Protecting Science from Abuse Requires a Broader Form of Outreach

1177 The politicization of science may be as old as science itself. Famously, Galileo’s championing of the theory that the Earth revolves around the sun met with staunch political opposition as a perceived challenge to the authority of the Catholic church. In the Soviet Union, Lysenko rejected the widely held chromosomal theory of inheritance in favor of a theory of environmental influences that aligned more closely with the philosophical underpinnings of communism. More recently, the assertion of the South African president Thabo Mbeki that AIDS is not caused by HIV flew in the face of decades of research and threatened to undermine proper treatment of the disease. In the view of many, science under the current United States administration is also under threat. Underlying many government policies that depend upon or affect science is a pattern by which evidence—which decision makers could use to craft well informed policies—is changed into a subjective tool for political or ideological goals [1–8]. The resulting perceptions of government hostility toward science threaten to drive frustrated federal scientists from agencies and to undermine the already flagging public respect for science. Ultimately, blame for the tension between science and politics does not lie with politicians alone. The minor role that scientists have played in the public arena allows such tensions to persist, and to grow elsewhere. To confront this issue, we joined with other graduate students and postdocs at Stanford University to initiate scienceinpolicy.org—a grassroots organization dedicated to promoting the use of sound science in US policymaking. Assessing the major environmental issues in the public eye, we found and categorized a widespread pattern of manipulation and suppression of environmental science affecting issues as diverse as climate change, forestry policy, endangered species protection, clean water, and air pollution on our website (www. scienceinpolicy.org). For example, when the US Environmental Protection Agency sought to warn the public of health threats from air pollution following September 11, 2001, the White House edited press releases to significantly change the meaning from one of warning to placation. Because we researched and cited both news reports and the primary literature, and distributed our analysis for friendly peer review, our analysis attained a level of scientific credibility beyond that of regular media. We alerted our colleagues to the information we had gathered by circulating emails, thereby 1) receiving additional informal peer review to ensure that our assessment and criticisms were fair and accurate, 2) empowering ourselves for additional