"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views."

Doctor Who ( Face of Evil)

We leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine whether Bush is very powerful or very stupid (or some combination thereof). A group of 60 highly-respected senior scientists from the Union of Concerned Scientists accuses the Bush administration of altering the facts to fit the views. A document signed by the group charges, "When scientific knowledge has been found to be in conflict with its political goals, the administration has often manipulated the process through which science enters into its decisions." It goes on to say, "This has been done by placing people who are professionally unqualified or who have clear conflicts of interest in official posts and on scientific advisory committees; by disbanding existing advisory committees; by censoring and suppressing reports by the government's own scientists; and by simply not seeking independent scientific advice."

According to USA Today, the signatures read like a who's-who of the scientific community with "20 Nobel Prize winners and 19 recipients of the National Medal of Science."

White House Office of Science and Technology Policy chief John Marburger dismissed the document, calling it a "conspiracy report" because you just know how redily those crazy Nobel Prize winners buy into conspiracy theories and how poorly they reason.

The full report is available online, but at the moment their database server seems to be having some trouble handling the load. It is said to outline specific complaints, which I'll post here once I can get the page to load.

---Nick

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