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title: "Political interference with science agencies by the first Trump administration"
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source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_interference_with_science_agencies_by_the_first_Trump_administration"
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During his first term as president of the United States (2017–2021), Donald Trump and his administration repeatedly politicized science by pressuring or overriding health and science agencies to change their reporting and recommendations so as to conform to his policies and public comments. This was particularly true with regard to the COVID-19 pandemic, but also included suppressing research on climate change and weakening or eliminating environmental regulations.
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Trump and his appointees pressured federal health and science agencies to take particular actions that Trump favored and to support his public pronouncements. He sometimes claimed that there was a "deep state" conspiracy among federal scientists, whose members delayed approval of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments because they wanted to hurt him politically or prevent his re-election.
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== Background ==
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Trump, inaugurated as president on January 20, 2017, did not name a Science Advisor to the President until July 2018, when he appointed meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier to the position. Science advisory committees at multiple agencies including the Department of the Interior, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Food and Drug Administration were disbanded. Many of Trump's first cabinet picks were people with a history of opposition to the agency they were named to head, including Rick Perry as Secretary of Energy and Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education. In the science area the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Scott Pruitt, had repeatedly sued the EPA when he was Oklahoma attorney general, and described himself as a "leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda".
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== Survey ==
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In a survey of scientists at 16 federal agencies conducted in 2018, 50% of respondents agreed that "the level of consideration of political interests hindered the ability of their agencies to make science-based decisions"; 69% of scientists at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 76% of respondents at the National Park Service, and 81% of scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency agreed.
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== Health agencies ==
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source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_interference_with_science_agencies_by_the_first_Trump_administration"
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On June 20, 2020, Alexander sent a message to CDC Director Redfield, criticizing a CDC report about risks to pregnant women from COVID-19. Alexander said that the report, whose limitations the CDC had acknowledged, would "frighten women" and give the impression that "the President and his administration can't fix this and it is getting worse". He said that in his "opinion and sense" the CDC was "undermining the president by what they put out". On September 16, after the political influence over the CDC was reported, Caputo took a 60-day medical leave of absence and Alexander was fired. In an interview with the Toronto-based Globe and Mail after his departure from HHS, Alexander defended his actions, stating that he had wanted the CDC to make their reports "more upbeat so that people would feel more confident going out and spending money", and that he "did not think agencies should contradict any president's policy". In September, Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis launched an investigation into political interference with the CDC's reports and recommendations regarding the coronavirus. Charlotte Kent, the editor of MMWR, told the panel in December that she had been ordered to destroy an August 8 email from Alexander demanding that the CDC change a previously published report on coronavirus risks to children; she said that the email was deleted but she does not know by whom. Following her testimony, the Trump administration canceled previously scheduled interviews with four other CDC scientists and officials. In December, the former CDC chief of staff, Kyle McGowan, and his deputy, Amanda Campbell, gave a series of interviews about their experiences. They described a years-long and escalating White House campaign to control and suppress the CDC during their tenure from 2018 until August 2020. They said the agency's science had been denied, its voice suppressed, and its budget siphoned off. McGowan said, "Everyone wants to describe the day that the light switch flipped and the C.D.C. was sidelined. It didn’t happen that way. It was more of like a hand grasping something, and it slowly closes, closes, closes, closes until you realize that, middle of the summer (of 2020), it has a complete grasp on everything at the C.D.C."
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=== U.S. federal government response to the COVID-19 pandemic ===
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==== COVID-19 testing ====
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At a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma on June 20, 2020, Trump claimed he had instructed his administration to slow down COVID-19 testing in order to keep the number of confirmed cases down.
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In August 2020, Trump announced the appointment of radiologist Scott Atlas as a White House advisor on the coronavirus. According to task force official Deborah Birx, Atlas wanted to change testing guidelines to say that people without symptoms did not need to be tested. On August 24, 2020, the testing guidelines on the CDC web page were quietly changed from their earlier recommendation that testing is recommended for anyone who has come into contact with someone who has COVID-19; the new message said that such people do not need to be tested if they do not have symptoms. Multiple public health experts expressed alarm at the new guideline, because people can be contagious even if they have no symptoms, and early testing of exposed people is considered essential to track and suppress the spread of the virus. On September 17, it was reported that the new guidelines had been written by the White House coronavirus task force, and had been "dropped into" the CDC website by officials in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) without the knowledge of, or over the objections of, CDC scientists. A July document on "The importance of reopening schools" was also placed on the CDC website by HHS officials rather than CDC scientists. Two former directors of the CDC said that the notion of political appointees or non-scientists posting information to the CDC website is "absolutely chilling" and undermines the credibility of the institution. On September 18, the day after the manipulation of the CDC by political appointees was reported, the testing guideline was revised to its original recommendation, stressing that anyone who has been in contact with an infected person should be tested. In late October, two guidance documents, including "The importance of reopening schools," were quietly removed from the CDC website. The updated website now states that "the body of evidence is growing that children of all ages are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection and contrary to early reports might play a role in transmission."
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==== Treatments for COVID-19 ====
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In early March, Trump directed the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to test certain medications to discover if they had the potential to treat COVID-19 patients. Among these were chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, which have been successfully used to treat malaria for over fifty years. On March 28, the FDA issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) which allowed certain hospitalized COVID-19 patients to be treated with hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine. The FDA's emergency approval was limited to use in hospitals and clinical drug trials. But in April the White House, at the urging and under the direction of senior economic advisor Peter Navarro, set aside those limitations and ordered that 23 million hydroxychloroquine tablets from the Strategic National Stockpile of drugs be released to a dozen states. The drugs were ordered to be distributed not only to hospitals but also to retail pharmacies in five cities. It is unclear where all the pills ended up; one distributor said they were also sent to long-term care facilities, but none are known to have gone to retail pharmacies.
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On June 8 Trump called NIH director Francis Collins to the White House to urge him to approve and promote hydroxycholoroquine as a treatment for COVID-19. Trump got golfer Jack Nicklaus on the phone to describe how he had recovered from the virus after taking the drug at Trump's urging. Collins explained that anecdotal stories do not prove anything, and said the research data did not support the use of the drug. A week later, on June 15, the FDA revoked the EUA for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as potential treatments for COVID-19. The FDA said the available evidence showed "no benefit for decreasing the likelihood of death or speeding recovery". On July 1, the FDA published a review of safety issues associated with the drugs, including fatal cardiac arrhythmias among other side effects. After the FDA withdrew its emergency authorization, health officials told holders of the pills from the Strategic National Stockpile that they could choose to return the pills to wholesalers or destroy them. As of late July, Trump was still promoting the use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19, despite the position of the NIH that the drug was "very unlikely to be beneficial to hospitalized patients with COVID-19".
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In August, Trump pushed to get speedy approval of convalescent plasma as a COVID-19 treatment, because he wanted to be able to announce it as a treatment breakthrough at the August 2020 Republican National Convention. A week before the convention he claimed in a tweet that people within the FDA were deliberately delaying approval of treatments and vaccines in order to hurt his chances of re-election; he tagged FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn in the tweet. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) had concerns about the effectiveness of the treatment. On the Wednesday before the convention Trump phoned Francis S. Collins, head of the NIH, and ordered him to "get it done by Friday." On the eve of the convention the NIH still had concerns, but Trump announced that the FDA had given emergency authorization for plasma therapy to be more widely used. In his announcement he greatly exaggerated the effectiveness of the treatment, calling it a major breakthrough and suggesting it might save the lives of 35% of coronavirus patients. The FDA approval had been much more limited in its scope and application, but Hahn initially echoed the president's claims, for which he apologized the next day.
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==== Mask wearing ====
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In September, the CDC drafted an order that would require passengers and employees to wear masks on all forms of public and commercial transportation in the United States, including airplanes, trains, buses, subways, and transit hubs. Transportation unions had requested a federal mandate for mask wearing, citing the difficulty of working under a patchwork of rules. HHS Secretary Azar and CDC Director Redfield strongly supported the order. However, the White House's coronavirus task force, which is supposed to sign off on all coronavirus actions, rejected the order, saying that such orders should be left up to states and local governments.
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==== Advice on reopening ====
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The CDC intended to release on May 1 a 17-page report called Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework, with detailed guidelines for the reopening of businesses, public transit, restaurants, religious organizations, schools, and other public places which had been ordered closed during the pandemic. However, the Trump administration shelved the document; CDC staffers were told the recommendations "would never see the light of day." An unauthorized copy was published by the Associated Press in late April. Six flowcharts were ultimately published on May 15, and a sixty-page set of guidelines was released without comment on May 20, weeks after many states had already opened up from lockdowns.
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In July 2020, as Trump pushed publicly for all schools to reopen fully, a CDC report on the subject came under pressure from the White House, the White House coronavirus task force, and the office of the Vice President. Officials including Deborah Birx of the task force and Olivia Troye of Pence's staff pressed for the report to play down any risks involved in in-person schooling, and to stress the need for children to be in school for mental health reasons. When the report, intended to guide parents by giving them a basis for decision making, was ready for distribution on July 23, it was distributed to multiple White House officials who were allowed to make edits. Among other things, a claim was inserted that the coronavirus was less deadly to children than seasonal flu—a claim which CDC scientists had objected to earlier in the week. The title of the final document was The Importance of Reopening America’s Schools this Fall.
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On September 29, the White House coronavirus task force overruled the CDC's recommendation regarding when passenger cruise ships should be allowed to resume sailing. The existing "no-sail" directive was scheduled to expire on September 30. CDC Director Redfield wanted to extend it to mid-February 2021. The task force instead agreed with the cruise ship industry's recommendation that the prohibition end on October 31, 2020.
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White House advisor Scott Atlas opposed closure of schools and businesses, saying the best approach was to promote "population immunity" by letting younger people get the virus while protecting the most vulnerable. He doubts the effectiveness of face masks to combat spread of the virus. He claimed that children have a very low risk of death or serious illness and "almost never transmit the disease". Atlas quickly became influential within the administration; Trump welcomed his recommendations, which were in accord with Trump's own preferences, and reduced the role of other advisors such as Birx and Fauci. On October 5, HHS Secretary Azar met with three epidemiologists who promoted the Great Barrington Declaration, a petition calling for an end to lockdown policies, instead protecting the most vulnerable in the population while allowing the virus to spread uncontrolled among healthy people while they live normal lives. Atlas attended the meeting and later said that he supported this approach. Other epidemiologists said this approach is dangerous because "If you do this, you’ll get more infections, more hospitalizations and more deaths." The World Health Organization and most experts preferred to prevent infection through practices like hygiene, masks, and social distancing. Azar had earlier told Congress that "herd immunity is not the strategy of the U.S. government". After the meeting he tweeted that he had met with the group to obtain "diverse scientific perspectives", adding that "We heard strong reinforcement of the Trump Administration’s strategy of aggressively protecting the vulnerable while opening schools and the workplace."
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On October 19, The Washington Post reported that Atlas had consolidated his control over the White House coronavirus task force, sidelining other physicians including Birx, Fauci, Redfield, and Hahn, and challenging their analyses and recommendations. He vetoed any expansion of testing and claimed that practices like social distancing and mask wearing are worthless. He echoed Trump's claims that the pandemic was nearly over and that a vaccine was imminent. In mid-October Atlas posted a series of tweets saying that masks do not work; Twitter removed the posts for violating the site's policy against coronavirus misinformation.
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==== Vaccine development and approval ====
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Trump stressed the need for a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as possible, and said one is being developed at "warp speed" (see Operation Warp Speed). He repeatedly suggested that a COVID-19 vaccine would be available before the end of 2020, possibly before the November 3 election. In mid-September 2020, Trump's chief of staff Mark Meadows predicted that 100 million doses of a vaccine would be available by the end of October, though CDC Director Robert Redfield told the Senate that the public should not expect vaccine distribution before mid-2021. Other federal scientists including Operation Warp Speed chief scientist Moncef Slaoui and NIAID director Fauci also said that Meadows' prediction was unlikely, given the time frame needed for clinical trials. Trump dismissed or contradicted these comments. When Redfield told a congressional committee that wearing a mask could be more effective in halting the spread of the disease than a vaccine, and that a vaccine would not be generally available to the public until the second or third quarter of 2021, Trump said that Redfield had "made a mistake" and that his vaccine prediction was "just incorrect information." Republican allies of the president endorsed Trump's comments; House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said "If I just take the words of the CDC and the president, the president is right." On September 21, Trump predicted a vaccine would be available "within a matter of weeks". The next day Fauci said it was impossible to know when a vaccine would be available, because "no one's seen the data"; the clinical trials were still "blinded" so that no one knew how the test groups and control groups compare to each other. Fauci had previously said that the efficacy of a vaccine might first become known in November or December.
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In late September, the FDA said it planned to announce additional criteria for emergency approval of a vaccine: to ensure that the vaccine is safe and effective, the clinical trial reportedly must follow trial participants for at least two months after their second shot, and the placebo group must show at least five severe cases of COVID-19 and some cases in older people. The move came following urging from Eric Topol and other public health experts, who believed that delaying the release of a vaccine until after the third week in November would increase trust among the public. The agency said it wanted to make its criteria public to bolster public trust in the process, as polling showed nearly half of the public would reject any vaccine they regard as rushed and politically tainted. At a press conference the next day, Trump said that the White House "may or may not" approve the new guidelines, saying it “sounds like a political move”. The White House blocked action on the guidelines for several weeks, objecting to the two-month-followup provision which would make it highly unlikely that a vaccine could be approved by election day. However, on October 6, the FDA unilaterally published the guidelines on its website, following which the White House approved them. Trump complained about the White House approval, claiming that the stricter guidelines were a conspiracy against his re-election. For months, FDA administrator Hahn stated that "science, not politics" would govern the FDA's decisions on whether to approve companies' applications for approval for COVID-19 vaccines.
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In late October, Politico reported that HHS chief Azar was trying to get permission to fire FDA administrator Hahn over the FDA's insistence that a COVID-19 vaccine meet safety standards before being approved. On December 10, a standing committee of outside scientists reviewed the application for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, and late that afternoon they recommended that the FDA authorize it for emergency use. The next morning, December 11, Trump ordered FDA Commissioner Hahn via Twitter to "stop playing games and start saving lives!!!", adding "Get the dam [sic] vaccines out NOW, Dr. Hahn." The same morning White House chief of staff Mark Meadows reportedly told Hahn in a telephone call that Hahn would be out of a job if he didn't give FDA approval to the vaccine that day; Hahn later said that report was inaccurate and he was merely "encouraged to continue working expeditiously." The FDA, which was already planning to issue the authorization the morning of December 12, issued it the evening of December 11 instead, a change which was not expected to affect the timeline for delivery of the first shots. Scholars were critical of the Trump administration's effort to pressure the FDA during its safety and effectiveness review; Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, said the campaign was an "unforced error" that "creates a veneer of political meddling" and reduced public confidence in the vaccine.
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== Environmental agencies ==
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=== Department of Agriculture ===
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The Trump administration marginalized the role of science at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and oversaw the mass departure of career USDA scientists. In July 2019, two USDA agencies—the Economic Research Service (ERS) and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture—were directed to move from the USDA's headquarters in Washington, D.C. to the Kansas City metropolitan area. Two-thirds of the USDA employees reassigned chose to quit rather than accept relocation. Current and former employees of the ERS were strongly critical of the relocation to Kansas City and other Trump administration policies, and the exodus of scientific and economic talent and disruption to federal research (especially on climate change and food security) that they had caused. The move to Kansas City area resulted in an attrition rate particularly high in the Resource and Rural Economics Division (90%) and in the Food Economics Division (up to 89%). ERS economists said that the Trump administration's moves were retaliation against the agency for publishing research reports detailing the negative economic effects of Trump's policies, including tariffs and Republican tax legislation, on U.S. agriculture.
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In April 2018, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue's office ordered ERS and other research components of USDA to include a disclaimer on peer-reviewed research authored by USDA scientists and published in scientific journals; the disclaimer was to state that findings and conclusions were "preliminary" and "should not be construed to represent any agency determination or policy." Susan Offutt, the ERS administrator under the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, said that the requirement was contrary to the USDA's longstanding policy that permitted and encouraged federal scientists to publish work in journals. The "disclaimer" mandate was strongly criticized by USDA employees, science advocates, and scientific journal editors. In May 2019, following an outcry, the USDA rescinded the directive.
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In April 2020, USDA established a "Farmers to Families Food Box" program, which paid farmers for food that would normally be destined for restaurants, repackaged it into household quantities, and distributed it to food-insecure Americans. Starting in summer 2020, some of the boxes included a letter signed by Trump, recommending coronavirus precautions and concluding "Together we will overcome this challenge, and our Nation will emerge from this crisis stronger than ever before." By September, the Department was requiring all contracted distributors to include the letter in every box. Regarding the letters as election-related advertising, many food banks, schools, and other nonprofit agencies removed the letters before distributing the food, citing the provision of U.S. tax law barring non-profits from engaging in political activity.
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=== Hurricane Dorian–Alabama controversy ===
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On September 1, 2019, as Hurricane Dorian approached the U.S. mainland, Trump commented on Twitter about the hurricane and incorrectly mentioned Alabama as one of the states that was threatened by the approaching storm. In fact the forecast on September 1 was that Dorian would steer well away from Alabama, so that Trump apparently relied on information that was several days old. About 20 minutes after Trump's tweet, the Birmingham, Alabama office of the National Weather Service (NWS) issued a tweet that appeared to contradict Trump, saying that Alabama "will NOT see any impacts from Dorian". The Birmingham office was unaware of Trump's tweet but was responding to a flood of phone calls and other questions about whether the storm was going to hit Alabama. Later that day and over the following days, as the hurricane moved up the coast and Alabama felt no effects from it, Trump insisted repeatedly that he had been right about the hurricane threatening the state. On September 4, at a briefing in the Oval Office he insisted that his Alabama comment had been correct, and displayed a forecast map dated August 29 which had been altered with a black marker to extend the cone of uncertainty of the hurricane's possible path into southern Alabama; the incident became known as Sharpiegate.
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On September 6, NOAA published an unsigned statement in support of Trump's initial claim, saying that NHC models "demonstrated that tropical-storm-force winds from Hurricane Dorian could impact Alabama." The statement also said the message from the Birmingham NWS office had been incorrect because it "spoke in absolute terms that were inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time." The statement was widely criticized as "political", "utterly disgusting and disingenuous", and with "no scientific basis". The Inspector General of the Department of Commerce investigated the memorandum, saying that it called into question "the NWS’s processes, scientific independence, and ability to communicate accurate and timely weather warnings and data to the nation in times of national emergency." Her investigation confirmed that the September 6 statement had been issued by Commerce officials in response to direct orders from the White House. The report said that White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney had instructed Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to get NOAA to issue a statement supporting the president's claims, and Mulvaney and Ross both approved the statement before it was issued. Another investigation reported that the acting NOAA administrator and his deputy chief of staff had also been involved with issuing the report. NOAA's acting chief scientist said "If not the single highest person in NOAA, who will stand for the Scientific Integrity of the agency and the trust our public needs to invest in our scientific process and products?" The Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Environmental Observation and Prediction wrote in an email to another NOAA scientist, "you have no idea how hard I'm fighting to keep politics out of science."
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=== Environmental Protection Agency ===
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On January 24, 2017, it was reported that the Trump administration froze grants and contracts to the EPA, along with employees being unable to speak to reporters or post on social media accounts.
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In a May 2018 survey, the EPA inspector general's office found that nearly 400 science-related employees said they had experienced, but did not report, potential violations of the EPA's scientific integrity policy. More than 250 employees said their concern was that a manager or senior leader had possibly interfered with science, and nearly 175 said they had experienced "suppression or delay of release of scientific report or information." Commenters said they had observed "suppression, changes, manipulation, or exclusion of scientific information, results, or research." They said people in senior positions, particularly political appointees, often do not understand or adequately consider science in their decisions, and they expressed a belief that their leadership is "greatly influenced by political, industry, state, or regulated groups."
