Science Friction
The growing--and dangerous--divide between scientists and the GOP.
by Nicholas Thompson
July/August 2003

Not long ago, President Bush asked a federal agency for evidence to support a course of action that many believe he had already chosen to take on a matter of grave national importance that had divided the country. When the government experts didn't provide the information the president was looking for, the White House sent them back to hunt for more. The agency returned with additional raw and highly qualified information, which the president ran with, announcing his historic decision on national television. Yet the evidence soon turned out to be illusory, and the entire policy was called into question.

Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, you say? Actually, the above scenario describes Bush's decision-making process on the issue of stem cell research. In August 2001, Bush was trying to resolve an issue he called "one of the most profound of our time." Biologists had discovered the potential of human embryonic stem cells--unspecialized cells that researchers can, in theory, induce to develop into virtually any type of human tissue. Medical researchers marveled at the possibility of producing treatments for medical conditions such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and spinal cord injuries; religious conservatives quivered at the fact that these cells are derived from human embryos, either created in a laboratory or discarded from fertility clinics. Weighing those concerns, Bush announced that he would allow federal funding for research on 60-plus stem cell lines already taken from embryos, but that he would prohibit federal funding for research on new lines.

Within days, basic inquiries from reporters revealed that there were far fewer than 60 viable lines. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has so far confirmed only 11 available lines. What's more, most of the existing stem cell lines had been nurtured in a growth fluid containing mouse tumor cells, making the stem cells prone to carrying infections that could highly complicate human trials. Research was already underway in the summer of 2001 to find an alternative to the mouse feeder cells--research that has since proven successful. But because these newer clean lines were developed after Bush's decision, researchers using them are ineligible for federal funding.

At the time of Bush's announcement, most scientists working in the field knew that although 60 lines might exist in some form somewhere, the number of robust and usable lines was much lower. Indeed, the NIH had published a report in July 2001 that explained the potential problems caused by the mouse feeder cells and estimated the total number of available lines at 30. Because that initial figure wasn't enough for the administration, according to Time magazine, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson asked the NIH to see if more lines "might conceivably exist." When NIH representatives met with Bush a week before his speech with an estimate of 60 lines scattered around the world in unknown condition, the White House thought it had what it wanted. In his announcement, Bush proclaimed, without qualification, that there were "more than 60 genetically diverse stem cell lines."

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The administration's stem-cell stand is just one of many examples, from climate change to abstinence-only sex-education programs, in which the White House has made policies that defy widely accepted scientific opinion. Why this administration feels unbound by the consensus of academic scientists can be gleaned, in part, from a telling anecdote in Nicholas Lemann's recent New Yorker profile of Karl Rove. When asked by Lemann to define a Democrat, Bush's chief political strategist replied, "Somebody with a doctorate." Lemann noted, "This he said with perhaps the suggestion of a smirk." Fundamentally, much of today's GOP, like Rove, seems to smirkingly equate academics, including scientists, with liberals.

In this regard, the White House is not necessarily wrong. Most scientists today do lean Democratic, just as most of the uniformed military votes Republican--much to the annoyance of Democrats. And like the latter cultural divide, the former can cause the country real problems. .... The Bush administration's dismissiveness toward scientists could also have serious consequences, from delaying vital new medical therapies to eroding America's general lead in science. .... It's not clear, however, that the Bush administration cares to reach out to scientists--or even knows it has a problem.

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Ph.D. Phobia

George W. Bush embodies the modern GOP's attitude toward science. He hails from a segment of the energy industry that, when it comes to global warming, considers science an obstacle to growth. He is strongly partisan, deeply religious, and also tied to evangelical supporters. And, like Reagan, he has refused to endorse the scientific principle of evolution. During the 2000 campaign, a New York Times reporter asked whether he believed in evolution. Bush equivocated, leading the Times to write that he "believes the jury is still out."

Bush has also learned from his father's experience that siding with scientists gains him little politically, and often alienates conservatives. Bush and Rove have tried to woo portions of other groups that traditionally trend Democratic--steel tariffs for unions, faith-based grants for African-American ministers--but scientists are different. They aren't a big voting bloc. They are generally affluent, but not enough so to be major donors. They are capable of organizing under the auspices of a university to lobby for specific grants, but they aren't organized politically in a general way. ....

