Remember, despite what the _resident or Mel Gibson
tell you, 2+2=4...
Ned Stafford, The Scientist: Some European scientists
are growing increasingly concerned at the potential
wider ramifications of what they see as political
interference with scientific freedom in the US.
Scientists interviewed by The Scientist in recent days
said they believed that continued political
interference from the Bush administration would not
only have a negative impact on the quality of US
science, but eventually on global science.
Restore the Timeline, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
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http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20040309/02/
Euros concerned for US scienceScientists worried that politics is damaging science in the US-and the world |
By Ned Stafford
Some European scientists are growing increasingly concerned at the potential wider ramifications of what they see as political interference with scientific freedom in the US.
Scientists interviewed by The Scientist in recent days
said they believed that continued political
interference from the Bush administration would not
only have a negative impact on the quality of US
science, but eventually on global science.
Carl Johan Sundberg, vice president of Euroscience,
told The Scientist that in the short-term Europe would
benefit from a politicized atmosphere in the US by
attracting promising young scientists from the Middle
East, Asia, and Eastern Europe, who in the past have
gravitated to the US. But he worries that in the long
term, Europe and the rest the whole world would lose
if the dynamic quality of US science deteriorates.
"The US is the most important country in the world
when it comes to science,” he said. "What happens in
the US is extremely important to the global scientific
community."
Criticism of the Bush administration's scientific
policies is not new. Last year, a group of
Congressional Democrats released a report charging
that the administration had repeatedly manipulated the
scientific process and distorted or suppressed
scientific findings to advance political and
ideological interests. The Union of Concerned
Scientists and other US scientists have started to
publicly protest in recent weeks against what they
perceive as political interference from the Bush
administration. They allege that the White House has
distorted scientific facts to support its policies on
the environment, public health and biomedical
research.
The protest became louder on February 27, when
President Bush dismissed two members of his
President's Council on Bioethics, a move that some
U.S. scientists believe was done to increase the
number of conservatives on the council. The council is
charged with studying stem cell policy, among other
issues.
Sundberg, who is head of Department of Physiology and
Pharmacology at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm,
said of the current US scientific environment: "When
committees are stacked with people who have the
correct type of political background--I think that is
very bad."
He said American scientists have told him they are
appalled about what is going on.
"All I hear when I speak to people, especially in the
U.S., is that the whole environment is politicized at
a level they have never seen," he said. "They feel
there is an agenda out there and that some things are
okay and some things are not.
The chairman of the president's council responded to
criticisms in an editorial in the Washington Post,
saying charges of stacking the council were
“unfounded.”
Eva-Maria Streier, spokeswoman for the German Research
Foundation, declined to comment directly on alleged
political interference within the US, but said: "Basic
science should be independent of political influence."
Seeking comment from the Biosciences Federation in the
UK, The Scientist was referred to Michael J. Rennie of
the University of Nottingham's School of Biomedical
Sciences.
"Many people in the Bush Administration seem to hold
right-wing political views that are not compatible
with science," said Rennie, a council member of The
Physiological Society.
A British citizen, Rennie studied in the 1970s at
Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where
two of his three children were born with dual US
citizenship. "I speak as someone who is very
pro-American," he said. "I have very strong feelings
of loyalty to the US."
But he believes the Bush administration is not acting
in the best interests of science. "Politics should not
intrude on science," he said. He agreed with Sundberg
that Europe already has begun to benefit from "brain
gain," with young scientists from around the world
seeing Europe as now having a "generally freer
atmosphere and intellectual environment" than the US.
Such young scientists in the past had been the
"lifeblood of American science," he said.
If Bush is re-elected in November, he believes, more
US scientists will follow the example of Roger
Pedersen, who after three decades of stem cell
research at the University of California, San
Francisco, moved overseas for a position at Cambridge
University.
Links for this article
Carl Johan Sundberg
http://www.euroscience.org/MBSHIP/board2003.htm
Euroscience
http://www.euroscience.org/
T. Agres, “Science, policy, and partisan politics,”
The Scientist. August 13, 2003.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20030813/04/
The Union of Concerned Scientists, “Preeminent
scientists protest bush administration's misuse of
science,” February 18, 2004.
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/rsi/rsirelease.html
M. Anderson, “Bush dismisses council members,” The
Scientist, March 3, 2004.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20040303/04/
L. Kass, “We don't play politics with science,”
Washington Post, March 3, 2004.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24742-2004Mar2.h
tml
Biosciences Federation
http://www.bsf.ac.uk/default.htm
The Physiological Society
http://www.physoc.org/index.asp
Roger Pedersen
http://www.medschl.cam.ac.uk/surgery/scientist.html
The Morton Cure paralysis fund: UK stem cell support
lures US scientists
http://www.mcpf.org/displayarticle.asp?articleId=81
Posted by richard at March 12, 2004 03:03 PM