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==== Climate change policy ====
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Before his election Trump promised to trim the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). At a Republican primary debate in Detroit on March 3, 2016, he said: "Department of Environmental Protection: We are going to get rid of it in almost every form. We’re going to have little tidbits left. But we’re going to take a tremendous amount out." Trump appointed Scott Pruitt, a climate change denier, as the EPA administrator. Under his leadership the EPA focused on promoting fossil fuel energy and repealing regulations regarding clean air, clean water, and federal lands.
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Although there is an overwhelming scientific consensus that global surface temperatures have increased in recent decades due to human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases, Trump claimed that scientists are divided on the causes of climate change. Following Trump's election, large amounts of climate information from the EPA website was altered or removed. There was widespread concern among environmentalists and scientists, and a coalition of scientific and academic groups began to make copies of the EPA web pages before they were deleted. According to the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative which tracks changes to government websites under the Trump administration, over 200 web pages providing climate information were removed during Trump's first year in office. Other pages were altered, often under Pruitt's personal direction, to remove mentions of climate and climate change.
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==== Wetlands and waterways ====
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In June 2017, Pruitt was preparing to undo the Waters of the United States rule, a regulation giving federal protection to wetlands and tributaries that flow into federally protected major waterways. An 87-page analysis had concluded that such protection would cost real estate developers and farmers between $236 million and $465 million, but would provide benefits of between $555 million and $572 million in reducing water pollution. Pruitt's deputies verbally ordered the analysts to produce a new study leaving out the quantifiable benefits. "They did what they were told", according to a 30-year administrator in the agency's water office. The administrator added that such analyses typically take months or years and are supported by research and a paper trail, but "This repeal process is political staff giving verbal directions to get the outcome they want, essentially overnight."
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==== Trichloroethylene ====
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In February 2020, the EPA released a report on the toxicity of the industrial chemical trichloroethylene (TCE), establishing the benchmark for unsafe exposure levels. Instead of the benchmark established by the agency's scientists, namely an exposure level known to cause fetal heart abnormalities, their draft report produced after three years' work had been completely altered to establish a much less stringent benchmark. All references to "cardiac toxicity" were eliminated. The report that was eventually published established autoimmune disease as the endpoint—a criterion allowing nearly 500 times as much TCE exposure. The report had been rewritten at the urging of chemical industry lobbyists and on direct orders from the Executive Office of the President.
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==== Other deregulatory efforts ====
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In the final months of Trump's first presidential term, Trump administration EPA appointees aimed to finalize new regulations to block the future adoption of restrictions on air and water pollution. The efforts were opposed by medical and scientific groups, as well as career EPA scientists, including Thomas Sinks, who was director of the agency's science advisory office and its office on data security and the privacy of human subjects. Before retiring in September 2020, Sinks issued a rare, strongly worded "dissenting scientific opinion" against the adoption of a new regulation, pushed by Trump's appointees, that would require the EPA to disregard scientific or medical research that did not make raw data (including personal health information) public. The regulation would stymie the ability of the EPA to regulate pollution on the basis of long-term health or epidemiological studies on toxin exposure, because the subjects of such studies usually participate on the condition that their personal health information remains private. By placing his dissent on the official agency record, Sinks signaled that Trump political appointees had dismissed career scientists' views on the proposal, and provided the Biden administration with evidence to repeal the rule.
|
||||
|
||||
== Other agencies ==
|
||||
A supervisor at the Department of Energy told employees not to use the terms "climate change", "emissions reduction," or "Paris Agreement" in any written communication. These were described as "hot button" terms better avoided, with the suggestion that it would be better to use words like "jobs" and "infrastructure".
|
||||
In March 2020, The New York Times reported that Indur M. Goklany, a science and technology policy analyst at the Department of the Interior, repeatedly inserted climate change denial language into the agency's scientific reports, such as those that affect water and mineral rights. The wording inserted into the documents includes assertions that there is a lack of consensus for global warming among scientists and that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is beneficial.
|
||||
|
||||
== Responses and reactions ==
|
||||
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Political interference with science agencies by the first Trump administration"
|
||||
chunk: 9/10
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_interference_with_science_agencies_by_the_first_Trump_administration"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:18:13.322702+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
=== Anthony Fauci ===
|
||||
After Trump left office, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984, spoke of the difficulties that he and other scientists faced under the Trump administration. He described working under the Biden administration as "a refreshing experience", said that he felt "uncomfortable" when Trump publicly made statements that "were not based on scientific fact", and indicated that he had felt silenced under Trump.
|
||||
Fauci, who has served under seven presidents, told The Atlantic, "With every other president, whether they were conservative, moderate, or liberal, the guidepost for everything was a deep respect for science. That was always the case. When I got involved with Trump, it went into a different world, the likes of which I had not experienced. I was used to being in the White House because of my work in previous administrations, but the White House became a different place in the Trump administration." Fauci said that Scott Atlas, brought into the coronavirus task force by Trump, was "a complete foil to poor Debbie Birx" and said, "I felt so bad for her, because he completely undermined her. He didn't undermine me, because I didn't give a shit about him. I didn't really care what he said, because my home base was [NIAID]. But Deb's home base was the White House." Fauci added that he did not "take any great pleasure in contradicting" Trump, but felt obliged to do so "as a symbol to the rest of the world that science is not going to flinch in the face of somebody who's spouting nonsense." Fauci said that Birx had repeatedly told him that her experience in the Trump White House was "the worst, most painful 11 months of my entire life."
|
||||
|
||||
=== Congressional investigations ===
|
||||
Democratic members of the House of Representatives launched several investigations. The House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis investigated claims that political employees of the HHS pressured scientists to alter data or change their recommendations related to the coronavirus pandemic. The lawmakers requested interviews with seven HHS employees. In December 2020, the committee subpoenaed HHS Secretary Azar and CDC Director Redfield for documents pertaining to their investigation, alleging that "Trump administration appointees attempted to alter or block at least 14 scientific reports related to the virus." In February 2021, the coronavirus committee asked the Biden administration for documents relating to the Trump administration's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying that Trump's HHS and other officials had blocked requests for documents and staff testimony in spite of "two subpoenas and at least 20 document requests." In April, the committee released documents indicating that Paul Alexander and other officials touted instances where they successfully blocked or altered scientists' reports to make them more optimistic. In December, the committee released a report stating that officials in the Trump administration had made "deliberate efforts to undermine the nation's coronavirus response for political purposes".
|
||||
In September 2020, the heads of three oversight committees launched an investigation into a planned advertising blitz by HHS to "defeat despair and inspire hope" about the pandemic. The stated goal was to "install confidence to return to work and restart the economy." Democrats questioned whether the $250 million ad campaign had political motivations, noting that it was proposed and supervised by Caputo. They also asked where the money was to come from, and requested that the program's launch be delayed while their investigation is underway.
|
||||
In early October 2020, a subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee opened an investigation into an agency within the Executive Office of the President, to determine whether there had been political interference with the government's messaging about the coronavirus.
|
||||
The Government Accountability Office, an independent auditing and investigative branch of Congress, announced on October 20, 2020, that it will investigate potential political interference by the Trump administration into the CDC and the FDA and "determine whether this interference has violated the agencies’ scientific integrity and communication policies." The agency was responding to a request from three Democratic senators to "determine whether the CDC and FDA's scientific integrity and communications policies have been violated." The office expected to begin studying the issue in January 2021 due to staff availability.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Employee complaints to EPA inspector general and scientific integrity office ===
|
||||
Dozens of current and former employees of the EPA, Fish and Wildlife Service, and Army Corps of Engineers filed a complaint with the inspector general of the EPA regarding political interference during the repeal of the Waters of the United States rule. Senator Tom Carper asked the EPA inspector general to investigate why only politically appointed attorneys and not career attorneys were listed as the attorneys of record on multiple court filings involving greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution. Inquiries, complaints, and requests for advice "spiked" with the EPA's Scientific Integrity office. Reportedly they received about 20 inquiries per year from 2012 to 2016, but got more than 60 inquiries during the first three quarters of the 2019 fiscal year; about half of them related to political interference with scientific work.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Rick Bright whistleblowing ===
|
||||
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Political interference with science agencies by the first Trump administration"
|
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|
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source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_interference_with_science_agencies_by_the_first_Trump_administration"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:18:13.322702+00:00"
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instance: "kb-cron"
|
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---
|
||||
|
||||
In May 2020, the House Energy and Commerce Committee heard testimony from Rick Bright, a career scientist who was removed from his position as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) for warning about problems with the administration's response to the coronavirus. Bright had filed a whistleblower complaint with the Office of Special Counsel. In the complaint, Bright said that his ouster and demotion were illegal retaliation by the Trump administration due to his warnings about the virus, his opposition to political interference in decision-making, and his objections to the promotion of hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment without scientific evidence. The U.S. Office of Special Counsel determined that there were "reasonable grounds to believe" that the Trump administration's HHS had unlawfully retaliated against Bright, in violation of the Whistleblower Protection Act, "because he made protected disclosures in the best interest of the American public." The office recommended that Bright be reinstated as head of BARDA while the investigation is undertaken. However, the recommendation was not binding on HHS, and was not honored by the agency. On October 6, 2020, Bright resigned from the government. In an addendum to his whistleblower complaint, Bright stated that, following his demotion, he had been given "no meaningful work" since September 4; that NIH officials had rejected his proposals for a national COVID-19 testing strategy "because of political considerations"; and that officials had ignored his request that he join the $10 billion Operation Warp Speed initiative to develop a COVID-19 vaccine.
|
||||
|
||||
=== National academy criticisms ===
|
||||
In September 2020, the presidents of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine issued a joint statement saying, "We find ongoing reports and incidents of the politicization of science, particularly the overriding of evidence and advice from public health officials and derision of government scientists, to be alarming. It undermines the credibility of public health agencies and the public’s confidence in them when we need it most." The statement was issued the day after Trump suggested he might veto an FDA proposal to raise the standards for emergency approval of a coronavirus vaccine. They added, "Policymaking must be informed by the best available evidence without it being distorted, concealed, or otherwise deliberately miscommunicated.... Ending the pandemic will require decision-making that is not only based on science but also sufficiently transparent to ensure public trust in, and adherence to, sound public-health instructions. Any efforts to discredit the best science and scientists threaten the health and welfare of us all."
|
||||
|
||||
=== Medical journal criticism ===
|
||||
In October 2020, the New England Journal of Medicine, in an editorial signed by 34 editors, denounced the Trump administration's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The article marked the first time in the medical journal's 200-year history that it had condemned or supported any political candidate. In the editorial, the journal strongly criticized the Trump administration's rejection of scientific expertise; its attempts to politicize and undermine the FDA, NIH, and CDC; and its decision "to ignore and even denigrate experts" within government institutions.
|
||||
|
||||
== Aftermath ==
|
||||
Hundreds of scientists and policy experts in multiple agencies left their positions during the Trump administration. Six months into the Biden administration, they had not returned, and recruitment of replacements proved difficult – in part because young scientists no longer trust that their agencies will remain insulated from politics. Just in the area of climate and environmental science, hundreds of scientific and technical positions remained vacant as of July 2021. A former oceanographer for the U.S. Geologic Survey explained that "It’s easy and quick to leave government, not so quick for government to regain the talent."
|
||||
As of January 2023 the EPA is "still reeling from the exodus of more than 1,200 scientists and policy experts during the Trump administration" and is short staffed in almost all departments, causing increased workloads. The head of the chemical unit said the workload in turn makes it hard to attract and retain staff. The enforcement unit is prosecuting polluters at the lowest rate in two decades. The department is behind its deadlines to write the new regulations necessary for Biden’s climate goals.
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
The Republican War on Science – 2005 book by Chris Mooney
|
||||
2025 United States government online resource removals
|
||||
Science policy of the second Trump administration
|
||||
|
||||
== Further reading ==
|
||||
"Select Subcommittee releases Trump Admin herd immunity report: Report is the first in a series on the Select Subcommittee's investigation into the Trump Administration's political interference with the federal coronavirus response". United States House Select Oversight Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis. June 21, 2022.
|
||||
"Select Subcommittee reports Trump WH interfered in FDA Covid response: Report is the second to reveal Select Subcommittee's findings from its investigation into the Trump Administration's political interference with the federal coronavirus response". United States House Select Oversight Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis. August 24, 2022.
|
||||
"Select Subcommittee report details Trump Admin assault on CDC: Report is the third installment detailing findings from investigation into Trump Administration's political interference with federal coronavirus response". United States House Select Oversight Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis. October 17, 2022.
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
Silencing Science Tracker, Columbia University
|
||||
28
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date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:18:14.587410+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
The politicization of science occurs when government, business, or advocacy groups use legal or economic pressure to influence the findings of scientific research or the way it is disseminated, reported or interpreted. As a means to political gains, the politicization of science is generally regarded as detrimental to scientific integrity and may also negatively affect academic and scientific freedom, which is why mixing politics with science is considered taboo. Historically, groups have conducted various campaigns to promote their interests, many times in defiance of scientific consensus, and in an effort to manipulate public policy.
|
||||
|
||||
== Overview ==
|
||||
Many factors can act as facets of the politicization of science. These can range, for example, from populist anti-intellectualism and perceived threats to religious belief to postmodernist subjectivism, fear for business interests, institutional academic ideological biases or potentially implicit bias amongst scientific researchers.
|
||||
Politicization occurs as scientific information is presented with emphasis on the uncertainty associated with the interpretation of scientific evidence. The emphasis capitalizes on the lack of consensus, which influences the way the studies are perceived. Chris Mooney describes how this point is sometimes intentionally ignored as a part an "Orwellian tactic." Organizations and politicians seek to disclaim all discussion on some issues as 'the more probable conclusion is still uncertain' as opposed to 'conclusions are most scientifically likely' in order to further discredit scientific studies.
|
||||
Tactics such as shifting conversation, failing to acknowledge facts, and capitalizing on doubt of scientific consensus have been used to gain more attention for views that have been undermined by scientific evidence. "Merchants of Doubt", ideology-based interest groups that claim expertise on scientific issues, have run successful "disinformation campaigns" in which they highlight the inherent uncertainty of science to cast doubt on scientific issues such as human-caused climate change, even though the scientific community has reached virtual consensus that humans play a role in climate change.
|
||||
William R. Freudenburg and colleagues have written about politicization of science as a rhetorical technique and states that it is an attempt to shift the burden of proof in an argument. He offers the example of cigarette lobbyists opposing laws that would discourage smoking. The lobbyists trivialize evidence as uncertain, emphasizing lack of conclusion. Freudenberg concludes that politicians and lobby groups are too often able to make "successful efforts to argue for full 'scientific certainty' before a regulation can be said to be 'justified' and maintain that what is needed is a balanced approach that carefully considers the risks of both Type 1 and Type 2 errors in a situation while noting that scientific conclusions are always tentative.
|
||||
|
||||
== Politicization by advocacy groups ==
|
||||
A political tactic, sometimes used to delay the implementation of legislation to control potentially harmful activities, is the "Scientific Certainty Argumentation Method" (SCAM). In many cases, there is a degree of uncertainty in scientific findings and this can be exploited to delay action, perhaps for many years, by demanding more "certainty" before action is taken.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Climate change ===
|
||||
|
||||
Both mainstream climatologists and their critics have accused each other of politicizing the science behind climate change. There is a scientific consensus that global surface temperatures have increased in recent decades and that the trend is caused primarily by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases.
|
||||
In 1991, a US corporate coalition including the National Coal Association, the Western Fuels Association and Edison Electrical Institute created a public relations organization called the "Information Council on the Environment" (ICE). ICE launched a $500,000 advertising campaign to, in ICE's own words, "reposition global warming as theory (not fact)". Critics of industry groups have charged that the claims about a global warming controversy are part of a deliberate effort to reduce the impact any international treaty, such as the Kyoto Protocol, might have on their business interests.
|
||||
In 2006, Guardian columnist George Monbiot reported that according to data found in official Exxon documents, 124 organizations have taken money from ExxonMobil or worked closely with those that have, and that "These organizations take a consistent line on climate change: that the science is contradictory, the scientists are split, environmentalists are charlatans, liars or lunatics, and if governments took action to prevent global warming, they would be endangering the global economy for no good reason. The findings these organisations dislike are labelled 'junk science'. The findings they welcome are labelled 'sound science'." The "selective use of data", cherry picking, is identified as a notable form of scientific abuse by the Pacific Institute, an organization created to provide independent research and policy analysis on issues at the intersection of development, environment, and security.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Intelligent design ===
|
||||
33
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date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:18:14.587410+00:00"
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|
||||
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|
||||
|
||||
The intelligent design movement associated with the Discovery Institute, attempts to "defeat [the] materialist world view" represented by the theory of evolution in favor of "a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions". The Discovery Institute portrays evolution as a "theory in crisis" with scientists criticizing evolution and that "fairness" and "equal time" requires educating students about "the controversy". A cornerstone of modern scientific biological theory is that all forms of life on Earth are related by common descent with modification.
|
||||
While criticisms to the theory of evolution have existed throughout time, often certain ideological proponents seek to expand the scope of these disagreements in order to draw doubt onto the entire theory. For example, in the United States there is a legal precedent of those who sought to discredit the teaching of evolution in classrooms by emphasizing so-called flaws in the theory of evolution or disagreements within the scientific community. Others insist that teachers have absolute freedom within their classrooms and cannot be disciplined for teaching non-scientific "alternatives" to evolution. A number of bills require that students be taught to "critically analyze" evolution or to understand "the controversy" when there is no significant controversy within the mainstream scientific community about evolution. As such, the controversy surrounding the teaching of evolution is not primarily a scientific one.
|
||||
The 2005 ruling in the Dover trial, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, where the claims of intelligent design proponents were considered by a United States federal court concluded that intelligent design is not science, that it "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents", and concluded that the school district's promotion of it therefore violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Tobacco and cancer ===
|
||||
|
||||
By the mid-1950s there was a scientific consensus that smoking promotes lung cancer, but the tobacco industry fought the findings, both in the public eye and within the scientific community. Tobacco companies funded think tanks and lobbying groups, started health reassurance campaigns, ran advertisements in medical journals, and researched alternate explanations for lung cancer, such as pollution, asbestos and even pet birds. Denying the case against tobacco was "closed," they called for more research as a tactic to delay regulation. John Horgan, notes a rhetoric tactic that has been used by tobacco companies. It is summarized in a line that appeared in a confidential memo from a tobacco company, in 1969, when they sought to cast doubt on evidence that supports smoking causes cancer. It read, "Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy."
|
||||
|
||||
=== Eugenics ===
|
||||
|
||||
Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler was well known for eugenics programs which attempted to maintain a "pure" German race through a series of programs that ran under the banner of racial hygiene. The Nazis manipulated scientific research in Germany, by forcing some scholars to emigrate, and by allocating funding for research based on ideological rather than scientific merit.
|
||||
In the early 20th century, eugenics enjoyed substantial international support, from leading politicians and scientists. The First International Congress of Eugenics in 1912 was supported by many prominent persons, including its president Leonard Darwin, the son of Charles Darwin; honorary vice-president Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty and future Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; Auguste Forel, famous Swiss pathologist; Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone; among other prominent people.
|
||||
The level of support for eugenics research by the Nazis prompted an American eugenics advocate to seek an expansion of the American program, with the complaint that "the Germans are beating us at our own game". There was a strong connection between American and Nazi eugenics research. Nazis based their eugenics program on the United States' programs of forced sterilization, especially on the eugenics laws that had been enacted in California.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Social justice ===
|
||||
Some critics argue that science has been politicized by social justice advocates. David Randall, director of research at the politically conservative advocacy group the National Association of Scholars, said that the emphasis on pursuing social justice and political activism "threatens the very definition of science as primarily a search for truth". In October 2021, The New York Times reported a rise in calls for "citational justice" within academic communities, which the article defines as an effort by professors and graduate students "to cite more Black, Latino, Asian and Native American scholars and in some cases refuse to acknowledge in footnotes the research of those who hold distasteful views." Some researchers have defended these efforts against the charge of politicization, arguing that science has always been inherently political.
