A Message to Garcia or Undermining Science

A Message to Garcia: Being a Preachment

Author: Elbert Hubbard

Elbert Hubbard wrote this literary trifle in one hour after supper. Its management advice is both timeless and provocative. In the 102 years since it was written, more than 40 million copies have been distributed.

Go to: Using Your Exercise Ball for Weight Loss or South Beach Heart Health Revolution

Undermining Science: Suppression and Distortion in the Bush Administration

Author: Seth Shulman

This vitally important exposé shows how the Bush administration has systematically misled Americans on a wide range of scientific issues affecting public health, foreign policy, and the environment by ignoring, suppressing, manipulating, or even distorting scientific research. It is the first book to focus exclusively on how this explosive issue has played out during the Presidency of George W. Bush and the first to comprehensively document his administration's abuses of science.
In 2001, a group of eminent American scientists affiliated with the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) contacted Seth Shulman, an experienced investigative journalist, to look into charges of serious mishandling of scientific information in the current administration. Shulman's investigation resulted in the groundbreaking report "Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policy Making," which served as the basis for a highly publicized UCS scientists' statement accusing the Bush administration of a misuse of science that was signed by dozens of Nobel laureates, National Medal of Science recipients, and members of the National Academy of Sciences. To date, more than 8,000 scientists across the country have signed the statement based upon Shulman's reporting. This book, drawing upon scores of interviews and including never-released information, goes beyond the UCS report to document the Bush administration's suppression and distortion of science, bringing this issue to a wider audience.
Undermining Science covers:
* The Bush administration's abuse and misuse of science in areas including stem cell research, AIDS prevention, environmental protection, the Iraq war, the teaching of evolution,and global warming;
* The administration's use of political litmus tests in selecting administrators for science-based agencies and in selecting scientists on federal advisory committees;
* The dangerous consequences of the Bush administration's war on science for the caliber and integrity of the nation's scientific research.
Shulman explains that, by knowingly misrepresenting and suppressing the truth, the Bush administration broke its covenant with its constituents in the most fundamental way possible, with consequences that reach far beyond the scientific community.

Publishers Weekly

Reviewing the evidence of how the Bush administration has systematically denied and doctored scientific findings that fail to support its political positions, journalist Shulman adds some new details in this accessible book. Combining thorough research with lucid prose and a sense of mounting outrage, he charges that the president's appointees and advisers are not only threatening the scientific enterprise but also American democracy itself. In human health, for example, he points to censored studies of race-based medical disparities, shows how guidelines on lead regulation have been decided by political appointees with ties to the lead-paint industry and reviews the now-infamous controversies over Plan B birth control and abstinence-only education. He also tells of scientists being questioned about their political beliefs, voting records and support for presidential policies during interviews for committee appointments. Though he cites recent congressional bills supporting scientific integrity, these are only small flickers of hope in a dark partisan landscape. While much of this information has been reported previously, especially in Chris Mooney's 2005 bestseller, The Republican War on Science, Shulman's consolidation of these tales of manipulation, intimidation and deception makes for disquieting reading. (Jan.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Writing at the request of the Union of Concerned Scientists, science journalist Shulman (The Threat at Home: Confronting the Toxic Legacy of the U.S. Military) here describes an extensive effort maintained throughout the George W. Bush administration to block and/or seriously distort the research findings of many government-supported scientists. This suppression campaign evidently extends across a broad range of subjects, including global warming, mercury pollution, sundry medical issues (e.g., stem-cell research), an alleged Iraqi nuclear weapons effort, and environmental lead poisoning. In numerous instances, political appointees with no scientific background have rewritten reports submitted by professional scientists. In other cases, highly credentialed scientists nominated for advisory boards have been rejected on political grounds. Shulman might have strengthened his argument further had he shown how the current administration has differed in this area from previous administrations of both major political parties. Even so, he has produced a convincing and frightening demonstration of the Bush administration's perversion of scientific facts and advice. Recommended. [Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science also investigates this issue.-Ed.]-Jack W. Weigel, Ann Arbor, MI Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Table of Contents:

Preface to the 2008 Edition     xi
Preface to the First Edition     xvii
Facts Matter     1
"Icing" the Data on Climate Change     16
Doctoring Evidence about Your Health     31
Abstaining from the Truth on Abstinence and AIDS     46
Clear Skies? Healthy Forests?: Understanding Bush's Real Environmental Policy     64
When Good Science Is the Endangered Species     81
Burying More Than Intelligence     94
Stacking the Deck     111
Stem Cells and Monkey Trials     127
Restoring Scientific Integrity     145
Notes     159
Index     191