A new battle over politics and science could be brewing. And scientists are ready for it

[Bill USA]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/01/31/a-new-battle-over-politics-and-science-could-be-coming-and-scientists-are-ready-for-it/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_ee-battle-245pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.0502a71a3b65

Over a decade ago, George W. Bush’s presidency attracted plenty of attention for charges that it had all-too-often mistreated scientific information. By the middle Bush years, reports were rampant that the administration had presented inaccurate or incomplete information on issues such as climate change and stem cell research, edited scientific reports to skew their contents, or had prevented scientists on the government payroll from speaking with the media about their findings and knowledge.

These problems didn’t appear immediately — they snowballed over the course of the Bush administration. By contrast, in the Trump administration, concerns about the treatment of science have emerged in just days, especially at the Environmental Protection Agency.

Trump administration officials are exerting more control over the agency’s outward communications, according to multiple reports, including those by the Washington Post. Scientists have been alarmed by these moves, as well as the overall tenor of the administration on scientific issues like climate change (Trump has not yet appointed a White House science adviser) and some are even now planning a march on Washington, D.C.

Yet we shouldn’t get too far ahead of ourselves here. There has been no specific claim of an Environmental Protection Agency scientist being prevented from communicating or accurately conveying information to the public (yet). There is also reason to think that what’s happening now may only be temporary, and attributable to the transition that’s currently happening, rather than representing a permanent new setting for the science-politics relationship in government.
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The scientiss are "ready for it"?? I wonder. Do they realize how profoundly stupid Trumpty Dumpty and his assembled idiots are??