Science Friction: The growing--and dangerous--divide between scientists and the GOP

[Guest guest]

> GOP: Today's Flat Earth Society

> Science Friction

>

> The growing--and dangerous--divide between scientists and the GOP.

>

> By Nicholas Thompson

>

> ----------

> 363bc7a.jpg363bc91.jpgNot long ago, President Bush asked a federal agency

> for evidence to support a course of action that many believe he had

already

> chosen to take on a matter of grave national importance that had divided

> the country. When the government experts didn't provide the information

the

> president was looking for, the White House sent them back to hunt for

more.

> The agency returned with additional raw and highly qualified information,

> which the president ran with, announcing his historic decision on national

> television. Yet the evidence soon turned out to be illusory, and the

entire

> policy was called into question.

>

> Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, you say? Actually, the above scenario

> describes Bush's decision-making process on the issue of stem cell

> research. In August 2001, Bush was trying to resolve an issue he called

> " one of the most profound of our time. " Biologists had discovered the

> potential of human embryonic stem cells--unspecialized cells that

> researchers can, in theory, induce to develop into virtually any type of

> human tissue. Medical researchers marveled at the possibility of producing

> treatments for medical conditions such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and

> spinal cord injuries; religious conservatives quivered at the fact that

> these cells are derived from human embryos, either created in a laboratory

> or discarded from fertility clinics. Weighing those concerns, Bush

> announced that he would allow federal funding for research on 60-plus stem

> cell lines already taken from embryos, but that he would prohibit federal

> funding for research on new lines.

>

>

> Within days, basic inquiries from reporters revealed that there were far

> fewer than 60 viable lines. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has so

> far confirmed only 11 available lines. What's more, most of the existing

> stem cell lines had been nurtured in a growth fluid containing mouse tumor

> cells, making the stem cells prone to carrying infections that could

highly

> complicate human trials. Research was already underway in the summer of

> 2001 to find an alternative to the mouse feeder cells--research that has

> since proven successful. But because these newer clean lines were

developed

> after Bush's decision, researchers using them are ineligible for federal

> funding.

>

> At the time of Bush's announcement, most scientists working in the field

> knew that although 60 lines might exist in some form somewhere, the number

> of robust and usable lines was much lower. Indeed, the NIH had published a

> report in July 2001 that explained the potential problems caused by the

> mouse feeder cells and estimated the total number of available lines at

30.

> Because that initial figure wasn't enough for the administration,

according

> to Time magazine, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson asked

> the NIH to see if more lines " might conceivably exist. " When NIH

> representatives met with Bush a week before his speech with an estimate of

> 60 lines scattered around the world in unknown condition, the White House

> thought it had what it wanted. In his announcement, Bush proclaimed,

> without qualification, that there were " more than 60 genetically diverse

> stem cell lines. "

>

> After his speech, then-White House Counselor Karen Hughes said, " This is

an

> issue that I think almost everyone who works at the White House, the

> president asked them their opinion at some point or another. " However,

Bush

> didn't seek the advice of Rosina Bierbaum, then-director of the White

> House's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Hughes claimed

that

> Bush had consulted other top federal scientists, including former NIH

> director Harold Varmus. That was partly true, but the conversation with

> Varmus, for example, took place during a few informal minutes at a Yale

> graduation ceremony. Later press reports made much of Bush's conversations

> with bioethicists Leon Kass and Daniel Callahan. Yet neither is a

> practicing scientist, and both were widely known to oppose stem-cell

> research. Evan Snyder, director of the stem-cell program at the Burnham

> Institute in La Jolla, Calif., says, " I don't think science entered into

> Bush's decision at all. "

>

> The administration's stem-cell stand is just one of many examples, from

> climate change to abstinence-only sex-education programs, in which the

> White House has made policies that defy widely accepted scientific

opinion.

> Why this administration feels unbound by the consensus of academic

> scientists can be gleaned, in part, from a telling anecdote in Nicholas

> Lemann's recent New Yorker profile of Karl Rove. When asked by Lemann to

> define a Democrat, Bush's chief political strategist replied, " Somebody

> with a doctorate. " Lemann noted, " This he said with perhaps the suggestion

> of a smirk. " Fundamentally, much of today's GOP, like Rove, seems to

> smirkingly equate academics, including scientists, with liberals.

