RIGHT WING TAKES BAD AIM AT SCIENCE

The moralizers are trying to muck with U.S. science again.

A flurry of activity over the last few weeks has followed the effort of the
Traditional Values Coalition, a right-wing religious group, to call into
question almost 200 National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants focusing on
behavioral and social aspects of issues such as sexuality, HIV/AIDS
transmission, and drug abuse.

This incident could have been written off as noise by a fringe group had it
not come almost on the heels of the near-passage in the House of
Representatives last July of what came to be known as the "Toomey
Amendment," after its author, Rep. Patrick Toomey (R., Pa.). By a vote of
212-210, the House just missed defunding four NIH research grants on sexual
behavior that had already been through rigorous scientific peer review and
approval by NIH Institute National Advisory Councils.

This is not the first time the scientific enterprise has been threatened by
political or ideological intervention, nor will it be the last. Many of us
recall, for example, Sen. William Proxmire's grandstanding "Golden Fleece
Awards" in the 1970s and 1980s. They were passed out with much media
fanfare to research projects with titles Proxmire considered silly, and
which were therefore ridiculed as a frivolous waste of the taxpayer's money.

Of course, the Golden Fleece "awardees" often turned out later to be
important and useful projects. One example is the study of the physical
characteristics of flight attendants. The study ultimately led to the
development of life-saving safety belt configurations for them.

We are not concerned that Congress wishes to exert oversight over the U.S.
research agenda and research priorities. That is its job, and we want our
representatives to do it well. We also believe that the scientific
community should be fully accountable to the public, because much science
is publicly funded and the public is the ultimate beneficiary of our work.
By nature, science is an open enterprise that invites examination and
criticism - and more often than not, it is actually strengthened by public
scrutiny. Oversight bolsters public confidence in the scientific enterprise
and provides incentives for scientists to interact with the public, explain
the importance of their research, and spread an ethic of intellectual
curiosity and critical thinking that helps make our society more innovative
and dynamic.

On occasions like the present one, however, healthy scrutiny gives way to
irresponsible attack. The recent assaults on science were not directed at
broad research questions or national research priorities. Instead, they
were aimed at imposing ideology and religious doctrine on the awarding of
individual research grants, intervening in and thereby subverting the
scientific peer review system that has served both science and national
needs so well.

The moral judges who are doing this don't like the fact that HIV is spread
through sexual contact, and they believe that drug addicts have made bad
personal choices that have led to addiction. Is their disapproval of these
behaviors a justification for stifling research on the diseases that
result? Do they suppose that some form of national denial will make these
problems go away? Regardless of personal feelings about the etiology of
these illnesses, we need to understand their causes and transmission
patterns if we are ever to get a handle on some of society's most pervasive
public health problems.

Whenever science is attacked on ideological grounds, its integrity and
usefulness are threatened. Society cannot afford for moralistic dogma to
replace scientific judgment when the public's welfare is at stake. We have
all been heartened in the last few weeks by the responses of many
scientific and academic organizations, including the American Association
for the Advancement of Science, and by the protests of many people who have
written in the popular press to defend science.

But rising up in protest as a community after the fact can protect us only
for a while. Retaining control of the integrity of our enterprise requires
that we engage more regularly and broadly with the public. We should make
our objectives and strategies more transparent to our fellow citizens, and
we must expand our efforts to educate both policymakers and the broader
public about how science works. Science has served society well in tackling
some of the world's greatest problems - but only as long as it has evaded
capture by narrow-minded interests.