Editor’s Note: This article is the first in a three-part series.

by Jay Lehr, Ph.D. Science Director, The Heartland Institute, and Mike Gemmell* **

“Billions of dollars are being spent each year on publicly funded scientific research in the U.S. However, the Climategate scandal has brought to light glaring problems in publicly funded science including: the slowing of the advancement of science to a crawl, vast sums of money being squandered, and disturbing occurrences of political correctness, science by consensus, and alarmist science. This paper presents an integrated approach to reform based on the principle of full disclosure of data and data protocols at the time of research publication. The implementation of that principle – combined with full disclosure by all parties during the grant application process -- and adherence to scientific objectivity, are used to demonstrate a fundamental approach to reform. The application of this reform approach should be a significant step toward restoring credibility in the scientific establishment and provide taxpayers with a much better return on the money spent on public scientific endeavors.”

In November 2009, reports began to emerge concerning data suppression of global temperature data in emails of scientists at East Anglia University, a leading institution involved in promoting the theory of manmade global warming. These reports soon mushroomed into a full-blown scandal now known as “Climategate.” The scandal’s emergence into the public spotlight has shown that systemic problems exist in scientific institutions involved in the promotion of the theory of manmade global warming, and by extension all publicly funded science.

Our approach to reform will be to identify what we believe to be the most fundamental of issues: the release of data and data protocols at the time that research results are published. Reform in the area of data release will be linked with the principles of full disclosure in the grant application process and adherence to the principle of objectivity regarding the accumulated knowledge available in any field. This essay will show how combining timely release of data and protocols, with full disclosure and objectivity, will help restore science’s self-correcting mechanisms. But first we must explain how we got into the mess we are in.

The results of 60 years of publicly funded science research have left us with a loss of scientific credibility as evidenced by:

1. Yearly expenditures of billions of dollars of research money with little in the way of meaningful scientific advances resulting from those expenditures.

2. Previously unacceptable practices becoming the order of the day in the scientific community including: political correctness, science by consensus, and alarmist science.

3. The Climategate scientific scandal that illuminated widespread systemic problems in the operation of public scientific institutions and their conducting of publicly funded scientific research.

Science enters the Public Realm

The decline in science has mirrored the decline in individualism, a cultural trend that began early in the 19th century in the U.S., and has continued to the present day. As a result of this decline, by the early to mid-20th century, interests that had been previously conducted by private parties began to be placed in the public realm. Newly created public institutions sprouted up to address the shift. Eventually, interested parties began to see scientific research as an issue that belonged in the public realm and began to push for public institutions to reflect that belief. One of the leaders in that effort was Vannevar Bush.

During World War II Bush led efforts to use scientific research to help the U.S. achieve technologic superiority and shorten the war through the creation of the National Research Defense Committee. This effort was extremely successful. Unknown to Bush and others at the time was the underlying reason for that success, its “mission- oriented” nature. It was focused on preserving American lives, and the rights to live those lives, a universal human need. This need was a principle that could be converted to a missionoriented action plan. Because its mission was so “reality-based”, costs vs. benefits and other objective means of measuring its success could be properly applied.

When the war was over, Bush attempted to broaden the use of scientific research into peacetime activities. Unfortunately, he did not realize that peacetime science was not a universal interest, or need, of the public. He blurred the boundaries between wartime and peacetime science in “Science the Endless Frontier” where he contended:

“It has been basic policy that government should foster the opening of new frontiers… that new frontiers should be made available for development by all American citizens.”

He ignored the distinction that making a frontier available, was not the same as funding it with public monies. Frontiers up to that time were typically tamed by individuals or small groups with well-defined interests rather than the entire public. This error was not challenged, and as a result widespread public funding of scientific research began in 1950 with the creation of the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health.

The Four steps of “Public Interest” Degeneration as applied to Science

The degeneration of public scientific research followed the same four steps as other issues wrongly placed in the public realm. What made its degeneration even more destructive was an entrenched establishment’s use of an anti-industrial ideology that treated “nature” as pristine and risk-free, and human action as guilty until proven innocent.

THE FOUR STEPS 1-2-3-4 A Explanation of the steps, B- How the step took form in environmentalism

1. Declare an issue to be in the public interest

A-Some person or a small group of people declare that the public interest on a particular issue requires action.

B-Vannevar Bush led the way in placing the funding of scientific research into the public realm with the establishment of the National Science Foundation in 1950. He viewed science as a frontier that the government should open to all of the public.

2. Attempts at defining the issue lead to vague or arbitrary definitions

A-The public as a whole (with the exception of the defense of rights, a universal need) does not have interests, only individuals do. Thus, trying to define an interest that does not exist is an exercise in futility and inevitably leads to vague and/or arbitrary definitions.

B-In justifying the public funding of scientific research, Vannevar Bush arbitrarily, and mistakenly, claimed that public funding was necessary to achieve technologic excellence in the marketplace. He ignored over a century of scientific historical development via private sources in the U.S.