>

> In this regard, the White House is not necessarily wrong. Most scientists

> today do lean Democratic, just as most of the uniformed military votes

> Republican--much to the annoyance of Democrats. And like the latter

> cultural divide, the former can cause the country real problems. The

mutual

> incomprehension and distrust between the Pentagon and the Clinton White

> House, especially in its early years, led to such debacles as Somalia and

> the clash over allowing gays to serve openly in the military. The Bush

> administration's dismissiveness toward scientists could also have serious

> consequences, from delaying vital new medical therapies to eroding

> America's general lead in science. The Clinton administration quickly felt

> the sting of the military's hostility and worked to repair the

> relationship. It's not clear, however, that the Bush administration cares

> to reach out to scientists--or even knows it has a problem.

>

> Mad Scientists

>

> The GOP has not always been the anti-science party. Republican Abraham

> Lincoln created the National Academy of Sciences in 1863. William

McKinley,

> a president much admired by Karl Rove, won two presidential victories over

> the creationist Democrat William Jennings Bryan, and supported the

creation

> of the Bureau of Standards, forerunner of today's National Institutes of

> Science and Technology. Perhaps the most pro-science president of the last

> century was Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, a former West Point

> mathematics and engineering student, and later president of Columbia

> University. Eisenhower established the post of White House science

adviser,

> allowed top researchers to wander in and out of the West Wing, and oversaw

> such critical scientific advances as the development of the U2 spy plane

> and federally funded programs to put more science teachers in public

> schools. At one point, he even said that he wanted to foster an attitude

in

> America toward science that paralleled the country's embrace of

competitive

> sports. Scientists returned the affection, leaning slightly in favor of

the

> GOP in the 1960 election.

>

> The split between the GOP and the scientific community began during the

> administration of Richard Nixon. In the late 1960s and early 1970s,

> protests against the Vietnam War captured the sympathy of the liberal

> academic community, including many scientists, whose opposition to the war

> turned them against Nixon. The president characteristically lashed back

> and, in 1973, abolished the entire White House science advisory team by

> executive order, fuming that they were all Democrats. Later, he was caught

> ranting on one of his tapes about a push, led by his science adviser, to

> spend more money on scientific research in the crucial electoral state of

> California. Nixon complained, " Their only argument is that we're going to

> lose the support of the scientific community. We will never have their

> support. " The GOP further alienated scientists with its " Southern

> strategy, " an effort to broaden the party's appeal to white conservative

> Southerners. Many scientists were turned off by the increasing evangelical

> slant of Republicans and what many saw as coded appeals to white racists.

>

> Scientists also tended to agree with Democrats' increasingly

> pro-environmental and consumer-protection stances, movements which both

> originated in academia. Gradually, as John Judis and Ruy Teixeira show in

> their recent book The Emerging Democratic Majority, professionals, the

> group of highly skilled workers that includes scientists, moved from the

> Republican camp to the Democratic. Yet that transition took a while, in

> large part because most professionals were still fiscally conservative,

few

> sided with pro-union Democrats, and the Republican Party had not yet been

> overtaken by its more socially conservative factions. In the mid 1970s,

for

> example, Republican President Gerald Ford showed a moderate streak while

in

> the White House and reinstated the Office of Science and Technology

Policy.

>

> Ronald Reagan oversaw a widening gulf between the Republican Party and

> academic scientists. During the 1980 campaign, he refused to endorse

> evolution, a touchstone issue among scientists, saying, " Well, [evolution]

> is a theory--it is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years

> been challenged in the world of science and is not yet believed in the

> scientific community to be as infallible as it was once believed. " Though

> he aggressively funded research for military development, he alienated

many

> in academia with his rush to build a missile defense system that most

> scientists thought unworkable.