|
||||
|
||||
== Government politicization ==
|
||||
|
||||
=== Poland ===
|
||||
Poland employs a distinctive system for conferring academic titles in which the President of the Republic of Poland officially awards the title of "profesor zwyczajny" (full professor) to candidates recommended by independent academic committees. Although this role is formally intended to be ceremonial and devoid of political influence, in practice it has become a locus for politicization. Under Polish law, the president's decision is not subject to a strict statutory deadline, granting considerable discretionary power that can be—and critics argue is—exploited for political ends. For instance, the promotion of noted genocide researcher Michał Bilewicz was reportedly delayed by President Andrzej Duda, a move that critics interpreted as punitive towards scholars whose work challenges nationalist narratives. In a related development, Prof. Bilewicz later won a court case against President Duda over the delay in his promotion. Other cases have raised similar concerns that the conferral process, rather than being a neutral recognition of scholarly merit, may serve as an indirect instrument of state influence over academia. Consequently, critics contend that such politicization undermines the autonomy of scientific inquiry and academic freedom in Poland, blurring the boundary between scholarly achievement and political favor.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Soviet Union ===
|
||||
26
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|
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title: "Politicization of science"
|
||||
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|
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|
||||
category: "reference"
|
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tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
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date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:18:14.587410+00:00"
|
||||
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|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
In the Soviet Union, scientific research was under strict political control. A number of research areas were declared "bourgeois pseudoscience" and forbidden. This led to significant setbacks for the Soviet science, notably in biology due to ban on genetics, with support for Lysenkoism, and in computer science, which drastically influenced the Soviet economy and technology.
|
||||
|
||||
=== United States ===
|
||||
The General Social Survey (GSS) of 1974 recorded that conservatives had the highest rates of trust in science between the three major political demographics: conservatives, liberals, and moderates. This study was repeated annually between 1972 and 1994, and biannually from 1994 until 2010. In 2010, when the same study was repeated, conservatives' trust rates had decreased from 49% to 38%, moderates' trust rates from 45% to 40%, and liberals' trust rates staying relatively stable, rising slightly from 48% to 50%. The study by Gordon Gauchat, which investigates time trends in the public trust of science in the United States, suggests that the increase of distrust of conservatives can be attributed to two cultural shifts. The first was during the post-Ronald Reagan era when the New Right emerged, and the second during the George W. Bush era when the New Right intensified and conservatives commenced the "war on science". Since Bush's presidency, Barack Obama and other politicians have expressed their concerns with the politicization of science in both the public and government sphere. In 2011, during his State of the Union speech, Obama discussed his dissatisfaction of the relationships between organized science, private economic interests, and the government. A 2024 analysis found that 100 U.S. Representatives and 23 U.S. Senators—23% of the 535 members of Congress—were climate change deniers. All were Republicans.
|
||||
|
||||
==== George W. Bush administration ====
|
||||
In 2004, The Denver Post reported that the George W. Bush administration "has installed more than 100 top officials who were once lobbyists, attorneys or spokespeople for the industries they oversee." At least 20 of these former industry advocates helped their agencies write, shape or push for policy shifts that benefit their former industries. "They knew which changes to make because they had pushed for them as industry advocates." Also in 2004, the scientific advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists issued a report, Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: An Investigation into the Bush Administration's Misuse of Science which charged the following:A growing number of scientists, policy makers, and technical specialists both inside and outside the government allege that the current Bush administration has suppressed or distorted the scientific analyses of federal agencies to bring these results in line with administration policy. In addition, these experts contend that irregularities in the appointment of scientific advisors and advisory panels are threatening to upset the legally mandated balance of these bodies. A petition, signed on February 18, 2004, by more than 9,000 scientists, including 49 Nobel laureates and 63 National Medal of Science recipients, followed the report. The petition stated: When scientific knowledge has been found to be in conflict with its political goals, the administration has often manipulated the process through which science enters into its decisions. This has been done by placing people who are professionally unqualified or who have clear conflicts of interest in official posts and on scientific advisory committees; by disbanding existing advisory committees; by censoring and suppressing reports by the government's own scientists; and by simply not seeking independent scientific advice. Other administrations have, on occasion, engaged in such practices, but not so systematically nor on so wide a front. Furthermore, in advocating policies that are not scientifically sound, the administration has sometimes misrepresented scientific knowledge and misled the public about the implications of its policies.
|
||||
The same year, Francesca Grifo, executive director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Scientific Integrity Program, stated "We have reports that stay in draft form and don't get out to the public. We have reports that are changed. We have reports that are ignored and overwritten." In response to criticisms, President Bush in 2006 unveiled a campaign in his State of the Union Address to promote scientific research and education to ensure American competitiveness in the world, vowing to "double the federal commitment to the most critical basic research programs in the physical sciences over the next 10 years."
|
||||
|
||||
===== Surgeon General =====
|
||||
Richard Carmona, the first surgeon general appointed by President George W. Bush, publicly accused the administration in July 2007 of political interference and muzzling him on key issues like embryonic stem cell research. Carmona testified: "Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is often ignored, marginalized or simply buried." Although he did not make personal accusations, the Washington Post reported on July 29 that the official who blocked at least one of Carmona's reports was William R. Steiger.
|
||||
|
||||
===== Food and Drug Administration =====
|
||||
In July 2006 the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released survey results that demonstrate pervasive political influence of science at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Of the 997 FDA scientists who responded to the survey, nearly one fifth (18 percent) said that they "have been asked, for non-scientific reasons, to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information or their conclusions in a FDA scientific document." This is the third survey Union of Concerned Scientists has conducted to examine inappropriate interference with science at federal agencies. The Department of Health and Human Services also conducted a survey addressing the same topic which generated similar findings. According to USA Today, a survey of Food and Drug Administration scientists by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Union of Concerned Scientists found that many scientists have been pressured to approve or reject new drugs despite their scientific findings concerns. In July 2006, the Union of Concerned Scientists released survey results that they said "demonstrate pervasive political influence of science" at the Food and Drug Administration.
|
||||
|
||||
===== United States Department of the Interior =====
|
||||
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|
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|
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date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:18:14.587410+00:00"
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|
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|
||||
On May 1, 2007, deputy assistant secretary at the United States Department of the Interior Julie MacDonald resigned after the Interior Department Inspector General, Honorable Earl E. Devaney, reported that MacDonald broke federal rules by giving non-public, internal government documents to oil industry and property rights groups, and manipulated scientific findings to favor Bush policy goals and assist land developers. On November 29, 2007, another report by Devaney found that MacDonald could have also benefitted financially from a decision she was involved with to remove the Sacramento splittail fish from the federal endangered species list. MacDonald's conduct violated the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) under 5 C.F.R. § 2635.703, Use of nonpublic information, and 5 C.F.R. § 2635.101, Basic obligation of public service. MacDonald resigned a week before a House congressional oversight committee was to hold a hearing on accusations that she had "violated the Endangered Species Act, censored science and mistreated staff of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service."
|
||||
|
||||
===== Climate change =====
|
||||
In December 2007, the Christian Science Monitor reported that at least since 2003, and especially after Hurricane Katrina, the George W. Bush administration broadly attempted to control which climate scientists could speak with reporters, as well as edited scientists' congressional testimony on climate science and key legal opinions. Those who have studied organizations that set up to delay action and manufacture uncertainty about the well-established scientific consensus have divided their tactics into three steps: first, deny that there is a problem, second, make the case that there are benefits involved, and, third, insist that there is nothing that can be done. In a study, "The legitimacy of environmental scientists in the public sphere" by Gordon Gauchat, Timothy O'Brien, and Oriol Mirosa, the researchers conclude that attitudes about environmental scientists as policy advisers are highly politicized. Their results demonstrate that, to be perceived by the public as a reputable policy advisor, the public's perception of their integrity and understanding weigh more strongly than their agreement with scientific consensus.
|
||||
|
||||
===== Waxman report =====
|
||||
In August 2003, United States, Democratic Congressman Henry A. Waxman and the staff of the Government Reform Committee released a report concluding that the administration of George W. Bush had politicized science and sex education. The report accuses the administration of modifying performance measures for abstinence-based programs to make them look more effective. The report also found that the Bush administration had appointed Dr. Joseph McIlhaney, a prominent advocate of abstinence-only program, to the Advisory Committee to the director of the Centers for Disease Control. According to the report, information about comprehensive sex education was removed from the CDC's website. Other issues considered for removal included agricultural pollution, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and breast cancer; the report found that a National Cancer Institute website has been changed to reflect the administration view that there may be a risk of breast cancer associated with abortions. The website was updated after protests and now holds that no such risk has been found in recent, well-designed studies.
|
||||
|
||||
===== Abortion–breast cancer hypothesis =====
|
||||
|
||||
The abortion-breast cancer hypothesis is the belief that induced abortions increase the risk of developing breast cancer. This belief is in contrast to the scientific consensus that there is no evidence suggesting that abortions can cause breast cancer. Despite the scientific community rejecting the hypothesis, many anti-abortion advocates continue to argue that a link between abortions and breast cancer exists, in an effort to influence public policy and opinion to further restrict abortions and discourage women from having abortions. While historically a controversial hypothesis, the debate now is almost entirely political rather than scientific. The most notable example of the politicization of this topic was the modification of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) fact sheet by the George W. Bush administration from concluding no link to a more ambiguous assessment regarding the abortion-breast cancer hypothesis, despite the NCI's scientifically based assessment to the contrary.
|
||||
|
||||
===== United States House Science Subcommittee on Oversight =====
|
||||
In January 2007, the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology announced the formation of a new subcommittee, the Science Subcommittee on Oversight, which handles investigative and oversight activities on matters covering the committee's entire jurisdiction. The subcommittee has authority to look into a whole range of important issues, particularly those concerning manipulation of scientific data at Federal agencies. In an interview, subcommittee chairman Representative Brad Miller pledged to investigate scientific integrity concerns under the Bush Administration. Miller noted that there were multiple reports in the media of the Bush Administration's manipulation of science to advance his political agenda, corrupt advisory panels, and minimize scientific research with federal funds. Miller, as part of the House Committee of Science and Technology, collected evidence of interference with scientific integrity by Bush's political appointees.
|
||||
|
||||
==== First Trump administration ====
|
||||
|
||||
===== Policy =====
|
||||
The Trump administration marginalized the role of science in policy making, halted numerous research projects, and saw the departure of scientists who said their work was marginalized or suppressed. It was the first administration since 1941 not to name a Science Advisor to the President. In July 2018, Trump nominated meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier for the position, and Droegemeier was confirmed by the Senate on January 2, 2019, the final day of the 115th United States Congress. He was sworn in by Vice President Mike Pence on February 11, 2019. While preparing for talks with Kim Jong-un, the White House did so without the assistance of a White House science adviser or senior counselor trained in nuclear physics. The position of chief scientist in the State Department or the Department of Agriculture was not filled. The administration nominated Sam Clovis to be chief scientist in the United States Department of Agriculture, but he had no scientific background and the White House later withdrew the nomination. The United States Department of the Interior, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Food and Drug Administration disbanded advisory committees.
|
||||
|
||||
===== Climate change =====
|
||||
32
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|
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|
||||
The issue of politicized science surfaced during the 2016 United States presidential campaign by then Republican candidate Donald Trump. Trump stated his intention to strip NASA's Earth Science division of its funding, a move that "would mean the elimination of NASA's world-renowned research into temperature, ice, clouds and other climate phenomena". Subsequently, the Trump administration successfully nominated Jim Bridenstine, who had no background in science and rejected the scientific consensus on climate change, to lead NASA. Under the Trump administration, the Department of Energy prohibited the use of the term "climate change". In March 2020 The New York Times reported that an official at the Interior Department has repeatedly inserted climate change-denying language into the agency's scientific reports, such as those that affect water and mineral rights.
|
||||
|
||||
===== Health =====
|
||||
During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump administration replaced career public affairs staff at the Department of Health and Human Services with political appointees, including Michael Caputo, who interfered with weekly Centers for Disease Control scientific reports and attempted to silence the government's most senior infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, "sowing distrust of the FDA at a time when health leaders desperately need people to accept a vaccine in order to create the immunity necessary to defeat the novel coronavirus." One day after President Donald Trump noted that he might dismiss an FDA proposal to improve standards for emergency use of a coronavirus vaccine, the Presidents of the National Academies of Sciences and Medicine issued a statement expressing alarm at political interference in science during a pandemic, "particularly the overriding of evidence and advice from public health officials and derision of government scientists". The administration reportedly sent a list to the CDC on words that the agency was prohibited from using in its official communications, including "transgender", "fetus", "evidence-based", "science-based", "vulnerable", "entitlement", and "diversity". The Director of the CDC denied these reports.
|
||||
|
||||
==== Biden administration ====
|
||||
As part of an effort to "refresh and reinvigorate our national science and technology strategy", President-elect Joe Biden announced, before taking office, that he would elevate the role of Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy to a cabinet level position. Biden's removal of Betsy Weatherhead from her role as director of the National Climate Assessment has been criticized as being politically motivated.
|
||||
|
||||
==== Second Trump administration ====
|
||||
|
||||
== Scholarly studies of the politics of science ==
|
||||
The politicization of science is a subset of a broader topic, the politics of science, which has been studied by scholars in a variety of fields, including most notably Science and Technology Studies; history of science; political science; and the sociology of science, knowledge, and technology. Increasingly in recent decades, these fields have examined the process through which science and technology are shaped. Some of the scholarly work in this area is reviewed in The Handbook of Science & Technology Studies (1995, 2008), a collection of literature reviews published by the Society for Social Studies of Science. There is an annual award for books relevant to the politics of science given by the Society for Social Studies of Science called the Rachel Carson Prize.
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
== Further reading ==
|
||||
Shawn Lawrence Otto, Fool Me Twice: Fighting The Assault On Science In America, Rodale Books, 2011, ISBN 978-1-60529-217-5
|
||||
Steven Rose, "Pissing in the Snow" (review of Audra J. Wolfe, Freedom's Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science, Johns Hopkins, January 2019, ISBN 978-1-4214-2673-0, 302 pp.), London Review of Books, vol. 41, no. 14 (18 July 2019), pp. 31–33.
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
23
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Discussions of race and intelligence—specifically regarding claims of differences in intelligence along racial lines—have appeared in both popular science and academic research since the modern concept of race was first introduced. With the inception of IQ testing in the early 20th century, differences in average test performance between racial groups have been observed, though these differences have fluctuated and in many cases steadily decreased over time. Complicating the issue, modern science has concluded that race is a socially constructed phenomenon rather than a biological reality, and there exist various conflicting definitions of intelligence. In particular, the validity of IQ testing as a metric for human intelligence is disputed. Today, the scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain differences in IQ test performance between groups, and that observed differences are environmental in origin.
|
||||
Pseudoscientific claims of inherent differences in intelligence between races have played a central role in the history of scientific racism. The first tests showing differences in IQ scores between different population groups in the United States were those of United States Army recruits in World War I. In the 1920s, groups of eugenics lobbyists argued that these results demonstrated that African Americans and certain immigrant groups were of inferior intellect to Anglo-Saxon white people, and that this was due to innate biological differences. In turn, they used such beliefs to justify policies of racial segregation. However, other studies soon appeared, contesting these conclusions and arguing that the Army tests had not adequately controlled for environmental factors, such as socioeconomic and educational inequality between the groups.
|
||||
Later observations of phenomena such as the Flynn effect and disparities in access to prenatal care highlighted ways in which environmental factors affect group IQ differences. In recent decades, as understanding of human genetics has advanced, claims of inherent differences in intelligence between races have been broadly rejected by scientists on both theoretical and empirical grounds.
|
||||
|
||||
== History of the controversy ==
|
||||
|
||||
Claims of differences in intelligence between races have been used to justify colonialism, slavery, racism, social Darwinism, and racial eugenics. Claims of intellectual inferiority were used to justify British wars and colonial campaigns in Asia. Racial thinkers such as Arthur de Gobineau in France relied crucially on the assumption that black people were innately inferior to white people in developing their ideologies of white supremacy. Even Enlightenment thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner, believed black people to be innately inferior to white people in physique and intellect. At the same time in the United States, prominent examples of African-American genius such the autodidact and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, the pioneering sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois, and the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar stood as high-profile counterexamples to widespread stereotypes of black intellectual inferiority. In Britain, Japan's military victory over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War began to reverse negative stereotypes of "oriental" inferiority.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Early IQ testing ===
|
||||
The first practical intelligence test, the Binet-Simon Intelligence Test, was developed between 1905 and 1908 by Alfred Binet and Théodore Simon in France for school placement of children. Binet warned that results from his test should not be assumed to measure innate intelligence or used to label individuals permanently. Binet's test was translated into English and revised in 1916 by Lewis Terman (who introduced IQ scoring for the test results) and published under the name Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scales. In 1916 Terman wrote that Mexican-Americans, African-Americans, and Native Americans have a mental "dullness [that] seems to be racial, or at least inherent in the family stocks from which they come."
|
||||
The US Army used a different set of tests developed by Robert Yerkes to evaluate draftees for World War I. Based on the Army's data, prominent psychologists and eugenicists such as Henry H. Goddard, Harry H. Laughlin, and Princeton professor Carl Brigham wrote that people from southern and eastern Europe were less intelligent than native-born Americans or immigrants from the Nordic countries, and that black Americans were less intelligent than white Americans. The results were widely publicized by a lobby of anti-immigration activists, including the conservationist and theorist of scientific racism Madison Grant, who considered the so-called Nordic race to be superior, but under threat because of immigration by "inferior breeds." In his influential work, A Study of American Intelligence, psychologist Carl Brigham used the results of the Army tests to argue for a stricter immigration policy, limiting immigration to countries considered to belong to the "Nordic race".
|
||||
In the 1920s, some US states enacted eugenic laws, such as Virginia's 1924 Racial Integrity Act, which established the one-drop rule (of 'racial purity') as law. Many scientists reacted negatively to eugenicist claims linking abilities and moral character to racial or genetic ancestry. They pointed to the contribution of environment (such as speaking English as a second language) to test results. By the mid-1930s, many psychologists in the US had adopted the view that environmental and cultural factors played a dominant role in IQ test results. The psychologist Carl Brigham repudiated his own earlier arguments, explaining that he had come to realize that the tests were not a measure of innate intelligence.
|
||||
Discussions of the issue in the United States, especially in the writings of Madison Grant, influenced German Nazi claims that the "Nordics" were a "master race". As American public sentiment shifted against the Germans, claims of racial differences in intelligence increasingly came to be regarded as problematic. Anthropologists such as Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, and Gene Weltfish did much to demonstrate that claims about racial hierarchies of intelligence were unscientific. Nonetheless, a powerful eugenics and segregation lobby funded largely by textile-magnate Wickliffe Draper continued to use intelligence studies as an argument for eugenics, segregation, and anti-immigration legislation.
|
||||
27
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|
||||
|
||||
=== Pioneer Fund and The Bell Curve ===
|
||||
In 1937, Draper founded the Pioneer Fund with the mission "to advance the scientific study of heredity and human differences". This fund would become a central driver of research into race and intelligence. The Southern Poverty Law Center lists the Pioneer Fund as a hate group, and numerous scholars have criticized it for promoting scientific racism, eugenics and white supremacy.
|
||||
As the desegregation of the United States gained traction in the 1950s, debate about black intelligence resurfaced. Audrey Shuey, funded by the Pioneer Fund, published a new analysis of Yerkes' tests, concluding that black people really were of inferior intellect to white people. This study was used by segregationists to argue that it was to the advantage of black children to be educated separately from the superior white children. In the 1960s, the debate was revived when William Shockley publicly defended the view that black children were innately unable to learn as well as white children. Arthur Jensen expressed similar opinions in his Harvard Educational Review article, "How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?," which questioned the value of compensatory education for African-American children. He suggested that poor educational performance in such cases reflected an underlying genetic cause rather than lack of stimulation at home or other environmental factors.
