Who needs science policy...?

When you have people who edit your reports in the White House? This article Bush Aide Softened Greenhouse Gas Links to Global Warming in the New York Times tells the story of a White House official who would insert and edit reports from places like National Academy of Science. "The dozens of changes, while sometimes as subtle as the insertion of the phrase "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties," tend to produce an air of doubt about findings that most climate experts say are robust."

It's like taking a sentence like "X is a credible threat" to "X is an 'insignificant' threat." Who needs scientists if you're just going to make it up anyway?

Oh, as Rich points out, science is about finding results that you may not have known about before, not about making a decision and then fitting science to what you want it to say.