GIGO
December 31, 2002
Mr. Bush, scientific advice isn't supposed to work like this
Researchers are complaining with rising alarm that the Bush administration is using political and ideological screening to try to ensure that its scientific consultants recommend no policies that are out of step with the political agenda of the White House.Administration officials say they are merely doing what their predecessors have always done: using appointment powers to make sure their viewpoints are well-represented on the government's scientific advisory boards, an important if unglamorous part of the policy-making process.
There are more than 250 boards devoted to public health and biomedical research alone, composed of experts from outside the government who help guide policy on gene therapy, bioterrorism, acceptable pollutant levels and other complex matters.
But critics say the Bush administration is going further than its predecessors in considering ideology as well as scientific expertise in forming the panels. A committee that merely gives technical advice on research proposals, as opposed to setting policy, has even been subject to screening, something the critics say was unheard of in previous administrations.
That whole Mayberry Machiavelli thing, more and more, strikes me as being so apropos. I'm not naive enough to believe that politics should play no role in appointments, of course they are. At some point though there is this other little thing that I think Rove and Rest are missing : service. The government, ideally, is about serving the people. (Serving your ego is just a lucky by-product.) But to turn advisory panels, which are charged with providing the best possible information on subjects at hand, and are able to draw on the widest, and greatest, array of minds available, into yet another ensign for the "Anyone Left of Bill Buckley is a Godless Liberal" brigade, isn't just bad politics, its bad humanity. The only principle that remains in Washington, it seems, is power.
Posted by Jody at December 31, 2002 12:14 AM
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