3. Limit the number of people / viewpoints in order to manipulate the decision-making process.

A-Without a clear definition of what the public interest is on any particular issue, rational decision making is impossible. Inevitably the situation degenerates into clashes between parties claiming to represent the public. Since rational decision making is impossible, there is no choice but to limit proposals to those who are the most effective influence peddlers.

B-For publicly funded science, the beginning steps to limit viewpoints was the use of the prestige system for the awarding of grants. The prestige system operated by having the most well-known authorities in each field serve on committees that reviewed grant proposals. Since proposals that deviated too far from an authority’s views were unlikely to get funding, this served to entrench the views of the reigning authorities.

At the National Cancer Institute the reigning authority was Wilhem Hueper and his “germ theory” of cancer. Hueper’s theory contended that cancer was largely created by industrial society, but had very little evidence to support it.

When Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962 and launched the environmental movement, her anti-industrial perspective was based primarily on the views of Wilhem Hueper.

4. The situation degenerates with exploding costs and other problems leading to a final entrenchment of an establishment and purging of those with contrary viewpoints.

A-Contracts between private parties are relatively easy to assess costs vs. benefits. The parties agree on a scope of work and a product to be delivered. The party purchasing the product designates someone or some group in particular to keep track of their interests. However, the entire public is, by definition, everyone in general, but no one in particular. And when there is no one in particular to “mind the store” the situation invariably degenerates.

Arbitrary guidelines to try and control costs are inevitable. The already entrenched establishment uses the crisis to further purge any remaining resistance.

B-In 1950, average project costs in the National Institute of Health was $9649, but by 1960 the average cost per project had skyrocketed to $18,584.

The first step taken to halt a deteriorating situation was implementing the prestige system for awarding research grants. Unfortunately even prestigious authorities had to find shortcuts to review the overwhelming numbers of grant proposals fueled by the newly available funds. Assessing papers on their long-term significance and quality was simply too time-consuming and took authorities away from their own research activities. The quantity of papers was soon used as a substitute for quality. This was the beginning of the publish or perish syndrome. Multiple authoring exploded, and emphasis on teaching declined.

Since cause and effect mechanisms can be difficult and time-consuming to determine, researchers began using statistics as a short cut for understanding mechanisms so that papers could be churned out more quickly.

These trends were deplorable, but some progress was still possible in fields such as physics and chemistry that were not being driven by ideology. However, in the environmental sciences, an anti-industrial ideology led by people such as Umberto Saffioti in the National Cancer Institute was beginning to transform the activities and perspective of public institutions involved in environmental science research. Saffioti’s belief, shaped by Wilhem Hueper, was that most cancers originated from exposure tomanmade chemicals.

However, in the early 1970s, there was much resistance within the scientific community to Saffioti and others who promoted the assumption that carcinogens in the environment were largely manmade. To suppress this resistance, an issue that went to the heart of the industrial world was needed to secure the anti-industrial ideologues long-term status as the entrenched establishment. That issue was the use of the manmade pesticide DDT.

Prior to the publishing of Silent Spring, DDT was considered one of the most miraculous chemicals on earth and had virtually eliminated malaria in many third world countries. However, Rachel Carson and others misrepresented the potential dangers of DDT using biased studies of eggshell thinning of birds, as well as ignoring test results-- among a control group of volunteers-- that showed minor DDT buildup in human tissue was not a health threat. Her emotionally-moving --yet highly inaccurate prose -- sold millions of copies of Silent Spring and widely spread the misperception that industrialized society was poisoning the earth. By the early 1970s the anti-industrial perspective of Carson was the reigning orthodoxy at the National Cancer Institute. In 1972, following a 7-month hearing process, William Ruckleshaus, head of the newly formed Environmental Protection Agency – quoting authorities at the National Cancer Institute banned DDT without ever attending a single day of the 7-month long hearings.

The banning of one of the most beneficial chemicals ever developed, created the perception that industrial wastes and processes were threatening to “destroy the planet.” If something as useful and widespread as DDT could be a risk, then any manmade chemical could be placed under suspicion.

With the banning of DDT the environmental movement was off and running, and as a result of the distortions and demagoguery surrounding the DDT ban, 2,000,000 people each year have had their lives ended prematurely and very painfully all supposedly to “protect the environment.” In addition, this highly biased research was used as the underlying justification for the emerging environmental legal / regulatory framework of the early 1970s in the U.S. in regard to man made chemicals and their concentrations in the environment.

*Mike Gemmell performed ground water resource and contamination studies as a geologist for over a decade before becoming a free lance science writer concentrating on education, business management and free enterprise solutions to environmental policy problems. He is coauthor of “People First: Creating a Roadmap for Environmental Reform”. He can be reached at mikegemmell@earthlink.net

**The authors wish to thank Dr. S. Stanley Young for his help regarding treatment of data protocols incorporated in this paper. Dr. Young is Assistant Director of Bioinformatics at the National Institute of Statistical Science in Research Triangle Park, NC.