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Confusion on Science Censorship in US Federal Agencies

There may be a good explanation, but Warren Washington has expressed apparently conflicting views on science censorship in U.S. federal agencies. In today’s Rocky Mountain News Warren Washington, outgoing chairman of the National Science Board (which oversees the National Science Foundation), is quoted as follows:

The American public is not hearing the full story on global warming because Bush administration officials are muzzling government scientists, a top climate researcher said Wednesday.

Warren Washington, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, said that Bush appointees are suppressing information about climate change, restricting journalists' access to federal scientists and rewriting agency news releases to stress global warming uncertainties.

"The news media is not getting the full story, especially from government scientists," Washington told about 160 people attending the first day of "Climate Change and the Future of the American West," a three-day conference sponsored by the University of Colorado's Natural Resources Law Center. . .

Washington said in an interview that the climate cover-up is occurring at several federal agencies, including NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U.S. Forest Service. NOAA operates several Boulder laboratories that conduct climate and weather research.

I was in attendance at the workshop and heard Dr. Washington’s allegations. But unless he has some new information (which he might), but has not released, it is difficult to square these allegations with a recent report of the NSB on this issue. A report (available here in PDF, relevant section begins at p. 6) which was chaired by Dr. Washington found no evidence of suppression. Here is an excerpt:

. . . the Board has reviewed statutes, regulations, agency statements and internal documents related to this issue for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and the Departments of Agriculture (USDA), Energy (DOE), and Health and Human Services (HHS). In addition, the Board requested that the Inspector General (IG) of the National Science Foundation (NSF) poll her counterparts at these agencies for additional relevant information.

The Board would like to acknowledge and thank EPA, NASA, NIH, NOAA, USGS, USDA, and DOE for their responses to our request for information. . .

The survey of the agencies’ IGs indicated that no reports were issued to indicate scientific information was suppressed or distorted at the agencies involved with the Board’s review.

It may be that while there are no formal reports from within various agencies, suppression is nonetheless ongoing. However, I would hope that Dr. Washington would provide the evidence of such continuing suppression if he has it. Otherwise, the allegations of suppression risk undermining the credibility of countless hard-working government scientists and their agencies. As a NOAA spokesman said,

Jordan St. John, a NOAA spokesman, said the allegations against his agency are false.

"NOAA is an open and transparent agency," he said. "It's unfair to the people who work at this agency that this kind of characterization keeps being made. Hansen said it once, and it took on a life of its own and just keeps getting repeated."

But Washington insisted that government officials are "trying to confuse the public" about climate change and the scientific consensus that global warming is a real problem.

The only way to reconcile these different points of view is with data. Without data that suppression continues (beyond the well documented cases of Jim Hansen and the NOAA hurricane press release) it is hard to know what is being referred to. If I see Warren today at the conference, I’ll ask him. The NSB does offer a number of useful recommendations, which I provide here in full:

RECOMMENDATIONS

Based on our analysis, we offer the following recommendations:

• A Government-wide directive should be issued by the Administration that provides overarching principles and clearly articulates the requirement for all agencies to develop unambiguous policies and procedures to encourage open exchange of data and results of research conducted by agency scientists, while preventing the intentional or unintentional suppression or distortion of research findings and accommodating appropriate agency review. A developed set of principles should also state the concomitant responsibility of agency employees regarding the advocacy of public policy that might be implied by their research.

• Agency-wide policies covering the public disclosure of an agency’s research results should be issued and uniformly applied, widely communicated, and readily accessible to all employees and the general public. Like those recently released by NASA, these policies should unambiguously describe what is and is not permitted or recommended. Responsibilities for communicating research results by researchers, public affairs officers, policy makers, and other agency employees should be clearly described. A clear distinction should be made between communicating professional research results and data versus the interpretation of data and results in a context that seeks to influence, through the injection of personal viewpoints, public opinion or formulation of public policy.

• An objective dispute resolution mechanism for disagreements involving the public dissemination of agency research findings should be implemented. This will help ensure the public has access to the research and that scientific findings presented are credible and of the highest quality.

• A Government-wide review should be established to ensure that implementation of these recommendations is conducted in a manner that meets the high standards expected and is consistent across agencies.

From where I sit these make good sense, however, I will point out that this aspiration will forever be problematic: “A clear distinction should be made between communicating professional research results and data versus the interpretation of data and results in a context that seeks to influence, through the injection of personal viewpoints, public opinion or formulation of public policy.”