|
||||
Another revival of public debate followed the appearance of The Bell Curve (1994), a book by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray that supported the general viewpoint of Jensen. Many of the references and sources used in the book were advocates for racial hygiene, whose research was funded by Pioneer Fund and published in its affiliated journal Mankind Quarterly. A statement in support of Herrnstein and Murray titled "Mainstream Science on Intelligence," was published in The Wall Street Journal. The Bell Curve also led to critical responses in a statement titled "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns" by the American Psychological Association and in several books, including The Bell Curve Debate (1995), Inequality by Design (1996) and a second edition of The Mismeasure of Man (1996) by Stephen Jay Gould.
|
||||
Some of the authors proposing genetic explanations for group differences have received funding from the Pioneer Fund, which was headed by J. Philippe Rushton until his death in 2012. Arthur Jensen, who jointly with Rushton published a 2005 review article arguing that the difference in average IQs between blacks and whites is partly due to genetics, received $1.1 million in grants from the Pioneer Fund. According to Ashley Montagu, "The University of California's Arthur Jensen, cited twenty-three times in The Bell Curve's bibliography, is the book's principal authority on the intellectual inferiority of blacks."
|
||||
Additional books by psychologist Pioneer Fund board member Richard Lynn and political scientist Tatu Vanhanen titled IQ and the Wealth of Nations and IQ and Global Inequality, where they try to find a correlation between national IQ test scores and the size of a country's economy, also fueled the debate, with several researchers criticizing their conclusions. On July 27, 2020, the European Human Behavior and Evolution Association issued a formal statement opposing the utilization of Lynn's national IQ dataset, citing various methodological concerns. They concluded, "Any conclusions drawn from analyses which use these data are therefore unsound, and no reliable evolutionary work should be using these data."
|
||||
On 24 January 2026, the New York Times reported that a group of fringe researchers with a long history of racist pseudoscience had used deception to access protected NIH data. The group, which included Bryan Pesta, Jordan Lasker, John G. R. Fuerst, and Emil Kirkegaard and was funded in part by the Pioneer Fund, used the data "to produce at least 16 papers purporting to find biological evidence for differences in intelligence between races, ranking ethnicities by I.Q. scores and suggesting Black people earn less because they are not very smart. Mainstream geneticists have rejected their work as biased and unscientific. Yet by relying on genetic and other personal data from the prominent project, known as the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, the researchers gave their theories an air of analytical rigor.” These papers sparked a new wave of online disinformation about race and intelligence. Pesta, the only one of the group to hold a university position, was fired from Cleveland State University because of this scientific misconduct.
|
||||
|
||||
== Conceptual issues ==
|
||||
|
||||
=== Intelligence and IQ ===
|
||||
|
||||
The concept of intelligence and the degree to which intelligence is measurable are matters of debate. There is no consensus about how to define intelligence; nor is it universally accepted that it is something that can be meaningfully measured by a single figure. A recurring criticism is that different societies value and promote different kinds of skills and that the concept of intelligence is therefore culturally variable and cannot be measured by the same criteria in different societies. Consequently, some critics argue that it makes no sense to propose relationships between intelligence and other variables.
|
||||
Correlations between scores on various types of IQ tests led English psychologist Charles Spearman to propose in 1904 the existence of an underlying factor, which he referred to as "g" or "general intelligence", a trait which is supposed to be innate. Another proponent of this view is Arthur Jensen. This view, however, has been contradicted by a number of studies showing that education and changes in environment can significantly improve IQ test results.
|
||||
Other psychometricians have argued that, whether or not there is such a thing as a general intelligence factor, performance on tests relies crucially on knowledge acquired through prior exposure to the types of tasks that such tests contain. This means that comparisons of test scores between persons with widely different life experiences and cognitive habits do not reveal their relative innate potentials.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Race ===
|
||||
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||||
The consensus view among geneticists, biologists and anthropologists is that race is a sociopolitical phenomenon rather than a biological one, a view supported by considerable genetics research. Race is a social construct based on folk ideologies that differentiate groups based on social disparities and superficial physical characteristics. A 2023 consensus report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine stated: "In humans, race is a socially constructed designation, a misleading and harmful surrogate for population genetic differences, and has a long history of being incorrectly identified as the major genetic reason for phenotypic differences between groups."
|
||||
The concept of human "races" as natural and separate divisions within the human species has also been rejected by the American Anthropological Association. The official position of the AAA, adopted in 1998, is that advances in scientific knowledge have made it "clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups" and that "any attempt to establish lines of division among biological populations [is] both arbitrary and subjective." A more recent statement from the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (2019) declares that "Race does not provide an accurate representation of human biological variation. It was never accurate in the past, and it remains inaccurate when referencing contemporary human populations. Humans are not divided biologically into distinct continental types or racial genetic clusters."
|
||||
Anthropologists such as C. Loring Brace, the philosophers Jonathan Kaplan and Rasmus Winther, and the geneticist Joseph Graves, have argued that the cluster structure of genetic data is dependent on the initial hypotheses of the researcher and the influence of these hypotheses on the choice of populations to sample. When one samples continental groups, the clusters become continental, but if one had chosen other sampling patterns, the clustering would be different. Weiss and Fullerton have noted that if one sampled only Icelanders, Mayans and Maoris, three distinct clusters would form and all other populations could be described as being clinally composed of admixtures of Maori, Icelandic and Mayan genetic materials. Kaplan and Winther conclude that while racial groups are characterized by different allele frequencies, this does not mean that racial classification is a natural taxonomy of the human species, because multiple other genetic patterns can be found in human populations that crosscut racial distinctions. Moreover, the genomic data underdetermines whether one wishes to see subdivisions (i.e., splitters) or a continuum (i.e., lumpers). Under Kaplan and Winther's view, racial groupings are objective social constructions (see Mills 1998) that have conventional biological reality only insofar as the categories are chosen and constructed for pragmatic scientific reasons. Sternberg, Grigorenko & Kidd (2005) argue that the social construction of race derives not from any valid scientific basis but rather "from people's desire to classify."
|
||||
In studies of human intelligence, race is almost always determined using self-reports rather than analyses of genetic characteristics. According to psychologist David Rowe, self-report is the preferred method for racial classification in studies of racial differences because classification based on genetic markers alone ignore the "cultural, behavioral, sociological, psychological, and epidemiological variables" that distinguish racial groups. Hunt and Carlson disagreed, writing that "Nevertheless, self-identification is a surprisingly reliable guide to genetic composition," citing a study by Tang et al. (2005). Sternberg and Grigorenko disputed Hunt and Carlson's interpretation of Tang's results as supporting the view that racial divisions are biological; rather, "Tang et al.'s point was that ancient geographic ancestry rather than current residence is associated with self-identification and not that such self-identification provides evidence for the existence of biological race."
|
||||
|
||||
== Group differences ==
|
||||
The study of human intelligence is one of the most controversial topics in psychology, in part because of difficulty reaching agreement about the meaning of intelligence and objections to the assumption that intelligence can be meaningfully measured by IQ tests. Claims that there are innate differences in intelligence between racial and ethnic groups—which go back at least to the 19th century—have been criticized for relying on specious assumptions and research methods and for serving as an ideological framework for discrimination and racism.
|
||||
In a 2012 study of tests of different components of intelligence, Hampshire et al. expressed disagreement with the view of Jensen and Rushton that genetic factors must play a role in IQ differences between races, stating that "it remains unclear ... whether population differences in intelligence test scores are driven by heritable factors or by other correlated demographic variables such as socioeconomic status, education level, and motivation. More relevantly, it is questionable whether [population differences in intelligence test scores] relate to a unitary intelligence factor, as opposed to a bias in testing paradigms toward particular components of a more complex intelligence construct." According to Jackson and Weidman,
|
||||
|
||||
There are a number of reasons why the genetic argument for race differences in intelligence has not won many adherents in the scientific community. First, even taken on its own terms, the case made by Jensen and his followers did not hold up to scrutiny. Second, the rise of population genetics undercut the claims for a genetic cause of intelligence. Third, the new understanding of institutional racism offered a better explanation for the existence of differences in IQ scores between the races.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Test scores ===
|
||||
23
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|
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|
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In the United States, Asians on average score higher than White people, who tend to score higher than Hispanics, who tend to score higher than African Americans. There is more variation in IQ scores within each racial group, such as when they are divided by income, than between different ethnic groups when compared as a whole against each other. A 2001 meta-analysis of the results of 6,246,729 participants tested for cognitive ability or aptitude found a difference in average scores between black people and white people of 1.1 standard deviations. Consistent results were found for college and university application tests such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (N = 2.4 million) and Graduate Record Examination (N = 2.3 million), as well as for tests of job applicants in corporate settings (N = 0.5 million) and in the military (N = 0.4 million).
|
||||
In response to the controversial 1994 book The Bell Curve, the American Psychological Association (APA) formed a task-force of eleven experts, which issued a report "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns" in 1996. Regarding group differences, the report reaffirmed the consensus that differences within groups are much wider than differences between groups, and that claims of ethnic differences in intelligence should be scrutinized carefully, as such claims had been used to justify racial discrimination. The report also acknowledged problems with the racial categories used, as these categories are neither consistently applied, nor homogeneous (see Race and ethnicity in the United States).
|
||||
In the UK, some African groups have higher average educational attainment and standardized test scores than the overall population. In 2010–2011, white British pupils were 2.3% less likely to have gained 5 A*–C grades at GCSE than the national average, whereas the likelihood was 21.8% above average for those of Nigerian origin, 5.5% above average for those of Ghanaian origin, and 1.4% above average for those of Sierra Leonian origin. For the two other African ethnic groups on which data was available, the likelihood was 23.7% below average for those of Somali origin and 35.3% below average for those of Congolese origin. In 2014, Black-African pupils of 11 language groups were more likely to pass Key Stage 2 Maths 4+ in England than the national average. Overall, the average pass rate by ethnicity was 86.5% for white British (N = 395,787), whereas it was 85.6% for Black-Africans (N = 18,497). Nevertheless, several Black-African language groups, including Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Akan, Ga, Swahili, Edo, Ewe, Amharic speakers, and English-speaking Africans, each had an average pass rate above the white British average (total N = 9,314), with the Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, and Amhara having averages above 90% (N = 2,071). In 2017–2018, the percentage of pupils getting a strong pass (grade 5 or above) in the English and maths GCSE (in Key Stage 4) was 42.7% for whites (N = 396,680) and 44.3% for Black-Africans (N = 18,358).
|
||||
|
||||
=== Flynn effect and the closing gap ===
|
||||
|
||||
The 'Flynn effect' — a term coined after researcher James R. Flynn — refers to the substantial rise in raw IQ test scores observed in many parts of the world during the 20th century. In the United States, the increase was continuous and approximately linear from the earliest years of testing to about 1998 when the gains stopped and some tests even showed decreasing test scores. For example, the average scores of black people on some IQ tests in 1995 were the same as the scores of white people in 1945. As one pair of academics phrased it, "the typical African American today probably has a slightly higher IQ than the grandparents of today's average white American."
|
||||
Flynn himself argued that the dramatic changes having taken place between one just generation and the next pointed strongly at an environmental explanation, and that it is highly unlikely that genetic factors could have accounted for the increasing scores. The Flynn effect, along with Flynn's analysis, continues to hold significance in the context of the black/white IQ gap debate, demonstrating the potential for environmental factors to influence IQ test scores by as much as 1 standard deviation, a scale of change that had previously been doubted.
|
||||
A distinct but related observation has been the gradual narrowing of the American black-white IQ gap in the last decades of the 20th century, as black test-takers increased their average scores relative to white test-takers. For instance, Vincent reported in 1991 that the black–white IQ gap was decreasing among children, but that it was remaining constant among adults. Similarly, a 2006 study by Dickens and Flynn estimated that the difference between mean scores of black people and white people closed by about 5 or 6 IQ points between 1972 and 2002, a reduction of about one-third. In the same period, the educational achievement disparity also diminished. Reviews by Flynn and Dickens, Mackintosh, and Nisbett et al. accept the gradual closing of the gap as a fact. Flynn and Dickens summarize this trend, stating, "The constancy of the Black-White IQ gap is a myth and therefore cannot be cited as evidence that the racial IQ gap is genetic in origin."
|
||||
|
||||
== Environmental factors ==
|
||||
|
||||
=== Health and nutrition ===
|
||||
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Environmental factors including childhood lead exposure, low rates of breast feeding, and poor nutrition are significantly correlated with poor cognitive development and functioning. For example, childhood exposure to lead — associated with homes in poorer areas — correlates with an average IQ drop of 7 points, and iodine deficiency causes a decline, on average, of 12 IQ points. Such impairments may sometimes be permanent, but in some cases they be partially or wholly compensated for by later growth.
|
||||
The first two years of life are critical for malnutrition, the consequences of which are often irreversible and include poor cognitive development, educability, and future economic productivity. Mackintosh points out that, for American black people, infant mortality is about twice as high as for white people, and low birth weight is twice as prevalent. At the same time, white mothers are twice as likely to breastfeed their infants, and breastfeeding is directly correlated with IQ for low-birth-weight infants. In this way, a wide number of health-related factors which influence IQ are unequally distributed between the two groups.
|
||||
The Copenhagen consensus in 2004 stated that lack of both iodine and iron has been implicated in impaired brain development, and this can affect enormous numbers of people: it is estimated that one-third of the total global population is affected by iodine deficiency. In developing countries, it is estimated that 40% of children aged four and under have anaemia because of insufficient iron in their diets.
|
||||
Other scholars have found that simply the standard of nutrition has a significant effect on population intelligence, and that the Flynn effect may be caused by increasing nutrition standards across the world. James Flynn has himself argued against this view.
|
||||
Some recent research has argued that the retardation caused in brain development by infectious diseases, many of which are more prevalent in non-white populations, may be an important factor in explaining the differences in IQ between different regions of the world. The findings of this research, showing the correlation between IQ, race and infectious diseases was also shown to apply to the IQ gap in the US, suggesting that this may be an important environmental factor.
|
||||
A 2013 meta-analysis by the World Health Organization found that, after controlling for maternal IQ, breastfeeding was associated with IQ gains of 2.19 points. The authors suggest that this relationship is causal but state that the practical significance of this gain is debatable; however, they highlight one study suggesting an association between breastfeeding and academic performance in Brazil, where "breastfeeding duration does not present marked variability by socioeconomic position." Colen and Ramey (2014) similarly find that controlling for sibling comparisons within families, rather than between families, reduces the correlation between breastfeeding status and WISC IQ scores by nearly a third, but further find the relationship between breastfeeding duration and WISC IQ scores to be insignificant. They suggest that "much of the beneficial long-term effects typically attributed to breastfeeding, per se, may primarily be due to selection pressures into infant feeding practices along key demographic characteristics such as race and socioeconomic status." Reichman estimates that no more than 3 to 4% of the black–white IQ gap can be explained by black–white disparities in low birth weight.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Education ===
|
||||
Several studies have proposed that a large part of the gap in IQ test performance can be attributed to differences in quality of education. Racial discrimination in education has been proposed as one possible cause of differences in educational quality between races. According to a paper by Hala Elhoweris, Kagendo Mutua, Negmeldin Alsheikh and Pauline Holloway, teachers' referral decisions for students to participate in gifted and talented educational programs were influenced in part by the students' ethnicity.
|
||||
The Abecedarian Early Intervention Project, an intensive early childhood education project, was also able to bring about an average IQ gain of 4.4 points at age 21 in the black children who participated in it compared to controls. Arthur Jensen agreed that the Abecedarian project demonstrated that education can have a significant effect on IQ, but also declared his view that no educational program thus far had been able to reduce the black–white IQ gap by more than a third, and that differences in education are thus unlikely to be its only cause.
|
||||
A series of studies by Joseph Fagan and Cynthia Holland measured the effect of prior exposure to the kind of cognitive tasks posed in IQ tests on test performance. Assuming that the IQ gap was the result of lower exposure to tasks using the cognitive functions usually found in IQ tests among African American test takers, they prepared a group of African Americans in this type of tasks before taking an IQ test. The researchers found that there was no subsequent difference in performance between the African-Americans and white test takers. Daley and Onwuegbuzie conclude that Fagan and Holland demonstrate that "differences in knowledge between black people and white people for intelligence test items can be erased when equal opportunity is provided for exposure to the information to be tested". A similar argument is made by David Marks who argues that IQ differences correlate well with differences in literacy suggesting that developing literacy skills through education causes an increase in IQ test performance.
|
||||
A 2003 study found that two variables—stereotype threat and the degree of educational attainment of children's fathers—partially explained the black–white gap in cognitive ability test scores, undermining the hereditarian view that they stemmed from immutable genetic factors.
|
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=== Socioeconomic environment ===
|
||||
Different aspects of the socioeconomic environment in which children are raised have been shown to correlate with part of the IQ gap, but they do not account for the entire gap. According to a 2006 review, these factors account for slightly less than half of one standard deviation.
|
||||
Other research has focused on different causes of variation within low socioeconomic status (SES) and high SES groups.
|
||||
In the US, among low SES groups, genetic differences account for a smaller proportion of the variance in IQ than among high SES populations. Such effects are predicted by the bioecological hypothesis—that genotypes are transformed into phenotypes through nonadditive synergistic effects of the environment. Nisbett et al. (2012a) suggest that high SES individuals are more likely to be able to develop their full biological potential, whereas low SES individuals are likely to be hindered in their development by adverse environmental conditions. The same review also points out that adoption studies generally are biased towards including only high and high middle SES adoptive families, meaning that they will tend to overestimate average genetic effects. They also note that studies of adoption from lower-class homes to middle-class homes have shown that such children experience a 12 to 18 point gain in IQ relative to children who remain in low SES homes. A 2015 study found that environmental factors (namely, family income, maternal education, maternal verbal ability/knowledge, learning materials in the home, parenting factors, child birth order, and child birth weight) accounted for the black–white gap in cognitive ability test scores.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Test bias ===
|
||||
A number of studies have reached the conclusion that IQ tests may be biased against certain groups. The validity and reliability of IQ scores obtained from outside the United States and Europe have been questioned, in part because of the inherent difficulty of comparing IQ scores between cultures. Several researchers have argued that cultural differences limit the appropriateness of standard IQ tests in non-industrialized communities.
|
||||
A 1996 report by the American Psychological Association states that intelligence can be difficult to compare across cultures, and notes that differing familiarity with test materials can produce substantial differences in test results; it also says that tests are accurate predictors of future achievement for black and white Americans, and are in that sense unbiased. The view that tests accurately predict future educational attainment is reinforced by Nicholas Mackintosh in his 1998 book IQ and Human Intelligence, and by a 1999 literature review by Brown, Reynolds & Whitaker (1999).
|
||||
James R. Flynn, surveying studies on the topic, notes that the weight and presence of many test questions depends on what sorts of information and modes of thinking are culturally valued.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Stereotype threat and minority status ===
|
||||
|
||||
Stereotype threat is the fear that one's behavior will confirm an existing stereotype of a group with which one identifies or by which one is defined; this fear may in turn lead to an impairment of performance. Testing situations that highlight the fact that intelligence is being measured tend to lower the scores of individuals from racial-ethnic groups who already score lower on average or are expected to score lower. Stereotype threat conditions cause larger than expected IQ differences among groups. Psychometrician Nicholas Mackintosh considers that there is little doubt that the effects of stereotype threat contribute to the IQ gap between black people and white people.
|
||||
A large number of studies have shown that systemically disadvantaged minorities, such as the African American minority of the United States, generally perform worse in the educational system and in intelligence tests than the majority groups or less disadvantaged minorities such as immigrant or "voluntary" minorities. The explanation of these findings may be that children of caste-like minorities, due to the systemic limitations of their prospects of social advancement, do not have "effort optimism", i.e. they do not have the confidence that acquiring the skills valued by majority society, such as those skills measured by IQ tests, is worthwhile. They may even deliberately reject certain behaviors that are seen as "acting white." Research published in 1997 indicates that part of the black–white gap in cognitive ability test scores is due to racial differences in test motivation.
