NASA: Too Science-y For Bush's Tastes

This administration's animosity towards science is becoming scary.

An update to the NY Times story about a scientist at NASA's claims he was being silenced...

NASA Chief Backs Agency Openness

A week after NASA's top climate scientist complained that the space agency's public-affairs office was trying to silence his statements on global warming, the agency's administrator, Michael D. Griffin, issued a sharply worded statement yesterday calling for "scientific openness" throughout the agency.

"It is not the job of public-affairs officers," Dr. Griffin wrote in an e-mail message to the agency's 19,000 employees, "to alter, filter or adjust engineering or scientific material produced by NASA's technical staff."

The articles speaks of presidential appointees attempting "to control the flow of scientific information".

One example-

Repeatedly that year, public-affairs directors at all of NASA's science centers were admonished by White House appointees at headquarters to focus all attention on Mr. Bush's January 2004 "vision" for returning to the Moon and eventually traveling to Mars.

"Focus on space, nigga, the United States of Space. Write this down, M-A-R-S, Mars, bitches! Cause that's where we're going. Yai yai!"

And another, more Pat Robertson-y example-

In October 2005, [presidential appointee] Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. The message said the word "theory" needed to be added after every mention of the Big Bang.

The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator."

Yes, you read that right. NASA needs to focus on intelligent design and religion.

And when do we stone Galileo?

The article concludes with-

The only response came from Donald Tighe of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. "Science is respected and protected and highly valued by the administration," he said.

Clearly.