Andrew Jaffe: Leaves on the Line

Wired News: Science Braces for Second Term

Climate change. The teaching of Darwinian evolution. Stem Cell research and reproductive rights. Industrial waste. Exploring Mars.

Many or most of us scientists disagree with the Bush Administration's policies on many of these and other issues. That becomes a real problem when they start interfering with the flow of ideas among scientists and between scientists and the public. They've been accused of trying to tell scientists what to say (as they did with climatologist James Hansen), stacking committees with administration and industry mouthpieces, and, in a recent report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, more generally distorting information for their own purposes (see also an excellent discussion in the New York Review of Books). Of course, this should sound like a familiar problem in the foreign-policy arena, too.