Political Science

NYT reported When Donald Kennedy, a biologist and editor of the eminent journal Science, was asked what had led so many American scientists to feel that George W. Bush's administration is anti-science, he isolated a familiar pair of culprits: climate change and stem cells. These represent, he said, ''two solid issues in which there is a real difference between a strong consensus in the science community and the response of the administration to that consensus.'' Both issues have in fact riled scientists since the early days of the administration, and both continue to have broad repercussions. In March 2001, the White House abruptly withdrew its support for the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, and the U.S. withdrawal was still a locus of debate at this summer's G8 summit in Scotland.

Support for Koyto was not withdrawn because of Science, it was because the proposed solution would have just hurt Western Economies, and not done anything significant for the problem, since India and China, the two largest growing economies, would add more polution than all the Western nations together could reduce.

And the administration's decision to limit federal funds for embryonic-stem-cell research four years ago -- a move that many scientists worry has severely hampered one of the most fruitful avenues of biomedical inquiry to come along in decades -- resulted in a shift in the dynamics of financing, from the federal government to the states and private institutions.

President Bush is the first president to allow ANY funding for stem cell research. He just did not allow as much as the scientists wanted, or allow them to kill more embryos to do the research. And it was for moral reasons, not science reasons. And he did nothing to block state or private funded research.

In November 2004, Californians voted to allocate $3 billion for stem-cell research in what was widely characterized as a ''scientific secession.''