>

> George H.W. Bush tried to walk the tightrope. He pushed the Human Genome

> Project forward and elevated the position of chief science adviser from a

> special assistant to assistant. Yet he served during an acrimonious public

> debate about global warming, an issue that drove a wedge between academic

> scientists and the interests of the oil and gas industry--an increasingly

> powerful ally of the GOP. He generally sided with the oil industry and

> dismissed environmentalists' appeals for the most costly reforms. Yet he

> also tried to appease moderates by signing the landmark Framework

> Convention on Climate Change in Rio de Janeiro and helping pass the Clean

> Air Act, which aimed to reduce smog and acid rain. In the end, his

> compromising did him little good; environmentalists attacked him, and his

> rapprochement with liberal academic elites won him few friends with social

> conservatives. Bush faced a surprisingly tough primary challenge from Pat

> Buchanan in the 1992 election campaign, saw his support among evangelicals

> in the general election decline compared with 1988, and lost to the

> Democratic underdog Bill Clinton.

>

> Newt Gingrich didn't make the same mistakes. When he became the House

> Speaker in 1995, Gingrich worked vigorously to cut budgets in areas with

> Democratic constituents--and he knew that by the time he came to office

> most scientists were supporting Democrats. The speaker took aim at

research

> organizations such as the U.S. Geological Survey and National Biological

> Survey and dismissed action on global warming. He even abolished the

> Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, which served as the main

> scientific research arm of Capitol Hill. Gingrich claimed that OTA was too

> slow to keep up with congressional debates; agency defenders argued that

> the cut was fueled by partisan dislike of an agency perceived as a

> Democratic stronghold. Indeed, several years prior, OTA had published a

> report harshly critical of the predominantly GOP-backed missile defense

> project, the Strategic Defense Initiative.

>

> By the mid 1990s, the GOP had firmly adopted a new paradigm for dismissing

> scientists as liberals. Gingrich believed, as Nixon did, that most

> scientists weren't going to support him politically. " Scientists tend to

> have an agenda, and it tends to be a liberal political agenda, " explains

> Gingrich's close associate former Rep. Robert Walker (R-Pa.), the former

> chairman of the House Science Committee. In 1995, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher

> (R-Calif.), then-chairman of the House committee dealing with global

> warming, called climate change a " liberal claptrap. " In interviews with

The

> Washington Post in 2001, Texas Republican Tom DeLay dismissed evolution as

> unproven, said that we shouldn't need an EPA because " God charges us to be

> good stewards of the Earth, " and denigrated scientific Nobel Prize winners

> as " liberal and extremist. "

>

> Ph.D. Phobia

>

> George W. Bush embodies the modern GOP's attitude toward science. He hails

> from a segment of the energy industry that, when it comes to global

> warming, considers science an obstacle to growth. He is strongly partisan,

> deeply religious, and also tied to evangelical supporters. And, like

> Reagan, he has refused to endorse the scientific principle of evolution.

> During the 2000 campaign, a New York Times reporter asked whether he

> believed in evolution. Bush equivocated, leading the Times to write that

he

> " believes the jury is still out. "

>

> Bush has also learned from his father's experience that siding with

> scientists gains him little politically, and often alienates

conservatives.

> Bush and Rove have tried to woo portions of other groups that

traditionally

> trend Democratic--steel tariffs for unions, faith-based grants for

> African-American ministers--but scientists are different. They aren't a

big

> voting bloc. They are generally affluent, but not enough so to be major

> donors. They are capable of organizing under the auspices of a university

> to lobby for specific grants, but they aren't organized politically in a

> general way. In short, scientists aren't likely to cause the GOP problems

> if they are completely alienated. Scientists have almost never turned

> themselves into anything like a political force. Even Al Gore, the

> apotheosis of many scientists' political hopes, received little formal

> support from them during the 2000 campaign.

>

> Consequently, the White House seems to have pushed scientific concerns

down

> toward the bottom of its list of priorities. Bush, for instance, has half

> as many Ph.D.s in his cabinet as Clinton had two years into his term.

