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The Pacific Institue’s Integrity of Science blog has moved! A long time in the making, we have now officially moved this blog over to ScienceBlogs.

Please bookmark and update your feeds to reflect the new site: http://scienceblogs.com/integrityofscience/

See you there!

The Management

What:
“Defining and Protecting the Integrity of Science: New Challenges for the 21st Century,” a panel discussion in conjunction with the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Leaders from various scientific sectors will be addressing political attacks and interference in science at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. The discussion, “Defining and Protecting the Integrity of Science: New Challenges for the 21st Century,” will bring together leaders from the journal Science, academia, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Pacific Institute, and the AGU itself. These leaders will discuss their experiences with politically- and privately-motivated attacks, efforts to understand scientific integrity, and thoughts on the future relationship between science and policy making. More at www.integrityofscience.org.

Who:

Peter Gleick President, Pacific Institute (presiding); “The Integrity of Science: Identifying Logical Fallacies, Deceitful Tactics, and Abuse of the Public Trust”

Francesca Grifo Senior Scientist and Scientific Integrity Program Director, Union of Concerned Scientists (presiding); “Preventing Federal Government Abuse of Science”

Judith Curry Professor and Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, member of NOAA Climate Working Group; “Falling out of the Ivory Tower: a Case Study of Mixing Hurricane Science, Politics, and the Media”

Don Kennedy Editor-in-Chief, Science; “Science, Policy, and Peer Review”

Timothy Killeen President, AGU; Director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Where:
Room MCS 308
Moscone Convention Center South,
San Francisco, California
Directions

When:
8am-10am, Tuesday, December 12, 2006.

Interviews:
To schedule a one-on-one interview with any of the panelists, please contact Ian Hart at 510-251-1600 x106.

The good news is that we’ve made it through 12 straight months without a carbon-amped Mother Nature laying waste to another great American city. Beignets all around. The bad news is that we didn’t make it to Hump Day without another allegation of the Bush administration tampering with scientific findings. Maybe next week. The AP reports:

The Bush administration has blocked release of a report that suggests global warming is contributing to the frequency and strength of hurricanes, the journal Nature reported Tuesday.

The possibility that warming conditions may cause storms to become stronger has generated debate among climate and weather experts, particularly in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

In the new case, Nature said weather experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — part of the Commerce Department — in February set up a seven-member panel to prepare a consensus report on the views of agency scientists about global warming and hurricanes.

According to Nature, a draft of the statement said that warming may be having an effect.

In May, when the report was expected to be released, panel chair Ants Leetmaa received an e-mail from a Commerce official saying the report needed to be made less technical and was not to be released, Nature reported.Source

Not only does the issue of federal tampering and silencing of science fail to go away, it seems that many within the administration are going out of their way to perpetuate it. Science advocate Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, D-NJ was quick to respond.

“The administration has effectively declared war on science and truth to advance its anti-environment agenda … the Bush administration continues to censor scientists who have documented the current impacts of global warming.”

Science tampering probably won’t end up being a big campaign issue this fall (if Tip O’Neill’s local maxim holds) but we expect this to add fuel to the fire.

In other news, if you’re keeping score you know we’ve been pretty quiet lately. Don’t fret — more new posts soon — over at ScienceBlogs. Stay tuned.

Bay Area cartoonist and animator Mark Fiore has given us another great cartoon narrated by Flamey McGassy. You might know Mr. McGassey from the educational video “Your Guide to Global Warming.” His follow up is entitled:

“If only we could pinpoint something that’s been reducing CO2 at high levels over the past few decades…”

If only.

You can view the cartoon here (requires Flash player).

As a 700 Club host and founder of both the Christian Broadcasting Group and the Christian Coalition of America, Pat Robertson has made many divisive and headline grabbing statements. One he made last week may be dividing a different camp, however. (Hat tip: Real Reason)

I tell you stay in doors ladies and gentleman. Stay cool. Get fans or whatever. And the poor, they need emergency fans and ice to cool down — the number of people dead. I have not been one who believed in the global warming. But I tell you, they are making a convert out of me as these blistering summers. They have broken heat records in a number of cities already this year and broken all-time records and it is getting hotter and the ice caps are melting and there is a build up of carbon dioxide in the air. We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels. If we are contributing to the destruction of the planet we need to do manage about it.

Robertson is not especially noted for his scientific prowess, and we join others cautioning against in uncritically conflating heat waves and climate change. But Robertson’s tone and candor is a quick and welcome change for his popular 700 Club. Just last month, Media Matters reported on the show’s uncritical airing of the views of climate skeptics.

