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This just in: The Smithsonian Institution, once the world’s most distinguished science museum, censored a 2006 exhibit on climate change in the Arctic in order not to upset the rightwing politicians who vote for the Smithsonian’s appropriations. References to human-induced Arctic warming thought to be too strong by Smithsonian executives were taken out of the exhibit’s textual materials or watered down, according to an Associated Press story quoting former Smithsonian exhibitions meister Robert Sullivan.
Scientists’ conclusions on their research were omitted if they said humans were causing global warming—and graphs were altered to show that future climate change might not so bad.
“It just became tooth-pulling to get solid science out without toning it down,” said Sullivan, who resigned last fall after the exhibit “The Arctic: A Friend Acting Strangely” closed.
Worse, no one from the Bush administration, the then-Republican Congress or even Exxon Mobil had to tell them to do it—after all, this isn’t the Soviet Union. Sullivan told the AP that former museum Director Cristin Samper and his boss, former Undersecretary for Science David Evans, acted on their own, fearing appropriations problems if they upset the administration or Congress.
Ever since at least Galileo, censoring science has been viewed by those who love liberty as a kind of disease. Censorship is a contagion, that spreads from the top down until it becomes epidemic. It starts when a government like the Bush one tries to spin and stifle climatologist James Hansen, and proceeds when phoney science paid for by big oil and auto firms drive real science from the media. In its advanced stages, those involved in science policy connive not to jeopardize their jobs, the agency funding or incur the wrath of the powerful with inconvenient scientific truths.Scientific truth disappears from discourse.
When that happens, there’s only one way to address environmental problems: raise your hands and pray for rain.
Altering graphs, for God’s sake.
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