The White House’s White-Out Problem
The White House’s White-Out Problem
The Bush administration has gotten into the nasty habit of doctoring its reports whenever the facts don’t match its preconceived agenda. Here are some instances of the White House’s magic pen at work:
Cattle Grazing: “The Bush administration altered critical portions of a scientific analysis of the environmental impact of cattle grazing on public lands before announcing relaxed grazing limits on those lands, according to scientists involved in the study…conclusions that the proposed rules might adversely affect water quality and wildlife, including endangered species, were excised and replaced with language justifying less-stringent regulations favored by cattle ranchers.”
Hog Farming: Nationally respected Agriculture Department microbiologist Dr. Zahn discovered that hog farms were emitting drug-resistant airborne bacteria that “if breathed by humans, would make them harder to treat when ill. Zahn presented his findings at a scientific conference in 2000, but the Bush administration stopped him from publishing his data 11 times between September 2001 and April 2002, he said. When Danish researchers sought to learn more about his work, Zahn wasn’t allowed to share his techniques.”
Climate Change: “A White House official who once led the oil industry’s fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents [The] official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In many cases, the changes appeared in the final reports.”
Air Quality at Ground Zero: “In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, the White House instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to give the public misleading information, telling New Yorkers it was safe to breathe when reliable information on air quality was not available. That finding is included in a report released Friday by the Office of the Inspector General of the EPA. It noted that some of the agency’s news releases in the weeks after the attack were softened before being released to the public: Reassuring information was added, while cautionary information was deleted.”
Toxicology of Mercury: “The White House and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) made changes to a report from the National Academy of Sciences on the toxicology of mercury, a powerful neurotoxin that is especially dangerous to pregnant women and young children…White House staff made editorial interventions in the report, which was commissioned by Congress to establish the science on the risks associated with mercury. The White House’s alterations downplayed the risks of mercury, replaced specific enumerations of mercury-related harms with bland, general references, and introduced additional emphasis on uncertainty.”
Effectiveness of Condoms: “The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and USAID have removed or revised fact sheets on condoms, excising information about their effectiveness in disease prevention, and promoting abstinence instead.”
Effects of Oil Drilling on the Arctic Refuge: “Interior Secretary Gale Norton substantially altered biological findings from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concerning effects of oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before she transmitted them to Congress, according to documents released October 19 by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.” In one instance, Norton’s defense was that she “simply made an error in her testimony — saying ‘outside’ when she meant to say ‘inside.’”
Abortion: “The removal from a National Cancer Institute website of a scientific analysis concluding that abortions do not increase a woman’s risk of breast cancer. That move, in November 2002, contradicted the broad medical consensus, and members of Congress protested the change. In response, the NCI updated its website to include the conclusion of a panel of experts that induced abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk.”
HIV/AIDS: “During the latter half of 2002, the Administration began removing scientific information, relating to the spread of HIV, from government websites, including those of the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. Much of the information that was removed contracted [sic] claims made by the administration’s abstinence-only agenda.”
Cancer: Earlier this year, “EPA’s guidelines acknowledge[d], for the first time, that children under 2 years of age are 10 times more likely to get cancer from certain chemicals than adults who are similarly exposed. But the White House Office of Management and Budget undermined that acknowledgment by inserting language in the guidelines that make it easy for industry to block EPA from following them when assessing cancer-causing chemicals.”
Stem Cell Research: “[The] Bush administration dismissed Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, a leading cell biologist, and Dr. William May, a prominent medical ethicist, from the President’s Council on Bioethics [Blackburn] was removed from the panel soon after she objected to a Council report on stem cell research. In an essay in the April 1, 2004, issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Blackburn recounted how the dissenting opinion she submitted, which she believes reflects the scientific consensus in America, was not included in the council’s reports even though she had been told the reports would represent the views of all the council’s members.”
