Who owns taxpayer-funded science? From the way many scientists behave, it's not the taxpayers.
Many scientific studies funded by federal agencies - through grants, contracts, or cooperative agreements, particularly those used to justify the most horrendous regulations - hide the guts of the science.
What the scientists keep secret is the raw data they obtain in the real world and the methods they use to interpret it, as if those were personal possessions.
Independent scientist Rob Roy Ramey told me of an extreme example: "A researcher tracked endangered desert bighorn sheep with government GPS radio collars to record precise animal locations for wildlife rangers.
"He then reset the access codes so only he could download the data remotely, and refused to surrender the codes. So California Fish and Game had to track down and net-gun the bighorns from a helicopter in order to manually download the collar data, costing a fortune and endangering both animals and people."...
And make no mistake, the FWS is rife with malicious officials, as witness Kent McMullen, chairman of Franklin County, Washington's Natural Resources Advisory Committee, testified.
His written testimony filled nine pages with outrageous FWS dirty tricks and skullduggery in his county. For example, announcements of critical habitat designations for the White Bluffs Bladderpod plant were deliberately kept "under the radar" in Franklin County so it could become law without a big fuss. Only when Hastings asked county officials about it did the impending decision come to light.
McMullen said, "a FWS employee that apologized in private to a farm family told them that they had been told to keep the issue quiet and to not inform landowners or locals."
The star witness was independent scientist Ramey, a PhD with 33 years of worldwide experience with threatened and endangered wildlife.
Ramey hit key points hard: The data behind most ESA decisions is not publicly available. We own it and it should be posted on the web for independent, third party review - and so everyone can examine it, comment on it, and thus sap the power of the scientific elite.
Your vote is as good as any scientist's but your power isn't. That playing field can be leveled.
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