|
||||
Some researchers have suggested that stereotype threat should not be interpreted as a factor in real-life performance gaps, and have raised the possibility of publication bias. Other critics have focused on correcting what they claim are misconceptions of early studies showing a large effect. However, numerous meta-analyses and systematic reviews have shown significant evidence for the effects of stereotype threat, though the phenomenon defies over-simplistic characterization. For instance, one meta-analysis found that with female subjects "subtle threat-activating cues produced the largest effect, followed by blatant and moderately explicit cues" while with minorities "moderately explicit stereotype threat-activating cues produced the largest effect, followed by blatant and subtle cues".
|
||||
Some researchers have argued that studies of stereotype threat may in fact systematically under-represent its effects, since such studies measure "only that portion of psychological threat that research has identified and remedied. To the extent that unidentified or unremedied psychological threats further undermine performance, the results underestimate the bias."
|
||||
|
||||
== Research into possible genetic factors ==
|
||||
|
||||
Although IQ differences between individuals have been shown to have a large hereditary component, it does not follow that mean group-level disparities (between-group differences) in IQ necessarily have a genetic basis. Today, the scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain differences in IQ test performance between groups. Growing evidence indicates that environmental factors, not genetic ones, explain the racial IQ gap.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Genetics of race and intelligence ===
|
||||
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Geneticist Alan R. Templeton argued that the question about the possible genetic effects on the test score gap is muddled by the general focus on "race" rather than on populations defined by gene frequency or by geographical proximity, and by the general insistence on phrasing the question in terms of heritability. Templeton pointed out that racial groups neither represent sub-species nor distinct evolutionary lineages, and that therefore there is no basis for making claims about the general intelligence of races. He argued that, for these reasons, the search for possible genetic influences on the black–white test score gap is a priori flawed, because there is no genetic material shared by all Africans or by all Europeans. Mackintosh (2011), on the other hand, argued that by using genetic cluster analysis to correlate gene frequencies with continental populations it might be possible to show that African populations have a higher frequency of certain genetic variants that contribute to differences in average intelligence. Such a hypothetical situation could hold without all Africans carrying the same genes or belonging to a single evolutionary lineage. According to Mackintosh, a biological basis for the observed gap in IQ test performance thus cannot be ruled out on a priori grounds.
|
||||
Hunt (2010, p. 447) noted that "no genes related to difference in cognitive skills across the various racial and ethnic groups have ever been discovered. The argument for genetic differences has been carried forward largely by circumstantial evidence. Of course, tomorrow afternoon genetic mechanisms producing racial and ethnic differences in intelligence might be discovered, but there have been a lot of investigations, and tomorrow has not come for quite some time now." Mackintosh (2011, p. 344) concurred, noting that while several environmental factors have been shown to influence the IQ gap, the evidence for a genetic influence has been negligible. A 2012 review by Nisbett et al. (2012a) concluded that the entire IQ gap can be explained by known environmental factors, and Mackintosh found this view to be plausible.
|
||||
More recent research attempting to identify genetic loci associated with individual-level differences in IQ has yielded promising results, which led the editorial board of Nature to issue a statement differentiating this research from the "racist" pseudoscience which it acknowledged has dogged intelligence research since its inception. It characterized the idea of genetically determined differences in intelligence between races as definitively false. Analysis of polygenic scores sampled from the 1000 Genomes Project has likewise found no evidence that intelligence was under diversifying selection in Africans and Europeans, suggesting that genetic differences cannot be a significant factor in the observed Black-White gap in average IQ test performance.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Heritability within and between groups ===
|
||||
|
||||
Twin studies of intelligence have reported high heritability values. However, these studies have been criticized for being based on questionable assumptions. When used in the context of human behavior genetics, the term "heritability" can be misleading, as it does not necessarily convey information about the relative importance of genetic or environmental factors on the development of a given trait, nor does it convey the extent to which that trait is genetically determined. Arguments in support of a genetic explanation of racial differences in IQ are sometimes fallacious. For instance, hereditarians have sometimes cited the failure of known environmental factors to account for such differences, or the high heritability of intelligence within races, as evidence that racial differences in IQ are genetic.
|
||||
Psychometricians have found that intelligence is substantially heritable within populations, with 30–50% of variance in IQ scores in early childhood being attributable to genetic factors in analyzed US populations, increasing to 75–80% by late adolescence. In biology heritability is defined as the ratio of variation attributable to genetic differences in an observable trait to the trait's total observable variation. The heritability of a trait describes the proportion of variation in the trait that is attributable to genetic factors within a particular population. A heritability of 1 indicates that variation correlates fully with genetic variation and a heritability of 0 indicates that there is no correlation between the trait and genes at all. In psychological testing, heritability tends to be understood as the degree of correlation between the results of a test taker and those of their biological parents. However, since high heritability is simply a correlation between child and parents, it does not describe the causes of heritability which in humans can be either genetic or environmental.
|
||||
Therefore, a high heritability measure does not imply that a trait is genetic or unchangeable. In addition, environmental factors that affect all group members equally will not be measured by heritability, and the heritability of a trait may also change over time in response to changes in the distribution of genetic and environmental factors. High heritability does not imply that all of the heritability is genetically determined; rather, it can also be due to environmental differences that affect only a certain genetically defined group (indirect heritability).
|
||||
The figure to the right demonstrates how heritability works. In each of the two gardens the difference between tall and short cornstalks is 100% heritable, as cornstalks that are genetically disposed for growing tall will become taller than those without this disposition. But the difference in height between the cornstalks to the left and those on the right is 100% environmental, as it is due to different nutrients being supplied to the two gardens. Hence, the causes of differences within a group and between groups may not be the same, even when looking at traits that are highly heritable.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Spearman's hypothesis ===
|
||||
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Spearman's hypothesis states that the magnitude of the black–white difference in tests of cognitive ability depends entirely or mainly on the extent to which a test measures general mental ability, or g. The hypothesis was first formalized by Arthur Jensen, who devised the statistical "method of correlated vectors" to test it. If Spearman's hypothesis holds true, then the cognitive tasks that have the highest g-load are the tasks in which the gap between black and white test takers are greatest. Jensen and Rushton took this to show that the cause of g and the cause of the gap are the same—in their view, genetic differences.
|
||||
Mackintosh (2011, pp. 338–39) acknowledges that Jensen and Rushton showed a modest correlation between g-loading, heritability, and the test score gap, but does not agree that this demonstrates a genetic origin of the gap. Mackintosh argues that it is exactly those tests that Rushton and Jensen consider to have the highest g-loading and heritability, such as the Wechsler test, that have seen the greatest increases in black performance due to the Flynn effect. This likely suggests that they are also the most sensitive to environmental changes, which undermines Jensen's argument that the black–white gap is most likely caused by genetic factors. Nisbett et al. (2012a, p. 146) make the same point, noting also that the increase in the IQ scores of black test takers necessarily indicates an increase in g.
|
||||
James Flynn argued that his findings undermine Spearman's hypothesis. In a 2006 study, he and William Dickens found that between 1972 and 2002 "The standard measure of the g gap between Blacks and Whites declined virtually in tandem with the IQ gap." Flynn also criticized Jensen's basic assumption that a correlation between g-loading and test score gap implies a genetic cause for the gap. In a 2014 suite of meta-analyses, along with co-authors Jan te Nijenhuis and Daniel Metzen, he showed that the same negative correlation between IQ gains and g-loading obtains for cognitive deficits of known environmental cause: iodine deficiency, prenatal cocaine exposure, fetal alcohol syndrome, and traumatic brain injury.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Adoption studies ===
|
||||
A number of IQ studies have been done on the effect of similar rearing conditions on children from different races. The hypothesis is that this can be determined by investigating whether black children adopted into white families demonstrated gains in IQ test scores relative to black children reared in black families. Depending on whether their test scores are more similar to their biological or adoptive families, that could be interpreted as supporting either a genetic or an environmental hypothesis. Critiques of such studies question whether the environment of black children—even when raised in white families—is truly comparable to the environment of white children. Several reviews of the adoption study literature have suggested that it is probably impossible to avoid confounding biological and environmental factors in this type of study. Another criticism by Nisbett et al. (2012a, pp. 134) is that adoption studies on the whole tend to be carried out in a restricted set of environments, mostly in the medium-high SES range, where heritability is higher than in the low-SES range.
|
||||
The Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study (1976) examined the IQ test scores of 122 adopted children and 143 nonadopted children reared by advantaged white families. The children were restudied ten years later. The study found higher IQ for white people compared to black people, both at age 7 and age 17. Acknowledging the existence of confounding factors, Scarr and Weinberg, the authors of the original study, did not consider that it provided support for either the hereditarian or environmentalist view.
|
||||
Three other studies lend support to environmental explanations of group IQ differences:
|
||||
|
||||
Eyferth (1961) studied the out-of-wedlock children of black and white soldiers stationed in Germany after World War II who were then raised by white German mothers in what has become known as the Eyferth study. He found no significant differences in average IQ between groups.
|
||||
Tizard et al. (1972) studied black (West Indian), white, and mixed-race children raised in British long-stay residential nurseries. Two out of three tests found no significant differences. One test found higher scores for non-white people.
|
||||
Moore (1986) compared black and mixed-race children adopted by either black or white middle-class families in the United States. Moore observed that 23 black and interracial children raised by white parents had a significantly higher mean score than 23 age-matched children raised by black parents (117 vs 104), and argued that differences in early socialization explained these differences.
|
||||
Frydman and Lynn (1989) showed a mean IQ of 119 for Korean infants adopted by Belgian families. After correcting for the Flynn effect, the IQ of the adopted Korean children was still 10 points higher than that of the Belgian children.
|
||||
Reviewing the evidence from adoption studies, Mackintosh finds that environmental and genetic variables remain confounded and considers evidence from adoption studies inconclusive, and fully compatible with a 100% environmental explanation. Similarly, Drew Thomas argues that race differences in IQ that appear in adoption studies are in fact an artifact of methodology, and that East Asian IQ advantages and black IQ disadvantages disappear when this is controlled for.
|
||||
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|
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|
||||
=== Racial admixture studies ===
|
||||
Most people have ancestry from different geographical regions. In particular, African Americans typically have ancestors from both Africa and Europe, with, on average, 20% of their genome inherited from European ancestors. If racial IQ gaps have a partially genetic basis, one might expect black people with a higher degree of European ancestry to score higher on IQ tests than black people with less European ancestry, because the genes inherited from European ancestors would likely include some genes with a positive effect on IQ. Geneticist Alan Templeton has argued that an experiment based on the Mendelian "common garden" design, where specimens with different hybrid compositions are subjected to the same environmental influences, are the only way to definitively show a causal relation between genes and group differences in IQ. Summarizing the findings of admixture studies, he concludes that they have shown no significant correlation between any cognitive ability and the degree of African or European ancestry.
|
||||
Studies have employed different ways of measuring or approximating relative degrees of ancestry from Africa and Europe. Some studies have used skin color as a measure, and others have used blood groups. Loehlin (2000) surveys the literature and argues that the blood groups studies may be seen as providing some support to the genetic hypothesis, even though the correlation between ancestry and IQ was quite low. He finds that studies by Eyferth (1961), Willerman, Naylor & Myrianthopoulos (1970) did not find a correlation between degree of African/European ancestry and IQ. The latter study did find a difference based on the race of the mother, with children of white mothers with black fathers scoring higher than children of black mothers and white fathers. Loehlin considers that such a finding is compatible with either a genetic or an environmental cause. All in all Loehlin finds admixture studies inconclusive and recommends more research.
|
||||
Reviewing the evidence from admixture studies Hunt (2010) considers it to be inconclusive because of too many uncontrolled variables. Mackintosh (2011, p. 338) quotes a statement by Nisbett (2009) to the effect that admixture studies have not provided a shred of evidence in favor of a genetic basis for the IQ gap.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Mental chronometry ===
|
||||
|
||||
Mental chronometry measures the elapsed time between the presentation of a sensory stimulus and the subsequent behavioral response by the participant. These studies have shown inconsistent results when comparing black and white populations groups, with some studies showing whites outperforming blacks, and others showing blacks outperforming whites.
|
||||
Arthur Jensen argued that this reaction time (RT) is a measure of the speed and efficiency with which the brain processes information, and that scores on most types of RT tasks tend to correlate with scores on standard IQ tests as well as with g. Nisbett argues that some studies have found correlations closer to 0.2, and that a correlation is not always found. Nisbett points to the Jensen & Whang (1993) study in which a group of Chinese Americans had longer reaction times than a group of European Americans, despite having higher IQs. Nisbett also mentions findings in Flynn (1991) and Deary (2001) suggesting that movement time (the measure of how long it takes a person to move a finger after making the decision to do so) correlates with IQ just as strongly as reaction time, and that average movement time is faster for black people than for white people. Mackintosh (2011, p. 339) considers reaction time evidence unconvincing and comments that other cognitive tests that also correlate well with IQ show no disparity at all, for example the habituation/dishabituation test. He further comments that studies show that rhesus monkeys have shorter reaction times than American college students, suggesting that different reaction times may not tell us anything useful about intelligence.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Brain size ===
|
||||
|
||||
A number of studies have reported a moderate statistical correlation between differences in IQ and brain size between individuals in the same group. Some scholars have reported differences in average brain sizes between racial groups, although this is unlikely to be a good measure of IQ as brain size also differs between men and women, but without significant differences in IQ. At the same time newborn black children have the same average brain size as white children, suggesting that the difference in average size could be accounted for by differences in environment. Several environmental factors that reduce brain size have been demonstrated to disproportionately affect black children.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Archaeological data ===
|
||||
Archaeological evidence does not support claims by Rushton and others that black people's cognitive ability was inferior to white people's during prehistoric times.
|
||||
|
||||
== Policy relevance and ethics ==
|
||||
|
||||
The ethics of research on race and intelligence has long been a subject of debate: in a 1996 report of the American Psychological Association; in guidelines proposed by Gray and Thompson and by Hunt and Carlson; and in two editorials in Nature in 2009 by Steven Rose and by Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams.
|
||||
Steven Rose maintains that the history of eugenics makes this field of research difficult to reconcile with current ethical standards for science.
|
||||
On the other hand, James R. Flynn has argued that had there been a ban on research on possibly poorly conceived ideas, much valuable research on intelligence testing (including his own discovery of the Flynn effect) would not have occurred.
|
||||
Many have argued for increased interventions in order to close the gaps. Flynn writes that "America will have to address all the aspects of black experience that are disadvantageous, beginning with the regeneration of inner city neighborhoods and their schools." Especially in developing nations, society has been urged to take on the prevention of cognitive impairment in children as a high priority. Possible preventable causes include malnutrition, infectious diseases such as meningitis, parasites, cerebral malaria, in utero drug and alcohol exposure, newborn asphyxia, low birth weight, head injuries, lead poisoning and endocrine disorders.
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
Behavioral epigenetics
|
||||
Melanin theory
|
||||
Model minority
|
||||
Nations and IQ
|
||||
Outline of human intelligence
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
=== Notes ===
|
||||
|
||||
=== Citations ===
|
||||
|
||||
=== Bibliography ===
|
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During the second presidency of Donald Trump, the US government has seen broad funding freezes and cuts (or proposed cuts). Broad research areas targeted so far have included addiction, climate change, cancer research, vaccine hesitancy, HIV/AIDS research, COVID-19, mental health, and mRNA. The administration has notably paused research funding related to LGBTQ and other gender issues, diversity, equity, and inclusion, race and ethnicity, and other topics deemed "woke".
|
||||
Some of the funding freezes have been used to apply pressure to universities on non-science related matters. For example the University of San Diego, a school that contains a massive research program for students. Due to the budget cuts from the Trump administration, the university experienced a decrease in funding.
|
||||
|
||||
== Early actions ==
|
||||
Early Trump executive orders led to government organizations removing or modifying over 8,000 web pages and approximately 3,000 datasets, many of them science-related.
|
||||
In addition, there were freezes in scientific funding and purges of data related to LGBTQ issues, gender, climate change, and racial diversity. There were also mass firings across federal scientific agencies.
|
||||
The National Science Foundation (NSF) ceased paying out its grants to researchers leaving many without a salary. Grant review panels—in which scientists decide which research proposals will receive funding—were paused to review whether projects supported potentially banned activities such as increasing diversity among scientists, international collaborations, or research into environmentally-friendly technology. After a court order on February 2, the NSF funds were unfrozen, though the review panels were still paused. On February 4, 2025, the NSF announced that it would lay off 25% to 50% of its workforce. Ten percent of NSF staff (168 employees) were fired on February 18. The firings were aimed at probationary employees (those who had held their positions for less than a year), but some of the laid off employees included those with over a year of experience who were unknowingly reclassified in January by the Office of Personnel Management and others who were permanent staff. Sethuraman Panchanathan resigned as NSF director on April 24, 2025.
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The Trump administration ordered a suspension of National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant funding on January 27, which froze much of its $47 billion budget. The order was blocked by courts after legal challenges but continued when the government exploited a loophole in which they refused to publish the agency's meeting plans in the Federal Register. The NIH announced on February 7 that it would cap support for indirect costs in grants to institutions at 15% of a grant's value. Indirect costs cover expenses that are not directly related to research but are necessary to support it, such as rent for facilities, utilities like heat and electricity, or janitorial and administrative staff. Indirect costs typically range from 30% to 70%, and the cuts represent "tens to hundreds of millions of dollars" in lost funding for research institutes that could lead to layoffs, hiring freezes, and ending research projects. The cuts had previously been outlined in Project 2025 to combat what it characterized as subsidies for "leftist agendas" and diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. In response, 22 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit and the cuts were paused on February 10. The NIH fired 1,000 to 1,200 workers on February 15. The cuts have led to universities pausing or reducing admissions for graduate biomedical research and medical school programs and hiring of postdoctoral researchers, and the NIH cancelling undergraduate internships and postbaccalaureate programs. Reports in mid-March stated that the NIH was expected to fire 3,400 to 5,000 people from its 20,000 person workforce.
|
||||
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) social vulnerability index and environmental justice index, which measured disparities in health risks, were removed from the organization's website, and on January 31, the data portal was taken completely offline in response to Executive Order 14168, which mandated that federal agencies use "sex" instead of "gender" and that they only recognize male and female sexes. AtlasPlus, an interactive CDC tool for tracking diseases such as HIV, hepatitis, sexually transmitted infections, and tuberculosis, was taken down. Census web pages about sexual identity and orientation were taken offline, and CDC pages about HIV and LGBTQ+ youth also disappeared. According to The Atlantic, the Trump administration targeted and replaced keywords in CDC content, including "pregnant people, transgender, binary, non-binary, gender, assigned at birth, binary [sic], non-binary [sic], cisgender, queer, gender identity, gender minority, anything with pronouns". About 750 CDC employees were fired over the weekend of February 15 with leadership stating that 10% (1,300) would be notified of their termination. The Food and Drug Administration purged online material on clinical trial diversity that encouraged drug developers to test the effects of medical treatments on different populations. After a court order, many web pages were restored. The administration added a disclaimer to the restored websites that notes the administration's opposition to what it terms "gender ideology", claiming it is "inaccurate".
|
||||
Layoffs at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) began on February 27, 2025 when 880 employees (approximately 5% of the organization) were fired. The administration stated that no critical employees such as National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologists were cut, though a source within the NWS reported to CBS News that meteorologists were included in the layoffs.
|
||||
In some cases, the government attempted to rehire scientists. Members of the technical staff at the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the nuclear arsenal, were fired on February 13; attempts to contact them for rehiring failed because their emails had been disconnected. The Department of Agriculture fired several scientists working on the ongoing avian flu outbreak over the same weekend and attempted to rehire them. Members of the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service were told their positions were eliminated, but the decision was reversed after an outcry.
|
||||
There were dismissals of thousands of researchers and other employees of the Departments of Agriculture, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services (including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)), and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
|
||||
There were controversial appointments, such as those of anti-vaccine advocate and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services; climate change denialist Lee Zeldin as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency; and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) co-founder Linda McMahon as secretary of education.
|
||||
There were threats to defund major universities, and actions such as freezing dozens of Department of Energy grants to Princeton University.
|
||||
|
||||
There were mass deletions of open-access datasets, papers, and study protocols from across the federal government.
|
||||
A New York Times analysis of funding through April identified 1,389 awards from the NIH that were cancelled and over 1,000 more that had been delayed, a reduction of $1.6 billion, or about one-fifth compared to the previous year. In the preceding decade, there were about 20 awards terminated each year (usually for circumstances like research misconduct or illness) and since 2012, fewer than five had been terminated for violating the NIH's terms and conditions. A ProPublica investigation spoke to over 150 researchers whose funding had been cut and identified over 30 clinical trials that were abruptly cancelled as well as studies into preventing stillbirths, child suicides, and infant brain damage.
|
||||
According to the New York Times, government agencies also began compiling lists of keywords to search for to find grants to eliminate. Duke University's Chronicle reported that this approach led to cancellations of grants unrelated to DEI because they used the "trans-" prefix, such as in "transgenic material" or "signal transduction", or contained words like "systemic" in the context of neural circuits.
|
||||
The administration proposed removing the NSF from its headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, which would displace over 1,800 employees and give the space to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The NSF employee union claimed plans for the space included a dedicated executive suite with a dining room and gym for secretary of HUD Scott Turner, which Turner denied. The building had been completed in 2017 with specifications to house the NSF.