Ground-Water: Vice President Dick Cheney’s old company Halliburton “pioneered” an oil-drilling technique that “can contaminate drinking water supplies with carcinogens and is therefore required by law to be regulated by the EPA.” Halliburton has spent years trying to get the federal government to exempt the technique from environmental regulations.” A senior Environmental Protection Agency recently revealed that “the EPA [initially concluded] that the technique can be dangerous to public health, but then [deleted] the conclusion after Cheney’s office demanded it.” Furthermore, six of the seven EPA panel members who decided that the technique was “safe” had all come from the energy industry.
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What are they worried about, after all: “The Truth shall make you free.”
June 20th, 2005 at 3:14 pmYeah, free to head directly to the ICC in Hague for trial.
June 20th, 2005 at 3:28 pmDidn’t they also remove the report that said Terrorism had gotten worse from the government web site after it became public?
June 20th, 2005 at 3:59 pmThis has been on the Union of Concerned Scientists site for over a year. People have been fired for protesting that the scientific accuracy of their work has been changed to reflect policy. Bush and Co are killing people right here at home and still he is defended. It is unbelievable
June 20th, 2005 at 4:08 pmAmazing. The consistent pattern would make one think that there is an Intelligent Design behind this obfuscation.
June 20th, 2005 at 4:11 pmJust another battle in the GOP’s War On Reality. Move on, nothing to see here… Hey didn’t you hear me? Get moving or you’ll lose today’s choco ration!
June 20th, 2005 at 4:12 pmYou left out a few.
Bush covered up for months or years an EPA report on asbestos contamination in vermiculite insulation, which is in many US homes.
Then there was the famous firing of the cartographer who did his job and posted maps of caribou breeding grounds which happened to be right where Bush wanted to drill for oil.
June 20th, 2005 at 4:30 pmDon’t forget about the Medicare scam:
In mid-March the likelihood arose that the Bush administration had suppressed the real cost of the Medicare overhaul in order to win its passage. Richard Foster, Medicare’s chief actuary, says that, five months before the bill came up for a vote, when Congress was requesting cost estimates, he was threatened with dismissal were he to tell Congress the real cost – not $400 billion but $551 billion over 10 years (since adjusted to $534 billion).
June 20th, 2005 at 4:32 pmHis boss, Thomas Scully, then the Medicare administrator, effectively confirmed the threat by saying much the same to Congressional aide Cybele Bjorklund, telling her, “I’ll fire him so fast his head will spin.� Scully at first denied voicing this threat; then said he was only kidding. Ms. Bjorklund, on the NBC Nightly News said, “He was angry; he was shouting at me; he was not kidding by any stretch of the imagination.�
Foster is convinced that the pressure to stick to the phony $400 billion price tag came from the White House. It worked before, when the Bush camp used fabricated intelligence to dupe Congress into supporting the use of force against Iraq, so why not try bait and switch again? By withholding the true cost, the administration may have deceived its own Republican supporters, and in turn the American people, in order to buy George W Bush a campaign boast.
Add selenium to the list. Dubious science was used to justify new and (surprise, surprise) less stringent guidelines for selenium in freshwater. There was a good debate on NPR last week. Guess who benefits?
June 20th, 2005 at 4:39 pmWhere’s James Watt at these days?
June 20th, 2005 at 4:39 pmI believe last year’s federal budget was to contain a study from the GAO showing that if we were to begin paying right now (instead of borrowing more), it would cost $51 trillion to get this country out of debt. That report was removed from the budget.
June 20th, 2005 at 4:39 pmAnd generally burying amazing new whenever they can: http://www.hairytruth.blogspot.com
June 20th, 2005 at 4:51 pmAbsolutely breathtaking.
June 20th, 2005 at 4:53 pmAmericaSedition has done a week-long special on what they call the “War on Empiricism” and the “Autistic White House”
June 20th, 2005 at 5:07 pmhttp://www.americasedition.org
Oh, lets not forget: Archivist of the U.S. : Questionable Bush appointment slips under the radar
June 20th, 2005 at 5:42 pmThis is great!!
