The Micro-Pundit:  Intimidating Scientists

Good science is like good intelligence - you don’t get either if you intimidate the people doing the work.  And, unfortunately, we continue to see what appears to be a pattern of intimidating scientists.

James E. Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, claims that NASA administrators and the Bush administration are intimidating him by demanding his papers and lectures for review and claiming the right to replace him in interviews (article).  Now, NASA claims that this is not the case.  Not a surprise.

Now, I don’t know if there really is intimidation or not.  But it fits a pattern of the Bush administration using ideology and corporate special interests to drive policy instead of good science (for an example, see this blog), and while two occurrences are coincidence, three is a pattern, and the Bush administration has demonstrated a lot more than three occurrences.

Representative Sherwood Boehlert, Republican of New York wrote to NASA:  “Good science cannot long persist in an atmosphere of intimidation.” It seems more and more likely that this is actually the point.