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||||
== Budget plans ==
|
||||
In April 2025, budget planning documents within the Trump administration indicated the intention to reduce funding for a variety of science agencies in Fiscal Year 2026, which begins on October 1, 2025:
|
||||
|
||||
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: reduce funding from $9.2 billion to $5.2 billion, a 44% cut.
|
||||
National Aeronautics and Space Administration science directorate: reduce funding from $7.5 billion to $3.9 billion, a 52% cut.
|
||||
National Institutes of Health: reduce funding from $47 billion to $27 billion, a 40% cut. Eliminate National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities and the National Institute of Nursing Research.
|
||||
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: reduce funding from $6.1 billion to $4.5 billion, a 26% cut. Eliminate the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research.
|
||||
National Science Foundation: reduce funding from $9 billion to $4, a 55% cut.
|
||||
These budget plans were reported in the press at the "passback" stage, at which the Office of Management and Budget sends its preferred revisions to agency budget requests. These cuts were formalized in the administration's FY 2026 budget, released on May 2.
|
||||
|
||||
== Scientific publishing ==
|
||||
Multiple scientific journals received letters in April 2025 from the Department of Justice under interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Edward R. Martin Jr. asking six questions about their editorial processes. Journals receiving the letter included CHEST and the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). A former editor in chief of Science stated the letters were an attempt to intimidate scientists, and other experts stated they could have a chilling effect. Prior to inauguration, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had mentioned potentially prosecuting journals for not publishing "real science", naming NEJM specifically. Other journals had received the letters but did not reveal it out of fear of retribution.
|
||||
Kennedy stated on the Ultimate Human podcast that government scientists would no longer publish in preeminent journals such as NEJM, The Lancet, or The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), believing them to be corrupt and controlled by the pharmaceutical industry; instead, scientists would publish in government-run journals. This would be a historical reversal, as peer review arose in the country to avoid undue government influence on research. Funding sources for such journals were not specified, and at the time two NIH-funded journals had paused activities because of funding uncertainty, and Health and Human Services (HHS) had proposed cutting two journals run by the CDC.
|
||||
The administration began cutting subscriptions in June to Springer Nature, which publishes over 3000 journals including its flagship Nature. NIH officials initially stated that their subscriptions remained, though an HHS spokesperson later stated all contracts with Springer Nature were terminated, stating "Precious taxpayer dollars should be [sic] not be used on unused subscriptions to junk science".
|
||||
|
||||
== Reactions and consequences ==
|
||||
Largely made by executive order, the cuts are drawing many lawsuits and marches and rallies against them.
|
||||
By February 2025, the scale of funding in question began raising concerns of "brain drain", and 75% of scientists responding to a March survey by Nature were considering leaving the country. On March 31, an open letter for the American people was published, warning the danger of attacks on science from the Trump administration, including threats to universities, federal grant cancelations and ideological funding reviews, mass federal government layoffs, resignations and censorship. It was signed by over 1,900 scientists of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The letter stated "We see real danger in this moment, [...] We hold diverse political beliefs, but we are united as researchers in wanting to protect independent scientific inquiry. We are sending this SOS to sound a clear warning: the nation's scientific enterprise is being decimated. [...] If our country's research enterprise is dismantled, we will lose our scientific edge. [...] The damage to our nation's scientific enterprise could take decades to reverse."
|
||||
By April, US scientists are reportedly looking for career opportunities abroad in greater numbers due to the administration's slashing of science funding and workforce numbers, with a 32% increase in applications for jobs abroad and a 35% increase in US-based users browsing jobs abroad, with economists considering which other countries might benefit most.
|
||||
In June, over 300 NIH staff signed the Bethesda Declaration condemning mass layoffs and program cuts and calling on Jay Bhattacharya to restore funding to the agency. The letter was co-signed by thousands of scientists internationally and over 20 Nobel laureates. Also that month a federal judge ruled that the cutting of hundreds of NIH grants for ostensible focus on gender identity or DEI was "arbitrary and capricious" and ordered that grants be restored.
|
||||
Historian Paul Josephson compared the damage to American science done by the appointment of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to the promotion of Lysenkoism in the Stalinist Soviet Union over the correct biological understanding of genetics after the appointment of Trofim Lysenko in 1940. Josephson also compared the more general repression of science in the Soviet Union to Trumpist attacks on universities and scientific research.
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
Anti-intellectualism
|
||||
Censorship
|
||||
Political interference with science agencies by the first Trump administration
|
||||
2025 United States government online resource removals
|
||||
Science policy of the United States
|
||||
Science and technology in the United States
|
||||
United States federal budget
|
||||
NOAA under the second presidency of Donald Trump
|
||||
Weather modification projects during the second presidency of Donald Trump
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
== Further reading ==
|
||||
Pagel, Christina; Buse, Kent; McKee, Martin (2024-11-28). "Evidence abandoned: Trump's cabinet and the fallout for science". BMJ. 387 q2654. doi:10.1136/bmj.q2654. ISSN 1756-1833. PMID 39608840.
|
||||
Tollefson, Jeff; Kozlov, Max; Witze, Alexandra; Garisto, Dan (2025-02-20). "Trump's siege of science: how the first 30 days unfolded and what's next". Nature. 638 (8052): 865–867. Bibcode:2025Natur.638..865T. doi:10.1038/d41586-025-00525-1. ISSN 1476-4687. PMID 39979570.
|
||||
"How the Trump administration is halting scientific research: Short Wave". NPR. Retrieved 2025-03-25.
|
||||
Khullar, Dhruv (2025-03-09). "Trump's Agenda Is Undermining American Science". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2025-03-25.
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The Soon and Baliunas controversy involved the publication in 2003 of a review study titled Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years, written by aerospace engineer Willie Soon and astronomer Sallie Baliunas and published in the journal Climate Research. In the review, the authors expressed disagreement with the hockey stick graph and argued that historical temperature changes were related to solar variation rather than greenhouse gas emissions as was the position of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other researchers. The publication was quickly taken up by the George W. Bush administration as a basis for amending the first Environmental Protection Agency's Report on the Environment.
|
||||
The paper was strongly criticized by numerous scientists for its methodology and for its misuse of data from previously published studies, which prompted concerns about the peer review process of the paper. The controversy resulted in the resignation of half of the editors of the journal and in the admission by its publisher, Otto Kinne, that the paper should not have been published as it was. The article and responses to it featured in further global warming controversy, including questions about funding of the paper.
|
||||
|
||||
== Background ==
|
||||
|
||||
=== IPCC and the Kyoto protocol ===
|
||||
|
||||
By the late 1980s, scientific findings indicated that greenhouse gases including CO2 emissions were leading to global warming. There was increasing public and political interest, and in 1987 the World Meteorological Organization pressed for an international scientific panel to assess the topic. The United States Reagan administration, worried about political influence of scientists, successfully lobbied for the 1988 formation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to provide reports subject to detailed approval by government delegates. The IPCC First Assessment Report included a "schematic diagram" of global temperature variations over the last thousand years which has been traced to a graph based loosely on Hubert Lamb's 1965 paper. The IPCC Second Assessment Report (SAR) of 1996 featured a graph of an early northern hemisphere reconstruction by Raymond S. Bradley and Phil Jones, and noted the 1994 reconstruction by Hughes and Henry F. Diaz questioning how widespread the Medieval Warm Period had been at any one time.
|
||||
Efforts to reduce CO2 emissions were resisted by industrial interests, and political pressures increased as the international Kyoto Protocol was opposed by lobbyists such as the American Petroleum Institute who sought climatologists to dissent and undermine its scientific credibility.
|
||||
In 1998, Mann, Bradley and Hughes published a multiproxy study (MBH98) which used a new statistical approach to find patterns of climate change in both time and global distribution, over the past six centuries In 1999 they extended their approach to 1,000 years in a study (MBH99) summarised in a graph which showed relatively little change until a sharp rise in the 20th century, earning it the nickname of the hockey stick graph. In 2001 the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR) included a version of this graph which was frequently featured in literature publicising the findings of the IPCC report that the 1990s were likely to have been the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, of the past millennium in the Northern Hemisphere.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Soon and Baliunas ===
|
||||
After the publicity the MBH99 study had been given by the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR), the "hockey stick controversy" developed in which the graph was targeted by those opposing ratification of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, including Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas. Both were astrophysicists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics: Soon had for a long time said that climate change was primarily due to solar variation, while Baliunas had previously been noted for disputing that man-made chemicals (halocarbon refrigerants such as CFCs) were causing ozone depletion. They prepared a literature review which used data from previous papers to argue that the Medieval Warm Period had been warmer than the 20th century, and that recent warming was not unusual. They sent their paper to one of the editors of Climate Research, Chris de Freitas, an opponent of action to curb carbon dioxide emissions who has been characterized by Fred Pearce as a "climate contrarian". Unusually for a peer reviewed journal, Climate Research at the time did not have one editor in chief that would distribute submitted papers amongst its editors, leaving its authors free to "shop around" for one that would be friendly to their views.
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||||
== Publication ==
|
||||
Chris de Freitas, as an editor at Climate Research, accepted the paper written by Soon and Baliunas and it was published in the small refereed journal on 31 January 2003 under the title Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years. The article reviewed 240 previously published papers and tried to find evidence for temperature anomalies in the last thousand years such as the Medieval warm period (MWP) and the Little Ice Age (LIA). The authors pointed out their disagreement with the Mann, Bradley, and Hughes hockey stick studies; "Our results suggest a different interpretation of the multiproxy climates compared to recent conclusions of Mann et al. (1998, 1999, 2000)." Their abstract concluded that "Across the world, many records reveal that the 20th century is probably not the warmest or a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium". The paper acknowledged funding support from the American Petroleum Institute, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and NASA, while stating that the views were those of the authors and were independent of the sponsoring agencies.
|
||||
In the Spring of 2003, Soon and Baliunas, with three additional co-authors, published a longer version of the paper in Energy and Environment. The three additional co-authors were Craig Idso, Sherwood Idso, and David Legates. A press release dated 31 March 2003 headed "20th Century Climate Not So Hot" announced the paper with a statement lacking the caveats of the original paper; "Soon and his colleagues concluded that the 20th century is neither the warmest century over the last 1000 years, nor is it the most extreme."
|
||||
In the paper, Soon, Baliunas, and their co-authors investigated the correlation between solar variation and temperatures of the Earth's atmosphere. When there are more sunspots, the total solar output increases, and when there are fewer sunspots, it decreases. Soon and Baliunas attributed the Medieval warm period to such an increase in solar output, and believe that decreases in solar output led to the Little Ice Age, a period of cooling lasting until the mid-19th Century. In a statement to The Chronicle of Higher Education, Soon said that, "When you compare the 20th century to the previous nine centuries, you do not see the change in the 20th century as anything unusual or unprecedented."
|
||||
Rather than showing quantitative data, they primarily categorized research by others into those supporting, and those not supporting, the MWP and the LIA as defined by themselves. Soon said "I was stating outright that I'm not able to give too many quantitative details, especially in terms of aggregating all the results". They used a very loose definition of climate anomaly, including any period of 50 years or more that was wet, dry, warm or cold. Though "mindful" that the MWP and LIA are both defined by temperature, "we emphasize that great bias would result if those thermal anomalies were to be dissociated" from climatic conditions such as wetness and dryness, but wetness and dryness were undefined and only "referred to the standard usage in English." Their selection of a 50-year plus period excluded recent warming, which had occurred in two periods of 30 years in the 20th century, with the greatest warming in the late 20th century.
|
||||
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||||
== Responses from other scientists, political intervention ==
|
||||
Initially, the scientists whose work was being disputed by Soon and Baliunas felt it was one of a series of sceptical papers that, in Mann's words, "couldn't get published in a reputable journal". In March he wrote to Phil Jones that "I believed our only choice was to ignore this paper. They've already achieved what they wanted, the claim of a peer-reviewed paper. There is nothing we can do about that now, but the last thing we want is to bring attention to the paper." Jones replied "I think the sceptics will use this paper to their own ends and it will set paleo back a number of years if it goes unchallenged. I will be emailing the journal to tell them I'm having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor", referring to de Freitas. At the time the second Soon et al. paper was publicised, Mann emailed Fred Pearce to say that it "was absurd, almost laughable (if it wasn't, as is transparently evident, being used as a policy–and politics–driven publicity stunt to support the dubious positions on climate change of some prominent American politicians)", and added that the paper made no attempt to find if the past warm temperatures it reported were contemporaneous or merely one-off scattered events.
|
||||
The Bush administration was involved in editing the first Environmental Protection Agency Report on the Environment prior to the draft being made public. The administration's Council on Environmental Quality chief of staff Philip Cooney deleted all references to surface temperature reconstructions showing world temperatures rising over the last 1,000 years, and on 21 April 2003 sent a memo to Kevin O'Donovan in the Office of the Vice President stating "The recent paper of Soon-Baliunas contradicts a dogmatic view held by many in the climate science community that the past century was the warmest in the past millennium and signals human induced "global warming". ... We plan to begin to refer to this study in Administration communications on the science of global climate change; in fact, CEQ just inserted a reference to it in the final draft chapter on global climate change contained in EPA's first "State of the Environment" report. ... With both the National Academy and IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) holding that the 20th Century is the warmest of the past thousand years (see below), this recent study begins to provide a counterbalance on the point to those two authorities. It represents an opening to potentially invigorate debate on the actual climate history of the past 1000 years and whether that history reinforces or detracts from our level of confidence regarding the potential human influence on global climate change."
|
||||
By May the journal's editors Hans von Storch and Clare Goodess were receiving numerous complaints and critiques of the paper from other scientists, to such an extent that they raised the issues with de Freitas and the journal's publisher Otto Kinne. In reply, de Freitas said they were "a mix of a witch-hunt and the Spanish Inquisition".
|
||||
Other scientists also criticized the study's methods and argued that the authors had misrepresented or misinterpreted their data. Some of those whose work was referenced by Soon and Baliunas were particularly critical. Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography commented that "the fact that [the paper] has received any attention at all is a result, again in my view, of its utility to those groups who want the global warming issue to just go away". Malcolm K. Hughes of the University of Arizona, whose work on dendrochronology was discussed in the paper, said the paper was "so fundamentally misconceived and contains so many egregious errors that it would take weeks to list and explain them all." Peter Stott, a climatologist at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, said "Their analysis doesn't consider whether the warm/cold periods occurred at the same time". The paper would count warm or wet conditions in one region from 800 to 850 and dry conditions in a separate region from 1200 to 1250 as both demonstrating the Medieval Warm period. He noted that regional periods of warmth or cooling do not always occur at the same time as the global average warms or cools.
|
||||
The media requested opinions from climate scientists and paleoclimatologists familiar with the issues underlying the Soon and Baliunas papers, and to help with information Mann and Michael Oppenheimer drafted and circulated privately a memorandum providing detailed guidance on the topic. They stated "Nothing in the paper undermines in any way the conclusion of earlier studies that the average temperature of the late twentieth century in the Northern Hemisphere was anomalous against the background of the past millennium". Colleagues receiving these requests from the media included Tom Wigley, Philip Jones and Raymond S. Bradley.
|
||||
The memorandum developed into a more general position paper jointly authored by 13 climate scientists, which was published on 8 July 2003 in the journal Eos as an article "On Past Temperatures and Anomalous Late-20th Century Warmth". Most of the paper's authors had been cited in the Soon and Baliunas 2003 paper (SB03). The Eos paper made three key points: the SB03 and Soon et al. papers had misused precipitation and drought proxies without assessing their sensitivity to temperature, they had taken regional temperature changes as global changes without any attempt to show that they had occurred at the same time across the world, and they had taken as their base period for comparison mean temperatures over the whole of the 20th century, reconstructing past temperatures from proxy evidence not capable of resolving decadal trends, thus failing to show whether or not late 20th century warming was anomalous. The IPCC TAR had concluded that late 20th century northern hemisphere warmth was likely to have exceeded warmth of any time in the past 1,000 years on the basis of studies that compared temperatures for recent decades with reconstructions of earlier periods while allowing for uncertainties in the reconstructions. Soon, Baliunas and Legates published a response to this paper in the same journal.
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Soon and Baliunas controversy"
|
||||
chunk: 4/6
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soon_and_Baliunas_controversy"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:18:22.543337+00:00"
|
||||
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|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
== Response of journal editors ==
|
||||
On 20 June 2003 the publisher of Climate Research, Otto Kinne, agreed to ask de Freitas for copies of the reviewer's evaluations: after studying the response, he advised the editors of his "Conclusions: 1) The reviewers consulted (4 for each ms) by the editor presented detailed, critical and helpful evaluations. 2) The editor properly analyzed the evaluations and requested appropriate revisions. 3) The authors revised their manuscripts accordingly. Summary: Chris de Freitas has done a good and correct job as editor."
|
||||
The journal had 10 editors, who at that time each independently received and accepted manuscripts from authors. One of the editors, Clare Goodess, recalled that many of them were "somewhat confused and still very concerned about what had happened". The paper "had apparently gone to four reviewers none of whom had recommended rejection", and "The review process had apparently been correct, but a fundamentally flawed paper had been published." She and fellow editor Hans von Storch knew of three earlier papers edited by de Freitas where concerns had been raised about the review process.
|
||||
To meet the concerns, Kinne proposed to adopt the more common system where instead of editors acting fully independently, an editor in chief would have overall responsibility, and that Hans von Storch would be upgraded from editor to editor in chief as of 1 August 2003. At first von Storch thought the objections to the Soon and Balunas paper should be presented in a comment which they could consider for publication, but when he saw a preprint of the Eos rebuttal of the paper he decided that "We should say that we have a problem here, that the manuscript was flawed, that the manuscript should not have been published in this way. The problem is that the conclusions are not supported by the evidence presented in the paper."
|
||||
On 28 July von Storch drafted an editorial stating that "the review process of CR failed to confront the authors with necessary and legitimate methodological questions which should have been addressed in the finally printed paper", and proposing a new system in which all new papers were to be sent to the editor in chief rather than directly to individual editors as previously. While Kinne agreed that the Soon and Baliunas paper should not have been published as it was, he did not accept von Storch's proposal and wanted prior agreement from all the other editors before von Storch's editorial was published. When von Storch found that some of the other editors thought the Soon and Baliunas paper was acceptable, he "concluded that we have different standards", and suspected that "some of the skeptics had identified Climate Research as a journal where some editors were not as rigorous in the review process as is otherwise common.". He felt that "editors used different scales for judging the validity of an article. Some editors considered the problem of the Soon & Baliunas paper as merely a problem of 'opinion', while it was really a problem of severe methodological flaws. Thus, I decided that I had to disconnect from that journal, which I had served proudly for about 10 years."
|
||||
Hans von Storch resigned on the same day, 28 July, and condemned the journal's review process in his resignation letter: "The review process had utterly failed; important questions have not been asked ... the methodological basis for such a conclusion (that the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climate period of the last millennium) was simply not given." Clare Goodess also resigned later that day.
|
||||
|
||||
== Senate hearing ==
|
||||
When the McCain-Lieberman bill proposing restrictions on greenhouse gases was being debated in the Senate on 28 July 2003, Republican Oklahoma Senator James M. Inhofe made a two-hour speech in opposition. He cited a study by the Center for Energy and Economic Development and the Soon and Baliunas paper in supporting his conclusion: "With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it."
|
||||
Inhofe convened a hearing of the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works held on 29 July 2003, examining work by the small group of researchers saying there was no evidence of significant human-caused global warming. Three scientists were invited, Mann giving testimony supporting the consensus position, opposed by long term global warming deniers Willie Soon and David Legates. The Soon and Baliunas paper was discussed. Senator Jim Jeffords read out an email dated 28 July. In it, von Storch announced his resignation, and stated "that the review of the Soon et al. paper failed to detect significant methodological flaws in the paper. The critique published in the Eos journal by Mann et al. is valid." In reply, Mann testified about the Soon et al. paper, "I believe it is the mainstream view of just about every scientist in my field that I have talked to that there is little that is valid in that paper. They got just about everything wrong." He later recalled that he "left that meeting having demonstrated what the mainstream views on climate science are."
