RADIO TIDBITS

Last night, I caught a little bit of Art Bell's show and he mentioned some disquieting new rules at the U.S. Geological Survey that seem to be a soft form of censorship.

New controls on publishing research worry
US government geological unit's scientists
The Associated Press
Published: December 13, 2006

The new requirements state that the USGS's communications office must be "alerted about information products containing high-visibility topics or topics of a policy-sensitive nature."

The agency's director, Mark Myers, and its communications office also must be told — prior to any submission for publication — "of findings or data that may be especially newsworthy, have an impact on government policy, or contradict previous public understanding to ensure that proper officials are notified and that communication strategies are developed."

From now on, USGS supervisors will demand to see the comments of outside peer reviewers' as well any exchanges between the scientists who are seeking to publish their findings and the reviewers.



This is starting to sound like prior restraint because there is no need for the bureaucrats to see the reviewer's comments.

Chris Mooney has written a book about how the GOP tries to stifle scientists and I think this is another example of them doing so. It also reminds of the fuss at NASA a bit ago:

Climate scientist says 'Kyoto' barred
Investigators eye censorship claims about White House
By Jim Erickson, Rocky Mountain News
December 11, 2006

In February, congressional leaders asked NASA to guarantee its scientific openness. They complained that an agency public affairs officer changed or filtered information about global warming and tried to limit reporters' access to James Hansen, a prominent NASA climate scientist.

The public affairs officer, George Deutsch, resigned.


We know that global warming is something else the GOP is in denial about and that they spend a lot of time trying to make the evidence for it seem flimsy.