Ryan Grim, over at Politico.com has a report on the latest Bush Administration assualt on science.
In late August, someone with an IP address that originated from the National Institutes of Health drastically edited the Wikipedia entry for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which operates within NIH. Wikipedia determined the edit to be vandalism and automatically changed the definition back to the original. On Sept. 18, the NIH vandal returned, according to a history of the site's edits posted by Wikipedia. This time, the definition was gradually changed, presumably to avoid the vandalism detector.
Link to the entry.
He then catches us up to date on the continuing saga.
Then, in January of '07:
NIDA spokeswoman Dorie Hightower confirmed that her agency was behind the editing. She said in an e-mail that the definition was changed "to reflect the science."
A little more than science-reflecting was done to the site. Gone first was the "Controversial research" section that included comments critical of NIDA. Next went the section on the NIDA-sponsored program that grows marijuana for research and medical purposes. The next slice of the federal editor's knife left all outside references on the cutting-room floor, replaced with links to government Web sites.
Mrs. Hightower (her preferred name) is not a scientist. She is another Bush political plant, doing the work of the Far Right. She is another PR hack, interfering with the flow of information your tax dollars paid for, and editing the mission and current profile of NIDA to change the face of the agency in the largest on-line data base.
There was a big stir about this last Fall when the original editing took place, but apparently she is continuing to try and shape the Agency's public information presentation.
This is yet another battle in the war on science, another in the continual blows to the Age of Enlightment, and yet more "Conservative" dumbing down of America.
If you would like to vent a bit, go here. You will find contact information for Mrs. Hightower. You might consider letting her know, for starters, that this kind of control of information produced with tax payer dollars, is completely unacceptable.