Science wars

THE 2004 ELECTION saw an unprecedented political mobilization of America's scientific community. Not only did scientists band together to oppose the reelection of George W. Bush, charging that his administration had systematically abused and manipulated scientific information on a variety of issues and let narrow religious concerns get in the way of potentially life-saving embryonic stem cell research. Scientists also helped fuel the state of California's end run around Bush's restrictive stem cell policy, backing a ballot initiative to invest $3 billion of public funding in the field over 10 years.

In their campaign to unseat Bush, scientists seem to have had limited electoral impact. In the California ballot drive, by contrast, they joined a broad coalition of patients groups and business interests and succeeded beyond their wildest dreams -- with approval of the measure, at 59 percent, running significantly ahead of John Kerry's returns in the state. Looking forward to the next four years, these divergent outcomes suggest a paradoxical result. While stem cell research now seems insulated from political pressures emanating from Washington, scientists could face even greater political difficulties from the administration in other areas.

In late September Robert Walker, former Republican chairman of the House Committee on Science and a Bush campaign representative, noted ominously that the science community could face a "push back at some point in the future" for its actions. Following the election, Bush science adviser John Marburger suggested that partisan attacks during the campaign could lessen support for federal science funding.

But even some who supported Bush's reelection are voicing concerns about the administration's science policies. On Monday, prior to a Senate hearing he convened on Arctic warming, Senator John McCain called the administration's global warming policy "terribly disappointing" in light of the evidence showing human-caused climate change in action. The next round of science wars, it seems, is poised to begin.

The politicization of science emerged in 2004 as a largely new issue. Last February, the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Cambridge-based advocacy group, issued a statement accusing the Bush White House of systematic suppression and distortion of scientific information on issues ranging from condom effectiveness to mercury pollution to global climate change. The group also objected to the ideological stacking of government advisory committees and the use of political litmus tests to determine their membership." Otheradministrations have, on occasion, engaged in such practices, but not so systematically nor on so wide a front," the UCS charged.

Since then, more than 5,000 scientists have signed on to the statement, including 48 Nobel Laureates. A group called Scientists and Engineers for Change even sent scientific luminaries to speak against Bush in swing states like Ohio and Florida. Kerry himself took up the theme, promising to be a president who "believes in science" and attacking Bush's stem cell policy, an issue that served as a proxy for broader discontent in the scientific community.

Many of the cases of science politicization singled out by the Union of Concerned Scientists seem motivated by an attempt to appease "traditional values" voters. But the scientists' case against Bush involves more than just prohibitions on research based on religious or moral objections. It also involves matters of scientific fact. As the history of "creation science" in America shows, Christian conservatives have their own views on many scientific matters and even, in some cases, their own cadre of PhDs to advocate these positions. Antiabortion Christian conservatives tend to argue, for example, that so-called "adult" stem cells can replace embryonic ones for scientific purposes and that abortion causes breast cancer and other negative health outcomes for women. (The latter notion was even temporarily suggested by a National Cancer Institute fact sheet, thanks to advocacy from Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey and other antiabortion members of Congress.) Although a few scientists who are also Christians support such claims, the nation's broader scientific community has resoundingly rejected them.

But the influence of increasingly powerful religious conservatives -- who played a key role in Bush's reelection -- isn't the only thing scientists have to worry about. On scientific matters tracked closely by industry groups -- also close allies of the administration, in many cases -- there's likely to be little improvement. Take global climate change, a key issue for oil companies, automakers, and other fossil-fuel interests. In response to a question about climate science posed by Science magazine in the run-up to the election, the Bush campaign resorted to a familiar strategy: hyping the lingering scientific "uncertainties," as if these somehow cancel out the consensus view that humans are heating the planet through greenhouse gas emissions.

This reliance on the idea of "scientific uncertainty" is a red herring. In fact, the very scientists who've grown increasingly vocal about human-caused climate change fully admit that some uncertainty remains over the extent and full impact of climate change. Uncertainty is, after all, inherent to the scientific process. In the policy sphere, meanwhile, legislators must often make decisions before all the facts are in -- particularly when it comes to something like climate change, where we can hardly wait for definitive "proof."

