Bush's science adviser defends the boss against his bashers

[Nambe]

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

And there are plenty of scientific critics during this election year.

In June, 48 Nobel Prize winners, including cancer researcher Harold Varmus, Caltech president David Baltimore and physicist Leon Lederman, released a letter claiming that the Bush administration has ignored unbiased scientific advice. The letter, which endorsed Democrat John Kerry, complained that Bush has, among other things, unnecessarily restricted embryonic stem-cell research and ignored the scientific consensus supporting the global warming theory.

The Union of Concerned Scientists, an activist group generally regarded as liberal, also has accused the administration of distorting or suppressing scientific views it doesn't like. In February, the group issued a report alleging a litany of abuses, from attempting to weaken the Endangered Species Act to applying political litmus tests to scientists nominated to government advisory groups. Last month, it reissued the report with additional charges.

The 4,800 scientists endorsing the document thus far include such noted researchers as Lincoln Wolfenstein, a physicist at Carnegie Mellon University, and Dr. Herbert Needleman, who studies the health effects of lead at the University of Pittsburgh. Neddleman called the administration's record "egregious, particularly in regard to the environment," and particularly cited a shift in favor of the lead industry and an "ignorant and cynical" view of global warming. ..

But Marburger maintained the activism among scientists this year isn't just partisan politics. Moral, ethical and economic concerns of such issues as embryonic stem cells, global warming and ballistic-missile defense are as much at play as the science, he said. ..

[truthisfreedom]

1. oh, sure, that makes sense. a scientist sees something happen that has

never happened in history before, and then calls it "partisan politics."

sorry, but this bozo wouldn't notice an odd occurrence if it bit him on the nose.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Bush and Co. want us back in a Dark Age -- this denial of...

and restrictions on science is emblematic of the Bush regime, and one of its most serious offenses.

[pinniped]

3. If asshole * had his way all those scientists would be standing...

before the inquisition.

What is this the 1700s?

[enki23]

4. well, yeah. that's what he was hired to do.

.