White House Issues Science Guidelines

The White House finally issued guidelines meant to insulate the findings of government scientific agencies from political bias, and to base policy decisions on "solid data." Many scientists complain that the guidelines are too vague to be useful. I also worry that they are based on the overly-simplistic idea that science can be completely "value-free," and that the concept of "solid data" is unproblematic.
I wonder what others think of this?

Read the article from the New York Times here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/18/science/18research.html?ref=science

I think it's a good start. It expresses an intention to keep science unbiased and a willingness to do something about it when necessary.

However, yes, they are much to vague to actually make a difference. For instance, I completely miss any thoughts about the funding - shouldn't there be extra protections to keep scientists from skewing results in the direction desired by their benefactors?

And whether it's possible or not to have value-free science, we don't actually have it. Scientists, as individuals and especially as a group, tend to gravitate to the received wisdom of their times.

This post was influenced by The Mismeasure of Man and Good Calories, Bad Calories. The first for showing how the complete set of scientists can agree on something because agrees with other things they think they know, the second for an inside look at the mess that results when ambiguous scientific results have to be made into clear government guidelines, and the false consensus that may come out of it.

I read the article but not the actual guidelines which I guess were one of the links in the article. If the objective is to prevent funding only research which will promise to substantiate a politically derived conclusion as I think the Bush administration was accused of I am in favor of it - no tax money to prove the world is flat.