you thought it couldn't get any worse

bush administration to review scientific papers before approving them for publishing??

White House policy angers scientists

Friday, December 15, 2006

By Juliet Eilperin The Washington Post

WASHINGTON A new Bush administration policy for reviewing scientific documents before publication has angered some U.S. Geological Survey scientists, who say the elaborate internal review of their work may impede them from conveying information to the public.

The new requirements, unveiled in July but still being put into practice, call for staff scientists to submit all reports and prepared talks to managers to determine if they meet the agency’s scientific standards. They also require researchers to alert the agency press office of any work involving “potential high visibility products or policy-sensitive issues.”

P. Patrick Leahy, USGS associate director for geology, said the agency spent more than two years drafting the new rules in order to ensure all of its scientists are subject to the same sort of rigorous scientific review before they send their work to be published.

STOCK AND TRADE

“What we’re doing is ensuring the scientific excellence of USGS products,” Leahy said in an interview. “Peer review has been the stock and trade of this organization for years and years. How we do that has been different depending on what part of the organization you were in ... What we want to do is (have) our scientists working together in concert with one another.”

But James Estes, a marine biologist who has worked for more than 30 years at the USGS’s Western Ecological Research Center in Santa Cruz, Calif., said that while he has not encountered problems in the past, he and his colleagues now fear their work might be stifled.

LOOKING OVER SHOULDER

“I feel as though we’ve got someone looking over our shoulder at every damn thing we do. And to me that’s a very scary thing,” Estes said, adding that it will be a cumbersome procedure. “There’s been no effort yet other than to intimidate everybody, but to me it’s censorship. ... I think they’re afraid of science. Our findings on ecology could be embarrassing to the administration.”

Leahy acknowledged that some agency scientists were resistant to the idea, even though USGS officials see it as a helpful reform.

“It’s the old thing, in concept it makes a great deal of sense,” he said. “In practice, if you have a change to what you’ve been doing for a long time, you’re not happy with it.”

ALL DOCUMENTS

Under the policy, a USGS employee must submit any scientific document for a peer review that may involve scientists either inside or outside the agency. A supervisor oversees the process, making sure the reviewers are qualified and looking at how the scientist in question responded to any criticism raised by the reviewers.

Rama Kotra, a senior scientist in Leahy’s office, said the review might take just one week for a simple document, but in the case of a complex scientific study “it would take much longer than that,” possibly six months.

http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?ID=324911&Category=23

hahaha, politics get more comical to me every damn day.

Well, you don't want to just make information available to the public all willy-nilly.

Well, you don't want to just make information available to the public all willy-nilly.

you're right. i'm treating this way too much like it's our country or something. guess i let imagination run amuck again.

U.S government needs to give the tick of approval to all works of science before they are published in journals? welcome to orwel country

hahaha, politics get more comical to me every damn day.

see, this is why i knew i liked you in some way. exactly. sit back and watch the comedy of errors. tragedy as we may find it.

politics is for the ugly so im good at it

I can't stand politics, they have become too ridiculous for words.... and yet... I'm still here... CAPTIVATED! :stretch: :stretch: :stretch:

U.S government needs to give the tick of approval to all works of science before they are published in journals? welcome to orwel country

Not ALL works of science, just government agency works. Which is still quite a lot.

hahaha, politics get more comical to me every damn day.

What are your feelings on this? You say the government should not interfere with scientific research and they also should not be funding it. But what about scientific research done by the government?

i think scientific research done by the government is like other oxymorons such as military intellegence or jumbo shrimp.

i've stated my position on this before.... im just gonna leave it at that.

AOD, I know you are for minimum government but what about grants to research institutions? Assuming you're against them, what is your alternative?

using private money from the private sector instead of using other peoples money taken by force to give to someone else.

^^^ this reminds me of mid 20th century soviet propaganda. after all, i could say the same about your job. im sure you go to work to make a profit and earn the highest wages possible for the least amount of work.

the soviets nationalized science, had the up to date materials, labs, etc. and still all the 'discoveries' were a decade behind the capitalist world. then the country collapsed. thinking that art or science would not exist without the federal government's control and funding shows you simply have no confidence in human action.

Yeah, I don't get the complaint. This isn't all scientific research or discourse being reviewed. This is a branch of the United States government assuring government approval of government research. So, checks and balances of sorts. Which we all learned about from "School House Rock" back in 1988. Do we really think this is a problem?

“I feel as though we’ve got someone looking over our shoulder at every damn thing we do. And to me that’s a very scary thing,” Estes said, adding that it will be a cumbersom procedure...

Isn't that what government oversight is? Somebody looking over your shoulder, and process being a cumbersome affair? Welcome to the last 200 years of democracy. Whoops.

"Politicians need to stay the fuck outta science like religion needs to stay the fuck outta politics."

awesome. and so does government money.

separation of society and state.

Try telling that to military scientists.

i could handle abolition of the state, though i am more of a classical liberal minimal state 'minarchist' than an anarchist.

I totally reject your speech about corporations owning us and the socialism you espoused. history has proven the great achievements, superior quality of products and overall goodness of socialism.

not.

it is a mark of a capitalist free society for people to be free enough to talk about the virtues of socialism. try this in a 'free' socialist society, and you'll be called an enemy of the revolution and get chunked in the nearest gulag or shot for treason.

i know i know, stalin, chavez and castro arent real socialists! it just hasnt worked out so good, simply because the right people havent been in charge yet. but they'll get it right. one of these days.

Hey, Marx believed it was the inevitable conclusion of mankind. Of course, he also bought into the whole anti-semitism thing.

Hey, Marx believed it was the inevitable conclusion of mankind. Of course, he also bought into the whole anti-semitism thing.

Marx was Jewish.

His father converted, Marx was not raised in a religiously Jewish family and eventually began to hate the Jewish religion.

U.S government needs to give the tick of approval to all works of science before they are published in journals? welcome to orwel country

Word. Up.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/01/bush_says_feds_.html

Bush says feds can open mail without warrants

personal note: i've had my mail opened a ton of times before this was ever brought up. it's just now coming to light

and the feds are saying they can do it legally now.

yeah i dont care if they look at my mail its nuthing but bills anyway

america

it`s a sik world we live in men be apart of it..

nice clip casek!

i heard alex jones saying that,and how the technology is so advadce these days it wouldnt surprise me,the thing is,FOX news is saying it,and even giving u tips on the only way around it is taking the battery off.......scare tactics? God knows best.

just beware,big brother is watching/hearing/killing us.

peace

nice clip casek!

 

i heard alex jones saying that,and how the technology is so advadce these days it wouldnt surprise me,the thing is,FOX news is saying it,and even giving u tips on the only way around it is taking the battery off.......scare tactics? God knows best.

 

just beware,big brother is watching/hearing/killing us.

 

peace

i've known about it for awhile. have a neighbor that is ata base doing network admin. he confirmed it, then this shit happens with the mafia and feds using cells to bug them,

i think it is scare-tactics. sometimes i also wonder if some of the faux news asswipes are really dedicated to their evil master murdoch.

yes they are,they have some blind sheeps,but some are dark and evil hearted.

just look at the things they agree on! a good person cannot say the war in iraq is ok and torture is ok and giving your liberties for security is ok in these times,something is wrong with them.

after all,they have huge wealth and will have more when the extermination process begins(if people let them),they are waiting for that,they are careless about us. devils.

lucifer worshipers.

peace