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Soon and Baliunas controversy"
|
||||
chunk: 5/6
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soon_and_Baliunas_controversy"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:18:22.543337+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
== Subsequent resignations ==
|
||||
In a Climate Research editorial pre-published on 5 August 2003, its publisher Otto Kinne expressed regrets about the resignations of von Storch, Goodess, and a third editor, Mitsuru Ando. Kinne described the main conclusions of the Soon and Baliunas paper; that the late 20th century was probably not the warmest period nor uniquely extreme in the last 2,000 years, and most of the proxy records had warmer anomalies at earlier times. He wrote "While these statements may be true, the critics point out that they cannot be concluded convincingly from the evidence provided in the paper. CR should have requested appropriate revisions of the manuscript prior to publication." Kinne told the New York Times that "I have not stood behind the paper by Soon and Baliunas. Indeed: the reviewers failed to detect methodological flaws."
|
||||
On 19 August 2003, Tom Wigley wrote to a colleague that "I have had papers that I refereed (and soundly rejected), under De Freitas’s editorship, appear later in the journal — without me seeing any response from the authors. As I have said before to others, his strategy is first to use mainly referees that are in the anti-greenhouse community, and second, if a paper is rejected, to ignore that review and seek another more 'sympathic' reviewer. In the second case he can then (with enough reviews) claim that the honest review was an outlier." Wigley supported the suggestion of an ethics committee, which he would be willing to serve on. Until then, he urged others to "dissociate themselves from Climate Research". The editors who had not resigned appeared to him to be mostly "a rogues’ gallery of skeptics", and he thought any reputable scientists still listed as editors should resign.
|
||||
By this time four editors had left the journal: von Storch, Clare Goodess, Mitsuru Ando and Shardul Argawala. In mid September Andrew Comrie also withdrew, so five editors had resigned; half of the journal's editorial board. The five remaining editors included de Freitas.
|
||||
|
||||
== Later investigations ==
|
||||
In September 2003 Soon told The Chronicle of Higher Education that the critics had mischaracterized the research in the paper. He said that he had used precipitation data because too many scientists had concentrated on temperature records which, in Soon's opinion, are not the only measures of climate. He added that "Some of the proxy information doesn't contain directly the temperature information, but it fits the general description of the medieval warm climatic anomaly. This is a first-order study to try to collect as much data as possible and try not to make the pretension that we know how to separate the information in the proxy."
|
||||
In 2006, Osborn and Briffa published a paper on "The Spatial Extent of 20th-Century Warmth in the Context of the Past 1200 Years", and concluded that "comparison with instrumental temperatures shows the spatial extent of recent warmth to be of greater significance than that during the medieval period." They reexamined the questions raised in the Baliunas and Soon study, but used different statistical methodology, restricted themselves to records that were validated as temperature proxies, and considered the timing of temperature anomalies in different regions to examine whether they had happened at the same time, or were from different periods reflecting local rather than global changes. They found that by far the most widespread warming had occurred after the mid 20th century.
|
||||
|
||||
== Funding controversy ==
|
||||
Questions have also been raised about funding for the paper. Soon and Baliunas "was in part underwritten by $53,000 from the American Petroleum Institute, the voice of the oil industry".
|
||||
Also, the additional sources of funding mentioned in the papers were apparently unrelated to the research presented in Soon and Baliunas 2003 and in Soon et al. 2003: both the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and NASA stated that they had provided funds for work on solar variability, not for work related to proxy climate records as discussed in the papers, while the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it had not provided funds for the research. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Grant AF49620-02-1-0194, deals with Theory and Observation of Stellar Magnetic Activity, and NASA grant NAG5-7635 studies variability of stars. When questioned during the 29 July 2003 Senate hearing, Soon said that the NOAA grant for Soon et al. was awarded to David Legates, and the papers, showing research into detailed patterns of local and regional climate variability, were directly relevant to his main goal of research on physical mechanisms of the sun-climate relationship. When asked if he had been "hired by or employed by or received grants from organizations that have taken advocacy positions with respect to the Kyoto Protocol, the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or legislation before the U.S. Congress that would affect greenhouse gas emissions", he responded "I have not knowingly been hired by, nor employed by, nor received grants from any such organizations described in this question."
|
||||
Connections between the paper's authors and oil industry groups have been well documented. Soon and Baliunas were at the time paid consultants of the George C. Marshall Institute. Soon has also received multiple grants from the American Petroleum Institute between 2001 and 2007 totalled $274,000, and grants from ExxonMobil totalled $335,000 between 2005 and 2010. Other contributors to Soon's research career include the Charles G. Koch Foundation, which gave Soon two grants totaling $175,000 in 2005/6 and again in 2010, and coal and oil industry sources such as Mobil Foundation, the Texaco Foundation and the Electric Power Research Institute. Soon has stated that he has "never been motivated by financial reward in any of my scientific research."
|
||||
Soon's co-authors Craig D. Idso and Sherwood B. Idso have also received industry funding. They have been linked to Western coal interests, and the ExxonMobil Foundation provided a grant of $15,000 to their Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change in 2000.
|
||||
|
||||
== Climatic Research Unit emails ==
|
||||
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Soon and Baliunas controversy"
|
||||
chunk: 6/6
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soon_and_Baliunas_controversy"
|
||||
category: "reference"
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||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:18:22.543337+00:00"
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instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
In November 2009, emails and documents which had been hacked from a server belonging to the University of East Anglia were distributed on the internet. Many of the emails included communication between climatologists in East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and other scientists, including Michael E. Mann. Several of the emails included conversations about Soon and Baliunas' paper as the controversy was ongoing in 2003 and 2004. In an 18 December 2009 column in The Wall Street Journal, Pat Michaels alleged that pressure from Jones and Mann was responsible for the resignations at Climate Research. On 22 December 2009 von Storch responded in the Wall Street Journal that his resignation as editor of Climate Research had nothing to do with any pressure from Jones, Mann, or anyone else, but instead he "left this post on my own, with no outside pressure, because of insufficient quality control on a bad paper—a skeptic's paper, at that."
|
||||
The Independent Climate Change Email Review, an independent review funded by the University of East Anglia and chaired by Sir Muir Russell, examined allegations that the emails showed attempts to undermine normal procedures of publication. Phil Jones gave evidence that he believed the paper showed self-evident errors and the reaction was both proper and proportionate: the review noted that the publisher Otto Kinne had admitted that the paper had problems, and considered that Jones could not reasonably be criticised for his reaction. A paper prepared for the review by Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, showed that strong responses were not uncommon in the peer review process. The review concluded that the strong reaction to the Soon and Baliunas paper "was understandable, and did not amount to undue pressure on Climate Research.
|
||||
In petitions to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Coalition for Responsible Regulation, the Ohio Coal Association, Peabody Energy, the Southeastern Legal Foundation, and the State of Texas argued that emails from March and April 2003 showed scientists discussing a boycott of the journal Climate Research and trying to get de Freitas removed, leading to the resignations of editors. They quoted Phil Jones writing that "I will be e-mailing the journal to tell them I'm having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor", and Mann's email response that "I think we have to stop considering 'Climate Research' as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal." Tom Wigley wrote that von Storch "is partly to blame — he encourages the publication of crap science ‘in order to stimulate debate’. One approach is to go direct to the publishers and point out the fact that their journal is perceived as being a medium for disseminating misinformation under the guise of refereed work." The EPA noted that the publisher Kinne had later agreed that the peer review process was flawed, and editors had then resigned as they could not get him to agree corrective action. The emails expressed displeasure but did not show that any action was in fact taken, and it is "expected and appropriate that researchers choose in which journals to publish, as well as recommend to their peers journals in which to publish or not publish. In this case, the bottom line is that the underlying science at issue has been shown to be flawed. The scientists' actions were focused on this lack of scientific merit and the process that lead to it, and not an attempt to distort the science or the scientific literature." The EPA considered that "If anything, their actions aimed to police the peer review process and rectify a problem that threatened its scientific integrity."
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
Pearce, Fred (2010). The Climate Files: The Battle for the Truth About Global Warming. Random House UK. ISBN 978-0-85265-229-9.
|
||||
|
||||
== Further reading ==
|
||||
"Reconstructing Climatic and Environmental Changes of the Past 1000 Years: A Reappraisal" (abstract), by Soon W.; Baliunas S.; Idso C.; Idso S.; Legates D.R: Energy & Environment, Volume 14, Numbers 2–3, 1 May 2003. Full text. The companion paper to the controversial Climate Research paper discussed here.
|
||||
30
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teissier_affair-0.md
Normal file
30
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teissier_affair-0.md
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||||
---
|
||||
title: "Teissier affair"
|
||||
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|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teissier_affair"
|
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category: "reference"
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|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:18:25.120988+00:00"
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|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
The Teissier affair was a controversy that occurred in France in 2001. French astrologer Élizabeth Teissier was awarded a doctorate in sociology by Paris Descartes University for a doctoral thesis in which she argued that astrology was being oppressed by science. Her work was contested by the scientific community within the context of the science wars, and compared to the Sokal hoax. Criticisms included the alleged failure to work within the field of sociology and also lacking the necessary scientific rigour for a doctoral thesis in any scientific field. The university and jury who awarded the degree were harshly criticised, though both they and Teissier had supporters and defenders.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Teissier's doctorate ==
|
||||
On April 7, 2001, Elizabeth Teissier defended her thesis entitled Situation épistémologique de l'astrologie à travers l'ambivalence fascination-rejet dans les sociétés postmodernes ("The Epistemological Situation of Astrology in Relation to the Ambivalent Fascination/Rejection of Postmodern Societies") – accounts of the defense have been published. Her studies at the University of Paris Descartes were under the supervision of Michel Maffesoli, an Emeritus Professor of Sociology. The central idea of the thesis was described by The New York Times as being that astrology is being oppressed by science, which Teissier called "official science" and "monolithic thought". Teissier argued, however, that her work is devoid of bias and had "focused only on the misunderstanding that astrology as a multimillennial knowledge vehicle" provokes. Her prepared statement was enthusiastically received by her supporters, but there was also a declaration from the editor-in-chief of Science et Vie Junior that what was occurring was a "farce". At end of the defense, the jury deliberated only briefly before Serge Moscovici admitted Teissier to her doctoral degree with the "very honourable" distinction.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Initial reaction ==
|
||||
Controversy erupted in the scientific community following the decision, and several sociologists also publicly challenged its legitimacy. The university was criticised for granting the degree, as was the jury, along with Teissier's statements in support of astrology as a science, though the university rejected accusations of "irresponsibility". A petition signed by over 370 sociologists was sent to Professor Pierre Daumard, the President of the university; he responded that the Teissier had complied with all university requirements and it is not his place to question the "guarantees of the scientific validity of the thesis" from the independent jury. Daumard also defended that astrology is a legitimate subject for sociological study for its impact on society, a point on which Teissier's critics agreed. These critics were themselves criticised for their "incendiary" complaints which targeted her personally for her astrological beliefs instead of based on her thesis. Critics were also described as engaging in a witch-hunt whose true target was the academic reputation of Michel Maffesoli. Maffesoli addressed the controversy in an email on 23 April 2001, acknowledging that the thesis included some "slippages" but minimising the importance of these errors. Maffesoli added that there is a "manhunt" against him and more broadly against scientific and intellectual rigor in "diverse approaches to sociology", but still engaged with critics such as Christian Baudelot at an ASES-organised symposium on the Teissier affair. Maffesoli did state during the defense that he had tried to keep Teissier focused on the sociological impact of astrology rather than discussing its scientific legitimacy, while still maintaining that the thesis demonstrated sufficient sociological significance to justify awarding the doctorate.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== AFIS analysis ==
|
||||
Once the thesis was available following the defense, the Association française pour l'information scientifique (AFIS) organised a group to critique the thesis; the analysis was published by a multi-disciplinary group (two experts in pseudoscience, including the editor of the AFIS Science et pseudo-sciences, three astrophysicists, two sociologists, and a philosopher) on 6 August 2001. They looked at the scientific, philosophical, and sociological aspects of Teissier's thesis, describing it as "not a thesis in sociology but actually pro-astrological advocacy". They concluded that the Teissier's work did not meet the requirements of scientific rigor of doctoral research, regardless of the discipline in question. They described the jury as having accepted the thesis "in defiance of basic academic requirements of objectivity and intellectual honesty" in part because the AFIS group's multidisciplinary analysis shows that "no relevant standard (analytical rigor, objectivity, indication of sources, style of writing, etc.) had truly been fulfilled". They comment all Teissier has achieved is to "demonstrate once again that [astrology] does not deserve the status of an intellectual discipline that can be taught in a university course". According to the journal Skepter, the "thesis pretends to provide irrefutable proof that astrology is a science, but the author has no idea what constitutes a scientific proof, she is muddleminded about basic astronomical and astrological facts, and the pièce de resistance of her argument consists of statements about Michel Gauquelin which can only be called lies." Examples of excerpts from the thesis which bear this out, according to Broch, include unsupported medical claims, fundamental errors in astronomy, and a lack of proper evidence. Teissier was "completely appalled" that a "tiny group" would question the award of her doctorate and did not exclude the possibility of suing the AFIS, who published the critique of her thesis, after its "intolerable attack" on academic freedom.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== Wider context ==
|
||||
Discussion of the circumstances of Teissier's doctorate occurred and continues to occur with the context of the science wars, a dispute which pitted humanities academics taking postmodernist perspectives against scientists taking positivist and rationalist approaches. In particular, comparisons have been made to the Sokal hoax, in that each case exemplifies the alleged support for pseudoscience and hostility to science within postmodernist circles. The emphatic language and personalised tone of the debate around Teissier's work was fuelled by the broader ongoing conflict, as was the targeting of Maffesoli and the description of the university as "heavily influenced by so-called post-modern ideologists" (emphasis in original). It also explains criticisms of the jury for its failure to seek input from scientists (a bone of contention in the science wars), and the unusually personalised tone of comments such as that Teissier, "very astutely, has taken advantage of the intellectual weakness and/or incompetence of ... the nincompoops who accepted to ratify such nonsense" (bold emphases from original omitted).
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,24 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "The Skeptical Environmentalist"
|
||||
chunk: 1/5
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Skeptical_Environmentalist"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:18:21.336470+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (Danish: Verdens sande tilstand, lit. 'The True State of the World') is a book by Danish author and statistician Bjørn Lomborg which focuses on the author's view of environmental economics and issues. It was first published in Danish in 1998 by Centrum, and in English by Cambridge University Press in 2001.
|
||||
Lomborg was inspired by an interview with economist Julian Lincoln Simon to undertake an assessment of publicly available data, and published his findings as a series of articles in Politiken. These formed the basis of the book, in which Lomborg argues against a range of what he considers overly pessimistic claims about environmental issues and their impact on human prosperity. Lomborg argues that environmentalists' concerns over pollution, environmental degradation, decline in natural resources, and climate change are overstated, and outlines his opposition to policy responses like the Kyoto Protocol, deeming them insufficient and causing more harm than good based on cost–benefit analysis. He argues in favour of focus instead being channelled to poverty reduction and combating diseases.
|
||||
The book generated great controversy and negative reviews upon its release. Lomborg's assertions, methodology and representation of sources were criticised by scientists and groups both in Denmark and internationally. Positive reception in some popular media outlets contrasted sharply with this, and this combined with the ensuing debate aided the book's profile.
|
||||
The author was formally investigated by the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD) for scientific dishonesty, which confirmed the accusation and lack of expertise in relevant fields used in the book. The Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation criticised procedural aspects drawn by the DCSD, though decided not to reinvestigate. The Skeptical Environmentalist established Lomborg's profile as an opponent of the scientific consensus on climate change. In 2007, Lomborg published a follow-up work titled Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming.
|
||||
|
||||
== Background ==
|
||||
|
||||
The book was written by Bjørn Lomborg, a Danish statistician who worked at Aarhus University. The ideas and writing for the book began in the 1990s. He was inspired by an interview with Julian Lincoln Simon which was published in the magazine Wired, in which Simon claimed that calculations he had conducted with publicly available data led him to conclude that standard doomsday conceptions of the state of the world were incorrect. He assumed Simon's views were the product of his American conservative thinking, but in 1997, Lomborg undertook a similar assessment with some of his students and came to similar conclusions as Simon.
|
||||
In 1998, Lomborg published four articles in the Danish newspaper, Politiken, outlining his research and study. These attracted media coverage and controversy in Denmark. These findings were published as a book in Danish on 22 September 1998 as Verdens Sande Tilstand (The True State of the World) by Centrum. and as The Skeptical Environmentalist in English, by Cambridge University Press in 2001. Sections on global warming, notes and references were expanded in the English edition.
|
||||
|
||||
== Contents ==
|
||||
The Skeptical Environmentalist's subtitle refers to the State of the World report, published annually since 1984 by the Worldwatch Institute. Lomborg designated the report "one of the best-researched and academically most ambitious environmental policy publications," but criticized it for using short-term trends to predict disastrous consequences, in cases where long-term trends would not support the same conclusions.
|
||||
In establishing its arguments, The Skeptical Environmentalist examined a wide range of issues in the general area of environmental studies, including environmental economics and science, and came to a set of conclusions and recommendations. Lomborg's work directly challenged what it framed as "the Litany of our ever deteriorating environment" by interpreting data from around 3,000 mostly secondary sources. The author suggests that environmentalists have diverted potentially beneficial resources to less deserving environmental issues in ways that were economically damaging. He portrays his book as an unbiased and scientific refutation of the claims of environmental groups. Much of the book's methodology and integrity have been subject to criticism, which argue that Lomborg distorted the fields of research he covers.
|
||||
The Skeptical Environmentalist is arranged around four major themes:
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "The Skeptical Environmentalist"
|
||||
chunk: 2/5
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Skeptical_Environmentalist"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:18:21.336470+00:00"
|
||||
instance: "kb-cron"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Human prosperity from an economic and demographic point of view. He argues prosperity, life expectancy, food and hunger and health have improved over the past centuries in most parts of the world, despite ongoing challenges such as HIV/AIDS. He dismisses Thomas Malthus' theory that increases in the world's population lead to widespread hunger.
|
||||
Human prosperity from an ecological point of view. Lomborg examines the state of natural resources and draws a conclusion that contrasts to that of the well known report The Limits to Growth. He argues that food is increasing, with the exception of fish which is depleting. He argues that there is no indication of widespread deforestation, and economic growth is a solution to the issue in developing countries. Lomborg asserts that rare materials and oil are not being depleted as fast as is claimed, and that improvements of technology will provide people with fossil fuels for years to come. Lomborg says that water conflicts will not take place because they are not cost-effective, and argues in favour of better water management.
