Sound and Impartial Science: Who Needs It?
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 09.17.07
In an important post highlighting the need for fairer, more fact-based science in government, Mark Hoofnagle advocates for the return of the Office of Technology Assessment, an agency on the Hill that used to provide non-partisan scientific documents to the members of Congress. It was unceremoniously shut down - after 20 years of valuable service - upon being deprived of funding in the wake of the 1994 Republican midterm election rout.
As Mark goes on to elaborate, this "self-lobotomy" helped in great part to facilitate the Bush administration's grievous mishandling of science, with acolytes like Cheney and Rove pushing for the prioritization of industry interests and big oil over all else - even going so far as to appoint former lobbyists and executives to plum leadership positions.
"This is truly should be a non-partisan issue. Everybody should want the government to be operating from one set of facts, ideally facts investigated by an independent body within the congress that is fiercely non-partisan, to set the bounds of legitimate debate. Everybody should want policy and policy debates to be based upon sound scientific ground. Everybody should want evidence-based government."
If you care about sound, rigorous science (and who doesn't?), Mark suggests you help push for the reinstitution of the OTA by e-mailing your local congressman and senators. As he puts it, we need to "ask congress to re-insert their brain, and refund the OTA." Amen.
Via ::denialism blog: Bring Back the OTA - Bring Back Evidence Based Government (blog)
See also: ::Science, Public Health Get Bushwhacked, ::President Bush Ordered to Release Overdue Global-Warming Plan
Image courtesy of SEED Magazine
You ask, who doesn't care about sound and rigorous science?
It's clear that Republicans didn't when they killed that department. The White House today definitely doesn't, as that administration routinely ignores even overwhelming scientific consensus in favor of . . .well practically anything supporting their buddies or personal dogma. Anyone who supports "Intelligent Design" obviously believes in a far Higher Priority than sound and rigorous science, and the explosion of "reality" paranormal shows and quack therapies shows a large sector of the rest of America doesn't either. Science instruction in public schools has been gutted because of No Child Left Behind's myopic focus on the three Rs (and the unwillingness of school administrators to see how science education helps testing in them).
I will definitely help in calling for this dept. to be reinstated, but what good will it do if nobody listens? It's a much bigger battle than this.
impartial science? isn't that like a double negative? the point is science proves itself.............why do we need a federal agency for everything? why add more politics to it?