Today DadTalk brought up the problem of government researchers being pressured to change their reports for political reasons. Here's his final point:
When it comes to research, we don’t pay taxes to be lied to; we rely on research to be pure and clean so we can make intelligent decisions. If politicians don’t create a level playing field for researchers to reveal honest results, this nation will sink into a mire of lies that will be difficult to escape.I'll admit I'm way too distracted to research the topic more, but I agree that it's a disturbing trend (and it's been happening since before the Bush administration). And the "mire of lies" problem is real - trust of the government is already low, and large sections of the public already seem to have a distrust of science in general. Being lied to will only exacerbate these problems. Posted by Tom Nugent at February 10, 2005 09:26 PM
"this nation will sink into a mire of lies that will be difficult to escape."
Sadly, I think that quote is more and more correct than it may seem. Why is it so hard to run a business, or even conduct normal every day activities without lying or being dishonest to get ahead? Is the presence of greed in human society that prevalent?
While the editor of the newspaper at St. Mary's I had the oppourtunity to do some things that would have been less than eithical, but would have supported myself and the newspaper's future in general. When I neglected to take those actions, I actually had an administrator come up to me and ask me why I didn't do it. I was to suprised to respond to him.
Posted by: Seth at February 10, 2005 09:36 PM