CLIMATE AND OCEAN SCIENTISTS PUT UNDER NEW SPEECH RESTRAINTS

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Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility News Release (www.peer.org)

For Immediate Release: April 3, 2007
Contact: Carol Goldberg (202) 265-7337

CLIMATE AND OCEAN SCIENTISTS PUT UNDER NEW SPEECH RESTRAINTS — Any Scientific Statements “of Official Interest” Must be Pre-Approved

Washington, DC — Federal climate, weather and marine scientists will be subject to new restrictions as to what they can say to the media or in public, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Under rules posted last week, these federal scientists must obtain agency pre-approval to speak or write, whether on or off-duty, concerning any scientific topic deemed “of official interest.”

On March 29, 2007, the Commerce Department posted a new administrative order governing “Public Communications.” This new order covers the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which includes the National Weather Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service. Commerce’s new order will become effective in 45 days and would repeal a more liberal “open science” policy adopted by NOAA on February 14, 2006.

Although couched in rhetoric about the need for “broad and open dissemination of research results [and] open exchange of scientific ideas,” the new order forbids agency scientists from communicating any relevant information, even if prepared and delivered on their own time as private citizens, which has not been approved by the official chain-of-command:

• Any “fundamental research communication” must “before the communication occurs” be submitted to and approved by the designated “head of the operating unit.” While the directive states that approval may not be withheld “based on policy, budget, or management implications of the research,” it does not define these terms and limits any appeal to within Commerce;
• National Weather Service employees are allowed only “as part of their routine responsibilities to communicate information about the weather to the public”; and
• Scientists must give the Commerce Department at least two weeks “advance notice” of any written, oral or audiovisual presentation prepared on their own time if it “is a matter of official interest to the Department because it relates to Department programs, policies or operations.”

“This ridiculous gag order ignores the First Amendment and disrespects the world-renowned professionals who work within Commerce agencies,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “Under this policy, National Weather Service scientists can only give out name, rank, serial number and the temperature.”

The agency rejected a more open policy adopted last year by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The new policy also was rushed to print despite an ongoing Commerce Office of Inspector General review of communication policies that was undertaken at congressional request.

While claiming to provide clarity, the new Commerce order gives conflicting directives, on one hand telling scientists that if unsure whether a conclusion has been officially approved “then the researcher must make clear that he or she is representing his or her individual conclusion.” Yet, another part of the order states non-official communications “may not take place or be prepared during working hours.” This conflict means that every scientist who answers an unexpected question at a conference puts his or her career at risk by giving an honest answer.

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See the new Commerce Public Communications Policy

Look at the agency justification (in the form of Frequently Asked Questions)

Read some of the objections from the National Weather Service Employees Organization

Contrast with the soon-to-be-rescinded NOAA “open science” policy

Compare the NASA policy

Lacking Grant Money, Scientists Shift Research To Defense And Security

Scientists switch focus to security

By Rebecca Knight in Boston

Published: February 25 2007 23:01 | Last updated: February 25 2007 23:01

Scientists are looking to focus their research on defence and homeland security as federal funding for scientific grants becomes harder to come by.

According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, funding for non-defence research and development will shrink for the fourth consecutive year in fiscal 2008. The National Institutes of Health’s R&D budget will fall $325m (£166m, €247m) or 1.1 per cent, next year. “Funding conditions are forcing researchers to look outside their traditional boxes at places that they might not have looked at before – such as the Department of Homeland Security,” said Kei Koizumi, a director at the AAAS.

The DHS’s budget for R&D will dip slightly to $933m next year.

Some researchers are putting scientific questions in the context of security. Jeremy Wolfe, professor of ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School, who studies how the brain processes visual input, was granted $460,000 by the DHS. His lab will research why airport guards fail to notice items on scanner screens.

Prof Wolfe, who described himself as “comfortably funded by a combination of NIH and non-NIH entities”, said his research’s security emphasis would not harm its scientific integrity.

“I am dedicated to solving basic research problems. If as a part of that I can also be useful in an area like airport security, I don’t have any particular problem with that,” he said.

Scientists seeking money from the NIH and National Science Foundation have also turned to security. The NIH’s bio­defence research portfolio will total $1.8bn in fiscal 2008. This had caused some scientists to “tailor their research to fit this priority”, Mr Koizumi said.

Thomas Cech, president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, said an over-emphasis on practical application could have a negative impact on future scientific discoveries, which are typically the result of basic rather than applied research.

“Some countries have gone heavily in this direction where research is funded based on [how it will] boost the nation’s economy, but the evidence has been that it stifles creativity and true breakthroughs,” he said. “I think it’s fine to have some portion of the nation’s funding focused on outcome, but it’s worrying if it becomes a major slice of the pie.”