On the July 10 edition of … the 700 Club, Media Research Center president L. Brent Bozell III misleadingly suggested that there is no scientific consensus on the existence of global warming. Asserting that the media “can’t decide” on the science because “[o]ne moment they’re declaring … there’s global warming. The next moment … there’s global cooling,” Bozell revived a favorite argument of some global warming skeptics that, in the 1970s, scientists were warning that the earth was cooling at an alarming rate. In fact, the magnitude of the consensus among scientists that global warming exists and that human activity is a contributing factor dwarfs the pool of scientists 30 years earlier who warned that the earth was cooling.

Robertson’s statements have also put him at odds with fellow evangelical leader Jerry Falwell, who has gone out of his way to instill doubt in the public’s understanding of climate science.

Writing for the National Journal, political writer Paul Starobin has produced an excellent, balanced article on scientific integrity called “Who Turned Out the Enlightenment?” Before you leave the office Friday (and before they make you pay to get it from the archives) print it out. Starobin traces the parallel lines of an ascending United States and an ascending scientific understanding, citing Franklin, Jefferson, Newton, and others. He gets to his thesis halfway through the essay:

“Shout popular democracy … get to decide what is and what is not credible science?”

He doesn’t answer the question, but he suggests what the answer might bring. Starobin goes to great lengths to show historical examples of both the left and the right trumping science with values. In doing so, he reveals the political thread connecting evolution, sociobiology, big tobacco, gender politics, tobacco, and climate change. The pattern produces a warning:

“In the long run, as the smoking-causes-cancer ‘debate’ proved, science cannot be cheated. And its punishment is merciless.”

While his argument that scientists skew Democrat because of a generally shared belief in government solving problems would seem to hold water, his portrait of the new “Lab-Coat Liberal” rests on too little evidence and not enough explanation. And while he is to be commended for pointing out attacks on science from both political extremes, he fails to give weight to their efforts. He may be able to balance attacks on sociobiology with attacks on evolution philosophically, but in political history they hold vastly different weights. However, his interest lies with science and political science, not with partisanship.

A fascinating, if somewhat frightening, societal experiment is under way. The question is whether democracy naturally advances science, or whether modern progress in science actually has less to do with heralded forms of government than with the fruit born of a special moment in historical time, the modern European Enlightenment, from which America, courtesy of the Founders, greatly benefited.

We think it’s a bit more frightening than fascinating, given that we’re not in the control group. But bravo to Starobin for this thought-provoking article.

Guest Blogger Amy Baker:

The Liberal Party has alleged recent climate science censorship by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party. “This is a government in denial about climate change,” says Mr. Godfrey. “They don’t like the science, and now they want to censor it. This is Orwellian.” Source.

The party cites the elimination of climate change references on government web sites, punctuated by the complete shut down of the government’s website on global warming on June 30th. The website had provided tools for educating students about climate change, but now only displays this limp, bilingual message:

“Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government is tied closely to leading climate change skeptics in the United States and the petroleum industry,” said according to MP Mark Holland. “This government has a track record of listening to people with dubious views on the environment and climate change.”

Prime Minister Harper has been making friends with notorious Republican advisor Frank Luntz (for some background on Luntz, and “Luntz-speak” read his infamous memo). Numerous high profile Republicans use Luntz’s tactics extensively.

Canada.com recently reported that the Prime Minister has been under attack lately for his relationship with Luntz.

“The government’s strategy of pretending to be concerned about the environment while both dismantling programs to address climate change and scrubbing government websites clean of any information proving that global warming exists has Frank Luntz written all over it,” said Mr. Holland.

This is proof positive that you need to pay attention to where your children (and national leaders) are playing, and who they’re playing with. The United States has set a bad example for scientific integrity, and Prime Minister Harper has picked up some terrible behaviours.

E&E TV has had a couple interesting interviews of late discussing the tricky balance between balanced journalism and scientific integrity. Today they interviewed Andrew Revkin, New York Times environment writer, children’s book author, and recent target of Senator Inhofe swift-boating. They touched on the subject of scientific integrity a few times. Toward the end of the interview, they directly address Inhofe’s attack.

Darren Samuelsohn: Your book has caught the attention of Senator Jim Inhofe’s staff, the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. It was listed among several journalism outlets, I guess you could call them, Tom Brokaw’s Discovery Channel documentary and the Associated Press’s coverage of Al Gore’s movie. Saying that there’s questions about objectivity in the press and that there’s a love fest in the media about global warming. How do you respond to Senator Inhofe questioning your objectivity?