Among

> the White House inner circle, Condoleezza Rice's doctorate distinguishes

> her as much as her race and more than her sex. Consider also the length of

> time the administration left top scientific positions vacant. It took 20

> months to choose an FDA director, 14 months to choose an NIH director, and

> seven months to choose a White House science adviser for the Office of

> Science and Technology Policy. Once Bush had appointed a head of OSTP, he

> demoted the rank of the position, moved the office out of the White House,

> and cut the number of associate directors from four to two. An OSTP

> spokeswoman argues that the administration's decision to move OSTP was

> inconsequential and that reducing the number of associate directors was

> just a way of " reducing the stovepipes. " But geography and staff equal

> clout in Washington, and unarguably signal how much the people in power

> care about what you do.

>

> Moreover, Bush appointed to one of the two associate director positions

> Richard Russell, a Hill aide credentialed with only a bachelor's degree in

> biology, and let him interview candidates for the job of director. " It

> bothers me deeply [that he was given that spot], because I don't think

that

> he is entirely qualified, " says Allen Bromley, George H. W. Bush's science

> adviser, who worked for some of his tenure out of prime real estate in the

> West Wing of the White House. " To my astonishment, he ended up

interviewing

> some of the very senior candidates, and he did not do well. The people he

> interviewed were not impressed. "

>

> Cynical Trials

>

> When required to seek input from scientists, the administration tends to

> actively recruit those few who will bolster the positions it already knows

> it wants to support, even if that means defying scientific consensus. As

> with Bush's inquiry into stem-cell research, when preparing important

> policy decisions, the White House wants scientists to give them

validation,

> not grief. The administration has stacked hitherto apolitical scientific

> advisory committees, and even an ergonomics study section, which is just a

> research group and has no policy making role.

>

> Ergonomics became a politicized issue early in Bush's term when he

> overturned a Clinton-era rule requiring companies to do more to protect

> workers from carpal tunnel syndrome and other similar injuries. Late last

> year, the Department of Health and Human Services rejected, without

> explanation, three nominees for the Safety and Occupational Health Study

> Section who had already been approved by Dana Loomis, the group's chair,

> but who also weren't clearly aligned with the administration's position on

> ergonomics. Loomis then wrote a letter saying that " The Secretary's office

> declined to give reasons for its decision, but they seem ominously clear

in

> at least one case: one of the rejected nominees is an expert in ergonomics

> who has publicly supported a workplace ergonomics standard. " Another

> nominee, who was accepted, said that she had been called by an HHS

official

> who wanted to know her views on ergonomics before allowing her on the

panel.

>

> The administration has further used these committees as places for

> religious conservatives whose political credentials are stronger than

their

> research ones. For example, on Christmas Eve 2002, Bush appointed David

> Hager--a highly controversial doctor who has written that women should use

> prayer to reduce the symptoms of PMS--to the FDA's Reproductive Health

> Drugs Advisory Commission.

>

> Bush has also taken to unprecedented levels the political vetting of

> nominees for advisory committees. When William Miller, a professor of

> psychology at the University of New Mexico, was considered as a candidate

> for a panel on the National Institute of Drug Abuse, he was asked his

views

> on abortion, the death penalty, and whether he had voted for Bush. He said

> no to the last question and never received a call back. " Not only does the

> Bush administration scorn science; it is subjecting appointments to

> scientific advisory committees and even study sections to political

tests, "

> says Donald Kennedy, editor in chief of Science, the community's flagship

> publication.

>

> Control Group Politics

>

> Any administration will be tempted to trumpet the conclusions of science

> when they justify actions that are advantageous politically, and to ignore

> them when they don't. Democrats, for instance, are more than happy to tout

> the scientific consensus that human activity contributes to climate

change,

> but play down evidence that drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife

Refuge

> (which they oppose) probably will have little impact on the caribou there.

> But Democrats will only go so far down the path of ignoring scientific

> evidence because they don't want to alienate their scientific supporters.