June 20th, 2005 at 5:58 pmYou should make a permanent web page or site for this, and allow people to submit/add new entries
And this gem from the Denver Post today: Scientists protest species rules
Some want the repeal of a U.S. Fish and Wildlife regional policy preventing the use of new genetic data, saying it gives leeway for some populations to be wiped out.
See it here: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_2812475
June 20th, 2005 at 6:27 pmEraseable Type
June 20th, 2005 at 6:36 pmvia Think ProgressThe Bush administration has gotten into the nasty habit of doctoring its reports whenever the facts don’t match its preconceived agenda.The examples are here.
Doctoring Reports
June 20th, 2005 at 7:17 pmDocumented instances of the Bush Administration doctoring official reports in order to look better, promote bad policy, or promote an ideological agenda. There are two many to list here, so click through the link and examine this administration. And …
I’m surprised that the Bush administration hasn’t tried to edit the Terri Schiavo autopsy report!
June 20th, 2005 at 7:32 pmJed Bush is doing his part, though!
You Want More? You Get More
June 20th, 2005 at 8:46 pmJust a quick update from The WB42 5:30 Report with Doug Krile. A few random links to raise your blood pressure.
White House white-out
June 20th, 2005 at 9:11 pmWhite House white-out
…
The White House’s White-Out Problem
June 20th, 2005 at 11:20 pmWell worth the read to see just how they have slaughtered science under the Bush Administration. Excusing pollution and the magacorps that do it, to the detriment of all americans. Truely sad to think that we are starting the 21st Century by turnin…
Just for fun:
And just for fun:
June 21st, 2005 at 1:59 amAnd don’t forget the Great Klamath River Fish Kill…..
” The decision that led to the death of 33,000 salmon in the Klamath River last year (2002) was made to help an Oregon Republican Senator get re-elected, according to the Wall Street Journal.
A story printed in that newspaper yesterday said Karl Rove, a top political strategist for President George Bush, pressured U.S. Department of Interior heads to ignore scientific recommendations and release more water to Klamath Falls’ Republican farmers despite the threat of low water flows for lower river salmon.
“The largest fish-kill in America’s history could have, and should have, been avoided if it were not for the political pressure put on scientists by administration officials looking for political gain,” said U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) yesterday after reading the story.”
June 21st, 2005 at 3:24 amPlease add:
- eliminating specifics on increased risk of diabetes, childhood leukemia and other illnesses from the national breastfeeding promotion campaign based on pressure from formula/pharma industry lobbyists. http://www.breastfeedingtaskforla.org/breastfeeding-awareness-campaign/060504-abcnews.htm
June 21st, 2005 at 7:47 amAdd to that list the ridiculous missile defense system the Bush administration has poored tens of billions of dollars into (FY05 budget for missile defense was $10 billion). The Union of Concerned Scientists website has a lot of information on this horrible misplacement of funds and the feasibility (or lack there of) of a missile defense system:
June 21st, 2005 at 9:24 amhttp://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/missile_defense/index.cfm
The New York Times obtained reports from a consulting company to the U. S. Department of Education on how favorably various papers and reporters were treating No Child Left Behind. When I got the reports from Times reporter, Diana Jean Schemo, I found many whiteouts.
I am certain there are more, but educators are typically pretty timid about this kind of thing.
A Department of Education strategem used more often has been to ignore reports it doesn’t like. The American Federation of Teachers analyzed data on charter schools from the National Assessment of Educational Progress only after it became clear that the Department of Education would never get around to it. Kids in charters didn’t do as well as similar kids in regular public schools.
The New York Times had to use an FOIA to obtain another charter school report by SRI International. Again, charters didn’t look good.
I have also heard complaints that the Department of Education is insisting that it review material it never did before. In the past, reports would simply contain a disclaimer at the beginning that they might not represent the position of the Department (or NSF or HHS or whomever).
Finally, the Department of Education is taking unually long amounts of time to review and approve those reports it eventually does release. This sometimes lessens the timeliness of the data.
Gerald W. Bracey
June 21st, 2005 at 10:16 amAlexandria, VA
why does this surprise anyone? after all isnt it 1984?
