Political science

The scientists, including the AIDS researcher David Baltimore, cancer specialist Harold Varmus, and entomologist E.O. Wilson, have brought into the open a pattern of political interference that the experts have confronted in agencies as varied as the Defense Department and the Food and Drug Administration.

Sometimes unwelcome scientific reports are just set aside, as happened with an Environmental Protection Agency study showing that a Senate clean air bill would reduce toxic mercury contamination of fish more than Bush's proposed "clear skies act." In the case of climate change, the administration has misrepresented the conclusions of government scientists on the role of man-made greenhouse gases. In the opinion of some scientists, the most disturbing trend is the selection of advisory board members for agencies based on political ideology and not scientific credentials.

"Leading policy makers don't know what they don't know," said Neal Lane of Rice University, a physicist, former director of the National Science Foundation, and former science adviser to President Clinton, at a press conference Wednesday.

The scientists, brought together on this issue by the Union of Concerned Scientists, acknowledged that other administrations have also occasionally played fast and loose with scientific evidence for political reasons. But Kurt Gottfried, emeritus professor of physics at Cornell and chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said it has never before been as systematic.

Russell Train, who led the EPA under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, said he was never subjected to the kind of political pressure that agency leaders are under now. Those Republican administrations and that of George H.W. Bush were referred to as a golden age of scientific integrity compared with the current Bush administration.

Nixon's decision to accept the scientific evidence behind the Clean Air Act of 1970, which he signed, prevented more than 200,000 premature deaths and millions of cases of respiratory and cardiovascular disease, according to the EPA. Policy makers, in Congress or the White House, will not be able to make sound decisions if they do not have access to the best information independent researchers can provide. Congress should accept the challenge from the scientists and investigate whether this administration truly is undermining the integrity of science.