Andrew Hamm: the Bipolar Express

Ruminations on theatre, music, and just about anything else that crosses my bipolar brain.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

NASA boss: Rename us 'Offices of Propaganda'

I have removed my original commentary on this article at WND about Dr. James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who said:

"Interference with communication of science to the public has been greater during the current administration than at any time in my career," ... during testimony before the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee. "In my more than three decades in government, I have never seen anything approaching the degree to which information flow from scientists to the public has been screened and controlled as it has now."

Hansen said in his view, the problem stems from the fact that public affairs offices at the headquarters level of America's science agencies are headed by political appointees. He said no matter which political party was in control, the inevitable result is a pressure for science to show the answers that the party in power prefers to see.

"The best solution to this problem would be to have the public affairs offices professionally staffed, with no political appointees," he said. "If this is not possible, they should be renamed as Offices of Propaganda."

As it turns out, Hansesn has done approximately 1,400 interviews on the subject of global warming which the administration has in no way interfered with. He has indeed been instructed to skip a handful of interviews in specific instances, but come on, 1,400 interviews? No one's censoring you, man.

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