The Pacific Institue’s Integrity of Science blog has moved! A long time in the making, we have now officially moved this blog over to ScienceBlogs.

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See you there!

The Management

In a letter to Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), NASA has confirmed that an internal investigation revealed wrongdoing with regard to the handling of Goddard Space Flight Center Chief Dr. James Hansen. “[A]n internal inquiry has revealed that one recent media request to interview Dr. James Hansen, of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, was inappropriately declined,” wrote a representative from NASA’s Office of Legislative Affairs. You can read the letter here (PDF). NASA denied that the Hansen incident was part of a larger effort.

Lieberman, however, was hardly placated.

“In the time it took NASA to acknowledge that the censorship of Dr. Hansen was inappropriate, new charges of suppressing climate science have arisen at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Forest Service,” Lieberman said. “Reports of this disturbing practice have now arisen at four federal agencies: EPA, NASA, NOAA, and the Forest Service. It is time for the White House to stop suppressing important climate change information that the public has a right to know and needs to know.” Source

We know the junior staffer and resume-fudger who denied Hansen’s interview request has been sacked. However, NASA’s new media policy (PDF) still runs afoul to the law and lacks efficacy, according to the Government Accountability Project.

The New York Times editorial board had nothing nice to say about yesterday’s Supreme Court decision eroding protections for whistleblowers.

The Supreme Court whittled away at the First Amendment yesterday, ruling against a prosecutor who raised concerns about the validity of a search warrant. The court made the law in this area messy, and even illogical. It suggested the attorney would have had more protection if he had embarrassed his office publicly than by working quietly through the system. But the bigger problem is that the ruling rolls back government workers’ rights to speak out against possibly illegal actions.

[...] The First Amendment should not protect employees from discipline for every statement they make at work, clearly. But as the dissenters point out, it should protect them in a case like this one, where an employee was bringing to light information that advances the public interest in honest government and the rule of law.

Given the nuances of the decision, we suspect the Court will be seeing similar cases in the future. In the meantime, we fear that acts of science distortion and potentially illegal actions are more likely to go unreported.