Huffpo: New Obama Scientific Integrity Memo Is Late And Vague

[True_Blue]

WASHINGTON -- Nearly a year and a half after President Obama promised to issue guidelines to assure scientific integrity in the federal government, the White House on Friday sent out a skimpy four-page memo that lacks details, deadlines and enforcement mechanisms.

Scientists -- and science itself -- took a beating from dogmatic political appointees during the Bush era. So advocates of scientific integrity were heartened when Obama, who campaigned on the issue, sent out a memo just six weeks into his presidency, full of high-minded principles such as calling for "transparency in the preparation, identification, and use of scientific and technological information in policymaking."

He gave his science advisor, John Holdren, the director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, 120 days to develop specific guidelines.

And then Holdren apparently hit some sort of a wall within Obama's own administration.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/17/new-obama-scientific-inte_n_798483.html

[Poll_Blind]

1. Obama, vague on integrity? Quelle surprise!

PB

[Democracyinkind]

2. Change?

In perhaps the most glaring, recorded example of political interference, Obama's oil spill commission revealed in October that the White House itself had squelched attempts by NOAA scientists to make public the agency's worst-case estimate of how much oil could spew from the blown-out BP well in the Gulf of Mexico. Those "worst-case" estimates -- unlike the ones the White House were issuing -- turned out to be about right.

I feel helpless. I should have learned my lesson in the 90's. We all suffer from "This time is different syndrome", to quote a rather popular book title.

[Pale Blue Dot]

3. While I don't disagree, I have to note the irony of the Huffington Post

talking about "scientific integrity". They publish unscientific articles daily - promoting homeopathy, acupuncture, anti-vaccination, etc - and make little effort to distinguish between science and psuedoscience.