> Increasingly, the Republicans feel little such restraint. Hence the Bush

> administration's propensity to tout scientific evidence only when it suits

> them politically. For instance, though numerous studies have shown the

> educational benefits of after-school programs, the Bush administration

> cited just one recent report casting doubt on those benefits to justify

> cutting federal after-school funding. Meanwhile, the White House has

> greatly increased the federal budget for abstinence-only sex education

> programs despite a notable lack of evidence that they work to reduce teen

> pregnancy. The administration vigorously applies cost-benefit

> analysis--some of it rigorous and reasonable--to reduce federal

regulations

> on industry. But when the National Academy of Sciences concluded that

> humans are contributing to a planetary warming and that we face

substantial

> future risks, the White House initially misled the public about the report

> and then dramatically downplayed it. Even now, curious reporters asking

the

> White House about climate change are sent to a small, and quickly

> diminishing, group of scientists who still doubt the causes of global

> warming. Many scientists were shocked that the administration had even

> ordered the report, a follow-up to a major report from the 2,500-scientist

> Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world's leading climate

> research committee. Doing that was like asking a district court to review

a

> Supreme Court decision.

>

> Experts in Exile

>

> This White House's disinclination to engage the scientific community in

> important policy decisions may have serious consequences for the country.

> One crucial issue that Congress and the Bush administration will likely

> have to confront before Bush leaves office is human cloning. Researchers

> distinguish between " reproductive cloning, " which most scientists abhor,

> and " therapeutic cloning, " which may someday allow researchers to use stem

> cells from a patient's cloned embryo to grow replacement bone marrow,

liver

> cells, or other organs, and which most scientists favor. When the

> President's Council on Bioethics voted on recommendations for the

> president, every single practicing scientist voted for moving therapeutic

> cloning forward. Bush, however, decided differently, supporting instead a

> bill sponsored by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) to ban all forms of

embryonic

> cloning.

>

> John Marburger, the president's current scientific adviser--a longtime

> Democrat who says that he has good relations with Bush and is proud of the

> administration's science record--wrote in an email statement which barely

> conceals his own opinion: " As for my views on cloning, let me put it this

> way. The president's position--which is to ban all cloning--was made for a

> number of ethical reasons, and I do know that he had the best, most

> up-to-date science before him when he made that decision. " Jack Gibbons, a

> former head of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, calls

> Bush's proposed ban " an attempt to throttle science, not to govern

> technology. " Harold Varmus, the former NIH director, believes that " this

is

> the first time that the [federal] government has ever tried to criminalize

> science. "

>

> Another potentially costly decision is the Bush administration's

> post-September 11 restrictions on the ability of foreign scientists to

> immigrate to the United States--restrictions which many scientists argue

go

> far beyond reasonable precautions to keep out terrorists. In December

2002,

> the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Engineering, and

> the Institute of Medicine issued a statement complaining that " recent

> efforts by our government to constrain the flow of international visitors

> in the name of national security are having serious unintended

consequences

> for American science, engineering and medicine. " Indeed, MIT recently

> abandoned a major artificial-intelligence research project because the

> school couldn't find enough graduate students who weren't foreigners and

> who could thus clear new security regulations.

>

> Unscientific Method

>

> Like Gingrich, Bush favors investments in scientific research for the

> military, health care, and other areas that garner strong public and

> industry support. Indeed, the White House quickly points to such funding

> increases whenever its attitude toward science is questioned. But for an

> administration that has boosted spending in a great number of areas, more

> money for science is less telling than how the Bush administration acts

> when specific items on its agenda collide with scientific evidence or

> research needs. In almost all of those cases, the scientists get tuned

out.

>

> Ignoring expert opinion on matters of science may never cause the

> administration the kind of political grief it is now suffering over its

WMD

> Iraq policy. But neither is it some benign bit of anti-elitist bias.

> American government has a history of investing in the capabilities and

> trusting the judgments of its scientific community--a legacy that has

> brought us sustained economic progress and unquestioned scientific

> leadership within the global intellectual community. For the short-term

> political profits that come with looking like an elite-dismissing friend

of

> the everyman, the Bush administration has put that proud, dynamic history

> at real risk.

>

> Nicholas Thompson is a Washington Monthly contributing editor.

> http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0307.thompson.html