Washblog

• The logging bill
  Representatives Baird,  Doc Hastings, and Cathy McMorris are among those co-sponsoring HB 4200 (Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act), which promotes logging forests after fires on the basis that this practice is ecologically beneficial.


• Previous research
  Previous research on this question has been mixed. Some has supported this theory of beneficial post-fire logging. More recent research indicates that logging after fires results in non-burned timber being harvested in otherwise protected forests, disturbs the soil just when new seedlings most need to get rooted, and knocks forest debris to the ground, where it provides fodder for new fires.


• The research that Baird has challenged
  The research at issue in this controversy is a paper recently published in the journal, Science, which supports the growing recognition that it's bad for forests to log them right after fires.  (Donato, et al, "Post-Wildfire Logging Hinders Regeneration and Increases Fire Risk").  


• Federal suppression of the challenged research
  The Bureau of Land Management, relying on a technicality (the editors of Science added a mention of HB 4200 in the paper),  defunded the ongoing research.  It has since been re-funded.  At the same time, three federal scientists and several professors from OSU's College of Forestry (which is partially funded by timber taxes and interests) asked Science to halt publication of the report - even though it had passed the final stage of Science's rigorous peer review process.


• Instead of defending suppressed science, Baird dismisses its relevance
  Representative Baird questioned Daniel Donato, the lead author of the paper, recently during congressional testimony. Instead of recognizing that this research had been suppressed, Baird chided Donato for allegedly imperfect science and other sins.  Judging from the media reports, Baird pretty much dismissed the findings of this report -- although it exactly refutes the earlier scientific evidence that the legislation rests upon -- and despite the fact that the publisher, Science, is the premier scientific journal in the United States and that it subjects research to a rigorous peer-review process before publication.


• Representative Jay Inslee steps up
  Inslee, hero of the hour (along with Donato and the other scientists who conducted and are defending the research) has asked the Interior Department's inspector general to investigate why the money for the study was pulled and why Science was asked to squelch the report.

Hostile questioning and the dismissal of relevant evidence
One of the disturbing aspects of this story in addition to the apparently hostile questioning that Representative Baird subjected Daniel Donato to -- shades of the kind of government intimidation that scientists are getting used to these days -- is the way Baird dismisses precisely germane evidence on a matter of key public concern under the guise of considered scientific skepticism.  

Donato pointed out in his testimony that his paper stuck to science - nary a policy recommendation in't.   But Baird observed no such niceties of professional boundaries. Venturing afield from public policy and psychology (Baird is a psychologist) into grammar and forestry, he opined in reference to its title: "The grammar of it, my friend, is a generic continuous generalization....  If I was your reviewer, I would have said your title was deliberately biased ... people are taking this to imply far more than the study suggests."

All of Baird's criticisms of the OSU research - at least as reported in the media - seem beside the point: the paper's title's all wrong; the authors' motives are suspect; the destruction caused to the forest by post-fire logging might eventually fade. Shouldn't this relevant research be given fair consideration -- even if its conclusions are at odds with the policy objectives Baird supports? It is, after all, published in Science, our country's premier scientific journal. It does, after all, question scientific findings published though the same institution (OSU) that Baird relies upon for defense of his legislation.

Baird's history as a defender of scientific integrity
In the keynote speech that he delivered to the 2004 Integrity In Science Conference, Corporate and Political Influence on Science-Based Policymaking, Representative Baird made some trenchant observations on the disastrous Bush administration assault on science:

"In countless subtle and not so subtle ways the administration and Republican majorities who control the House and Senate are deliberately and systematically suppressing discussion and criticism and distorting the scientific process. The modalities of such distortions are manifold and collectively constitute nothing less than a coordinated attack on virtually every stage and aspect of the science/policy interaction."

I say, with no irony of my own, that I am grateful to Representative Baird for making these remarks and for his other work on behalf of scientific integrity.  I believe he is sincere in this matter and I hope he continues to fight the Bush administration's methodical assault on science. But what happened in this case?

Timber-industry funding and relationships
Could it possibly be that ties with the timber industry are clouding Representative Baird's judgment?

Using the Reference USA and Federal Elections Commission databases to identify the larger NW timber and logging companies and compare their political contributions to Representative Inslee (none at all that I could find) - and to Representatives Baird, Hastings, and McMorris - who all are cosponsors of this legislation -- is enlightening.

• Inslee - Zero
• Baird: $10,000 from Weyerhaueser and Simpson Investment Corporation between 2000 and 2005.


• Hastings: $32,000 from Boise Cascade, Plum Creek Good Government Fund (!), Simpson Investment, and Weyerhaeuser between 1997 and 2005


• McMorris: $15,000 from Boise Cascade, Weyerhaueser, and Simpson Investment

Representative Reichert, by the way, has received $13,000 from just Weyerhaueser in just two years.

Added note: These figures are almost certainly low. I searched only on the SAIC codes for timber and logging -- and none of them for forest products industries. I left out in-kind contributions. Carla on Loaded Orygun's commentary on this post this morning provides the link to Open Secret's summary of the top-20 recipients of forest products funding. I got it almost right with Reichert -- but I think I'm low on Cathy McMorris, who is shown as receiving over $14,000 in just one election year.

It is not only money that can cloud judgment -- but also the social pressures and biases that come with relationships -- expectations built up over time, political and social obligations that are generated through collaboration.

We need clean elections
Baird's apparently contradictory behavior in this case, I believe, testifies to the difficulty for any person to remain intellectually, emotionally, and ethically independent in our current system, which requires obeisance to the corporate machine that makes election and re-election possible.   As Baird said in his 2004 address:  "The more a putative answer conforms to one's emotional needs, economic self-interest, religious predilections or political aspirations; the more group support and pressure there is to believe something; and the more those in authority wield their power in support of some answers and against others..."    Yep, we just gotta get us some clean elections -- or we get even our defenders of science committing the kind of scientific suppression Baird outlined in his speech:

• Limits or elimination of funding and resources to pursue certain currently politically incorrect questions or methodologies
• Active and intentional suppression of findings that are not to the official liking
• Disregard of discomfiting scientific evidence entirely and formation of policies based on administration wishes regardless of data or broad expert judgment
• Creation of a climate in which scientists and policy makers begin to self censor or self select out of fear or frustration.

Beyond the consequences that our dirty elections appear to have already created in this case - the further weakening of scientific freedom, the corruption of politics, and threatened damage to important forestland - an additional harm done is to the effectiveness and reputation of a US legislator that represents our state.

For a statement signed by 8,000 scientists, including 49 Nobel laureates, 63 National Medal of Science recipients, and 171 members of the National Academies on the Bush assault on science, see Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking.

Representative Inslee gets the last word here:

"Without vigorous debate in the scientific community -- if it is suppressed, if it is censored, if it is leaned on in the political process -- it makes it impossible to make good public policy."