|
By Dale Keiger http://www.jhu.edu/~jhumag/1104web/polysci.htmlThe Bush administration has pushed hard for "scientifically based" programs, curriculums, methodology, etc. in my profession; and we've known all along that it was crap. Here's the reason; this corruption doesn't just happen in the field of public education: <snip> In October 2003, conservative members of the U.S. House of Representatives prompted a hearing on 10 research grants funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The grants included studies of Asian sex workers in San Francisco and women's responses to pornography, and some in Congress wanted to know why taxpayers' money was paying for that sort of thing. After Rep. Michael Ferguson (R-N.J.) asked NIH for information on the supposed public benefits of the 10 studies, an NIH staff member contacted the House Energy and Commerce Committee, co-sponsor of the hearing, and requested a list of the grants in question.
That staff member got back more than expected: not summaries of 10 projects, but page after page of NIH grants, dozens of them, all seemingly listed because the research involved prostitution, substance abuse, homosexuality, or sexually transmitted diseases. By mistake, someone on Energy and Commerce had revealed a list that was making the rounds of Republican members of Congress, a list of 181 NIH-funded researchers whose studies had been targeted by a conservative religious lobbying group, the Traditional Values Coalition.
The work of five Hopkins researchers made the roster. What landed the targeted quintet — Chris Beyrer, David Celentano, Jonathan Ellen, Charlotte Gaydos, and Carl Latkin, all faculty at Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health — in the sights of the Traditional Values Coalition was research on sexually transmitted diseases, especially HIV/AIDS. Beyrer, for example, made it on the basis of a study on HIV transmission among prostitutes in Moscow, and another on injection drug users in China and their response to HIV. He says, "In the middle of an epidemic in which sexual behavior and drugs have been linked for 20 years, you'd think it would be uncontroversial to try to understand more about that interaction."
Evidently not. For more than two years, NIH has been under serious political pressure to justify, and in some cases discontinue, its support of research in areas problematic to social and religious conservatives, pressure that is unprecedented, according to many scientists and science advocates. Says Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), "In all my years in Congress, I've never seen anything like this. The effort to undermine science crosses all science-based agencies and a wide range of issues." (See "An Unprecedented Assault?") Waxman's office recently issued a report charging that the current "administration's political interference with science has led to misleading statements by the President, inaccurate responses to Congress, altered Web sites, suppressed agency reports, erroneous international communications, and the gagging of scientists."There's more; much more. |
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
