What to do if you have power, as you do when you chair a congressional committee, and don't like sound science? Make life miserable for succesful scientists.
A current example appeared recently in The Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE) by Richard Monastersky (available online is by subscription only, I'm afraid). Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican and chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce has decided to "investigate" three prominent climate scientists "whose work suggests that the earth's climate is warmer now than at any time in many centuries and that increasing levels of greenhouse gases from burning fossils fuels are largely to blame."
Barton's office sent letters to the three scientists, the National Science Foundation, and the Chair of the IPCC.
In the letters, Barton "demanded detailed documentation about the hundreds of studies on which they were an author or co-author. Mr. Barton also sent a letter to the director of the National Science Foundation that requests information about the work of the three professors, as well as a list of all grants and awards in the area of climate and paleoclimate science, which number 2,700 in the past 10 years."
Here is an excerpt from one of the letters from Barton's office--this one to Dr. Michael Mann:
"The concerns surrounding these studies reflect upon the quality and transparency of federally
funded research and of the IPCC review process - two matters of particular interest to the
Committee. For example, one concern relates to whether IPCC review has been sufficiently
independent. We understand that you were a lead author of the IPCC chapter that assessed and reported your own studies, and that two study co-authors were also contributing authors to this very same chapter. Given the prominence these studies were accorded in the IPCC TAR and your position and role in that process, we seek to learn more about the facts and circumstances that led to acceptance and prominent use of this work in the IPCC TAR and to understand what this controversy indicates about the data quality of key IPCC studies."
So Barton and his colleagues think they're better qualified than teams of scientists who write the IPCC assessments to decide whether the science is credible? More arrogance inside the beltway.
The letter goes further:
"According to The Wall Street Journal, you have declined to release the exact computer code you used to generate your results. (a) Is this correct? (b) What policy on sharing research and methods do you follow? (c) What is the source of that policy? (d) Provide this exact computer code used to generate your results."
This despite the fact that NSF earlier described such exact code as intellectual property. A congressional committee wants to review specific code???
Since when do congressional offices request this level of detail about studies conducted by individual scientists? This is a little bit like having your boss at work say: "I understand not everyone agreed with all your decisions. Can you please show me the minutes of every meeting you've held for the past five years plus your resume and all the emails you've sent that might pertain to your decisions? We just want to check into this because some concerns have been raised, and of course we all want the best decisions possible."
From the CHE article: "'It's a technical form of harassment by people in Congress who are opposed to global warming and basically want to discredit the science so they don't have to worry about the policy alternatives,' said Thomas Crowley, a professor in the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University."
What's scary is how intrusive and damaging this harassment might be--and how much time and energy will be distracted from the valuable work these and other scientists are doing. It's also worth remembering that these attacks are being leveled at people who work long hours for relatively modest compensation and who have dedicated their lives to noble work.
This whole story is too reminiscent of the attacks on Dr. Ben Santer in the mid-1990s.
Santer was lead author of Ch. 8 of the IPCC's 1995 assessment. (Relevant correspondence in Santer's case can be found at: http://www.his.com/~sepp/ipcccont/item08.htm)