Academic

CHRIS MOONEY WAS UNAVAILABLE FOR COMMENT: White House vs. Science: ongressional Republicans say ?

By Glenn Reynolds

CHRIS MOONEY WAS UNAVAILABLE FOR COMMENT: White House vs. Science:

ongressional Republicans say a whole lot of questions “need to be an swered” about an inspector general’s report detailing how the White House altered a scientific paper that it used to justify a controversial drilling moratorium after the BP oil spill last spring.

They’re right.

Almost from the moment the report was first made public, most of the scientists involved said it had been deceitfully edited to make it look like they’d endorsed the ban, which Gulf-state elected officials immediately denounced as a job-killer.

Now the Interior Department’s inspector general, Mary Kendall, has determined that those allegations are correct — and that the White House falsely applied a scientific veneer to justify what was clearly a political decision. . . . Ironically, of course, it was candidate Barack Obama who accused the Bush administration of twisting scientific evidence; he promised, if elected, to be guided by “science, not ideology.”

And it turns out that this is just one of several instances in which the Obama White House has manipulated the word of scientific experts.

My Chris Mooney references, for those not getting them, are all about this. He’s actually a good guy, but the argument was a bit tendentious . . . .

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on November 13, 2010 (boomark / email).