www.nytimes.com/2006/02/04/science/04climate.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
ANDREW C REVKIN Published: February 4, 2006 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.
Access His Podcasts "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 statement came six days after The New York Times quoted the scientist, James E Hansen, as saying he was threatened with "dire consequences" if he continued to call for prompt action to limit emissions of heat-trapping gases linked to global warming. He and intermediaries in the agency's 350-member public-affairs staff said the warnings came from White House appointees in NASA headquarters. Other National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientists and public-affairs employees came forward this week to say that beyond Dr. Hansen's case, there were several other instances in which political appointees had sought to control the flow of scientific information from the agency. They called or e-mailed The Times and sent documents showing that news releases were delayed or altered to mesh with Bush administration policies. In October, for example, George Deutsch, a presidential appointee in NASA headquarters, told a Web designer working for the agency to add the word "theory" after every mention of the Big Bang, according to an e-mail message from Mr Deutsch that another NASA employee forwarded to The Times. And in December 2004, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory complained to the agency that he had been pressured to say in a news release that his oceanic research would help advance the administration's goal of space exploration. On Thursday night and Friday, The Times sent some of the documents to Dr. Griffin and senior public-affairs officials requesting a response. Griffin did not respond directly, he issued the "statement of scientific openness" to agency employees, saying, "NASA has always been, is and will continue to be committed to open scientific and technical inquiry and dialogue with the public." Because NASA encompasses a nationwide network of research centers on everything from cosmology to climate, Dr. But he added that changes in the public-affairs office's procedures "can and will be made," and that a revised policy would "be disseminated throughout the agency." Asked if the statement came in response to the new documents and the furor over Dr. Griffin's press secretary, Dean Acosta, replied by e-mail: "From time to time, the administrator communicates with NASA employees on policy and issues. Climate science has been a thorny issue for the administration since 2001, when Mr Bush abandoned a campaign pledge to restrict power plant emissions of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas linked to global warming, and said the United States would not join the Kyoto Protocol, the first climate treaty requiring reductions. But the accusations of political interference with the language of news releases and other public information on science go beyond climate change. In interviews this week, more than a dozen public-affairs officials, along with half a dozen agency scientists, spoke of growing efforts by political appointees to control the flow of scientific information. In the months before the 2004 election, according to interviews and some documents, these appointees sought to review news releases and to approve or deny news media requests to interview NASA scientists. 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.
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