June 21st, 2005 at 10:19 amThere are reasons why the Bush administration is referred to as the Bush Crime Family.This is one of the more salient ones.
June 21st, 2005 at 10:29 amBush Has A White Out Addiction
“The Bush administration has gotten into the nasty habit of doctoring its reports whenever the facts don’t match its preconceived agenda. Here are some instances of the White House’s magic pen at work:“
…
June 21st, 2005 at 12:59 pmaaaah, now I get it … they dissolved their brains with all the huffing …
June 21st, 2005 at 6:40 pmNO !, say it isn’t so Joe.
June 22nd, 2005 at 3:59 pmThe editing and suppression of the truth by this administration is probably no different than that practiced by the scientific community. See:
“The Suppression of Inconvenient Facts in Physics” by Rochus Börner, Ph.D., 2004 at:
June 22nd, 2005 at 8:10 pmhttp://www.suppressedscience.net/physics.html
[...] conceived agenda. Here are some instances of the White House’s magic pen at work - more here Comments » The URI to TrackBack this entry is: ht [...]
June 23rd, 2005 at 12:06 pmI am a victim of one of these whiteouts. I recently had a scare about HIV and when I went to the CDC website I could not eaily find information like FAQs or anything. Now I know I can thank dubya for that.
June 28th, 2005 at 5:54 pmLOL! Is this a surprise to anyone? This type of miss has been going since before this administration officially took power through the conservative special interests that got Bush elected. And what of the so called “educated” american public? Do you see any real outrage?
As long as there are “good Republican” team members (followers) out there believing that what ever a republican says is right, regardless of the facts, things we stay the same.
They (the administration) can literally do anything it wants to at this point. The democrats are too weak and wishy washy about their convictions for anyone to follow them. All they can do now is filibuster nominees. So much for going with the “safe” candidate!
June 29th, 2005 at 7:17 pmSomeone earlier made the comment that “the consistent pattern would make one think that there is an Intelligent Design behind these obfuscations”. I realize that you were making a play on words, but I believe an even more appropriate phrase would be “IngSoc”. It’s time to brush up on your Orwell, people!
This tactic has been lifted practically *verbatim* out of “1984″. Remember the Party motto — “who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” When the statistics don’t concur with the policy, suppress all the original data by popping it in the ever-handy “memory hole” then rewrite the report so it supports whatever you want the people to believe. No more need for nasty, old-fashioned things like facts or truth. Brings a whole new and disquieting meaning to that off-the-cuff remark by a Bush advisor in 2002 about “creating our own reality’, doesn’t it?
WAR IS PEACE…KNOWLEDGE IS SLAVERY…IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
June 30th, 2005 at 12:31 amAllow me to add to this distinguished list.
The Administraiton also doctored a Department of Health and Human Services Report on racial disparities in health care. They made the revised report less critical of the racial imbalances in health care, than the original report.
Racial Disparities Played Down
By Shankar Vedantam
A federal report on racial disparities in health care was revised at
the behest of top administration officials — and a comparison with an
earlier draft shows that the version released in December played down
the imbalances and was less critical of the lack of equality.
Government officials acknowledged and defended the changes yesterday,
even as critics charged that the Department of Health and Human
Services rewrote what was to be a scientific road map for change to put a
positive spin on a public health crisis: Minorities receive less care, and
less high-quality care, than whites, across a broad range of diseases.
The earlier draft of the report’s executive summary, for example,
described in detail the problems faced by minorities and the societal costs
of the disparities, and it called such gaps “national problems.”
The final report’s executive summary interspersed examples of
disparities with success stories and emphasized the role of geography and
socioeconomic factors — rather than just race — in producing different
outcomes. It dropped the reference to “national problems.”
Government officials agreed that the tone of the report had been
changed, saying the revisions reflected HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson’s
strategy of triggering improvement by focusing on the positive.
