toxin, implemented
under court order), the Bush Administration is pushing through
regulations ignoring worker health, adding an additional layer of
review before protective measures can be implemented, and ignoring
their own scientists and legal advisors in the process. In this
instance the Department of Labor is rushing to put regulation favorable
to industry, at the expense of workers, in place before the conclusion
of the Bush Administration.
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