Consequently, the White House seems to have pushed scientific concerns down toward the bottom of its list of priorities. Bush, for instance, has half as many Ph.D.s in his cabinet as Clinton had two years into his term. Among the White House inner circle, Condoleezza Rice's doctorate distinguishes her as much as her race and more than her sex. .... Once Bush had appointed a head of [the Office of Science and Technology Policy], he demoted the rank of the position, moved the office out of the White House, and cut the number of associate directors from four to two. .... [G]eography and staff equal clout in Washington, and unarguably signal how much the people in power care about what you do.

Cynical Trials

When required to seek input from scientists, the administration tends to actively recruit those few who will bolster the positions it already knows it wants to support, even if that means defying scientific consensus. As with Bush's inquiry into stem-cell research, when preparing important policy decisions, the White House wants scientists to give them validation, not grief. The administration has stacked hitherto apolitical scientific advisory committees, and even an ergonomics study section, which is just a research group and has no policy making role.

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Bush has also taken to unprecedented levels the political vetting of nominees for advisory committees. When William Miller, a professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico, was considered as a candidate for a panel on the National Institute of Drug Abuse, he was asked his views on abortion, the death penalty, and whether he had voted for Bush. He said no to the last question and never received a call back. "Not only does the Bush administration scorn science; it is subjecting appointments to scientific advisory committees and even study sections to political tests," says Donald Kennedy, editor in chief of Science, the community's flagship publication.

Control Group Politics

Any administration will be tempted to trumpet the conclusions of science when they justify actions that are advantageous politically, and to ignore them when they don't. Democrats, for instance, are more than happy to tout the scientific consensus that human activity contributes to climate change, but play down evidence that drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (which they oppose) probably will have little impact on the caribou there. But Democrats will only go so far down the path of ignoring scientific evidence because they don't want to alienate their scientific supporters. Increasingly, the Republicans feel little such restraint. Hence the Bush administration's propensity to tout scientific evidence only when it suits them politically. ....

Experts in Exile

This White House's disinclination to engage the scientific community in important policy decisions may have serious consequences for the country. One crucial issue that Congress and the Bush administration will likely have to confront before Bush leaves office is human cloning. Researchers distinguish between "reproductive cloning," which most scientists abhor, and "therapeutic cloning," which may someday allow researchers to use stem cells from a patient's cloned embryo to grow replacement bone marrow, liver cells, or other organs, and which most scientists favor. When the President's Council on Bioethics voted on recommendations for the president, every single practicing scientist voted for moving therapeutic cloning forward. Bush, however, decided differently, supporting instead a bill sponsored by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) to ban all forms of embryonic cloning.

.... Jack Gibbons, a former head of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, calls Bush's proposed ban "an attempt to throttle science, not to govern technology." Harold Varmus, the former NIH director, believes that "this is the first time that the [federal] government has ever tried to criminalize science."

Another potentially costly decision is the Bush administration's post-September 11 restrictions on the ability of foreign scientists to immigrate to the United States--restrictions which many scientists argue go far beyond reasonable precautions to keep out terrorists. In December 2002, the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine issued a statement complaining that "recent efforts by our government to constrain the flow of international visitors in the name of national security are having serious unintended consequences for American science, engineering and medicine." ....

Unscientific Method

Like Gingrich, Bush favors investments in scientific research for the military, health care, and other areas that garner strong public and industry support. Indeed, the White House quickly points to such funding increases whenever its attitude toward science is questioned. But for an administration that has boosted spending in a great number of areas, more money for science is less telling than how the Bush administration acts when specific items on its agenda collide with scientific evidence or research needs. In almost all of those cases, the scientists get tuned out.

Ignoring expert opinion on matters of science may never cause the administration the kind of political grief it is now suffering over its WMD Iraq policy. But neither is it some benign bit of anti-elitist bias. American government has a history of investing in the capabilities and trusting the judgments of its scientific community--a legacy that has brought us sustained economic progress and unquestioned scientific leadership within the global intellectual community. For the short-term political profits that come with looking like an elite-dismissing friend of the everyman, the Bush administration has put that proud, dynamic history at real risk.

Nicholas Thompson is a Washington Monthly contributing editor.

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