Science and Politics

Via digby: Jorge Hirsch at UC San Diego has gathered a few of his friends — Nobel Laureates, Boltzmann and Fields Medalists, Medal of Science winners, and past Presidents of the American Physical Society — to write a letter to President Bush, urging him not to use nuclear weapons against Iran. The signatories are:

• Philip Anderson, professor of physics at Princeton University and Nobel Laureate in Physics
• Michael Fisher, professor of physics at the Institute for Physical Science and Technology, University of Maryland and Wolf Laureate in Physics
• David Gross, professor of theoretical physics and director of the Kavli Institute of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Nobel Laureate in Physics
• Jorge Hirsch, professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego
• Leo Kadanoff, professor of physics and mathematics at the University of Chicago and recipient of the National Medal of Science
• Joel Lebowitz, professor of mathematics and physics, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and Boltzmann Medalist
• Anthony Leggett, professor of physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Nobel Laureate, Physics
• Eugen Merzbacher, professor of physics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and former president, American Physical Society
• Douglas Osheroff, professor of physics and applied physics, Stanford University and Nobel Laureate, Physics
• Andrew Sessler, former director of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and former president, American Physical Society
• George Trilling, professor of physics, University of California, Berkeley, and former president, American Physical Society
• Frank Wilczek, professor of physics, MIT and Nobel Laureate, Physics
• Edward Witten, professor of physics, Institute for Advanced Study and Fields Medalist

In reality, winning a Nobel Prize doesn’t make you an informed judge of geopolitical affairs. But anyone in their right mind can see it would be a bad idea to launch a nuclear first strike against Iran or anyone else, and these folks are in their right minds. Hopefully they can lend some heft and gather some publicity for the cause.

Part of me wonders whether the administration understands perfectly well that a nuclear strike would be madness, but they want to give the impression of being reckless cowboys so that Iran will dismantle their nuclear program — that’s a hopeless plan, of course, but at least not wildly irreponsible. Then I remember that they have consistently acted like reckless cowboys in every previous situation, and my heart sinks a little. Remember DeLong’s Law: “The Bush Administration is always worse than one imagines, even when taking into account DeLong’s Law.”

Greetings from New Mexico, where I selflessly rise early to share a couple of items on the fight-to-save-honest-science front:

• At Daily Kos, DarkSyde has an interview with Representative Brad Miller (D-NC) about his efforts to ferret out instances of the overt politicization of science within the administration (as we mentioned before). He wants to gather enough evidence to hold an investigation by the House Science Committee.
• Phil Plait points us to Defend Science, a group that is holding protests and circulating a petition decrying attacks on objective scientific thinking within the U.S. I personally wasn’t that fond of the way the petition itself was written — a little too overheated, with a lot of capital letters — but it’s absolutely a worthy cause, and I am happy to go along.

Passed on by DarkSyde at Daily Kos — Rep. Brad Miller of North Carolina has posted a Daily Kos diary calling for Congressional hearings on the issue of the integrity of scientific research in the Bush Administration. He believes that Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, chair of the House Science Committee, may be amenable to such hearings.

And he’s asking a favor: Rep. Miller is looking for information about “instances of censoring, intimidating, blacklisting or whatever” concerning government scientists. Anyone fitting that description (not just random people with a gripe, but actual government scientists who feel that their integrity has been compromised for political reasons) should email Rep. Miller’s legislative assistant Heather Parsons, at heather.parsons [at] mail.house.gov, or Dan Pearson of the Democratic staff of the Science Committee at dan.pearson [at] mail.house.gov.

You’ve heard, I hope, about NASA climate scientist James Hansen, who the Bush administration tried to silence when he called for reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases. Cosmology, as it turns out, is not exempt from the radical anti-science agenda. The New York Times, via Atrios:

In October, for example, George Deutsch, a presidential appointee in NASA headquarters, told a Web designer working for the agency to add the word “theory” after every mention of the Big Bang, according to an e-mail message from Mr. Deutsch that another NASA employee forwarded to The Times.

…

The Big Bang memo came from Mr. Deutsch, a 24-year-old presidential appointee in the press office at NASA headquarters whose resume says he was an intern in the “war room” of the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. A 2003 journalism graduate of Texas A&M, he was also the public-affairs officer who sought more control over Dr. Hansen’s public statements.

In October 2005, Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. The message said the word “theory” needed to be added after every mention of the Big Bang.

The Big Bang is “not proven fact; it is opinion,” Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, “It is not NASA’s place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator.”

It continued: “This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most.”

Emphasis added. Draw your own conclusions, I’m feeling a bit of outrage fatigue at the moment.

Update: Phil Plait has extensive comments at Bad Astronomy Blog. Also Pharyngula, Balloon Juice, Stranger Fruit, Gary Farber, Mark Kleiman, World O’ Crap, and Hullabaloo.

Update again, for our new visitors: Folks, of course the Big Bang model is a theory, and of course it is also correct. It has been tested beyond reasonable doubt: our current universe expanded from a hot, dense, smooth state about 14 billion years ago. The evidence is overwhelming, and we have hard data (from primordial nucleosynthesis) that the model was correct as early as one minute after the initial singularity.

Of course the initial singularity (the `Bang’ itself) is not understood, and there are plenty of other loose ends. But the basic framework — expanding from an early hot, dense, smooth state — is beyond reasonable dispute.

It’s too bad that scientific education in this country is so poor that many people don’t understand what is meant by “theory” or “model.” It doesn’t mean “just someone’s opinion.” Theories can be completely speculative, absolutely well-established, or just plain wrong; the Big Bang model is absolutely well-established.

If Chris Mooney didn’t seem so serious, I would think this was a joke. He’s predicting that George W. Bush will use the State of the Union Speech to stake his claim as “the Science President.”

A while back I blogged about an idea floated by Morton Kondracke: That George W. Bush should try to become the “science” president by emphasizing, in his State of the Union speech, themes of global scientific competitiveness and the need to ensure that the good old USA is leading the pack. Well, it now seems official: According to the Boston Globe, in his speech tonight Bush plans to highlight Norman Augustine, a former Lockheed Martin CEO who “last year led a congressionally mandated National Academies team that issued a report warning that America is ‘on a losing path’ in the global marketplace.” Why are we falling behind? If you believe the NAS, it’s because of inadequate scientific and mathematical training for our high school students, not enough funding of basic scientific research, etc etc.

That’s right. George “Let’s teach intelligent design” Bush. George “Let’s censor climate scientists” Bush. George “Let’s watch while particle physics withers away” Bush. George “Let’s slash funding for basic research” Bush. George “Let’s politicize the scientific decision-making process and suppress results we don’t like” Bush. George “Let’s divert research funding to my Moon-Mars boondoggle” Bush. George “Most anti-science President ever” Bush.

I understand that, after staking his claim as the Science President, Bush will present himself with a coffee mug that says “World’s Greatest Leader, Ever.” And a pony.