The Anti-Science President

The Bush 43 Administration was frequently accused of being "anti-science," largely on the grounds that it did not follow the New York Times party line on climate change, stem cell research, and Darwinian evolution. I happen to think that Bush was right about the first, half right about the second, and wrong about the third. In any case, it's not "anti-science" to disagree with political interpretations of science.

It is anti-science to distort legitimate scientific literature for partisan purposes. The Obama Administration has done that at least twice. It did so in its mad dash to secure healthcare reform. From the New York Times:

In selling the health care overhaul to Congress, the Obama administration cited a once obscure research group at Dartmouth College to claim that it could not only cut billions in wasteful health care spending but make people healthier by doing so.

That is in fact the core of the Administration's argument for healthcare reform. We can deliver better medicine to more people and reduce healthcare spending at the same time. Here I cite Blanchard's First Law of Rhetorical Evaluation:

Gratification is inversely proportional to plausibility.

In more common speech, if it sounds too good to be true, it ain't true. All the Dartmouth College Atlas showed is that Medicare spends a lot more in some places than others.

The atlas's hospital rankings do not take into account care that prolongs or improves lives. If one hospital spends a lot on five patients and manages to keep four of them alive, while another spends less on each but all five die, the hospital that saved patients could rank lower because Dartmouth compares only costs before death.

In other words, if healthcare spending is guided by the study the Administration relied upon, it could easily shift money from the most effective hospitals to the most lethal ones. But of course, the Administration had no intention of relying on this study. It merely distorted it for partisan purposes.

Now we have another case. Obama announced a moratorium on deepwater oil wells and based his decision on a study by fifteen experts in the field. These experts, the Administration said, "peer-reviewed" the decision to shut down the wells. Well, they didn't.

Eight of the 15 members of the review panel are charging that the administration misrepresented their position by suggesting they supported a blanket moratorium that they actually oppose. Their criticism, and the administration's response, are evidence that the six-month stoppage is based on politics rather than on science.

The language endorsing the Interior Department's moratorium policy was added to the report after the scientists signed off on it. If true, that isn't distortion, or misinterpretation, or spin. It is deliberate fraud. The whole point of signing a report is to make sure that every single word is endorsed by the signers. That is the very substance of scientific integrity. To falsify a report by amending its language after it is signed, without the knowledge of the signers, is a blatant violation of that integrity. The Obama Administration is anti-science in a way that the Bush people could scarcely imagine.

Comments

[Donald Pay]

Too bad you didn't read further into the links. The experts weren't tasked to support or oppose the moratorium on deep water drilling. They were asked to review certain safety measures. That was what the peer review entailed. Some inelegant wording in the release made it appear that the panel also was tasked with deciding on the moratorium. That was never the case, and when it was pointed out the administration corrected the wrong impression left by the wording. Isn't it refreshing to have an administration that doesn't want to leave the wrong impression with the public and will correct any such mistake? We never got that from the Bush administration.

[George Mason]

Those of us for whom the practice of science is a major part of our profession and livelyhood, have always had problems with those who profess to have science on their side while delivering unquantifiable and unqualifiable goobledygook (E.G. Al Gore and company). The Obama administration brings us more of the same. "It is because I say it is." So much of what comes from the left is actually political religion. It is based on faith not on science, knowledge or logic. many of the "Moonie" like followers of Obama from 2008 must be wondering when he will wave his staff, part the sea and "fix the damn leak." Mostly we what we witness is one of the great laws of practical science: "Knowledge, science and logic will always lose out to ignorance, superstition and brute force."

[Donald Pay]

Hmmm. I googled "George Mason climate scientist" and got nothing. George, there aren't any real scientists I know who hide in the weeds like you to to attack others, unless they are getting paid to do so. Kinda wonder what your game is.

[William]

Donald,

"Inelegant wording" is certainly a creative way to describe the administrations' implication that the scientists supported the drilling ban. At best, that implication was explicitly the way Ken Salazar presented it to the President. Assuming that's true, Ken Salazar should be fired immediately. If not an intentional deceit, then it's yet another example of the incompetence demonstrated in the administration's response to this crisis.

"Salazar's May 27 report to President Barack Obama said a panel of seven experts "peer reviewed" his recommendations, which included a six-month moratorium on all ongoing drilling in waters deeper than 500 feet"

"The National Academy of Engineering provided seven reviewers for Salazar's safety report, and the academy's Ken Arnold, an oil and gas industry consultant, wrote a scathing cover letter Tuesday that concludes: "The Secretary should be free to recommend whatever he thinks is correct, but he should not be free to use our names to justify his political decisions."
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-14/1276064428189870.xml&coll=1

"The current order includes a six-month moratorium on issuing new drilling permits by floating rigs and a suspension of activity on 33 previously permitted deepwater drilling rigs. The executive summary of the report makes reference to experts, including Arnold, who helped provide input."

"The wording implies that we had somehow agreed with that conclusion," said Arnold."

"(The moratorium) will not only eliminate jobs, but force us to import more oil from countries we really don't want to import oil from," said Arnold. "I think it's almost punitive."
http://www.click2houston.com/news/23833753/detail.html

[George mason]

Donald old boy; you need to come up with something original. That "skeptics are all in the pay of..." went out with the rest of the blather. The people who made money with the global warming business were Al Gore and his minions.

[Donald Pay]

William.

Move on. I answered your concerns above.

[William]

No Donald, you did not. You believe what you want to believe because you're emotionally invested in this President and his administration. I'm not.

[William]

From Friday’s Fox News All-Stars.

On Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s modifying the analysis of outside oil experts to support a moratorium on drilling in the Gulf:

Salazar adding the two [paragraphs] in which he calls for the moratorium — in a scientific report that you‘re claiming is peer-reviewed and hard science — when the scientists have not seen that . . . is a high level of deception. . . .

The declaration of a six-month moratorium is far different from asking for a pause that you could do for a quick safety check. . . .

And it's economically devastating. The Gulf has already lost fishing, and lost tourism — and now it's going to lose a huge industry, the oil support industry. That does not make any sense.

[Mark Anderson]

The idea that the Obama adminstration is anti-science in comparison to the Bush adminstration is so patently absurd that no response is even needed.

[KB]

Mark: that's a good thing, since you are obviously unable to come up with a response. In fact, the Bush Administration frequently was guilty of ignoring or distorting good science for political purposes. I demonstrate above that the Obama Administration is guilty of the same. I am sorry if that offends your prejudices.