20 Nobel laureates can't be wrongFollow

Yet another thread in a string of Bush bashin', giving Totem, Gbaji et al something to hop up and down about.

Recently, the Union of Concerned Scientists released a report detailing scientific abuses of the Bush administration including tampering with reports, supressing evidence and manipulating findings. While the UCS is an advocacy group, many of the 60+ scientists to sign the report have no affiliation with the UCS. Signatories to the report include twenty Nobel laureates as well as other distinguished scientific award bearers.

Included in the report are allegations such as:
"...the Bush administration blatantly tampered with the integrity of scientific analysis at a federal agency when, in June 2003, the White House tried to make a series of changes to the EPA’s draft Report on the Environment" including removing a thousand year temperature record, inserting a discredited temperature record created by the American Petroleum Institute, and even demanding that any reference to the thought that climate changes could be detrimental to man be expunged from the report.

"...published accounts to date have documented that senior Bush officials suppressed and sought to manipulate government information about mercury contained in an EPA report on children’s health and the environment" including the fact that 8% of women aged 16-49 have levels of mercury in their blood sufficent to lead to reduced IQ and motor skill loss in their children.

Suppressing and distorting CDC data regarding the effectiness of abstinence programs to promote them over safe sex education and even replacing a fact sheet on the CDC website regarding proper condom use with one detailing condom failure rates. "When a source inside the CDC questioned the actions, she was told that the changes were directed by Bush administration officials at the Department of Health and Human Services."

"Dr. James Zahn, a research microbiologist at the USDA who asserts that he was prohibited on no fewer than 11 occasions from publicizing his research on the potential hazards to human health posed by airborne bacteria resulting from farm wastes [...] suppression of Zahn’s research results seems to be part of a larger pattern within the USDA of squelching findings that conflict with the Bush administration’s agenda. Notably, a directive issued in February 2002 instructed USDA staff scientists to seek prior approval before publishing any research or speaking publicly on 'sensitive issues'"

Ignoring data and findings from multiple scientific parties that aluminum tubes headed to Iraq were not likely to be used a centrifuge components and instead using them as a centerpiece of the weapons program "evidence" as spouted by "...National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, Vice President **** Cheney, and finally by President Bush on September 12, 2002, in his address to the United Nations (UN) General Assembly." This led to Powell claiming the scientists were "suprised" when it was discovered the tubes weren't for that purpose at all.

Distorting and suppressing ecological findings on endangered species to further Bush's industrial policies and agendas, including logging rules supposively put in place to "decrease the chances of fires" and found by a Forest Service panel to have no scientific validity or backing.

Rejecting the nominees of a CDC panel to determine whether or not to strengthen the Federal standard of lead poisoning and replacing them with shills with ties to the lead industry (obviously opposed to any such revisions).

Eliminating scientific committees whose findings concluded that nuclear "bunker buster" weapons had a high fallout rate and limited use against deeply buried targets. Such findings didn't support Bush's own desire for nuclear "bunker buster" research.

There's more, but hey the report is fourty-seven pages long and I'd hate to ruin it all for you. Certainly not quite as much fun as random emails decrying Kerry's service medals, but enough to keep you going as you sip your morning coffee.

Edited, Tue Mar 2 22:33:48 2004 by Jophiel

How am I supposed to beleive a word of what the administration say? The POTUS has absolutely no credibilty left. Looking at the exit polls of Super Tuesday I'd say that the great majority of democrats agree. They don;t matter. What matters are the independents in key swing states. To get reelected Bush must convince them he is a safer bet than Kerry, but how?

Looking at the GOP's game plan, they are going to force out the culture issues such as abortion, tax cuts, gun rights, gay marraige and of all things an amendment to ban flag burning. Excuse me, these issues pale in comparison to Bush's record. Very few independents care about anything right now except the economy, jobs, the war in Iraq. Bush is very very weak on all these because of his credibility gap.

I think Bush has two trump cards to play. First, Osama will be caught between now and November. Also I believe it is possible that dirty election tricks might crop up in key states such a Florida and Ohio. Diebold's integrity is definately an issue.

The union comes out with one of these periodically. I also read the one they wrote about Clinton some years back. I agree with both reports. I'm not going to compare them and say who is worse on this issue.

However, even if both reports are equally horrible, we should not tolerate this behavior. Someone like McCain or McGovern would never let this happen in their administrations, or so I think obviously I don't know these people personally.

Further, extending this to: Bush == Kerry is pretty scary. Let me just list a few points: Kerry is going to try to move us toward socialized health care. He will try to undo the tax cut for the very wealthy. Bush will take the opposite views. Kerry will try to stabilize social security without lowering its benefits, whereas Bush favors privatizing parts of social security. These are major issues we in the US all should likely have opinions on, and their are strong arguments on both sides of each.

And lastly we should all recall the Simpson's episode where both candidates are shown to be space aliens bent on enslaving the human race. When unmasked, they say "so what are you going to do about it?" Someone suggests voting for a 3rd party candidate, and another person says "but we have a 2 party system, voting for a third party candidate is just a wasted vote" and so everyone chooses between the two. The final scene is where all the Simpsons are slaving away draging rocks around and Homer says something to the effect: "don't blame me I voted for the other guy".

I was about to say the same. As I said in the OP, the UCS is an advocacy group -- they pretty much exist to take a stand on issues. I had no trouble finding them complaining about Clinton and defense issues, for example. One of the big things about this particular piece was the amount of highly accredited non-UCS affiliated scientists who chose to add their names to the study.

If there was a paper written on the same topic as the above, accusing the Clinton administration of manipulating and suppressing scientific data and taking environment/health studies out of the hands of independant study and into the hands of industrialists to further his agenda, I wasn't able to find them. Certainly the UCS didn't feel they were worth archiving and, while I only went about ten pages deep into my Google search, they didn't show up. I won't say they don't exist, but I have yet to see evidence of them.

Edited, Thu Mar 4 10:48:14 2004 by Jophiel

Well, let me know if you do.