Scientists have long sought funding from federal agencies, and researchers in all disciplines often follow the money trail. But some have voiced concern.

“Part of the strength of the US system is that we do have multiple sources of funding and people understand why defence and homeland security are a much more important priority than they were even five years ago. But there is a frustration because these priorities are not everyone’s priorities,” Mr Koizumi said.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

650,000 dead given voice in Congress

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December 11th, 2006

I just watched the Congressional briefing on the Lancet Iraqi casualty study: “650,000 excess deaths in Iraq”. Speaking were Gilbert Burnham, Les Roberts, and Juan Cole. The briefing was organized by Rep, Kucinich, with the support of rep. Ron Paul.

The briefing was to discuss the October 2006 study Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey, which appeared in the British medical journal The Lancet. This study estimated that 655,000 more Iraqis had died (”excess deaths”) since the invasion than would have died if the prewar rate of death (mortality) had continued. It further estimated that about 600,000 of these had died from violence.

I have great respect for Rep. Kucinich, who kept the entire briefing focused on the effects of the fighting on the Iraqi people and on Iraqi society. It is the first time I’ve seen anyone from the U.S. government focus on Iraqis and what they have experienced and what they are suffering. For example, he asked about the effects on Iraqi society of the loss of so many young men. He also asked about the creation of Iraqi orphans. Unfortunately, none of the three scholars had any real information on these topics, a sign of how little we really know about what is going on in that unfortunate country.

I thought Burham and Roberts did an excellent job of presenting the study. While this was not a methodological seminar, Burham said that they were well aware of the potential for bias and spent months designing the sample design so as to include all households. This declaration constitutes an explicit statement that the so-called “Main Street Bias” proposed by British scientists is not present to any meaningful degree. One may question the honesty of the Lancet study authors, but speculation about a massive MSB after such a definitive statement does require questioning their integrity.

Juan Cole, of the Informed Comment blog, presented various evidence from the media and other sources that supported the Lancet authors’ position that the vast majority of deaths are not presented in the press, making the results of this study less surprising. Roberts pointed to the statements in the new Iraq Study Group report that the US military had radically underreported the extent of violence in Iraq. In particular, as the Associated Press put it, the report stated:

“The panel pointed to one day last July when U.S. officials reported 93 attacks or significant acts of violence. ‘Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence,’ it said.”

If, on average, one Iraqi died in each such attack, the mortality rate would be greater than that in the Lancet study. Thus, the reported rates are not implausible, as many critics claim.

Of course, the fact that the mortality rates are not implausible does not mean that they are therefore correct. While many epidemiologists and others have defended the study, some experts in this area, most notably the eminent Norwegian researcher Jon Pedersen have criticized the study. Like all studies on important matters, this one does deserve careful scrutiny. But it does not deserve to be dismissed by the press in a way that similar studies with results more comfortable to the United States government are not dismissed. The existence of “controversy” should not be an excuse to ignore that, as a consequence of U.S. government action, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have needlessly died.

Les Roberts again made the point that their data implies that the majority of deaths in Iraq are from violence, whereas alternative accounts from Iraq Body Count, the Brookings Institution, or the Iraq Ministry of Health imply that only a small percentage, perhaps 10%, of deaths in Iraq are from violence. He again, as he has done since the study came out in early October, has called upon the press to visit graveyards and ask if the majority of deaths is from nonviolent or violent causes. Roberts again called, as these authors did after their 2004 study, for another research group to investigate the Iraqi mortality rate and confirm or invalidate the Lancet study. It is disturbing that, in the two years between theses researchers’ 2004 and 2006 studies, no other group did attempt such a replication. Given the numbers of surveys conducted in Iraq on other controversial issues, such as attitudes toward attacks on Coalition troops, it should he relatively easy for this study to be replicated. Perhaps all of us, whatever our evaluation of this study, can echo these calls to the press and to other survey researchers.

Movingly, Rep. Kucinich ended the briefing by emphasizing “the imperative of human unity” “that we recognize the imperative of human security,… that each of us has a right to survive.” And: “It is an imperative to focus on the imperative of peace. War is not inevitable.”

Kucinich seems among the very few in the public arena who realize what is truly at stake for the human race in an era of modern technology. Given the nature of this technology of warfare, either Rep. Kunich’s call will be heeded or one of the continual conflicts will spark an all out war that will destroy us all.

Entry Filed under: War and Peace, Research Methods, Iraq, Social Issues, Public Health, Science, Electoral Politics, Politics, Middle East, Mortality