Washington (AFP)
The political interventions of Donald Trump's government in government scientific research institutions have reached the level of a crisis, reports a think-tank in a study published Thursday.
The report published by the Brennan Center for Justice, a think tank on law and democracy, lists interference in federal science agencies to try to change some findings in a way more in line with the White House's political line, whether they concern climate change, oil and gas exploration or meteorology.
"The prerogative of politicians is to lead the policy, even to question the scientific facts and the methodology used by experts, but we must protect the exact research, apolitical and public," write the authors, led by the former federal prosecutor Preet Bharara, an opponent declared to Donald Trump, and Christine Todd Whitman, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency under the presidency of Republican George W. Bush.
Political interference does not date back to the Trump era, they write.
Under the Bush administration, officials had removed conclusions about climate change. Under Democrat Barack Obama, a passage was added in a draft report on hydraulic fracturing to minimize its impact on drinking water.
But attacks have accelerated since 2017 and have never been so frequent, say the report's authors.
In 2018, for example, Ministry of Labor officials ordered government researchers to positively modify a study on the possibility for restaurant patrons to recover some of the tips left to their servers by customers. .
Environmental Protection Agency officials have recently prevented some of their scientists from presenting their research at a conference. A national park official was urged not to use the term "climate change" in internal project applications.
Last year, the national climate report was released by the government the day after Thanksgiving holiday, a day when few Americans read the news. Donald Trump then said he did not agree with his conclusions.
And the government recently disowned an office of the National Meteorological Service that warned the people of Alabama that, contrary to rumors and a tweet from the president, Hurricane Dorian did not threaten the state.
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