Andrew Revkin: Well, the book is very much science driven. It lets the scientists speak and show what it’s all about. It’s, by far, the least inflammatory book out there on this issue and there’s no spin, it’s a no-spin zone. I don’t believe in spin. In fact, I’ve worked hard to kind of cut that away, parse that away and see what we really know and don’t know and need to know. And the book really lays that out. It’s a portrait of the once and future Arctic.

Darren Samuelsohn: Senator Inhofe is one of the most outspoken critics of the science, a skeptic or denier, what have you. How do you deal with skeptics when you’re doing your reporting? Do they get any say whatsoever in your stories?

Andrew Revkin: Yeah, well it depends on the story. If I’m writing about science I talk to scientists who are publishing peer-reviewed work in the field I’m writing about. If it’s about what’s happening with Greenland’s ice, I talk to people who understand the dynamics of glaciers and ice sheets in that part of the world. And that if I’m talking about policy questions in a story, what do we do about it? How dangerous is climate change? How much is too much? Then I reach farther out, and I would be more apt to quote someone from, let’s say, World Wildlife Fund and someone from the Cato Institute or one of the groups that shapes the industry position. Because they are, that’s where that discourse broadens. The science stories, if I’m writing about an assessment of a new research project, then I talk to scientists alone.

In word and deed, Revkin is both knowledgeable and balanced. He does not deserve to have his credibility attacked for a book, a children’s book no less, that his attackers haven’t even read. You can watch the full interview here (subscription required).

A couple days ago they interviewed Jim Detjen, professor and director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University. Detjen discussed the state of environmental journalism, and near the end of the interview discusses the tricky balance between balanced coverage and scientific consensus.

You can view the program here (subscription required). Below is an excerpt from the transcript:

Darren Samuelsohn: How do you teach students in terms of initially, like global warming, where there are many points of view? What do you teach them in terms of the skeptic’s point of view? Do they belong in their coverage?

Jim Detjen: I think I try to teach the students that it’s important to figure out where the consensus of knowledge is on an issue. And so, like in the area of climate change and global warming, the overwhelming, the majority of science, scientists, are in very similar camps. I mean I think it’s important to tell your readers and viewers that that’s the case. I think you can tell if there’s a knowledgeable minority. You can express that point of view. I think sometimes there are people that are throwing up smoke screens and I think journalists need to be authoritative. They need to be knowledgeable enough and authoritative enough so that they can say, “This is what science is telling us.”

Darren Samuelsohn: Vice President Gore, in his movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” he actually criticizes the press for quoting skeptics too much in terms of how much majority or consensus opinion there is compared with the coverage. Is this really a no-win situation for reporters, where they’re going to be criticized from the left and from the right?

Jim Detjen: I mean it’s very difficult. I guess I like to say that if you’re a journalist, criticism comes with the territory. And if you’re going to be a journalist, you know, you’re going to be criticized and there will be some very strong attacks you will face. I think, as a journalist, the best thing to do is try to become as knowledgeable as you can, try to look at the best science as you can, try to report it as fairly as you can and do the best you can. And try not to be intimidated, because I think there are powerful special interests that are, in fact, trying to intimidate journalists from covering one story or the other or shaping the way you cover a story. And I mean this goes back for, in all beats. I mean I worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer for many years and we had our Middle East correspondents. You name it, on any given day there were people from the Palestinians protesting or the Israelis protesting in front of the building. And we used to think, well gee, he’s probably doing a good job because he’s getting a lot of people angry and upset.

Darren Samuelsohn: As long as you can get both sides angry.

Jim Detjen: Well, I think you try to be fair, OK? And you realize that there’s going to be special interests that are mobilized, who will try to shape your coverage. My hope is that you have strong enough editors and strong enough publishers who will let the journalists do their jobs and do it well if they have good reporters. And not be intimidated by people who are trying to shape the coverage.

It’s fairly obvious that as climate skeptics lose both the science and the public opinion, they are pushing to discredit those who challenge their world views. While some do it respectfully, others are unscrupulous in their personal and professional attacks.

If that was your answer in Jeopardy!, you’d probably be hard pressed to guess the question. However, this week’s This Modern World attempts to connect the dots.

You can read Tom Tomorrow’s chronicle of Gloomy Gus and Perky Pete at Working for Change.