[Mb-civic] The Silencing Of Science - Anne Applebaum - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

The Silencing Of Science

By Anne Applebaum
Wednesday, February 15, 2006; A21

One of the benefits of writing newspaper articles is that sometimes, 
instead of sending anonymous insults, readers call you up and tell you 
interesting things. Two weeks ago, after news broke that a NASA press 
officer had resigned amid revelations that he'd tried to muffle the 
agency's top climate scientist, I got several such calls. All were from 
people with similar tales of government-funded scientists intimidated by 
heavy-handed public relations departments. Curiosity piqued, I followed 
one up, at least as far as the nervous scientists and the equally 
nervous government press officers would let me. Here's what I learned.

The story begins with the publication of an article -- "Potential 
Environmental Impact of a Hydrogen Economy on the Stratosphere" -- in 
the June 2003 issue of the journal Science, which is not exactly beach 
reading. Yet although crammed with graphs, equations and references to 
chlorofluorocarbons, the basic premise isn't hard to explain: The five 
authors, all affiliated at the time with the prestigious California 
Institute of Technology, wanted to explore the potential long-term 
impact of hydrogen fuel cells on the Earth's atmosphere.

For those who've forgotten, hydrogen fuel cells were, three State of the 
Unions ago, the thing that was going to save Americans from their oil 
addiction and stop the auto emissions that help cause global warming. 
Nowadays switch grass and biomass are the hot alternative fuels, but 
back in 2003, the president won applause for proposing "$1.2 billion in 
research funding so that America can lead the world in developing clean, 
hydrogen-powered automobiles." On Capitol Hill, there were 
demonstrations of one such "Freedom Car," and the president called on 
scientists to be "bold and innovative" in their hydrogen research.

Unfortunately for the authors of "Potential Environmental Impact of a 
Hydrogen Economy on the Stratosphere," their research, while bold and 
innovative, didn't exactly mesh with the hype. According to their model, 
tiny leaks from hydrogen cells, if such cells are ever mass-produced, 
could cause serious environmental damage. But they made no suggestion of 
inevitability: One of the study's authors, John Eiler of Caltech, 
pointed out that foreknowledge of potential environmental problems could 
"help guide investments in technologies to favor designs that minimize 
leakage." Presumably thinking along the same lines, NASA, which had 
helped pay for the research, prepared a news release and news conference 
on the paper.

Abruptly, both were canceled. Although "we often hear that releases are 
held up for political reasons," one NASA employee told me, "that one was 
a surprise: It went all the way to the top and then got killed." In 
fact, the release and the conference were "killed" by the White House 
Office of Science and Technology Policy. An official there told me this 
was because the office wanted to give Energy Department scientists a 
chance to respond to the study before it was publicized: "Our role is to 
facilitate interagency cooperation." Coincidentally or not, it also 
happens that Spencer Abraham, then the energy secretary, was that same 
week preparing to depart for Brussels, where he was to tell Europeans 
that U.S. hydrogen research proved the Bush administration cared about 
the environment.

All of that part of the story is confirmed. The rest -- the story of how 
none of the scientists ever got government grants for further research 
on this subject -- is complicated by rumor and hearsay. Eiler, seeing 
that the Energy Department was looking for proposals to study the 
environmental impact of hydrogen, applied for a grant to do so. He was 
turned down on the grounds that he thought were "peculiar" -- that the 
department was not, in fact, interested in proposals on the subject. 
Today he gets his only money for related research from the private 
sector. The National Science Foundation officially rejected another 
researcher's grant application -- and then unofficially told him that 
some in the foundation thought the timing of the Science magazine paper 
had been deliberately designed to embarrass the energy secretary. One of 
the authors has now changed his research focus, he e-mailed me, to 
something that "has less politics." Others refused to talk about the 
paper at all.

None of this means that there really was any government interference in 
the funding. Another eminent scientist who does related research, Mark 
Jacobson of Stanford University, told me that while he considered the 
Science paper "groundbreaking" and "pioneering," because it was "the 
first to actually go after this issue," he disagreed with the 
conclusions and methodology, and said that perhaps grant reviewers did 
too. The science and technology policy office says it is "preposterous" 
to think that the White House was involved in funding issues. Abraham 
remembers the trip to Europe but (very plausibly) doesn't recall 
anything about this contrarian paper at all.

I'm thus left with nothing to report -- except that a fuss over a press 
release and a rumor about who said what to whom at the National Science 
Foundation left some scientists feeling, rightly or wrongly, that they'd 
better stay away from "political" subjects if they want government 
grants. And, three years down the road, they have.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/14/AR2006021401771.html
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