Protecting Scientists and Scientific Integrity - More Info
Ideology is straight-jacketing science on an unprecedented scale in this country. Under the Bush administration, the traditional tension between politics and truth has become almost unbearable for government scientists – particularly on controversial issues.
- In every morning’s newspaper there is another story about government repudiation of its own science—
- Stem cell research is stalled due to opposition from the religious right;
- An assessment on global warming is excised from an EPA report; and
- A Bush appointee overrules a scientific panel to ban the “morning after pill” from over-the-counter sale.
For each one of these stories that you see in the news, there are scores of other instances taking place behind the scenes in government laboratories, in grant review sessions and in field stations across the country.
Nowhere is scientific suppression more widespread than in the environmental arena. On issues ranging from global warming to grazing, public agency scientists are being censored, obstructed and marginalized – and it is here you will find PEER at work.
On almost a daily basis, a government scientist reaches out to PEER for assistance. These intakes are not only biologists, botanists and archaeologists but also include toxicologists, statisticians and even economists for it seems that political manipulation respects no scientific discipline.
While PEER works in coalitions with several other organizations, no other organization is there as a resource to represent, seek redress for or personally assist embattled environmental scientists. At the heart of PEER’s operations is our direct representation of the public agency scientists. With your support, PEER provides free, accessible and completely confidential legal consultation and counsel. From that initial intake, PEER may embark on personnel litigation on behalf of a scientist under political siege or launch a campaign on the underlying issue or concern for which that scientist is risking his or her career.
In order to remedy, rather than merely decry, manipulation of science, it is necessary to get down in the trenches – the cubicles – of federal agencies. Only by working directly with public agency scientists will conditions be redressed, misfeasors identified by name and the integrity of the science be vindicated.