Ideology is straight-jacketing science on an unprecedented scale in this country. On issues of controversy, the traditional tension between politics and truth can become almost unbearable for government scientists.
In every morning’s news there is another story about government repudiation of its own science – especially on environmental and public health issues:
- Scientific uncertainties are suppressed from assessments of drilling in Alaska’s Outer Continental Shelf;
- An analysis of the adverse effects of fracking fluids is excised from an EPA report; and
- Behind-the-scenes political deals require that scientific findings on what is needed for wolf recovery be shelved.
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.
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 toxicologists, engineers, statisticians and even economists. Political manipulation respects no scientific discipline.
While PEER works in coalitions with several other organizations, no other organization is there as a resource to legally 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.
In order to remedy, rather than merely decry, manipulation of science, it is necessary to get down in the trenches – the laboratories, research stations and cubicles – of federal agencies. Only by working directly with the scientists doing the work will wrongs be redressed, misfeasors identified by name and the integrity of the science enterprise vindicated.
