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MARCH 2005

Scientists say politics trumps research
within the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

WASHINGTON D.C.—“Political intervention to alter scientific results has become pervasive within the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service,” charged the Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility on February 9, 2005.

The Union of Concerned Scientists and PEER cited findings from an anonymous survey of “more than 1,400 Fish & Wildlife Service biologists, ecologists, botanists and other science professionals,” of whom 414 (29.4%) responded.

Nineteen percent reported having “been directed by Fish & Wildlife Service decision makers to provide incomplete, inaccurate or misleading information to the public, media, or elected officials.”

“There’s nothing inappropriate with people higher up in the chain of command supervising the work of those below them, and where necessary, editing that work,” responded Interior Department official Hugh Vickery to a question about the study from Bryn Nelson of Long Island Newsday, Biologist Sally Stefferud, who retired in 2002 after 20 years with the Fish & Wildlife Service, told reporters that she personally had “been ordered to change findings on biological opinions.”

Stefferud studied four endangered fish, the spikedace, loach minnow, Gila topminnow, and razorback sucker, who are involved in disputes over water rights in the U.S. southwest.

“Political pressures influence the outcome of almost all cases,” Stefferud said. “As a scientist, I would probably say you really can’t trust the science coming out of the agency.”

The George W. Bush administration favors hatchery breeding as a means of rebuilding endangered fish populations, instead of stringently protecting habitat, awaiting natural recovery. The hatchery approach is reportedly succeeding in Lake Mead and Lake Havasu on behalf of the razorback sucker, listed as endangered since 1991, but only 24 of 175 attempts to reintroduce hatchery-bred Gila topminnows had succeeded through 2003, and the spikedace has never been reintroduced successfully.

Following orders

Among respondents to the Union of Concerned Scientists and PEER survey whose work involves determining if species are in jeopardy, 44% reported that they “have been directed, for non-scientific reasons, to refrain from making findings that are protective of species.”

Even if the only scientists who returned the survey form were those with complaints, the finding indicates that about one Fish & Wildlife Service scientist in seven has felt such pressure.

The current Bush administration has given Endangered Species Act protection to just 25 species in the past three years, all of them as obliged by court order. The Bill Clinton administration protected an average of 65 species per year, while the George H. Bush administration protected 58 species per year.

About 20% of the respondents reported having been “directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information from a scientific document,” said the Union of Concerned Scientists and PEER.
Fifty-six percent of all respondents, about 19% of the Fish & Wildlife Service scientific staff, were aware of cases where “commercial interests have inappropriately induced the reversal or withdrawal of scientific conclusions or decisions through political intervention.”

Seventy percent of the responding scientists and 89% of those of managerial rank reported knowing of cases “where Department of Interior political appointees have injected themselves into Ecological Services determinations.”

This would be from about a quarter to a third of the Fish & Wildlife Service scientific staff.

“A majority of respondents cited interventions by members of Congress and local officeholders,” the study authors wrote.

More than 75% of the scientists agreed that the Fish & Wildlife Service is not “acting effectively to maintain or enhance species and their habitats,” to avoid possible Endangered Species Act listing.

Just over two-thirds considered the Fish & Wildlife Service ineffective in directing recovery of listed species. “More than two-thirds of staff scientists (71%) and half of scientist managers (51%) did not ‘trust Fish & Wildlife Service decision makers to make decisions that will protect species and habitats,’” the Union of Concerned Scientists and PEER said.

Although 83% of the respondents said they felt free to share scientific findings with fellow scientists, 42% said they could not voice to the public “concerns about the biological needs of species and habitats without fear of retaliation.”

Thirty percent felt that such expressions of concern are dangerous even within the Fish & Wildlife Service.

Half of the respondents described morale within the Fish & Wildlife Service science departments as poor to extremely poor, while from 85% to 92% agreed that the Fish & Wildlife Service lacks the budget to fulfill its duties, especially in protecting endangered species.

The Union of Concerned Scientists and PEER said they had received copies of memos from Fish & Wildlife Service superiors warning employees against responding to the survey, even from home.

Fish & Wildlife Service spokesperson Mitch Snow told Bryn Nelson of Newsday that on February 2 the agency issued a memo stating that “the only surveys [staff] are authorized to respond to during duty hours or using Government equipment are ones that have been authorized by the Service, the Department, or other Federal agencies.”

Self-censorship

The Union of Concerned Scientists and PEER survey of Fish & Wildlife Service scientific staff was released one day before the journal Science published findings about scientific self-censorship in response to public controversy, collected by University of Michigan researcher Joanna Kempner and co-authors from Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania.

Though not directly examining the specific issues examined in the survey of Fish & Wildlife Service scientists, the Kempner study shed light on the tendency of scientists to practice self-censorship rather than risk public controversy.

Kempner et al interviewed 41 scientists engaged in a variety of potentially controversial studies. Half felt constrained by formal limits, such as the ban on federal funding of most embryonic stem cell research using human tissue, but even more said they were affected by such issues as how science is seen by the public, who influence government research funding.

Fear of opposition to animal testing was especially pervasive, Kempner found. Wrote Kempner of one interviewee, “All of a sudden he said, ‘How do I know you’re not from an animal rights group collecting information to storm the place?’”

The Kempner study was funded by the Greenwall Foundation, which supports studies of bio-ethics, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a major sponsor of health research.