Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Editorial: NASA scientists get the OK to talk
Now the Bush administration should free all civil servants to be frank with the public, their boss.
From the RoundTable blog
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A NASA scientist who would not be muzzled is convinced the agency administrator's pledge of "scientific openness" is genuine, and that NASA workers will be able to speak freely to the public without first running their remarks through a political rinse cycle.
That will be a change in procedures that had evolved since political appointees at NASA headquarters began trying to cleanse all public communications of any scientific findings contrary to Bush administration policy.
But, warns James E. Hansen, the man whose protests of government censorship drew congressional scrutiny, don't mistake a change at NASA, which is crafting a new public information policy, for widespread reform. Other scientific agencies have been constrained by political appointees who see President Bush, rather than the American people, as their boss.
There's no sign that NASA administrator Michael Griffin's intervention on behalf of scientists and the public is being widely emulated.
Griffin ordered a review of the agency's communications policies last month, after Hansen complained to The New York Times that NASA officials had told public affairs officers to review his future lectures, Web postings and scientific papers. Hansen is one of NASA's top climate scientists -- one who, not incidentally, thinks that global warming caused by human activity is an urgent threat.
Hansen insists that motor vehicle emissions can be cut enough to significantly reduce the greenhouse gases that are heating up the planet. His message is inconvenient for an administration that insists that voluntary industry measures to merely slow the increase in emissions, rather than reduce them, is quite enough.
Hansen joined more than 140 NASA scientists and other civil servants from the agency's nationwide network of research centers in stating publicly Monday that the new communications policy will limit the potential for political mischief -- if, that is, it gets final approval.
That would leave the public to worry only about what scientific propaganda the administration might be forcing all of the other federal agencies to churn out.
