The Committee of Concerned Scientists extends support and gratitude to the Secretary of Commerce, Penny Pritzker, and the Kathryn Sullivan, Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), for their refusal to allow politics to interfere with free scientific inquiry and in defense of scientific freedom.
December 14, 2015
The Honorable Penny Pritzker
Secretary of Commerce and
The Honorable Kathryn Sullivan
Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator
1401 Constitution Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20230Dear Secretary Pritzker and Under Secretary Sullivan:
We, the Committee of Concerned Scientists (“CCS”), write to commend you for the strength and determination you have shown in the face of the unacceptable harassment and political interference into free scientific inquiry being directed at you and your staff by Congressman Lamar Smith.
CCS is an independent organization of scientists, physicians, engineers and scholars devoted to the protection and advancement of human rights and scientific freedom for colleagues all over the world.
In our gratitude for your strong stance in defense of scientific freedom we join over 500 other scientists and technical experts who have written to thank you for your resistance to this clear “abuse of congressional oversight authority.”
In a quest to discredit an important peer-reviewed climate change study — Possible Artifacts of Data Biases in the Recent Global Surface Warming Hiatus — recently published in the journal Science, Congressman Smith is using subpoenas to seek private communications of NOAA researchers and other staff, and threatening even harsher legal and financial measures. These inquiries are irrelevant to the data and methodologies used in the climate change study, which, per federal research rules and the rules of the journal Science, are readily available to Congressman Smith.We note that your staff has tried to work with Congressman Smith’s House Science Committee to help them better understand the science and methodologies used in the study. We believe that his efforts to seek private communications – and his recent request for communications of the nonscientific political and policy staff – are an attack on NOASS and on free scientific inquiry, in general.
We want to thank you, and we pledge to stand in solidarity with you in defense of scientific inquiry that is free from politicization.
Sincerely,
Joel L. Lebowitz, Paul H. Plotz, Walter Reich,
Eugene M. Chudnovsky, Alexander GreerCo-Chairs, Committee of Concerned Scientists
Copies to:
Congressman Lamar Smith
Related articles
- Possible Artifacts of Data Biases in the Recent Global Surface Warming Hiatus (sciencemag.org)
-
Rep. Lamar Smith Is Fighting Climate Science. Again … (houstonpress.com)
- NOAA hands over some e-mails for Congressman’s subpoena (computermagazine.com)