With Democrats in triumphant control of Congress, there is a widespread hope that they will rein in George W. Bush's administration on all fronts. By passing legislation that broadens federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, as well as by casting light on some of the more dubious goings-on of the past six years, the Democrats could go a long way toward restoring scientific integrity to the U.S. government.
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The Bush administration has been the chief prosecutor of an ongoing war on science, but until now a look-the-other-way Republican Congress has served as accomplice. Here, I propose five actions that Democrats should take to help set matters straight.
1. Shine A Little Light
Using their newly obtained powers of subpoena, Democratic committee chairs will be able to force information out of the Bush administration; the word "oversight," seemingly forgotten on Capitol Hill, will once again have some meaning. The implications for the "war on science" are major. For example, Democrats can explore why political appointees at the Department of Commerce were apparently handpicking which scientists could talk to the media about the relationship between hurricanes and global warming in 2005.
The use of committee hearings to explore abuses of science could keep the new Congress quite busy, as this appears to be a government-wide problem. Over the past six years, there have been significant science-related scandals involving NASA, the Department of the Interior (particularly the Fish and Wildlife Service), the Department of Commerce (especially the National Marine Fisheries Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), the Department of Health and Human Services (especially the Food and Drug Administration), the Environmental Protection Agency, and many other agencies. It may require the attention of more than one committee to look into all of this: Maybe the House Committees on Science and Government Reform could arrange a one-two investigative punch.
In any event, up until now we have largely relied upon journalists and advocacy groups to expose anti-science malfeasance in our government. The Freedom of Information Act has been an invaluable tool in this regard. Still, the amount of information these muckrakers can gather has been limited. Democrat-run congressional committees, on the other hand, will have considerably more power to conduct far-ranging and thorough investigations. And they shouldn't be afraid to use it.
2. Get Some Advice
A smart symbolic maneuver on the part of Democrats would be to restore Congress's Office of Technology Assessment, a world-renowned scientific advisory body that the Republican Congress dismantled in 1995. OTA got the science right, but its studies sometimes offended political sensibilities. The office should return in precisely the same bipartisan format in which it originally existed: Democrats and Republicans would jointly decide which studies to commission.
To be sure, OTA alone cannot make the worst science abusers in Congress clean up their act. The unrepentant will simply ignore (or attack) its work. Nevertheless, restoring OTA would, in turn, be a step toward restoring a sense of seriousness and dignity to congressional conversations about science. It would provide a baseline for determining what types of information Congress should and shouldn't accept. There's really no downside here: In 1995 the office's annual budget was only about $22 million.
3. Make Sure You're Hearing Right
When they ran Congress, Republicans all too often made a mockery of the hearings process, inviting unqualified (or possibly conflicted) witnesses to advise them on science. The low point, perhaps, came when Sen. James Inhofe, then head of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, brought in novelist Michael Crichton to testify about climate science shortly after hurricanes Katrina and Rita had devastated the Gulf Coast.