This quote comes from an L.A. Times article about how the Bush Administration is, shockingly, siding with the Pentagon against those weenies at the EPA who believe that the military should clean up their own toxic chemical spills. Screw that, right? It’s not like we can just throw money around willy-nilly to clean up our own messes. Unless those messes are named “Saddam Hussein,” of course. But that’s another column.
But Raymond F. DuBois, former deputy undersecretary of Defense for installations and environment in the Bush administration, said the Pentagon had not been willing to accept whatever came out of the EPA, though it cared a great deal about base contamination.
"If you go down two or three levels in EPA, you have an awful lot of people that came onboard during the Clinton administration, to be perfectly blunt about it, and have a different approach than I do at Defense," DuBois said. "It doesn't mean I don't respect their opinions or judgments, but I have an obligation where our scientists question their scientists to bring it to the surface."
Our scientists versus Their scientists. The phrase our scientists disgusts me. Now, of course I realize that this sort of nonsense has been going on for quite a while (RJ Reynolds certainly had plenty of “scientists” of their own who would eagerly massage their data to fit the “Smoking isn’t at all harmful” party line; assuming that any data was involved, of course).
The point is not that scientists can have biases one way or another, either conservative, progressive, pro-environment, or pro-business. What ticks me off is that, ultimately, the personal political views of the scientists shouldn’t matter at all. Their results matter, and that’s what you test. So, yes, all findings should be questioned; there’s no argument about that. But Conservatives (and of course I do mean every single one of them, everywhere) keep insisting on this doubt-based approach as a way of undermining science in general. While DuBois has every right to insist that “Toxic chemicals are bad” findings should be questioned, if the vast majority of (replicable) data points in that direction, further questioning is just an attack on the conclusion.
So who is surprised when “his scientists” disagree? But where’s their evidence? Where are their results? Show us the damn data, instead of saying, “Well, some scientists disagree, so there’s controversy, so we can’t really act on the initial findings.” Hell, some people disagree about everything. There’s always that fifth dentist, advising his patients to coat their teeth with honey and chew on quarters. So “controversy” has become a meaningless term, and is an easy way to sway an argument without actually providing real data or evidence.
But hire yourself some scientists, willing to nod their heads for a buck, and you’ve got “controversy,” and a great way to avoid doing something inconvenient.
The Vindictive Solution, in this case, is to build luxury houses for Pentagon and Administration officials on the chemical-soaked land. Then we’d find out how much DuBois really trusts “his” scientists.