Show Date: February 15, 2006 
Pam Eastlick for THE DEEP on line

Government and Science
Who’s in charge?

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond. Join us each week on Newstalk K57 on Wednesday night from 7 to 8 p.m. for exciting live science expeditions or listen live on our web site www.thedeepradioshow.com

There have always been scandals in the scientific world from Piltdown man through cold fusion, through the meteoritic rise and even more spectacular fall of Woo-Suk Hwang, the Korean stem cell researcher who faked his data. Much rides on production of papers in science and there are great pressures to perform, just as there are in other professions. Scientists are not immune to bad behavior.

But some recent news suggests that there are other players in the ‘bad behavior’ game when it comes to science. Last December, Dr. James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the top science specialist at NASA, called for increasing efforts to reduce industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to global warming. He was then threatened by a government official with “dire consequences” if he insisted on calling for “aggressive action”. This was not the first time Dr. Hansen has had a run-in with the Bush administration, which has spent the better part of five years avoiding the issue of global warming.

"In my more than three decades in government, I have never seen the degree to which the information flow from scientists to the public has been screened and controlled as it is now," Dr. Hansen said recently.

Interestingly enough, the censor in this case was a 24-year old man in NASA’s public affairs office. His chief credential appears to be his service with President Bush's re-election campaign and inaugural committee. On his resume, Mr. Deutsch claimed a 2003 bachelor's degree in journalism from Texas A&M, but the university says that he never graduated. Mr. Deutsch has now resigned.

The real kicker is not that NASA didn’t check Mr. Deutsch’s credentials, but that this young political hack with no qualifications was able to impose his personal view of science on other agency employees. At one point, he told a Web designer to add the word "theory" after every mention of the Big Bang.

The administration has sought to influence scientific policy by muzzling the people who disagree with it or — as was the case with two major reports from the Environmental Protection Agency in 2002 and 2003 — editing out inconvenient truths or censoring them entirely.

President Bush has said that our nation is “addicted to oil” even though his administration has done more to feed that addiction and wreck the environment than any other in history. Remember the Bush-Cheney opposition to the Kyoto accord aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions? Remember the Bush-Cheney plan to open up the Alaska wilderness to drilling? Remember last year's $14.5 billion energy tax reduction bill that gave 60 percent of its tax breaks to carbon-producing companies and not to companies producing renewable energy? Recall Bush opposition to increasing the gasoline tax, clearly the smartest way to reduce "addition to oil?"

And it isn’t just here. Graeme Pearman, an Australian scientist and world expert on climate change, says he was reprimanded and encouraged to take early retirement after joining a group of scientists urging action to cut greenhouse gases.

Join us this week on The Deep as we discuss government censorship of science. The Deep is broadcast on Newstalk K57 every Wednesday night at 7:00 p.m. You can also listen live from our web site www.thedeepradioshow.com. Join Jim Sullivan, Pam Eastlick, and Peter Melyan on the deepest radio show on Earth.