My last post was about whistleblower Susan Wood, and her apparent reluctance to explain why access to Plan B emergency contraception is being held up within the administrative bowels of the Food and Drug Administration. Wood seemed hesitant to offer a political explanation for what is, unmistakably, a political phenomenon. Now I'd like to move on to a related case: David Baltimore, distinguished scientist, Nobel laureate, and president of CalTech. If Susan Wood seemed to shy away from explaining the root causes of the war on science, Baltimore has offered a causal explanation that, to put it frankly, leaves me a bit puzzled. Baltimore spoke recently at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in St. Louis, where he not only denounced the administration for abusing science, but propounded a theory for why this might be happening. As Naturereported:
Speaking last Saturday to a packed conference room, Baltimore - the president-elect of the AAAS - urged scientists to challenge perceived censorship of their research. Tensions between the Bush administration and researchers have been high for years, but Baltimore said he had recently grown convinced that the problem cannot be shrugged off as the usual battles between science and politics. "It is no accident that we are seeing such extensive suppression of science," he said. "It is part of a theory of government, and I believe it is a theory that we must vociferously oppose." In particular, Baltimore condemned the "unitary executive" theory of government - the notion that a president can bypass Congressional and judicial oversight and run the country single-handedly (see page 891). Baltimore argued that this approach threatens to undermine the independence of science conducted under the auspices of the federal government.
Unitary executive? I suppose that Bush's view of the exercise of presidential power does lead to a very controlling approach to governing the federal agencies, and I can see how this would in turn lend itself to tensions between scientists within these agencies and their political minders. I can also see how a lack of congressional oversight contributes to a worsening of the problem. But let's bear in mind that this lack of oversight isn't coming from the executive branch, it's the fault of Congress, which is going along all too unquestioningly. In any case, I'm afraid I don't think Baltimore has offered the most parsimonious explanation for the so-called "war on science" that we're seeing right now. I for one am much more satisfied by an explanation that goes straight at the political roots of the phenomenon. The so-called "war on science" has many causes. I've singled out the growth of conservative think tanks as one of them. Another, I suspect, is the increasing number of political appointees within the federal government. These factors explain as much as, if not more than, Baltimore's "unitary executive" explanation. However, when it comes to getting to the source of what's driving the Bush administration, I think one factor tends to swamp all the others: politics. There's simply no doubt that the groups being appeased by the administration's attacks on science--religious conservatives and industry--are key components of the Republican base, making the "war on science" the by-product of a kind of spoils system. We don't need to appeal to a "unitary executive" theory of governance in order to grasp this blatant political fact. Let's keep it simple, huh?