“That’s just the way Secretary Thompson wants to create change,” said
Karen Migdail, a spokeswoman at the Agency for Healthcare Research and
Quality, the HHS unit that drafted the report. “The idea is not to say,
‘We failed, we failed, we failed,’ but to say, ‘We improved, we
improved, we improved.’ ”
The National Healthcare Disparities Report was intended by HHS to be a
comprehensive look at the scope and reasons for inequalities in health
care. A number of studies have shown that even among people with
identical diseases and the same income level, minorities are less likely to
be diagnosed promptly and more likely to receive sub-optimal care.
Documented disparities exist in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, heart
disease, AIDS, diabetes, pediatric illness, mental disorders and other
conditions. They also exist in surgical procedures and nursing home
services.
The report was based on an earlier study by the Institute of Medicine
(IOM), a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, an independent
institution that advises the government on scientific questions.
An IOM report suggested last year that widespread racial differences
in health care “are rooted in historic and contemporary inequities” and
asserted that stereotyping and bias by doctors, hospitals and other
care providers may be at fault — a much stronger critique than the HHS
report.
“The final report was much more positive and upbeat” than the
draft, said Donald Steinwachs, a member of the IOM committee. The final
version, he said, “does not really help people focus on the major
problem areas.”
“One of the missions of public health is to identify public health
problems,” said Steinwachs, chairman of the department of health policy
and management at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore. “If you don’t identify the problems, then
people don’t address them.”
The earlier draft of the executive summary was obtained by Rep. Henry
A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who charged that the changes were part of a broad
effort by the Bush administration to politicize science.
“In effect, they whitewashed the issue away, even though they were
told that health care disparities are a national problem and pervasive and
carry a significant personal and societal price,” he said. “It’s hard
not to reach the obvious result that HHS is wishing the problem away.”
The earlier version of the executive summary defined “disparity” and
mentioned it 30 times in the “key findings” section, Waxman said. The
final version mentioned the word only twice in that section and left it
undefined.
In what they called “a case study in politics and science,” Waxman and
four other members of Congress said the final version “drops findings
on the societal costs of disparities, and replaces them with a
discussion of ’successes.’ ”
The final report cited positive examples such as these: that Asians or
Pacific Islanders have lower death rates from cancer; that black and
Hispanic patients are “more likely to report that their provider usually
asks about medications from other doctors”; and that Hispanics and
Asians or Pacific Islanders have “lower rates of hospitalization from
influenza.”
Bill Pierce, a spokesman at HHS, said the department is well aware of
the importance of disparities and that the changes made to the
executive summary were only a matter of seeing the glass “half empty” or “half
full.” No statistics or tables were changed in the final report, he
said.
Pierce said the Bush administration has launched public health
initiatives in minority communities such as “Take a Loved One to the Doctor
Day,” created eight centers to study the issue of disparities, and
started programs to screen low-income women for breast and cervical cancer.
Focusing on the positive was a better approach, he said, “versus saying, ‘We don’t do this well, and it is these people’s fault.’ “
October 14th, 2005 at 10:50 pmWell? Where do we go from here? How do we get this out? How have they gotten away with this? This is headline news, no? With w’s dwindling popularity, my hope is that maybe this all will start to change…
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February 5th, 2006 at 9:44 pm[...] Think Progess has a big list of reports doctored by the Bush administration to support, or at least be less contradictory of, their ideatheology. Highlights include: [...]
March 5th, 2006 at 11:19 amHey Dude ! Great site !
May 15th, 2006 at 9:56 pmHave a nice week.
[...] Lysenkoism, revisited It’s a new term, but the Bush administration is as disdainful of scientific fact as ever. I am Jack’s utter lack of surprise. Think Progress has a round-up of the latest egregious examples of scientific misinformation perpetrated by the Bush white House, with details of cover-ups on evironmental effects of farming and climate warming. It’s getting so that it’s no longer appropriate to refer to “creeping” lysenkoism; in the US today, “trampling” might be a more appropriate description. [...]
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December 8th, 2006 at 4:31 amHere’s another story to add to the list — the Bush administration wants to cover up the geological history of the grand canyon.
See an article from P.E.E.R. here — http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=801
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