Censoring Truth
February 9th, 2006 by Jim SpadacciniA New York Times Editorial has more on the the controversy surrounding the Bush administration’s alleged effort to silence NASA scientist Dr. James E. Hansen after he gave a lecture calling for quick reductions in greenhouse emissions.
Apparently, a twenty-four-year old presidential appointee who also lied about his credentials was the censor. According to the Times…
In this case, the censor was George Deutsch, a functionary in NASA’s public affairs office whose chief credential appears to have been his service with President Bush’s re-election campaign and inaugural committee. On his résumé, Mr. Deutsch claimed a 2003 bachelor’s degree in journalism from Texas A&M, but the university, alerted by a blogger, said that was not true. Mr. Deutsch has now resigned.
The shocker was not NASA’s failure to vet Mr. Deutsch’s credentials, but that this young politico with no qualifications was able to impose his ideology on other agency employees. At one point, he told a Web designer to add the word “theory” after every mention of the Big Bang.
As this story breaks, Time Magazine has as their cover story Is America Flunking Science? Certainly, having ideology stifle debate and the free flow ideas isn’t helpful. Time takes the issue head on with the article,The Political Science Test.
Update (2/11/06): There is an interesting follow up article in the Washington Post here.
March 20th, 2006 at 2:20 pm
[...] Last night 60 minutes aired a piece entitled “ReWriting the Science” about NASA scientist Jim Hansen and the efforts of the Bush administration to silence him. I posted about this story back in January and February with links to articles in the New York Times and Washington Post. Ironically, all of the attention has helped Dr. Hansen get the word out that Climate Change is ‘real’ and that human activity is the likely culprit… “There’s no doubt about that,” says Hansen. “The natural changes, the speed of the natural changes is now dwarfed by the changes that humans are making to the atmosphere and to the surface.” [...]
March 31st, 2006 at 2:53 pm
[...] We’ve been following the Bush Administration’s alleged attempts to censor NASA scientists and research findings for the last couple of months. Today, we learn that NASA has unveiled new rules on the release of agency information. The Washington Post has an article, NASA Sets New Rules On Media. They state… NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin unveiled new rules yesterday that govern the release of agency information to news media and the public, his most detailed response yet to embarrassing allegations that NASA’s public affairs office had sought to suppress the release of scientific information not consistent with the views of the Bush administration. [...]