Scientists Strike Back At Bush

Scientists have never felt so wronged by the leadership of the country.

From the outspoken complaints of senior federal climate scientists to the testimony of the former Surgeon General, the message has been the same: The Bush Administration has taken scientific findings and recommendations and twisted them as it saw fit to suit it's political aims.

Now, this claim is nothing new. Every administration has faced off criticism of this kind, in part because policy can never adhere strictly to the demands of science. It's just too messy, with too many concerns and interests to balance.

And, consider that "science" is used as an argument for or against almost any issue, and one has to look no farther than a local planning board to see competing claims made by contractors using the same evidence to see that science is twisted for far less lofty reasons than the power of one national political party or another.

But the uncoordinated but sustained counterattack that scientists have been launching against the Bush administration is unprecedented. The near unanimity among serious scientists is startling. If science is used in pursuit of truth, and its practitioners see their work manipulated for other purposes, the policy emanating from the administration has to be suspect.

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