Editorial: Tampering with science

Friday, May 4, 2007 | 7:05 a.m.

As a president's second term nears its end, it is not uncommon for high-ranking political appointees to resign their posts .

But this week's departure of Julie A. MacDonald, Interior Department deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks, is anything but ordinary.

MacDonald resigned Monday under mounting pressure created by an April inspector general's report. That report says she routinely sought to alter U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientific reports and had broken federal rules by giving industry lobbyists access to internal agency documents.

Her resignation came a week before a House committee was to begin hearings about possible political interference with service biologists.

In what the policy director of the Center for Biological Diversity described as a "reign of terror," MacDonald has been accused of, among other things, heavily editing and altering federal biologists' reports on the sage grouse, a bird that was being considered for protection as a threatened or endangered species, The New York Times reported Wednesday. The bird's habitat covers areas of the Rocky Mountain region in which cattle ranching or oil and gas drilling occurs. The Bush administration's efforts to increase such activities in that area would have been limited if the bird had been listed as threatened or endangered. And, not so coincidentally, the bird wasn't listed.

Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.V., chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, has said that, despite MacDonald's resignation, next week's hearings will go on as planned. The inspector general's report shows "faults that run deeper than Julie MacDonald," Rahall told the Times.

We agree. This certainly isn't the first time Bush administration officials have been accused of twisting scientific data to fit their political agenda. Reports on global warming and the approval processes for some drugs also have been tainted by politics. Congress must keep digging to see what else, if anything, may have tainted the Fish and Wildlife Service's scientific decisions. This problem will not be solved by one individual's resignation.