Apparently, Republican leaders have been singling out climate-change experts for special scrutiny and intimidation if they express views on global warming which are contrary to the administration's official line. This isn't the least bit surprising because Bush has demonstrated a repeated preference for ideology over science.

Paul Brown writes:

Mr Barton, a Texan closely associated with the fossil-fuel lobby, has spent his 11 years as chairman [of the House of Representatives committee on energy and commerce] opposing every piece of legislation designed to combat climate change. He is using the wide powers of his committee to force the scientists to produce great quantities of material after alleging flaws and lack of transparency in their research. He is working with Ed Whitfield, the chairman of the sub-committee on oversight and investigations.

Eighteen of the country’s most influential scientists from Princeton and Harvard have written to Mr Barton and Mr Whitfield... “Requests to provide all working materials related to hundreds of publications stretching back decades can be seen as intimidation - intentional or not - and thereby risks compromising the independence of scientific opinion that is vital to the pre-eminence of American science as well as to the flow of objective science to the government.”

But the strongest language came from another Republican, Sherwood Boehlert, the chairman of the house science committee. He wrote to “express my strenuous objections to what I see as the misguided and illegitimate investigation”. He said it was pernicious to substitute political review for scientific peer review and the precedent was “truly chilling”. He said the inquiry “seeks to erase the line between science and politics” and should be reconsidered. [Guardian]

If there are legitimate concerns about the scientific value of certain studies, then the proper context for a review is the scientific process — that’s how science works. Boehlert appears to understand the scientific process and, therefore, realizes the danger of imposing a political review on scientific results. Playing politics with science, though, is precisely what Republican leaders have consistently done because it’s so rare that genuine science supports the Republicans’ agenda.

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