|
||||
Pollution as a threat to human prosperity. He connects air pollution and water pollution with economic growth, and argues that faster economic growth will reduce their impacts. He also says that fears over waste are overblown given the percentage of land they can take up.
|
||||
Future threats to human prosperity. Lomborg puts forward his main assertion that based on cost-benefit analysis, environmental threats to human prosperity are overstated and policy responses are misguided. He states his view that links between pesticide use and cancer are exaggerated and that biodiversity loss and species extinction have little impact on human prosperity. On global warming, Lomborg accepts its occurrence but expresses doubts over computer modelling and argues that policy responses such as the Kyoto Protocol have greater costs than benefits.
|
||||
Lomborg's main argument is that the vast majority of environmental problems—such as pollution, water shortages, deforestation, and species loss, as well as population growth, hunger, and AIDS—are area-specific and highly correlated with poverty. He concludes that challenges to human prosperity are essentially logistical matters, and can be solved largely through economic and social development.
|
||||
|
||||
== Reception ==
|
||||
|
||||
The book generally received negative reviews from the scientific community, focusing on the author's methodology, data issues, theories and concepts. The most common critiques were the selective use of data, followed by referencing, and lack of focus on the environmental movement. Most environmental scientists argued that the book was deeply flawed, and that the state of the environment was not clearly represented. In some cases, reviews were harsh in both content and tone.
|
||||
The Danish Ecological Council, an advisory committee on environmental issues, published a "counter-publication" which criticised Lomborg's methods and approach in his book. The publication was released in 1999 as Fremtidens Pris (The Price of the Future), written by 18 contributors of various disciplines.
|
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title: "The Skeptical Environmentalist"
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source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Skeptical_Environmentalist"
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category: "reference"
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|
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date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:18:21.336470+00:00"
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|
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The Union of Concerned Scientists published a critique of the book, highlighting reviews by Peter Gleick, Jerry D. Mahlman, Thomas Lovejoy, Norman Myers, Jeffrey Harvey, E. O. Wilson and Stuart Pimm. They concluded that the book fits squarely in a tradition of contrarian environmental works, which may gain temporary prominence but ultimately fail to stand up to scientific scrutiny. Harvey compared the book unfavourably to University undergraduate quality, and added "ecology is the most complex of sciences and Lomborg has never done a shred of work in the field". In a letter, Wilson said that the greatest regret he had about the book was "the time wasted by scientists correcting the misinformation created."
|
||||
In January 2002, a heading from Scientific American read, "Misleading Math about the Earth" and contained set of essays written by scientists on the book. The article concluded that The Skeptical Environmentalist misrepresented both scientific evidence and opinion. The journal also refused Lomborg's request of publishing a defense print of 32 pages, rather a page in the later May issue in 2002. The magazine later published his complete rebuttal on its website, along with the counter rebuttals of John Rennie and John P. Holdren.
|
||||
Nature also published a harsh review of Lomborg's book, in which Stuart Pimm of the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation at Columbia University and Jeff Harvey of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology wrote: "Like bad term papers, Lomborg's text relies heavily on secondary sources. Out of around 2,000 references, about 5% come from news sources and 30% from web downloads — readily accessible, therefore, but frequently not peer reviewed." They continued that "the text employs the strategy of those who, for example, argue that gay men aren't dying of AIDS, that Jews weren't singled out by the Nazis for extermination, and so on."
|
||||
Peter Gleick was also highly critical, stating "there is nothing original or unique in Lomborg's book. Many of his criticisms have appeared in... previous works—and even in the work of environmental scientists themselves. What is new, perhaps, is the scope and variety of the errors he makes." David Pimentel wrote a critical review in Population and Environment, particularly taking issue with Lomborg's argument on soil erosion, pesticides, deforestation and water resources. He concluded that "as an agricultural scientist and ecologist, I wish I could share Lomborg's optimistic views, but my investigations and that of countless scientists leads me to a more conservative outlook." Roger A. Pielke, meanwhile, defended Lomborg and the book, describing the debate as an example of politicising science.
|
||||
The 12 December 2001 issue of Grist devoted an issue to The Skeptical Environmentalist, with a series of essays from various scientists challenging individual sections. A separate article examining the book's overall approach by Kathryn Schulz took issue with the framing of Lomborg's conclusions, asking "[why] does he weigh the environment only against hospitals and childcare, rather than against, say, industry subsidies and defense spending?".
|
||||
Legal scholar David Shoenbrod was one of the defenders of Lomborg. In March 2003, the New York Law School Law Review published an examination of the critical reviews of Skeptical Environmentalist from the Scientific American, Nature and Science magazines by Shoenbrod and then-Senior Law Student Christi Wilson of New York Law School. The authors defend Lomborg, say that the book is "largely free from factual errors", and characterise the scientific community's response to the book as a "disingenuous attack", using legal arguments that a court should accept Lomborg as a credible expert witness in the field of statistics, given that his testimony would be appropriately restricted to his area of expertise.
|
||||
|
||||
== Media coverage ==
|
||||
The book was widely cited in conservative media and groups who oppose environmental regulations. Influential UK newsweekly The Economist supported Lomborg's views, publishing an advance essay by Lomborg in which he detailed his "litany", and following up with a highly favorable review and supportive coverage. It stated that "This is one of the most valuable books on public policy—not merely environmental policy—to have been written for the intelligent general reader in the past ten years...The Skeptical Environmentalist is a triumph."
|
||||
|
||||
In a profile of Lomborg preceding the book's publication The New York Times stated that "The primary target of the book, a substantial work of analysis with almost 3,000 footnotes, are statements made by environmental organizations like the Worldwatch Institute, the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace." In August 2001, The Guardian published three exclusive essays by Lomborg and hosted an online debate with him, describing him as "Europe's most controversial environmental thinker". The Wall Street Journal deemed Lomborg's work "a superbly documented and readable book." In The Washington Post, Denis Dutton claimed that "Bjørn Lomborg's good news about the environment is bad news for Green ideologues. His richly informative, lucid book is now the place from which environmental policy decisions must be argued. In fact, The Skeptical Environmentalist is the most significant work on the environment since the appearance of its polar opposite, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, in 1962. It's a magnificent achievement." Rolling Stone wrote that "Lomborg pulls off the remarkable feat of welding the techno-optimism of the Internet age with a lefty's concern for the fate of the planet."
|
||||
Chris Lavers gave a mixed review in The Guardian, saying Lomborg "is clearly committed to rubbishing the views of hand-picked environmentalists, frequently the very silly ones such as Ehrlich, whom professionals have been ignoring for decades" and criticising his framing of deforestation.
|
||||
In a BBC column from 23 August 2001, veteran BBC environmental correspondent Alex Kirby wrote:
|
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source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Skeptical_Environmentalist"
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date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:18:21.336470+00:00"
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I am neither a statistician nor a scientist, and I lack the skill to judge Lomborg's reworkings of the statistics of conventional wisdom. But I am worried that on virtually every topic he touches, he reaches conclusions radically different from almost everybody else. That seems to suggest that most scientists are wrong, short-sighted, naïve, interested only in securing research funds, or deliberately dancing to the campaigners' tune. Most I know are honest, intelligent and competent. So it beggars belief to suppose that Professor Lomborg is the only one in step, every single time.
|
||||
Kirby's first concern was not with the extensive research and statistical analysis, but the conclusions drawn from them, concluding: "In the rational world that Bjørn Lomborg thinks we all inhabit, we would manage problems sensibly, one by one. But the real world is messier, more unpredictable—and more impatient."
|
||||
|
||||
=== Reception of media coverage ===
|
||||
Shortly after its release, the World Resources Institute and World Wide Fund for Nature published a nine-point critique of Lomborg's work and credentials specifically targeted at journalists, advising them to "proceed with caution" in their coverage of the book. One critical article, "The Skeptical Environmentalist: A Case Study in the Manufacture of News", attributes the book's media success to its initial, influential supporters, who linked its message to a European visit from United States president George W. Bush.
|
||||
|
||||
Richard C. Bell, writing for Worldwatch argued that many reviews in prominent publications were written by individuals with prior association with Lomborg, "instead of seeking scientists with a critical perspective." In The Wall Street Journal, a review was published by the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Ronald Bailey, someone "who had earlier written a book called The True State of the World, from which much of Lomborg's claims were taken." Bell also criticized the Washington Post, whose Sunday Book World assigned the book review to Denis Dutton, identified as "a professor of philosophy who lectures on the dangers of pseudoscience at the science faculties of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand", and the editor of the web site Arts and Letters Daily. Bell noted that "The Post did not tell its readers that Dutton's web site features links to the Global Climate Coalition, an anti-Kyoto consortium of oil and coal businesses, and to the messages of Julian Simon—the man whose denial that global warming was occurring apparently gave Lomborg the idea for his book in the first place."
|
||||
|
||||
== Pieing incident ==
|
||||
|
||||
On 5 September 2001, at a promotional event at a Borders book shop in Oxford, England, British environmentalist author Mark Lynas threw a cream pie in Lomborg's face. While doing so, he said "I wanted to put a Baked Alaska in his smug face in solidarity with the native Indian and Eskimo people in Alaska". In a post on Indymedia titled "Why I pied Lomborg", Lynas stated "Lomborg specialises in presenting the reader with false choices—such as the assertion that money not spent on preventing climate change could be spent on bringing clean water to the developing world, thereby saving more lives per dollar of expenditure. Of course, in the real world, these are not the kind of choices we are faced with." Lynas also commented on the difficulty of challenging Lomborg's book, arguing "his work, as flawed as it is, has clearly been very time-consuming and meticulous. In a busy and under funded world, few people have the time or background knowledge to plow though 3,000 footnotes checking his sources. It is impressively interdisciplinary."
|
||||
Lomborg said he was "stunned" by the incident, but "at least the pie tasted good". Lynas later apologised to Lomborg and said that he regretted pieing him. The two would later be on "friendly" terms.
|
||||
|
||||
== Accusations of scientific dishonesty ==
|
||||
After the publication of The Skeptical Environmentalist, Lomborg was accused of scientific dishonesty. Several environmental scientists brought a total of three complaints against Lomborg to the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD), a body under Denmark's Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. Lomborg was asked whether he regarded the book as a "debate" publication, and thereby not under the purview of the DCSD, or as a scientific work; he chose the latter, clearing the way for the inquiry that followed. The charges stated that The Skeptical Environmentalist contained deliberately misleading data and flawed conclusions. Due to the similarity of the complaints, the DCSD decided to proceed on the three cases under one investigation.
|
||||
|
||||
=== Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty investigation ===
|
||||
A six-month review took place and on 6 January 2003, a 17-page DCSD ruling was released, in which the Committees decided that The Skeptical Environmentalist showed "systematic one-sidedness" and was scientifically dishonest, but Lomborg was innocent of wrongdoing due to a lack of expertise in the relevant fields. The investigation heavily relied on published reviews of the book.
|
||||
|
||||
The DCSD cited The Skeptical Environmentalist for fabrication of data, selective discarding of unwanted results (selective citation), deliberately misleading use of statistical methods, distorted interpretation of conclusions, plagiarism and deliberate misinterpretation of others' results.
|
||||
Lomborg defended his work, challenging the committee for not identifying specific errors. He also argued the report could jeopardise his employment at the Danish Institute for Environmental Assessment and some of his critics attempted to do this, although government officials denied his posting would be impacted.
|
||||
The DCSD decision about Lomborg led to a petition from some Danish social scientists, calling for the body to be abolished and arguing the body cannot hold the book to the same standards as medical and natural sciences. Another group of around 600 Danish scientists, many of them from medical and natural science fields, collected signatures in support of the DCSD. The ruling was also debated in parliament, and science minister Helge Sander asked the Danish Research Agency to establish a working group to scrutinise the DCSD's procedures.
|
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|
||||
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|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Skeptical_Environmentalist"
|
||||
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|
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tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:18:21.336470+00:00"
|
||||
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|
||||
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|
||||
|
||||
=== Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation review and response ===
|
||||
On 13 February 2003, Lomborg filed a complaint against the DCSD's decision with the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MSTI), which oversees the group. On 17 December, the Ministry released a report identifying a number of procedural errors had made, although did not refute any criticisms of the book. It criticised the DCSD for not identifying specific areas of error and for not providing an opportunity for Lomborg to respond before the report's publication.
|
||||
The Ministry then remitted the case to the DCSD, and instructed the DCSD to decide whether to reinvestigate. On 12 March 2004, the Committee formally decided not to act further on the complaints, reasoning that renewed scrutiny would, in all likelihood, result in the same conclusion.
|
||||
|
||||
== Legacy ==
|
||||
Jim Giles wrote a 2003 retrospective on the book in Nature, saying it was "packed with facts and figures, yet it was the emotional response that it inspired that will be best remembered," and argued that it would have little long-lasting influence. Giles suggested the intense critical reaction from scientists and environmental groups was driven by fears that the book's talking points would be adopted by the Bush administration, but their criticisms conversely boosted sales and Lomborg's profile. Cambridge University Press said sales of the book quadrupled in the month following negative reviews in Scientific American. Jeffrey Harvey, who had debated Lomborg several times by 2003, admitted that the tone of attacks on Lomborg could have been counterproductive. In 2005, an article by a group of non-climatologist scientists published in the Journal of Information Ethics, claimed that most criticism against the book was unjustified, and that the scientific community had misused their authority to suppress the author. The claim that the accusations against Lomborg were unjustified was challenged in the next issue of the journal by Kåre Fog who asserts that, "despite the ministry's decision, most of the accusations against Lomborg were valid." He also rejected the Galileo hypothesis, "that Lomborg is a brave young man confronting old-fashioned opposition."
|
||||
Another article published in the Journal of Integrative Environmental Sciences in 2010, recounted the controversy surrounding the book and criticised the author and publisher, saying "the question remains why a book that contains so many flaws by someone without any scientific credentials has received so much public attention." The article also pointed to contradiction of the principles of environmental economics in the book. They concluded that "the book is anyway sure to go down in history as an unreliable source of information and argumentation, being one of the most severely criticized texts issued ever by a prestigious academic publisher".
|
||||
Despite the controversy, The Skeptical Environmentalist established Lomborg as a public figure and prominent critic of the scientific consensus on climate change. He was named one of the Time 100 most influential people in 2004, and established the Copenhagen Consensus to institutionalize his views. He was also appointed director of the Environmental Assessment Institute in Denmark. By 2004, some polluting industries bodies had already quoted Lomborg or invited him to speak to further their agendas. The Skeptical Environmentalist was followed by Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, which was published in 2007.
|
||||
|
||||
== See also ==
|
||||
Global warming controversy
|
||||
Media coverage of climate change
|
||||
Environmental skepticism
|
||||
Anti-environmentalism
|
||||
State of Fear
|
||||
The Population Bomb
|
||||
Climate change denial
|
||||
Howard Friel, critic of Lomborg
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
|
||||
=== Bibliography ===
|
||||
Lomborg, Bjørn (2001). The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521010683.
|
||||
van den Bergh, Jeroen (2010). An assessment of Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist and the ensuing debate,[1] Journal of Integrative Environmental Sciences 7(1).
|
||||
|
||||
== Further reading ==
|
||||
Lomborg, Bjørn (2001). The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-01068-9.
|
||||
Stephen Schneider; John P. Holdren; John Bongaarts; Thomas Lovejoy (January 2002). "Misleading Math about the Earth". Scientific American. 286 (1): 61. Bibcode:2002SciAm.286a..61S. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0102-61 (inactive 12 July 2025).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of July 2025 (link)
|
||||
Ed Regis (1997), The Doomslayer (archived 2009-12-16) (Julian Simon article in Wired.
|
||||
|
||||
== External links ==
|
||||
A sample of the book (PDF)
|
||||
Lomborg's responses to his critics at Bjørn Lomborg's Website
|
||||
HAN selection of complaints made by Lomborg critics, an article collection by Heidelberg Appeal Nederland, supporting Lomborg.
|
||||
Kyoto Economics by William Shepherd
|
||||
New York Law School Law Professor and a Senior Law Student review of the reviews to determine whether Lomborg is still credible as an expert witness and whether his testimony is appropriate to his expertise based on the criticisms of Scientific American, Nature and Science.
|
||||
The Lomborg Deception: Setting the Record Straight About Global Warming by Howard Friel (Yale University Press, 2010)
|
||||
|
||||
=== Reviews ===
|
||||
John Gillot: "The Skeptical Environmentalist" Spiked-Science Online, 10 September 2001.
|
||||
"Doomsday postponed" The Economist, 6 September 2001.
|
||||
"Greener Than You Think" Archived 2018-08-24 at the Wayback Machine, by Denis Dutton in The Washington Post, 21 October 2001.
|
||||
Review of The Skeptical Environmentalist by the Union of Concerned Scientists with reviews from Peter Gleick, Jerry D. Mahlman and E.O. Wilson.
|
||||
"Nine things journalists should know about The Skeptical Environmentalist", World Resources Institute.
|
||||
"The Skeptical Environmentalist: A Case Study in the Manufacture of News", Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, 23 January 2003.
|
||||
"Something Is Rotten in the State of Denmark" Archived 2002-01-23 at the Wayback Machine, Grist Magazine, 12 December 2001.
|
||||
Misleading Math about the Earth: Science defends itself against The Skeptical Environmentalist Scientific American January 2002
|
||||
Chris Lavers: "You've never had it so good", The Guardian 1 September 2001.
|
||||
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|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Walter W. Stewart (scientist)"
|
||||
chunk: 1/1
|
||||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_W._Stewart_(scientist)"
|
||||
category: "reference"
|
||||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:18:23.802480+00:00"
|
||||
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|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Walter W. Stewart (born c. 1945) is an American biomedical scientist who worked at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Working at the National Institute of Arthritis, Metabolism and Digestive Diseases, he invented Lucifer yellow, a fluorescent dye used for visualizing cells under microscope, in 1979. In 1971, he had also isolated and worked out the chemical structure of tabtoxin, or wildfire toxin, an antibiotic precursor from the bacterium Pseudomonas syringae. He is most popularly known for his efforts in maintaining scientific integrity by fighting against important cases of malpractices. He accompanied James Randi in debunking homeopathic experiment perpetrated by French immunologist Jacques Benveniste in an incidence known as the Benveniste affair in 1988.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== The Baltimore case ==
|
||||
David Baltimore was a microbiologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who received the 1975 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (along with Howard Temin and Renato Dulbecco) for the "discoveries concerning the interaction between tumor viruses and the genetic material of the cell." Since 1981, he collaborated with Brazilian immunologist Thereza Imanishi-Kari at the Institute for Genetics in University of Cologne, Germany. By the next year, Imanishi-Kari joined him at MIT and worked on mutations in immunoglobulins. In 1986, Baltimore and Imanishi-Kari's team published a paper in the journal Cell on rearrangement of immunoglobin gene and the effects in transgenic mice.
|
||||
Margot O'Toole, a post-doctoral researcher at MIT claimed that she could not reproduce the same experimental results and accused Imanishi-Kari of fabricating research data. When Charles Maplethorpe, a former graduate student with Imanishi-Kari, learned of this, he took the matter to Stewart and his colleague Ned Feder, who had specialised in dealing with research frauds. Stewart and Feder reanalysed the laboratory data and the published paper, and found not just small mistakes but "concluded that the published paper contained a number of serious misrepresentations of scientific fact." With permission from the NIH, they submitted their findings to MIT and Tufts University, where Imanishi-Kari had moved. As the universities took no action, Stewart and Feder informed the case to John Dingell, a member of the United States House of Representatives. As the research was funded by the U.S. federal government, the case was taken up by the United States Congress. Dingell, as chairman of the House's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations (OSI), pursued the case.
|
||||
In 1991, Imanishi-Kari was accused of data falsification and barred from research grants for 10 years. Baltimore was prompted to resign as president of the Rockefeller University for assisting and defending Imanishi-Kari. Cell retracted the paper. In 1994, however, OSI's successor, the Office of Research Integrity found Imanishi-Kari guilty on 19 counts of research misconduct, but was cleared of the charges in 1996.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
== References ==
|
||||
Loading…
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