That's the point made by critics like McCain, who with Sen. Joseph Lieberman has proposed a bill that would create the first caps on greenhouse gases agreed to by the US government. But the Bush administration shows every inclination of continuing to play its "uncertainty" game. On Nov. 4, The Washington Post reported that the administration had worked actively to prevent the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment -- a report commissioned by a council of eight nations, including the United States, and drawing on the work of some 300 scientists -- from serving as a basis for policy recommendations to address the melting of the Arctic region that's now underway. According to the Post, the administration questioned whether enough "evidence" existed to justify such recommendations and "repeatedly resisted even mild language that would endorse the report's scientific findings."

Stem cell research, by contrast, may have just been significantly defused as a political issue. The California ballot initiative -- which created a "constitutional right" to do stem cell research -- represents a true political first. Never before has a state so dramatically upstaged the federal government in the funding of basic scientific research.

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine will now largely supplant the National Institutes of Health, funding all varieties of stem cell research without restrictions on the particular lines used. In addition to supporting research using donated embryos left over from fertility clinics, the institute will also support controversial "therapeutic cloning" research. Here, scientists would create embryos through the process of somatic cell nuclear transfer -- inserting the nucleus of a body cell into an unfertilized egg and prompting it to grow and divide -- and then extract embryonic stem cells from them. They expect this technology to furnish disease-specific embryonic stem cell lines, which, when grown in the lab, could potentially further the quest for cures for Alzheimer's and other diseases. Cloned embryo research could also lead to stem cell transplant therapies genetically matched to individual patients.

Medical scientists want to do this work -- badly. However, the Bush administration and Republican Congress could still potentially derail the "therapeutic cloning" side of the California initiative through legislative means. Republican senator Sam Brownback of Kansas has sponsored a bill to ban and criminalize all forms of cloning, even for research purposes. The House version of Brownback's blanket cloning ban passed easily in 2001. If Brownback's bill passes the Republican-controlled Senate, the president has already said he would sign it.

California could then find itself squaring off against the federal government in a massive states' rights battle. But even if that fails to materialize, the science wars seem poised to escalate. In the past four years, the Bush administration has been accused of meddling with or clamping down on the activities of scientists in various federal bodies. The Department of Health and Human Services even went so far as to introduce a new policy stipulating that US government scientists could not consult with international bodies like the World Health Organization without prior political approval. Meanwhile, in May, the FDA overruled a nearly unanimous scientific advisory panel and blocked over-the-counter access to the "morning after pill" Plan B.

Such actions may please various constituencies. But if our nation's scientific agencies become viewed as irretrievably corrupted by politics, they could find themselves unable to recruit the talent they need to address the nation's technical problems in areas ranging from pollution control to drug safety to homeland security.

There are a few things the administration could do to mend fences with scientists. First, as a sign of goodwill, the White House could pledge to restore the position of presidential science adviser to the near-cabinet rank of "Assistant to the President." It could also pledge to eschew political litmus tests in the appointment of scientific advisory board members -- a practice denounced in a report this week from the National Academy of Sciences.

Of course, even these (unlikely) steps would hardly end debates over science policy. Scientific information may inform political decisions, but it never mandates them. Even if the Bush administration stopped hyping scientific "uncertainty" on climate change, it could still justify its opposition to caps on greenhouse emissions, say, on economic or other grounds.

But whatever the administration's position, it must work with scientists to establish the idea of a "wall of separation" between scientific assessment and policy making. At a time when so many political issues have a core scientific component, we simply cannot afford a standoff between "liberal" science and "conservative" science. Politicians have a hard enough time agreeing on actual policy matters without also having to fight over the underlying facts.

Chris Mooney is a senior correspondent with the American Prospect magazine. His book on science and politics will be published in 2005 by Basic Books.