Undermining Science: Suppression and Distortion in the Bush Administration | Seth Shulman

Undermining Science: Suppression and Distortion in the Bush Administration | Seth Shulman | Gravity Always Holds Me Down

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Undermining Scienc...

	Undermining Science: Suppression and Distortion in the Bush Administration Seth Shulman University of California Press, 2008 - 232 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

This vitally important exposé shows how the Bush administration has systematically misled Americans on a wide range of scientific issues affecting public health, foreign policy, and the environment by ignoring, suppressing, manipulating, or even distorting scientific research. It is the first book to focus exclusively on how this explosive issue has played out during the presidency of George W. Bush and the first to comprehensively document his administration's abuses of science. This paperback edition contains a new preface bringing to light the most up-to-date research on these abuses.
Undermining Science covers:
* The Bush administration's abuse and misuse of science in areas including stem cell research, AIDS prevention, environmental protection, the Iraq war, the teaching of evolution, and global warming;
* The administration's use of political litmus tests in selecting administrators for science-based agencies and in selecting scientists on federal advisory committees;
* The dangerous consequences of the Bush administration's war on science for the caliber and integrity of the nation's scientific research.

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The Destruction of Proper Process

This reviewer has worked for the Navy Dept. in Washington, and for businesses, big and small. I am a "conservative liberal" Democrat, so that will color my comments. With that background, I must say that anyone who wishes to get a real understanding of what the Bush administration has done to distort the proper process of government at all levels must read this book. For example, in May of 2008, it was in the news that the administration directed the EPA to take into account the cost to businesses of the regulations which it proposes. This is a clear conflict of interests; it is the job of such agencies to propose a regulation, give the supporting facts to justify it, circulate it to the public for comments, and leave it to the politicians to resolve the conflicts. Seth Shulman's book documents this kind of action throughout government, how political considerations have been brought to bear on every agency. It reminds one of the stories we have heard about the ubiquitous presence of political officers in the days of the communist Soviet Union. The book is a detailed documentary of the damage done to the proper workings of government by this Republican administration, causing the resignations of innumerable highly qualified people. It should be a revelation to moderate Republicans as to how true conservative principles have been compromised by the Bush administration.

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Gravity Always Holds Me Down

Now that sounds like a silly assertion. There has been some silliness circulating. Sometimes I find myself on top of a mountain, and on other days I'm at the bottom of a canyon. Sometimes I am riding in an airplane, and other days I riding an elevator. Whether I am high or low does not depend on who is causing it. It does not depend on who is President of the United States. The gravity that holds me to Earth does not vary from day to day, even if it seems to have grown stronger lately. Gravity is as certain and unchanging as time itself.

Gravity isn't silly. Gravity is physical truth. Scientists seek to find these physical truths because they are helpful in making extremely important determinations, such as whether the soil will remain on the ground, or whether the soil will blow in the sky. Nasty black rollers have been known to blot out the sun and cause dust pneumonia. Climate change could cause more soil to blow if soil becomes drier.

Another physical truth involves greenhouse gases. We have known for over one-hundred years that more greenhouse gases will always cause more heat to be retained in the atmosphere. Scientists have shown this in theory, laboratory experiment, climate models and ecological simulators such as Biosphere 2. Astronomers have successfully learned to predict the surface temperatures of other planets based on the distance from the sun and the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. On Earth, we could only hope we would find a source of negative feedback to regulate Earth's temperature. Climatologists found positive feedback which magnifies temperature increases. Just like throwing more weight onto a truck will make it more heavy, more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will always make the atmosphere hotter.

I have never known scientists to purposely create research conclusions that defy truth. Science is highly reviewed and screened. Scientific peers conduct tests to determine adherence to scientific theory. Science must be repeatable and dependable as background to further research. Poor research is tossed aside. Science is built on a strong foundation to prevent having to throw out more research later.

Seth Shulman describes why facts do matter. The public does rely upon the accuracy of data, and upon the integrity of researches who acquire and analyze data. There is no scientific conspiracy cult trying to make your favorite politician look bad. There are no greedy scientific deceivers who will sell you theory that gravity is about to change. There are no scientists that bend theory in order to make it less convenient for executives to make money. Most importantly, nothing has changed among scientists who put on their clothes and go to work in the morning just like everyone else.

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Important Book

In her December 2 New York Times column, "Back to Reality," Olivia Judson praises the importance of this book:

"The most notable characteristic of the Bush administration's science policy has been the repeated distortion and suppression of scientific evidence in order to fit ideological preferences about how the world should be, rather than how it is. In his disturbing book "Undermining Science: Suppression and Distortion in the Bush Administration," the journalist Seth Shulman describes case after case of intimidation of scientists in government posts, the suppression of scientific evidence and the perpetuation of misinformation. The fields affected range from climate change to public health. Although some incidents are small in and of themselves, the cumulative effect is horrifying. Shulman also catalogs a long list of established government scientists who, during the course of the Bush administration, resigned their posts in despair.

"The distortion and suppression of science is dangerous, and not just because it means that public money gets wasted on programs, like abstinence-only sex "education" schemes, that do not work. It is dangerous because it is an assault on science itself, a method of thought and inquiry on which our modern civilization is based and which has been hugely successful as a way of acquiring knowledge that lets us transform our lives and the world around us.... The rubbishing of science is far more serious than any particular decision over whether to fund research into stem cells, the sexual behavior of fruit flies or the quarks and quirks of particle physics. Undoing the damage of the past eight years may take another eight. But it must be done. We are probably one of the last generations that will be able to use our knowledge and methods to guide human civilization to a sustainable future. This is our time."

I, too, highly recommend this book. It offers insights not simply into the past, but also into the battles sure to come as religious fanatics continue their attempts to steer public policy and undermine science.

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Informative Book, Shabby Editing from California Press

An interesting and informative book--and a handy guide to the appalling Lysenkoism of the Bush administration.

But, despite its scholarly trappings (endnotes and an index), this book shows no signs of editing whatsoever, except for several instances of the en-dash trick (a publisher's ruse intended to create the illusion of editorial control). The author is a journalist, and this book should never have been published by a scholarly press without extensive revision. The unrelenting barrage of journalistic bad usage makes the book difficult to read and is a constant source of irritation to the literate reader. For example: "based on," used exclusively as a dangling modifier, appears at least fifty times in fewer than 200 pages. And, while the "editor" was scutinizing the manuscript for en-dash opportunities, he or she completely overlooked the hundreds of unhyphenated adjective phrases that needed hyphenating or rewriting. In sum, this is a shabby performance by the University of California Press, and it perpetuates the current low standards of academic publishing in the United States

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reviews: page 1, 2

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